Then, all of a sudden I couldn't control the urge at all. It had complete control over me and forced me to head in its direction. I dropped my hot dog, and before I knew it, my body was moving on its own.
Detective Karl and Max stayed quiet as they followed me while I hurled my body through the woods; they weirdly didn’t ask or say anything to me as this was happening. I had a strong desire to get somewhere even though I had no clue where there was.
Somewhere along the way, Detective Karl stopped following me, but Max had kept up with me. The further away I got from the field, the stronger the pull became. Although slightly scary, it wasn't all bad. The longer I ran, the more energized I felt.
Just as I was falling into a comfortable pace, I started to feel lighter. Then, I had done something strange before I even noticed what I was doing. I was moving quickly, and everything was zooming by as if I was traveling in a car. In fact, I was positive I was running faster than a car drove. I felt a sudden horror fill my body as I realized what I was doing.
That wasn’t normal at all, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my body to stop. I had no control over myself as I kept running to this unknown destination that potentially held more horrors. While my panic was rising, I caught a glimpse of Max. He was keeping up with me like it was no problem!
Maybe I was just going crazy, and I was just imagining my speed. However, there was no way I was imagining it; it was too real. Max never said a word to me as we ran towards our mystery location, and despite all of the running, I didn’t feel tired. Other than not being able to control my own body, it was a really nice run, and the forest was beautiful, as usual. As we got further into the forest, I began seeing scorch marks scattered among the trees.
My body began to slow down, and I took a quick survey of my surroundings. I had no clue where I was. All I could do was look around and survey the area. The whole area was covered in ash and dead plant life. There was nothing living here or at least I thought.
Even though I had stopped running at neck break speed, there was no time for me to waste. Something had brought me here, and I needed to figure out what.
As I looked around, I noticed there was a large oak tree that still stood in the area despite the obvious fire destruction. I walked over to it, and the call became overpowering. It had been this tree the whole time. I put my hand on the tree, and I could feel its sadness. It was sad here now that all of its friends were gone. It was a lonely, sad tree. It was struggling just as I was, and I felt bad for it.
Despite understanding the tree's plea, I couldn't do anything to help the tree, and as I thought about my inability to help, the tree ended its call for help. However, even after the call went away, there was still something there. It was very faint and didn’t feel like the normal message that I got from nature.
I felt an intense sadness flood my body. I was missing something here; something I was supposed to be able to see but couldn’t. I wasn’t just missing something; I was missing someone. Someone that I dearly needed, but I didn’t know who it was or what their significance was to me. I walked around in circles trying to figure out what had happened. While I did my own thing, Max just sat back and watched me.
I gave him a glance, causing a sudden realization to hit me. I really did run quicker than a normal human being, and despite that he had kept up with me. I did something inhuman! Was he right about me being an alien? However, he had kept up with me too; he was there with me for the whole run. Was he an alien? How far had we even gone? What was he? What was I for that matter? What even happened?
“Max?”
He looked at me and simply responded, “Yes?”
“What did we just do? Where are we? Are we lost?” The words just flew out of my mouth, and I started panicking.
“Calm down,” he interrupted me, “I’ll explain it when we get back to my house, but whatever you do, do not tell Karl what happened.”
“Why”
“Well, this is outside of his jurisdiction, and he doesn’t need to know about what just happened. He doesn't need to know about people like us anyway.”
“People like us? What are we?”
“I’ll explain that to you later, but for now we need to just hang out for a few more hours before I call Karl to come get us.”
“Why can’t you explain now if we have to wait?”
“I don’t think right now and right here is the best idea. I’d rather explain it in the protection of my house. You were called here, and I don’t know by who, so I want to play it safe.”
“Someone called me? I thought it was the tree that called for me.”
Max crossed his arms and put all his weight onto one foot, “I used the word called, but it was more of a summoning. The way you acted suggests that something strong pulled you here, and trees don’t have that kind of force. It is true that the tree can call for you too, but not to this extent. The most a tree can do is make a call for help that travels far, but it wouldn’t make you lose control over yourself. Trees have calls; they cannot summon. However, it's also possible that someone amplified it's call so that it could be turned into a summoning. This isn't really the place to talk about this; we can discuss more of it later.”
I stopped asking questions. There wasn’t much I could ask, considering he wanted to explain everything when we got back to his house. We sat there in silence for what felt like ages, but it was nice. In our silence, I walked around trying to take in the strange aura that the area put off.
