****
Alexandra woke up slowly, aware of a dull, aching pain in her arms and legs, particularly her right leg. She felt hot all over, and so exhausted that she wasn’t even sure why she was awake. She groaned, turning onto her side, and realized that she was not on the ground anymore. Alexandra gasped, opening her eyes, as the last moments before she lost consciousness flooded back into her mind. She remembered the wolves dispersing—and then the sight of a huge brown bear, its eyes golden in the moonlight, hovering over her.
When she opened her eyes, Alexandra’s confusion deepened. She found herself on a bed, small but comfortable; she was naked, which sent a new jolt of alarm through her brain, but as she sat up, she realized that part of the reason she was undressed was because at some point while she had been unconscious, someone had attended to the gashes and punctures on her arms and legs—she saw ugly black medical thread and bandages marking some unknown doctor’s ministrations. Throwing the blanket off herself, for the moment heedless of her nudity, Alexandra saw that her left leg—the one that hurt the most—bore a brace at the ankle, tightly wrapped.
The sound of a door opening made Alexandra yelp, her hands fumbling for the blankets, pulling them up to cover her nudity as she looked around in panic. Her gaze fell on the doorway to the small room she was in, and Alexandra’s grip on the blankets tightened convulsively as she saw a man stepping through the door. He was tall—easily over six feet—with a lean, muscled physique that was not concealed by his sweater and jeans. The man’s sandy blond hair was cut short, maybe three or four inches long, brushed back from his forehead. Hazel-gold eyes widened at the sight of her awake, and the man opened his mouth, though no words came out for a span of several fluttering heartbeats. “Where am I?” Alexandra asked, the words leaving her lips all at once. The man took a step back, licking his lips and glancing around the room.
“I’m sorry,” he said, a faint accent on his voice. “I thought you were still unconscious or I would’ve knocked.”
“Where am I?” Alexandra repeated, looking around the room. She could see part of what she assumed was the same forest she had been lost in through a small, bare window. The man cleared his throat.
“You’re at my house,” he said. “Are you in pain? I have some pain pills if you’d like one—the…doctor mentioned you’d probably be in pain.” Alexandra shifted in the bed, uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was naked underneath the blanket. She was in pain, but being naked in the home of a strange man was a slightly more pressing issue, somehow.
“Uh—ah…do you happen to know where my clothes are?” The man relaxed slightly, his lips twitching in an almost-smile.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, leaving the door open behind him as he came further into the room. “I can let you borrow some clothes; they had to cut yours off. The blood, you know.” Alexandra swallowed, nodding.
“I’d like some clothes first,” she said. “And then probably one of the pain pills, if you’re feeling generous.” The man chuckled.
“It’s not generosity,” he told her, moving to a dresser in one corner of the room. He opened one of the drawers and took out a pair of soft-looking, faded flannel pajama pants and a tee shirt. “The doctor wrote a prescription for you, so they’re yours.” The man carefully tossed the clothes onto the bed, giving Alexandra another quick smile. “I’ll go get the pills and something for you to drink. Be careful getting dressed; you don’t want to pull your stitches or injure yourself.” Alexandra nodded, watching as the man walked in near-silence out of the room.
When she was once more alone, Alexandra climbed slowly out of the bed, every movement sending a new wave of throbbing pain through her body. She steadied herself as she stood cautiously, one hand on the headboard of the bed, and slowly—slowly—Alex shook the flannel pants out and slipped them on, swaying slightly as she balanced her weight on the better of her injured legs. She tugged the tee shirt over her head, wincing as the movement sent new painful jolts through her.
By the time the man came back into the room, Alexandra had sagged, sitting heavily on the edge of the bed. “Here,” he said, approaching her slowly and extending the plastic pill jar towards her. “What’s your name, by the way? I wasn’t able to put that information in at the urgent care clinic I took you to.” Alexandra smiled weakly, accepting the pill jar and then the bottle of water he extended towards her. She read the label: hydrocodone. Well, at least I won’t feel like a truck hit me, she thought.
“Alexandra,” she answered. “Alex.” She popped open the bottle and shook one of the pills out, glancing up at the man. Questions still swam in her mind: how had he discovered her? Where was she? What had happened to the bears? “You?”
“Sasha,” the man said, sitting down in a chair a few feet away from her.
“What happened to me?” Alexandra tossed a pill into her mouth, the bitter taste of the medicine coating her tongue for just a moment before she washed it down with water, swallowing with difficulty. “I remember a bunch of bears…and then nothing.” A look like guilt flashed through Sasha’s hazel-gold eyes, and he glanced away before meeting her gaze once more, steadily.
“I found you in the woods—probably only a moment or two after you passed out. I brought you to a friend who runs an urgent care clinic in town, he patched you up. I thought you’d probably prefer to spend the night here, instead of waking up there.” Alexandra shrugged.
“Probably would have been just as confused either way,” she said, shifting on the bed. The man had seen her naked; he had to have, in order to have put her in the bed. She couldn’t discern any sense that she’d been violated—but then so much pain throbbed and shot through her body that Alex thought it would be hard to separate out one particular pain from the rest. “What happened to the bears?” she asked, glancing at Sasha again.
“They…dispersed,” he said. Alexandra frowned.
“You didn’t kill any of them, did you? And how did you find me?” The story didn’t add up. Sasha glanced away again, and Alexandra’s heart started beating faster. Oh God. He’s some kind of axe murderer. And like the idiot I am I just took a fucking pain pill. Shit, shit, shit.
“The bears aren’t dead,” Sasha said quickly. “It’s been a long night for you. How did you come to be in the woods?” Alexandra scrubbed at her face, trying to think. Her stomach had been empty when she took the pain pill; it seemed like it was hitting her all at once, making her brain fuzzy, making her tingle all over. A wave of nausea swept over her and the room spun slightly as Alexandra tried to sit up, to lean against something.
“I—I was trying to get to Waynesboro,” she said slowly. “My car overheated…I broke down in the woods and tried to find my way back to town.” Sasha nodded and rose in a quick, fluid movement. Alexandra thought—feeling curiously separated from the real world as the opiate began to take effect—that she should probably be afraid, and yet she wasn’t.
“Did you have anything packed? Stuff you might want?” Sasha was only inches away from her, and Alexandra tried to focus on him.
“Suitcase,” she said absently. “I had…a job interview. Shit, I’m probably not going to make it there, am I?” Alexandra slumped against the bed, feeling as if all of the bones in her body had turned to jelly. “I think I left my phone,” she said as an inexorable wave of sleepiness washed through her.