David shoved his way through a patch of thorns, ignoring the blood that trickled down his calves. These few branches were nothing compared to the towering, tangled masses he had already encountered while tearing through the woods. Dawn was now breaking and Dave was still forcing a path through the dense branches and bushes, as he had been for the past four or five hours. He would not let himself get panicked or frightened just yet. He had made it through the night, and he hadn't panicked when he first realized he had lost the path, he hadn't panicked when his flashlight had gone out a few hours ago, and he would not freak out now. As he thought about keeping calm, he forced out of his mind the fact that he was losing his breath and really should stop, that his heart was thudding in his chest at a painful pace, and that there were beads of sweat pouring down his bloody face. All of his concentration was on breaking his way through the underbrush and the idea that he must find his way back the road, or at least another bike path, or something other than these god damn tress! Again, he kicked a branch out of the way and tried not to sink his foot in a puddle of mud. He missed and slammed his boot into the puddle, slid, then caught himself on a tree just before he fell to the ground. Panting, he pulled himself up, jamming a thorn deep into his palm. "Shit!" Dave exclaimed as he got his footing. Using what he had left of his dirty worn fingernails, he pried out the thorn and ripped his skin even further. He clenched his fists and held back a frustrated scream. With a decisive step, he continued to cut through the woods. Because he was distracted by the cut in his palm, he didn't focus on where he was placing his foot. Immediately he fell straight down onto his back and slid downwards, rocks scraping through his t-shirt and thick mud keeping him from getting a firm grasp on anything that would stop him. His boots suddenly hit something hard and threw him forward, face first, onto a gravel path. A muddy puddle that was spread across the path made his hands slide as he made a desperate attempt to catch his fall, and his face collided with the gravel, cutting him and giving him a mouthful of soggy dirt. The puddle probably saved Dave from a broken wrist, but he wasn't thinking that when he mustered enough strength to push himself up, only to have that puddle send him back onto the path. "Fuck it," he sputtered when he finally got himself into a sitting position and spat out dirt and blood. He brushed himself off and winced as his hands peeled off the excess skin hanging from his scrapes. In front of him was the muddy embankment that he had just fallen down. A slick path of crushed leaves and smooth mud marked his violent route onto the gravel, and he responded by picking up large chunk of gravel and hurling at the hill, and letting out a scream of "Fuck you!"
"Well, at least I'm out the woods," he thought as he stood up and looked up and down the path. Each direction showed now promise of reaching a destination, and apparently hadn't been traveled in quite some time. This wasn't the same path that connected to his buddies cabin, but at least it was a path that had to connect to somewhere. The center of the road was tufted with thick grass and surrounding it were deep potholes filled with water, undisturbed. Without any deciding factor, he turned right and began to shamble his way down the road, kicking rocks and avoiding puddles. Dave began to asses what had happened over the past few hours, and what a great kick his buddies would get out of this. It was their dumb ass prank that got him into this mess after all. "Oh man, I am going to get you back good for this one, assholes!" He said this out loud, making a squirrel in a nearby tree skitter further up the bark into the dripping canopy of leaves.

A thin fog floated around him, filtering in and around the path and trees. The air was humid and sticky, even in the early morning hours. Dave was drenched with sweat, and he flung his soaking gray t-shirt off onto the road, leaving it discarded on the muddy road. "Man, I hope they didn't get too drunk without me last night," he thought with dismay. He will look pretty stupid getting back to the cabin, after missing some serious partying and being the only one not hung over. "Great, if they're as hung-over as we were last weekend, and if they really got drunk last night, they probably haven't even noticed that I haven't come back." Presumably they had just walked away without him, and laughed their asses off if they heard any of his frantic, angered yelling from the woods.

