Before the Beginning
The sun was setting as Macie drove further into the mountains, light pink and orange sky was being taken over by purple and red.
I’ve never seen so much green in one place, she thought to herself. Macie lived in Arizona all her life, where most of everything was rusty desert. Her last foster home was outside of Tucson near Mica mountain. It was beautiful. She photographed every inch of it. It was Mica mountain that gave her the dream of photographing for Nat Geo. She was 19 now, having spent the last year saving for her Canon camera- not the top of the line but it was wonderful, and this trip. Macie couldn’t remember feeling happier.
Macie was short and slender. She looked athletic but not highly coordinated. Her arms had gained some muscle from holding a camera up constantly the past few months. She was so focused capturing the beauty around her she barely paid attention to herself. She hadn’t really paid any mind to herself or what she looked like for most of her life. At sixteen she had a really ‘cool’ foster parent that owned a tattoo shop, that’s when she got the planets on her lower arm done. That’s also when she got snakebites pierced and her eyebrow. Of all the times to hit your rebellious stage it worked out pretty well. Still, her clothes were old and worn hand-me downs from foster siblings she’d kept along the way. Not really having a choice at what she owned or wore until recently, she had only just begun to explore who she was as an individual. However the first thing to go was her straight auburn hair which was kept around her shoulders since 5th grade. The sides and back were buzzed short with a little length on top now. She had picked up clippers and did it herself. She didn’t have the skill for what she really wanted it to look like but she smiled everytime she ran her fingers up the back. It fit her, she felt handsome and kindof beautiful too.
Macie was handsome and beautiful. Many people throughout her life growing up had noticed. Yet she was oblivious to different date proposals as she reached her teens. She was in her own world, dreaming about the future when she could make her own choices. She had some friends through school. They weren’t very close friendships but she was bubbly, funny, and a little feisty, a lot of people liked her. She just didn’t notice much. She was used to being alone, taking care of and comforting herself. When it came to this trip she didn’t have a second thought about driving across the country alone.
Her car wasn’t remarkable, it was dark grey with woven seats, a squeaky sun roof and an old radio that played cassete tapes - definitely not new but it was very well maintained. She worked all year after she turned 16 for it at a greasy pizza place where the owner was even greasier. The only thing worse than being paid so little were his creepy remarks about her body, but she saved every penny until she could go to the used car lot and drive back to the shop to quit.
She’d been driving for 14 hours and now that the sun was setting she was becoming more aware of how sore her leg was from the pedals. Her stomach had been slowly aching more and more for real food, not the jerky, nuts, or oatmeal creme pies she had been munching on as she drove.
Macie had been fairly lucky so far with very little traffic through the cities she had passed. At this point she could only see one other car on this road some yards behind her.
“I might make it to the house in a couple hours after I stop for groceries” She said to herself hoping it would be true. She was getting stiff and tired from staring at the road. It wasn’t really a house she was going to, it was more like a decent sized shack, but it had electricity, plumbing, and a bed that she found herself longing for more as time went on.
She was going to spend the summer in the shack taking pictures of the animals and mountains by day and reading by night. She loved reading, mostly books about other worlds, mythical and mystical creatures with adventures and quests. She had just finished a book about a wherewolf colony she had particularly liked the night before she set off. Her trunk was full of books she had collected and gotten at thrift stores. She didn’t exactly believe in mythical monsters but she had dreams about finding one and photographing them on some obscure mountain. Where she was headed now, Sawtooth Range in Idaho, should be home to black bears, big cats maybe some mule deer and gorgeous cliffs. She didn’t know why she specifically picked Sawtooth Range, they weren’t exactly well known. Out of all the mountain ranges in the country it was like something was pulling her there.
It was strange though, that very little people appeared to live in Sawtooth Range. She spent months looking for cabins to rent, or a room, but not even one motel was listed in the area. The only grocery store- if you could call it that, was an hour away from the shack. She found the shack listing online burried beneath a thousand other listings for places to stay in the Blue Ridge, the Smokeys, the Rockeys. She bought a 3 months stay pretty cheap in the shack, it couldn’t have gone better.
It has to be close she thought as the sky darkened considerably.
As she looked ahead into the darkening winding road surrounded by trees something big and blinking was coming into view. It was a semi hauling massive logs splayed out across the road.
“Shit!” They must have lost control she thought as she sped closer to the wreck. She stopped her car behind the truck and unbuckled.
She didnt know that in the car yards behind her was a woman with two kids. Two cranky kids that for the last hour had been fighting and pinching and punching each other. At this point the boy had grabbed a fistfull of his sisters hair because she had just wacked him hard on the head with her hairbrush. Both were screaming and crying and their mom had had enough.
She whipped around in her seat with one hand still on the wheel glaring at her kids and through gritted teeth started
“I swear to god if you dont stop screaming and fighting I will pull over this second and you will be sleeping in those woods tonight! Let go of her damn hair Connor and Jane!-“
SLAM
