A Slip and a Trip - A Screened Word Story

I began to grow weary from all the hiking through the forests. Feeling my breath going in and back out, I tried and failed to stop it as I looked up and noticed my friend, Chloe, hopping a ways ahead of me.

“The last one back to college is a rotten egg”, she shouted ahead of me.

“Wait up,” I shouted back, but not as forcefully as I wanted to. I kept up my speed and did my best to catch up to her as the leaves of the shrubbery beside me brushed against my legs, my face, my hips. As I pushed myself further to catch up to her, I noticed some small glimmers of light piercing through the forests, the trees, the shrubbery, and the canopy. After hiking through the forest for what felt like five miles, I felt so happy to finally see some clearance creeping towards me. Somehow, that told me that we were just getting clear of all the deep, dark forestry behind us.

Soon, we were about to be one step closer to being home free as I walked closer to the opening. But my enthusiasm started to wane a little bit as I noticed just where Chloe, not to mention the rest fo the gang, who were way ahead of both of us, were going. The first thing I saw beyond the leafy borders were Chloe as she was walking on a long, large log ahead of me.

“Come on, Delia. The log here is as sturdy as can be. Watch me cross it.”

That log did not look too thick to me, though. It looked a touch soggy where she was walking, and there’s no telling whether she would have slipped and fallen into the river below. Even if the river was flowing smoothly, I still didn’t know if this was the best way to cross.

To my surprise, however, I noticed Chloe walk along the log with her arms spread out, her blonde hair falling down to her thighs, and with less difficulty than I feared. With each tiptoe, she slowly but steadily walked all throughout the log until she confidently made it to the other end of the log. My confidence in potentially crossing the log with her became more prominent when I saw her hop off the log and onto the other side of the river.

“You see? This wasn’t so bad,” she told me. “Come on. You can do it.”

Could I? I thought.

At my utmost confidence slowly building up inside of me, I followed her lead, carried my hiking gear, found the rocks to climb the log with, slowed down, and started to tiptoe my way across the log next. For a minute, I felt like I was at peace with myself. My feet strutted along step by step across the log, and I felt a little sense of relief feeling more present as I saw Chloe on the other side of the log and the river, waving and waiting for me.

At least, it lasted that way for a minute.

All it took was for one slippery part of the log have me feel my body losing control of itself, and I felt it become loopier than ever before. The next thing I knew, my other foot lost hold of the log, and I felt myself in mid-air and lunging down towards the river. I couldn’t have recalled what became of my body as soon as it landed inside the river, but I did remember so many other things going on all at once. The coldness of the water enveloping my body, the hard impact of my body against the river floor, how it was immediate, swift, cold, nibbling me all over. Somehow, I was starting to go entirely numb from the fall.

Inside, I was panicking. I knew that I had possibly fallen to my death. I should have known better than to not have called out for Chloe or suggested that we find another way through the river. And there I was, having made the mistake of following Chloe’s lead. Look where it got me.

At the bottom of the river, as my body slunk, I didn’t feel myself flowing along with the river. Before I possibly succumbed to what little life I had left, I tried to swim up to the surface before I noticed how I was starting to lose air in my lungs. My body was too numb to carry me up to the surface of the water as it slowly lost control and slumped to the bottom of this river, on the stone and the rocks buried underwater.

This was it, I thought. This is goodbye after all.

I felt my face wrinkle a little bit from sadness before my face started to lose its feeling too. Soon, my eyes started to slowly close in on me. The last things I saw were those rocks and all the little particles of the river flowing past me until I saw nothing but blackness.

What happened next was not what I expected. It did not take me long for me to have woken up, yet I felt something truly weird come about. I did feel myself waking up, and yet I still felt nothing all around my body. I did not feel my arms, my legs, my stomach, my back. I did not even feel my hands, fingers, feet or toes. I wasn’t even feeling anything with the water in my throat. I was awake, yet I felt nothing. I had no idea what happened, but for some reason, I felt like I could have easily leapt out of where I fell into the river and just roamed free and swam about without any problems.