Last night, after the fire had gone out, Dave and his friends went into the cabin and got some flashlights because they wanted to take a walk. It must have been around one in the morning, and they had been walking for about an hour when Dave said he had to go take a leak. They stopped on the path as Dave walked into the trees. He figured that Jackie would follow, and he planned to have a quick make-out session while his friends goofed off on the path. After zipping up his pants, he waited for a few seconds, but there were no signs of Jackie coming, and he noticed that he couldn't even hear his friends. He shrugged it off and walked back to the path. They weren't there. He yelled for them and said that it was a really funny joke. He waited for them to jump from bushes, staying alert in all directions so that they wouldn't scare the shit out of him. After a few minutes of this and of poking through the roadside underbrush, Dave became agitated. It wasn't funny now. He flicked on his flashlight and walked a little ways down the path, in the direction they had been going. He had to catch up to them sometime, he figured. Eventually he noticed that there weren't any foot prints, or any beer cans that had been carelessly thrown onto the road. "Shit," he thought, "where in the hell did they go?" He decided that they must have just gone back to the cabin with the same idea of getting a good piece of ass, if they had given up on the prank, so he went back to the place where they left him. Checking the woods one more time wouldn't be a bad idea, he thought. They probably meant for him to walk away and come back, so that they could scare him even more. He turned on his flashlight again and went back into the bushes. After a few paces he heard some twigs break and swung to his left. He saw a branch swaying and could see some leaves moving in the distance. "Found them," Dave thought creeping in the direction of his dumb-ass friends. He swung his flashlight around, but they had disappeared again. "Guys, I fucking found you, come out, you almost got me." he trailed off, swinging his flashlight in front of him again and hearing no reply and no movement. "Jesus! Would you cut it out, it two thirty in the god damn morning! Lets just go back to the cabin and get drunk!" he yelled this really loudly, hoping his enthusiasm for beer would entice his idiot friends out of hiding. No reply, no movement. "Get out here! You jerks, I can't get my way back to the path, and you guys know the fucking way!" David gulped and looked around the dark woods. "Guys?! Yoo-hoo?! Fuck!" He had really gotten himself into a mess. Everything looked the same, especially in the darkness created by the trees. There was no way of telling what way he had come from, leaving no clues to where the path was. Dave began trudging through the woods, guiding himself with his flashlight. About and hour and later, he felt a few raindrops, and cussed like crazy, knowing that if he didn't find the freaking path back to the cabin, he would be stuck in the monster storm that was expected. Surely enough, the sprinkles broke out into a heavy downpour, making his way through the bushes and trees even harder, and cutting down on his visibility. He finally gave up and stopped trying to avoid thorns and wood blocking the way; he simply shoved through every obstacle. The lightning raged, but luckily he hadn't been electrocuted; only scared out of his mind. Around five, Dave was covered in scratches, terribly pissed off, and drenched with rain and mud. To make matters worse, his flashlight began to flicker and soon went out. He threw it into the woods and still continued to recklessly break his way deeper into the trees. The rain let up around six-thirty, and Dave stumbled onto the road at around seven.
Now, Dave was wandering slowly down his newly discovered path, letting the cramps in his side ease up and wiping the sweat off of his body with a scrap of t-shirt. He desperately tried to ignore the effects of this morning's hang-over, until he finally had to lean over and puke between his knees. "Man, did we really drink that much last night before we left? I didn't have that much of a buzz.." he threw up again, and let himself fall down onto the path. Sitting on the muddy ground he thought "Well Dave, if you hadn't of been drunk, you probably wouldn't of gotten yourself lost in the fucking woods, you probably were walking right next to the path half of the night and didn't even know it." He vowed then that he would never ever go into the woods while he was drunk again, even if he intended to stay on the path. Thoughts began to fill his mind, thoughts that brought that feeling of fear back again. "What if Jackie, Kali, Jay and Mike are lost too? What if they wondered off the path, they had all drank more than me anyway? Why did Jackie stay with them, why didn't she wait for me?" He stopped and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to think some sense over the throbbing head ache he had. Yet, more troubling thoughts ran into his head. "Well, if they went back to the cabin and they are drunk out of their minds, then what did Jackie do without me? Jay and Kali probably had a fucking blast, and Mike probably sat alone watching TV . No. Jackie never got drunk enough to do something stupid, she couldn't ever touch Mike. Could she, would she? If they are back there...but yet again, what if they're out here..screw it, forget it Dave, you'll be back at the cabin in no time and can get a nice long shower..with Jackie." Now he was determined to find the route back to the Jay's parent's cabin, which was so nicely placed in a remote, uninhabited area of woods, in the middle of fucking nowhere. He shook off all of the disturbing thoughts, and imagined Jackie, with him, tonight, wrapped around him at the fireside.

An hour or so later, he realized he needed to take another leak. "No way am I going to make the same mistake I did last night. I don't have to piss on a tree; I'll stay right here on the road." He said this aloud, smiling at himself. He had just pulled down his fly, when a blood curdling scream pierced the heavy morning air. "Holy shit! What the hell." Dave hurriedly zipped his pants and took off in a sprint towards the scream. "That definitely sounded like Carly. What in the world is going on?" He thought, utterly befuddled as he ran, splashing through puddles and gasping for breath. Suddenly he heard "Noooo! Run man, run!" screamed helplessly by who he thought was Jay. The screams were closer now. They had to be just around the next bend, Dave had finally found his friends, but not quite how he expected them.