25/11/2022 - The Cruelty Of Nature
Reading time: 3 min
Photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash
Madley escaped the venue from the bathroom window. She would have never been able to fit through that small opening if she hadn’t been on the strictest diet for the past three months, and the silky wedding dress helped her slide away from the ceremony.
She landed in the bushes, where the bridesmaid had hidden a red bicycle for her, and leaving behind her uncomfortable heels, she pedalled as fast as she could into the woods.
She couldn’t marry that idiotic child. Someone who could name the model of a Lamborghini from the sound of its engine but could not spell the word “marriage.”
And yet, she knew she had no choice. He was Esposito’s son, she was Colantuomo’s daughter, their union would have created the most powerful criminal empire on that side of the Mississippi River. Her only option was to disappear.
All she had to do was get to the cabin on the other side of the forest and wait for her contact there. With a new passport, a change of clothes and a wig, she would be on a plane in no time, with enough money to start anew.
She pictured this in her head, ignoring her thighs burning, ignoring the pain of the pedals on her bare feet, when something lifted the front of her bike making her fall hard on the ground.
She massaged her bottom smearing dirt on her white dress, and as she looked up, she saw that her bike was being swallowed by a tree.
There was no other way of putting it. A big oak had grown out of nowhere and had trapped the bicycle inside its trunk, carrying it a dozen feet above the ground.
Madley was so mesmerised that, for a second, she forgot she was running for her life and almost paused to take pictures, but fear grew stronger than curiosity, and limping, she leapt beyond the oak, towards safety.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed another bike stuck in an oak. Then another. Then another, and when she turned her head to make sure she was not hallucinating, she banged her head against a tree.
That tree had not been there a second before.
Hurt, puzzled, and starting to be terrified, she crawled around it, but it seemed impossible.
The tree slid seamlessly sideways, blocking her way, and when she changed direction, it followed.
She turned, hurrying to get away from that devilish place, and realised the oaks were closing the gaps between one another, creating a solid wall of trunks surrounding Madley; rusty bicycles sticking out like gargoyles.
She cried for help punching the trees, climbing on the lower brunches, but they shook her off easily.
It was the middle of summer, and yet, the ground was covered with yellow, orange, and brown leaves.
As she fell and fell again, Madley noticed something strange on the leaves. Some of them had words written on them.
She swooped a rock collecting the leaves with words, and just like pieces of a puzzle, she tried to reconstruct a sentence. “Kill,” was the first word she recognised.
She spent some time playing with them, mixing them, her work made harder by the tears in her eyes. Hours passed, and while dusk drew darkness over her wooden prison, she read the message hidden in the leaves, hands on top of her mouth.
“Don’t escape your marriage,” it said, “or IT will kill you.”
About this story
Prompt: 🚲🧩👰🏼 (Thanks Matt!)
Notes on the challenge
Each and every story published here has been written, reviewed, polished and published in less than 90 minutes. Which means you’re going to find spelling mistakes, ugly sentences and weird structures. I still hope you’ll enjoy them!