While I was walking around, a lizard came up to me. I spent a good bit of time letting it run over my hands one at a time. It was strange that a lizard was out here though. Everything was dead and covered in ashes. There was nothing out there for it to eat; however, there were plenty of places for it to hide. I decided to walk around with the lizard in my hand and decided I’d walk back towards where I had come so that I could put the lizard somewhere it could find food.
As I was walking away Max questioned me, “What are you doing?”
“I’m bringing this lizard somewhere it can find food.”
“You can’t just walk off without saying a word to me.”
“Sorry, I just want to go back to somewhere with greenery.”
“Okay, I’ll walk with you, and we will return to this area.”
He walked up to me, and I continued to walk in the direction I had picked. As we walked, I made sure the lizard didn’t fall from my hand. The whole way there the lizard didn’t even make a move. It stayed on my hand the whole time as if it wasn’t scared of me at all. When we reached an area with few burn marks, I released the lizard onto a small shrub.
“Why did you want to bring the lizard here?” Max suddenly asked me.
“If it had stayed in that ash covered forest, it would have struggled to find food to eat and would have died.”
“Fair enough, I guess.”
We walked back to the area we had just left. On the way, I, once again, realized how little I knew about Max. Even more so now than before. He was a whole new being that I had no information about, but whatever he was, I was probably the same thing. Since I couldn’t ask him any questions about what we are and what happened I decided to ask about something else. “What’s your favorite color?”
“That’s a random question.”
“I just decided that I would like to know.”
“Okay then, it’s red. What’s yours?” He asked me in return.
“I like green.”
“How am I not surprised by this.” He laughed at me. He had an attractive laugh. It was fun to listen to him laugh; it had a strange melodic feeling to it.
“Do you like animals?”
“I like you.” He teased me.
“I’m not an animal!” I shouted at him.
“Are you sure about that? I mean you have no clue what you are.” He continued to tease me.
“Am I an animal?” I asked, giving him puppy dog eyes.
“Well technically, but humans are animals too.”
“What animals do you like?” I rephrased my question to get an actual answer out of Max.
“Hmm. I don’t really know. Never really thought much about it.”
“I like all of them. They are just so amazing.”
“My turn to ask you a question. Do you by chance remember anything at all?”
“What a great time for that question. No, I don’t.” I answered as we arrived back at the lonely tree.
We continued to talk about random, nonsensical things for a while. After a few hours, Max pulled out his phone and called Detective Karl. I was only able to hear one half of the conversation, but Max had told Detective Karl that we were in the area of the blood bath. After hearing this, I looked around. Why was it known as the blood bath? Why not something like ash forest.
“Why is it called the blood bath if there isn’t any blood?”
“When we first found this place, it was covered in blood marks. I told you this when you first started talking that we found an area covered in blood splatters. It has rained since we found you, and the blood has all washed away.”
For another half hour, we stayed where we were and made plans for dinner. Max decided he was going to make barbecue meatballs and some fries. Detective Karl finally made an appearance in the area and greeted us. “Well boys, that was some kind of run y’all had.”
“You got that right. Pretty nice run, wouldn’t mind doing it again sometime.” Max responded to him.
“I’ll take it that this means Felix and the blood bath are connected after all.”
“I think more so than you and I know at this moment. I think you and I need to have a conversation with the rest of the investigators to discuss how to continue this investigation.”
“Yes, that is a great idea. You can contact the others and arrange the meeting for today as soon as possible while I drive you guys back to your car.” Detective Karl said as he motioned towards his car.
I jumped into the detective's car behind the driver's seat and buckled up. Max quickly started contacting everyone who had been working on my case.
Through the conversations Max had with the other investigators, I gathered that I would not be going back to Max’s house any time soon. The meeting was to be held as soon as we made it back to the city to discuss further action.
Since this was the first breakthrough that had been made since my case was opened, I knew people were going to have a lot of questions for me. This made me nervous; I didn’t like being interviewed, and I was positive that they would ask me questions about if I remember anything.
Despite heading straight to the blood bath area, I still did not remember anything from my past. I had no clue why I went there and who this person was that had called me there. I didn't even know if I was allowed to tell them that someone had summoned me there.
After another long car ride, we made it to a really tall building that Max and I had been calling the house of questioning. The building was mostly glass and held many offices and rooms. The door to enter was one of those pressure sensing sliding doors that open for you when you get close to it. The first time I experienced this, I was so fascinated by it that I ended up playing with it.
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