I've always hated crowds.
You know that feeling when you just stand there trying your best not to have any part of your skin touch a stranger who seems not to care for it as much as you do? It's not that I think highly of myself or that everyone around me was dirty or unworthy. It's more about my fear of people getting too close for comfort. That feeling of suffocation. Without any escape. Or having all eyes on me.
I thought that I would escape that feeling by coming with Patrick on this camping trip with his friends. After all, it was a chance to get away from the chaos of the city. It was probably past midnight when he invited me to go have a walk with him in the woods. At first I hesitated cause it was dark but he insisted that we only stay on the path. If he wasn't that charming I would not have said yes, hell I wouldn't even have agreed to come to this trip at all. The lighter in his hand did little to provide light in our way.
As we walked deeper into the woods, he kept on talking but I never really heard anything he said. I couldn't keep my eyes off all the trees around us. When the light passes by each of them, I felt like there were eyes staring at me. It didn't help that the trees looked crooked, bent out of shape. Of course, Patrick noticed my silence and probably sensed my fear. Being the little shit that he is, he decided to tell me some made-up story.
"They said years ago this small town started having people plagued with some disease. That caused their bodies to look crooked and their skin stretched out to their limits. So the villagers, scared that it might happen to them, drove these people away. Took them out of their homes. Tied them to different trees while they begged for mercy. Maybe a hundred of them. And they burned the forest down. Months later, the woods sprouted back to life just like how it was before. But they say at night, the woods disappear and beings bent out of shape roam around in search for revenge."
"That's the most ableist story I've ever heard." I quipped.
He laughed, "Lighten up! Why you gotta take the fun out of it with your social activism? This is why I took you out of the city life for once."
"Yeah," I whispered. No matter how much I hated his story, it somehow crept under my thoughts. We're in the middle of the woods, I was reminded. The winds began to blow and the fire on his lighter started flickering. I hugged myself tighter to battle the cold.
"Can you hold this for a minute? I have to take a piss." He gave me the lighter despite my protest. "Do you really have to do that now?"
As I held the lighter in my hand, I couldn't help but look at my peripherals. When the little light of the fire flickered at the trees, it was as if there were faces in pain looking at me. The branches reaching out to me.
While Patrick stood there on the side with his back facing me, I was in a hurry to leave the place that I caught myself stomping on the ground.
"Hey, about the story earlier," he said while doing his business. "It was this forest."
Right then, the winds blew hard killing the fire and sending us both in total darkness. I scrambled to get the light back on as I watched sparks return our vision. But when I finally got the fire back on, Patrick was nowhere to be found.
At this point I closed my eyes, hoping that this wasn't real. I stood there frozen as the light went out one more time.
With my eyes closed, I embraced myself to fight the cold. The howling of the wind stopped. And there was silence. Slowly, the cold winds were replaced by warm breeze. Like breath. Every little noise I heard from then on made my face twitch as I fought the urge to open my eyes. Maybe pray that when I open them, I'll be fine. And when I did, I saw the night sky.
I always said I hated crowds.
Now I'm in one.
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