Only, it didn’t feel like I was swimming about. Instead, I felt like I was soaring within the river instead. Soon, I was lunging through the river and exploring all the beauties that I didn’t think to explore when I wasn’t inside the river. I saw the bubbles flittering up past me, all the moss that had collected on the stones and by the sand beneath me. I even recalled seeing a few fish swimming past me, regardless of which way they went. Soon, as I continued to explore the breathtaking depths within the river, I saw the soft glimmers of light glittering above me from the surface of the water. As soon as I looked at it, I gradually leaned in closer to it until, ultimately, I was finally out of the river and looking at the it as I would have from outside.

Interestingly enough, however, I did not feel like I was standing in the middle of the river, let alone standing on the river. All I knew is that I was just above the river, and that was that. I didn’t know what was going on, but somehow I felt like I was looking at all the different people, the different places, the different things that I didn’t think I would have had a chance to explore. As soon as I found myself outside of the river, I looked backwards and forwards and every which way where I was as I peeked out into the horizons and noticed the beautiful forests, as well as the mountains that were hovering around me.

But then, I remembered Chloe and how she would have responded to me falling into the river, and to what I had been doing at that moment. Of course, I didn’t recall whether I even fell in or not, just that I was somehow out of the river and looking at things as far as the eye could’ve seen. I peeked down where I last saw Chloe after she crossed the log, and she wasn’t there. I knew she was trouble before. In some moments, I found her too impulsive to care to stop to think of what happened to her friends behind her. But this was just not what I thought she would have done. I should have known that taking a hike with her was a bad idea.

What did that matter, though? I just knew that I had finally lunged away from the river and past the forest where Chloe would have been by then.

Suddenly, I became more ecstatic as I went over the forest and past where Chloe and the rest of our friends would have been by then. So, yeah, perhaps I would have become the first to see the end of the high trail far ahead of her. How do you like that, Chloe?

Soon enough, I saw myself back at our hometown of Tacoma, Washington. It felt so nice to finally be back after such a long and arduous hike. All the nice people, the nice sights, the nice signs, the pleasant buildings, even the pleasant atmosphere. I remembered feeling like I had come back home again. And yet, I felt like there were more homes that I felt like I had to visit, to catch up on.

Soon after that, as I embraced Tacoma with open arms, I was back at good old Pacific Lutheran University. All the attractive details of the campus grounds were still there, and as I came to expect, all the different activities and turmoils that I recalled from my classmates and God knows how many other people came along were still roaming about the campus. Once I got settled there all over again, I was suddenly over at my old college dorm room where Chloe and I lived in together. Everything in the room looked about the same as it was before she and I left for our hiking trip. I was over at my side of the room with my pencils, pens, erasers, sharpeners, notebooks, textbooks, all stacked neatly on the desk. But what drew my attention to this side of the dorm room were family photos that I held on to me. My family, my parents, my younger brother, my cousins. I looked intently at them as I gained an inner appreciation for who I had in my life, who I left behind, what I left behind. I leaned in closer at the picture of my family, and wouldn’t you know it, I was sharing the living room with my parents, who were just wandering about and doing their usual business back home.

Sometimes, they talked about Washington politics and what they thought was unseemly about what went on in our country at that moment. Sometimes, they caught the news on TV, but this was mostly because I noticed my father reading from the newspaper while my mother went about doing her usual chores around the house. That’s usually what I came to expect from my parents every time I came down there from my room.

Speaking of which, I did go to the hallway and stand between my room and that of my brother, Davis. When I peeked inside his room, I saw him doing what I usually expected to see him do, just reading his favorite books and listening to his favorite records. Sometimes, he was a little outgoing, especially with all the friends he made in our school together. But that’s my younger brother for you, always sitting around, reading and listening to music.

Next, I went into my own bedroom. The bed sheets looked unwrinkled. I found nothing messy or cluttered about the room, and it all looked just as I remembered leaving it before I headed off to college. I had to hand it to Davis. He sure was a man of his word in not tampering with my bedroom while I was away.

