by David Probert

Terror returned when an alarming sound broke the silence, heavy footfalls followed by crunching leaves and cracking twigs. The bear was near the car. Please no. Theresa stared out the frame of the windshield, waiting for the animal to appear. Her heart raced. This was the end. She was bleeding and didn’t have the strength to fend off a four hundred pound bear. No way, not in this lifetime.

She scanned the pine trees. Any minute now a large black mass of fur would come lumbering across the landscape on all fours, and when it saw her, it would see dinner—a banquet trapped beneath an uncooperative seatbelt.

The woods fell silent except for her heavy breathing and the grunting. The bear was behind the car; she could hear it. She tried to turn her head, but she’d sprained her neck and the muscles were too tight. She groaned and clenched her teeth.

The beast’s footsteps sounded heavy. It walked beneath the driver’s side door, and Theresa waited for it to stand on its hind legs, duck into her shattered window and begin gnawing on her.

Instead, the bear walked back around the car and emerged through the passenger window. Theresa winced and let out an abrupt scream. Her body leaned slightly forward and she watched in horror as the bear ducked its large black head inside the car. It sniffed at the air before pulling its head back outside.

She was relieved for a moment, until the animal continued around to the front of the car and watched her though the large window frame. It leaned its head closer, poking through the windshield and staring at her with its large black eyes, which seemed more human than animal. Its little ears wiggled as it sniffed at Theresa’s face. Her heart froze for a second and sent a tingle throughout her body. She felt the hair on her scalp rise, and her gut churned with anxiety.

The bear leaned further, its nose almost pressed against Theresa’s. She could feel her jaw quiver and tears streamed down her grimy face. A warm, wet puddle formed beneath her as she lost control of her bladder. She recoiled, paying no mind to the pain in her neck, and avoided making direct eye contact with the beast.

The bear opened its mouth and displayed a set of large, sharp teeth. Theresa closed her eyes tightly and tears rolled down her cheeks. She could still hear the grunting and feel its breath blowing against her face in small gusts. She trembled and her heart began to race again.

Her body jerked beneath the seatbelt, and she felt the bear’s warm, moist tongue against her forehead. Soon the creature would be gnawing at her flesh, chomping on her bones.

Theresa opened her eyes as she felt the bear withdraw from the windshield. She watched with amazement as the animal strolled away through the trees. Her trembling hand reached back down to the seatbelt. This time it opened.

She swung an arm outside the door to keep from falling and pulled the strap off of her shoulder. The adrenaline must have kicked in, as she was able to feel her legs again. They were tingly as if she’d been standing hip-deep in snow and just started to defrost. She lowered herself through the passenger window and slipped out onto the bed of pine needles and last autumn’s leaves.

Fresh pine never smelled so good. Theresa hobbled around the back of the car and started up the slope. She felt like hell. Her head throbbed and her neck was stiff, but escaping from the car had given her a second wind, another chance at life, a chance that she wasn’t going to pass up.

She wanted to stop and enjoy the fresh air for a moment, absorb the landscape around her. She couldn’t, she needed help and she had to hurry.

Her feet slipped through the needles as she tried to turn her head just enough to glance over her shoulder. She had to make sure the bear wasn’t following her. She’d gotten lucky once and didn’t want to push it.

She pulled on tree limbs and jutting rocks, climbing toward the road, toward salvation.

Halfway up the slope she spotted the little white bottle. The lid had popped off and the aspirin were spilled onto the ground. Theresa paused and stared at the bottle’s contents. For the first time in a long time, a smile formed across her face. It hurt, but that didn’t matter. There she stood, bloodied and bruised, not beaten.

Ignoring the pain, she turned a blind eye to the pills and continued up the slope. The moment she reached the top, the world began to fade. The landscape spun and her legs lost the strength to stand. As her body fell toward the ground, the world turned off like a light.

***

“She’s awake, sir. You can come on in and see her now,” a nurse at the far end of the room said as she held the door open for a tall blurry man.

Theresa slowly regained eye focus and her father came into view like paint bleeding through a white canvass. She felt groggy, and when she tried to talk, the words wouldn’t come out. She could only mumble and groan.

Neil walked around the bed, leaned in, and kissed her on the forehead. “You’re gonna be OK, honey.”

She felt like a little girl again; Dad wasn’t drunk. She didn’t smell stale beer on his breath, and his eyes weren’t bloodshot. She smiled and raised a weak hand toward him.

“You don’t know how scared I was. I really thought I lost you.” Neil took her hand, careful not to pull on the IV tube that ran to a saline drip beside her bed. “Things are gonna be different from now on, I promise.”

She smiled again.

“You’re lucky to be alive, kiddo. The girl who found you would have hit you with her car if it wasn’t for that monster of a bear.”

Theresa’s heart froze like it had in the car when she and the bear came face to face.

“You were lying right in the middle of the road and, sure enough, about fifty feet ahead of you, a big black bear was just sitting there. The woman had to stop, and that’s when she saw you. You’re lucky that bear didn’t attack you.” Neil’s eyes watered and his lips began to quiver. “Your mother must have been with you.”

In a croaking voice Theresa managed to say, “She was.” She thought of the moment where she and the bear were eye to eye, and tears streamed down the sides of her face. Her eyes shot up to Neil, and in a scratchy voice she said, “Today was our antidote.” It was never the bottle of aspirin. It was about the bear, the crash, finding that place deep within herself that she’d long forgotten. She’d faced death, looked it right in the eyes, and in doing so, she found the person who she’d lost after her mother’s passing, and, Neil seemed to have found his strength as well.

“OK, let her get some rest.” The nurse opened the door again. “You can come back later on.”

Neil winked at his daughter and knelt down to kiss her on the forehead. “I’ll come back later, sweetheart.” He turned to walk out of the room, paused, and spun back around with one final thought. “You have a lot of explaining to do, you know? The police said your seatbelt was torn right above the buckle. I’d love to know how you managed that.”

Theresa’s lips arched upward. She shut her eyes, just as she had when the bear licked her face, and her body jerked beneath the seatbelt. Her dad would never know what really almost took her life. The bottle of pills that lay scattered across the grassy slope, where they would remain.

*********END*********