¡Ay mi cabeza!

The pounding of my heart echoed in my temples. Now that I was conscious, I could feel the Earth turning beneath me.

Wait.. Earth? I groped at the ground around me and felt the grittiness of dirt along with the smoothness of grass.

I’m outside?I thought as I forced my eyes open, immediately blinded by the errant rays of sunshine peeking through the overhead trees.

I was outside, but outside where?

Slowly, the images around began to crystallize. I was lying in the middle of a large meadow. There was tall, lush grass surrounding me, and the towering trees reached so high that it appeared as if they were holding the sky up.

Wait a second… the more that I looked at the swaying branches, the more I found the trees to be unfamiliar. These weren’t the ones that were planted around the compound.

My stomach lurched, and my vision blurred as I sat up too quickly. The pounding in my head intensified, so I pressed my hands against it, and I felt it.

A warm, wet stickiness that set the world tilting again.

My right palm was bright red with blood. The ground below me was wet and darker than the surrounding area, where it had soaked up the pooling blood.

Shit. What happened to me?

I felt my chest constricting, and a sob escaped my lips unprompted. The rest of the world dropped away as I watched myself from the outside in.

With shaky hands, I touched my neck gingerly, expecting to find some tenderness, but there wasn’t any. I breathed out slowly and inhaled very shakily as my hands continued their descent. My breasts felt normal, my stomach did too, and then I paused.

Trembling fingers moved gently down my inner thighs, but there were no bruises or sore muscles. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding and the tears that had pooled in my eyes.

I wiped at them, smearing blood across my face as I did.

Finally, on my feet, I became acutely aware of the sheer size of the trees around me. They dominated the scene. These were definitely not from around the lab. I looked further, but couldn’t make out any buildings hiding within the trees.

Out of habit, I reached for my back pocket, but my phone wasn’t there. The front pockets were empty, and so were the ones of my lab coat.

A fresh wave of  panic crashed over me.

I was in the middle of nowhere without the most essential lifeline of the 21st century! How the hell was I supposed to figure out now how to get out of these woods if I didn’t have GPS?