Laughing In The Night

Poking and forcing her way through the growth, Aubrey stumbled and fell to the forest ground. Picking herself back up, she noticed smeared blood over her hand. She dabbed at her cheek and found a long, thinly bleeding scratch. The thornbush nearby became the recipient of an angry glaze from Aubrey. At least she had the river next to her to wash it clean.

Aubrey had been following the river ever since she awoke earlier in the forest. She had a headache and, worse, amnesia. No matter how hard the effort, she couldn't remember anything about herself or her life. Excerpt her name. Thank...something...I remember that much. The river had sated her thirst and provided a reasonable direction or path to follow, but it was incapable of squelching the hunger she felt. So she followed the river, hoping to find either clearly edible food or decent civilization.

For several hours of effort, all she had gotten was a scratch to the face. What miserable journey does this be? She made her way to the bank of the river and squatted down. She splashed water on her face using her cupped hands. It felt good. Additionally, the thin scratch had stopped bleeding. She stared upstream into the moving current of water for the longest of times.

It was then Aubrey realized the length of the shadows. She quickly turned to face the other way, to look at the sun. To her horror, it was indeed sinking and had barely begun to touch the horizon. Nighttime would be upon the forest before too long, a forest she knew nothing about. For all she knew, the forest could be either deadly or harmless, filled with wild predators or cute herbivores.

There were two choices. The most conventional one was to find a place of shelter and sleep out the night. Humans were at a sensory disadvantage during the night; they were also usually tired after having done a day's activity. The other was to continue walking through the night, keeping her senses alert and avoiding trouble. Even in the most secure shelter, being asleep was still a disadvantage because of the near-comatose state a person was in.

Aubrey kept walking. She'd only been awake for part of the day; she wasn't tired. The double moons in the sky lit up the night enough for her to blaze a trail. Blazing a trail was unnecessary though when she realized that she could just walk downstream in the river. What a stupid genius I am!

As the night wore on, there was nothing to be heard. No insects, no animals, nothing. It seemed as if the forest was dead. Aubrey worried. What was wrong with this forest?

It was then she saw the shadow in the sky. Aubrey spun around, pulse quickening, swirling the water around her feet. There was nothing in the sky but the double moons. Slowly turning around, she pressed on. She still couldn't help but casually glance behind her. Was it really something, or just the tricks of the eye?

The rain poured down, thick and fast. Hearing rumblings of thunder and seeing distant flicks of lightning, Aubrey abandoned the middle of the river and resumed merely trailing parallel to its banks. She had to go on.

A flash of lightning, a shape in the corner of her eye again. Once more she spun around to face it; once more it was nowhere to be found. Cold and wet, she shivered. She didn't know if it was from her body or her mind.

The rain came and gone; the lightning and the thunder departing with it. Distant, it could still be heard and seen. Aubrey was about to breath a sigh of relief when a new sound invaded the forest's silent sanctity. Shrill, incoherent, laughing. All around her. It came from flapping shadows in the night sky.