Chapter One: Black Forest Cake

He awoke to the lyrical chirping of birds. Must've left the window open, he thought. His right hand was facing down with his arm outstretched. His head is squished against his shoulder. His left arm is twisted and up against his body. His legs are tangled together. His hair is over his face.

Through it he can see streams of light. His right hand feels itchy. He moves it back and forth, trying to scratch it on the floor. While he does that the floor seems to move with his hand. It feels sort of soft and crumbly, like chocolate cake, and there are little hard bits in it. He swept his arm in an arc, feeling the floor. Maybe it was another side effect from the cold-but-not? His hand caught on something smooth and flat and sort of teardrop shaped. It had lightly serrated edges and little raised lines that were fanned out. He followed the lines to where they converged and found a little wood-like thing attached, like a stem. Like on a leaf.

He shot up. What was a leaf doing in his apart-He looked around at the trees surrounding him and the earthy forest floor-ment? He scooted backwards, as if he could get away from it all, as if he could just scoot back into his apartment.

He wildly looked around, swiveling his head almost 360 degrees. Trees with sunlight shining through the leaves. Birds chirping and flying between the trees. Squirrels chattering territorially at each other. Clean, fresh air brought to him by a small breeze.

He was in a fucking forest. Outside. On the ground.

He swiftly stood up and brushed the offending dirt off his hands and pants. And shirt. And hair. He hugged his arms to himself, trying to keep anything from touching him.

He had hardly ever been outside before. Well, he was outside every day when he went places, like the store for groceries or school or his job, but that was in the city. Out here there were no buildings. No sidewalks. No roads. The only time he'd ever been in this kind of setting was when he went camping with his father once when he was seven. In an RV.

He stuck a knuckle in his mouth and gnawed on it in worry. He had no idea how to do anything without modern appliances. He wouldn't be able to get food or make a shelter. The best bet would be to find a road and try to hitch a ride. Or at the very least follow the road until it led to a city. Either way, he was not staying here tonight.

He picked a direction and started walking straight. He hoped that he would be able to find a way out of the forest first if he kept walking in one direction. The forest couldn't be that big, right?

As he walked he tried to figure out he got in the forest in the first place. The last thing he remembered was falling in the bathroom and that light. But that was probably because his eyes were sensitive as he had been weak. So maybe after passing out he'd tried to get help again. Maybe he went outside and staggered about the streets trying to find the hospital because in his delusional state he hadn't thought to call the hospital. Then maybe after that he'd wandered out of the city to the only forest near the city, which was five miles away.

He pulled his hair in frustration. There was no way someone that weak would be able to walk around that much. Something else must have happened. Maybe he got kidnapped after he'd accidently left the front door open, although he was quite sure he'd closed it, and they did unspeakable things to his body while he was unconscious! And then they dumped his body in the forest so that nobody would know what happened and are now waiting outside the forest to see if he's dead or not, and will shoot him if he's not!

He quickly checked his body for signs of violence. He poked his legs for bruises and hissed when he found one. Oh no! Oh, wait. That was probably from falling on the bathroom floor. The same thing was true of his arms and hips and chest and head.

He sighed in relief. He only had bruises from the fall. No ugly rapist men had defiled his still-pure body and he wouldn't have any flashback dreams for years to come. He sighed in relief again.

Then he promptly got punched in the face by a tree trunk.

He jumped back and brought his hands up to his face. His mouth was open in that pose right before you cry. He felt his face heat and tears prickled his eyes. He scrunched up his face, mouth still open, and started doing cry-breathing, the phase right before you start to cry when you try to stop the crying. He rubbed his face, hoping to make it better, but ended up making it worse.

He tried to keep the tears in but after a while they just came. They made his face even hotter and redder and made it hurt more. He was getting a headache now, too, as he always did when crying. He went over to a log to sit down.

Finally after a few minutes his face had stopped being so painful; it was now a dull throb. He got up from the log-bench and went to continue walking forward when he realized he'd lost the direction he was going in through all the painful confusion.

He huffed through his nose and his face scrunched up in frustration and fear. He had noticed that the light that had been shining through the trees was now dimmer. It was getting closer to night. And he hadn't found the road yet.

He panicked and ran blindly through the trees. Branches whipped him in the face and caught in his hair. He angrily shoved them out of the way. Night was falling faster now. There were fewer birds out. He couldn't hear or see any squirrels. The branches on the ground were blending together in the darkness. He tripped forward over one. He caught himself before he could fall and kept running.

