“Oh shit!” I cry out as I lose my balance. My foot that’s on the ground slides a bit due to wet ground and grass, sending me off balance. It doesn’t help that I’ve leaned too far forward to lower my foot into the pond, making my entire body off balance.
In slow motion I find myself falling forward. My arms circle and windmill as I try to catch my balance but it’s too late. I’m falling over and headed right for the pond.
I splash face first into The Pond, my entire body falling in. I fall hard against the water too, the water stinging my face badly. Instantly I’m completely under water, feeling all of me, including my clothes get drenched.
Thankfully the pond isn’t deep at all, maybe three or four feet at most, so it’s easy to stand up. I’m very lucky that I didn’t hurt myself as it would be so easy to smack my head against one of the stones or even the floor of the pond. My entire body seems to make it out injury free, which I take as a good sign.
Standing up, I fling my wet hair out of my eyes and curse loudly. My freaking cell was in my pocket! It’s got to be destroyed by now, which means I’m not going to be able to take pictures. That means no video. Which means no proof at all. Not to mention I had my school notes on my cell. Damn it.
Hurriedly, I step out of The Pond. When I do, I get a shock. It’s a powerful shock, one that makes it feel like my stomach fell all the way to my feet like an anvil. It makes the world go upside down as what I’m seeing can’t be real.
I’m naked. Completely naked. Naked as the day I came into this world. Naked and wet with water dripping off me.
My clothes are gone. All of them. No jeans. No socks. Not even my hairband. Everything is gone. Everything. I’m seeing my bare breasts and shaved womanhood very clearly, watching drops of water fall down.
My first reaction is to spin and jump back in the pond. To hide under the water. After all, my clothes are probably there, right? Maybe they tore or something. I’ll be able reattach them. At the very least I’ll be able to use them to hold against my body to hide my nakedness.
I turn around and jump, meaning to leap back into The Pond. Only upon my leap, I step onto grass and not water. In disbelief, I look down knowing I should be inside The Pond, but it’s gone. Sure, the ring of stones is there like it was before, but there’s no pond, no water, just grass. No water, no hole in the ground, just overgrown grass that makes it look like it’s been this way for years.
The pond is gone. But more importantly, so are my clothes. And my backpack. And my shoes. And my cell. Shit. Everything is gone. EVERYTHING IS GONE. What sort of prank is this?!
My head swims and my body sways as I use my arms to hide my nakedness. Of all the feelings I thought I would feel in my life, I never thought feeling the weight of my own naked breasts in public would be one of them. Just like I’ve never had to cup my own little lady downstairs before, so doing so feels extremely weird.
“It’s ok…it’s ok,” I tell myself out loud. Sure, it’s not ok, but I need to think. Now, my clothes are probably still on me. It’s more likely that the water was drugged so has some sort of funky mixture to make me see things. Yeah, that sounds right. I’m hallucinating. I just think I’m naked. In reality, I’m perfectly clothed.
As I stand in the open naked like this, I consider what will happen if I am naked and someone sees me. I consider myself an open person. Even open sexually. Well, let me rephrase that. I’m ok with other people being sexually open and doing crazy shit, but not me. I much rather watch and laugh than do it myself. So I’ve never exposed any part of me to anyone in a public setting. Not even so much as a quick flash to a boyfriend. To say that this is all extremely embarrassing, humiliating and uncomfortable is the understatement of the year.
“Hey baby! Doing a dare?!” I hear a man’s voice yell. This acts like fire to a firecracker’s fuse, making me start to run. I don’t even pick a direction but run, wanting to get away from whomever that may be. To get away from where people can see me like this. To run and hide where no one can see me.
Never have I felt so humiliated or embarrassed. This is like a bad frat prank during a drunken party. One that you do to the drunk slut, not to the graduate student that’s trying to make her way through life. I’ve never even like pranks, not to mention hate when they are done to me.
I’m running barefoot deeper into the forest now, away from the trail and whomever that was. The more I run, the more the area looks devoid of human life, which is what I want. I want to get to an area where I can think of what to do. To a place that’s safe and I can figure this all out.
“Ouch!” I yelp as a thin branch slaps me in the face as I run. I know I ran into it, but it felt almost like someone was holding it and waiting for me to get close to let it go. It hits and stings my face bad, making me bring my right hand up to my face to comfort the sting.
“What the fuck?!” I exclaim as my lifted hand gets grabbed. For a brief moment I’m sure that someone has grabbed me by the wrist to hold me, stopping me from running. But turning I see there’s no one here at all. No huge muscular person wanting to stop me. Instead…there’s a vine.
Having stopped running, I look at my right hand which is now raised close to eye level. There’s a vine wrapped around my wrist several times, like it was done on purpose. I know I just ran through a patch of branches and greenery, where I had my hands up, but how could this happen?
Finding I don’t really care, I pull on my right hand to break the vine. When I do, the nearby branches the vine is wrapped around pull downward, but the vine doesn’t break. So I pull harder, making the vine feel like it is digging into my skin as the trees wobble a bit as their branches are pulled.
“Come on!” I yell out as I use my entire body weight to pull, dragging multiple branches downward as I try to break the vine. I even take several steps backward to get as much leverage as I can. Yet the vine doesn’t break. It’s like the world’s strongest vine or something.
My left hand is over my right now, trying to use my center to pull. But I come to a point where the vine and myself are at a standstill. The vine has the trees and branches as leverage, while I just have my body weight. In short, there’s no way I can break the vine as it is too healthy and wrapped around the greenery too well.
“Oh fuck,” I grunt as my right foot sinks through the ground. Looking down I see that my foot was standing in some sort of patch of mud or maybe loose dirt. Me moving on top of it made it part and thus my foot has sunk into it. It sunk quite a bit too as now I can’t even see my ankle.
Frowning, I try to pull my right foot up and out of the thick, muddy goo. About to panic I feel that I can’t. It’s not the stuff has hardened, but it is, I dunno, gooey to the point it is sticking to my skin. When I try to lift my foot, I’m trying to lift all the dirt and whatever else that’s with it. Makes it feel like being stuck in a pot full of melted marshmallows.