Just as I was starting to settle more in my bedroom, of course, that’s when I found myself in the same room as my cousins, whom I remembered not seeing for years. They all lived over in South Dakota, and as soon as I saw them, my uncles, and my aunts, suddenly everything started to come back. The humble homestyle. The outgoing family banter. The persistent work ethics coursing throughout with the family. I recalled seeing it unfold in front of me as I saw them again. Soon enough, I remembered being outside of their home again and looking at all of the nice little touches and familiar details throughout the farm and the farm grounds. I remembered seeing some signs of wear, but I could tell it was more from age instead of lack of maintenance. Shortly afterwards, I gazed out into the open plains, also stretching out as far as the eye could have seen. Everything that I thought I didn’t need anymore were suddenly presenting themselves to me all over again as I soaked in all that I had seen in front of me, all who I had seen in front of me, and I started to relish in being around them again. I wanted to speak with them, but I somehow could not have found it in me to have spoken out to them, no matter how hard I tried. Who knows? Maybe I could have tried again and seen whether I could have voiced myself out some more.

I did not have a chance to put it into practice, though, for just as I was about to do so, I was whizzing past South Dakota in a flash of light. Everything that I thought I had seen, everyone I knew and loved, were suddenly zipping right past me until they became nothing but fast blurs passing by me until I was left with nothing but a blinding flash of light in front of me and all around me.

After that, I felt myself hovering above the river where I was all over again, but this could not have felt any more different than the first time. Back then, I felt nothing as I came out of the river. This time, I remembered feeling everything that came with me coming out of the river. I felt the weight of all the water flowing off me as I came out into the fresh air. All the familiar smells of the evergreen forest around me, the dirt and the water, I felt my nostrils picking up on them again. I felt the small droplets of water falling off of my clothes and my body. And I felt the slight touch, the tingliness, all my senses coursing back in my arms and especially my hands and fingers as they began to twitch on their own. I even felt a slight faintness in my feet as I started to feel the sogginess in my socks and shoes. I wanted to see what was going on, but it didn’t take long before I found myself slinking back into unconsciousness. Could I have died for real this time?

Well, I thought I did.

Soon after that, I woke up a little bit. This time, what I remembered seeing and smelling in front of me were completely different from what I last saw and smelled before. Rather than the sweet natural sounds and scents, I felt like I was back in modern society and breathing in something manufactured, something that obviously seemed more human-made. All around me, I noticed white walls, white ceilings, white doors, even a white bed that I happened to be nestling in. What was going on with me? This seemed too conventional to feel like I made it into Heaven.

But just as I was about to ponder that possibility, a nurse opened the the door to my right and walked up to me with a look of relief on her face.

“Hello, Delia. I’m so glad that you are awake again.” I tried to speak, but my voice just didn’t find the strength for me to ask what was going on.

“Your friend, Chloe, saw you falling inside the river. She ran as quickly as possible to search for a nearby phone to call 911 with. Interestingly enough, when the paramedics saw you, they said they found you still submerged in the river and noticed enough air in your lungs for them to think that perhaps you had not drowned, even though you were at the bottom of the river. I personally think it was a miracle that you could not  have allowed yourself to be weighed down by the river and that you managed to pull through long enough for the paramedics to reach you.”

As soon as she told me that, I felt a faint grin creeping up on my face. “Thank you,” was all I remembered whispering to her.

“I will pass the word along to Chloe and let her know that you’re okay. For the time being, I recommend that you sit back and relax for another couple days. The doctors will be in soon to check up on you and we’ll see what must be done with you from there.”

“Could you let my parents know, too?” I caught myself whispering to the nurse before she left. “Please?”

“Sure thing, hon,” she reassured me. “I’ll pass it along to them, too.”

As soon as she left, that’s when I began to feel content and slinking back into bed. I didn’t know exactly what it was that I went through, but I could have sworn that it was far from it being a dream. It never felt like I was asleep. It just felt more like I might have died and yet have not died. What would I possibly have seen if I didn’t feel like I was in my body the whole time?