He slowed to a jog when his lungs started burning. And that's when he heard it.

Off to his right side was a rustling and snorting. Something big was moving out there.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

What the fuck was he supposed to do now? He couldn't just stand there and wait for it to come out and eat him after gouging out his eyes with its giant sabers and scooping out his entrails and-and-

It had just stepped out from behind the bushes. Its back brushed the tips of the branches of the trees it was so tall. It had giant, gleaming, white tusks that looked knife-sharp. It had thick, thick, bristly fur that formed a ridge on its back.

He couldn't move.

"That's one big fucking boar," he mouthed. Then he squinted, trying to get a better look at the creature in the moonlight. He'd thought for a moment that the fur was blue…

The giant boar moved more into the moonlight, and that's when he saw that, yes, its fur was indeed blue. A really, really dark blue that seemed to shimmer a silvery blue in the moonlight.

His mind raced. He was stuck out here in the wilderness, with the bugs and the dirt and the leaves and the fresh air, and now this, this thing! This fucking blue boar! With its sword-sized tusks that could probably skewer him alive! And its blue fur! Blue! Then he had a thought, how many blue-furred boars did you see every day? His eyes widened. This must be an escaped-experiment boar! That means that it's even more dangerous than a normal boar. It probably had some aggression enhancing chemicals in it that will make it attack on sight! …So why wasn't it attacking him now? He was standing right in front of it…

It was just snuffling around the forest floor looking for whatever boars eat, which he'd always thought was rabbits, and not paying any attention to him. And it was a lot closer than before, but he couldn't move. He didn't know if it was just playing him right now, waiting for him to move to make its attack.

Okay, now it was uncomfortably close. He could make out individual hairs on its face. And he could see its eyes…which were really small and red. They were outlined in thick black lashes. The boar's nose was pink, as was the insides of its long ears. That's strange…he didn't think boars had such long ears. That means it's definitely an escaped experiment.

Suddenly it stopped its snuffling and looked straight at him. He held his breath. The thing seemed to be searching for something. Abruptly it turned around and went back from where it came. He still stood there, a little frozen in fear. He let out a little sound in the back of his throat when he tried to move, almost warning himself not to.

He finally got over whatever spell he was under and ran full out in the opposite direction of the blue boar. He ran and ran until he was far away from the thing, and then he ran some more.

He was cold. It was night. He was scared. He was hearing strange sounds, sounds that he'd never heard before. There was a sort of hooting sound that could have been an owl, except that it tapered off into a yowling.

There were other sounds, too. Yipping sounds. Snarling sounds. Sounds that started to circle the tree he was staying in.

He shivered from the cold, and from fear. He didn't know what to do, to get out of this forest, to find help, to stay alive until morning.

He had tried looking for help, a way out, something, for hours, until it became too dark to see, and he had started hearing the noises.

And so, he found himself in a tree, scared out of his mind that who knew how many bugs were crawling over his skin in the dark. And the dirty bark beneath him was probably covered in snake slime and bird droppings and dirty squirrel fur and sticky sap. He shuddered in disgust.

Where the heck was he? He had been trying to figure that out since he had woken up in the middle of a forest. He had quietly quashed the idea that this was the state forest near the city; it was far too large.

His stomach growled.

And now he was hungry. Great.

Because of all that frantic searching and the panicked fleeing he was starving, which was made worse by his inability to hold much food in his body for the last couple of weeks. He was fucked.

He listened and realized it was silent. The snarling things that had been circling his tree had left, only judging by the absence of their sounds. They could still be there, lurking and waiting for a chance that he would come down and then they would eat him after first fighting over his body and then they would rip him apart while still alive and howl their victory with his blood on their muzzles.

He started hyperventilating, well not really, but that's what he called it when he started panicking a lot. But, really, he needed to find a way out of this place. Right. Now. He didn't want to be here one minute more.

He couldn't leave right now, what with the howl-y creatures running about; he'd have to wait for morning. Which means he'd have to stay in this tree until morning. He sighed. It would have to do. He curled up and tried to force himself to sleep, wanting the night to pass by as quickly as it could so that he could wake up in the morning and start his planning.

He eventually fell asleep only due to his extreme exhaustion. He'd never moved that much and with him just getting over a sickness the exhaustion just compounded.

TBC

Hey guys! So...nobody likes this one, eh? I promise it'll get better! I swear! Stuff's gonna happen! Please read it and review. Review are to me, as blood is to vampires.

I don't know why you all like Wolf so much...It's actually my least favorite story line.