One Word Erased Every Pain by Clark Mahoney (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📕

base of the tree where she used to lay. She felt much better, moving her lower jaw in a circle. Feeling an itch in her scalp, she reached up with her fingernails, and found a globby mess of tangled hair, and something thick, like syrup. Blood.
Her right eye seemed a bit tender, and her vision somewhat limited. She felt the bump, just above her brow, and wondered how it got there. Her helmet was there to protect her, but still she must’ve hit something. What? Maybe the tree? A branch? The ground?
She needed to get to the trail. It was up the hill, so she crawled up, trying to make her way toward what she assumed was the trail. She put one knee in front of the other, crawling with all of her strength. She’d grab hold of a clump of grass, but it would tear out of the earth, sending her reeling backwards. She’d try again, digging her fingers into the soil. Trying, but having little success. After a few moments, she gave up, realizing that she didn’t have the strength to fight the fines and bushes and grass. She couldn’t go up the hill. So, she changed direction. She would try downhill. She knew that water always led downhill, and there were creeks in many of the ravines along this trail. If she could find a creek, then she could follow it down the valley where it was sure to cross the very trail that she had biked up.
She crawled and felt something sticky on her ear. A spider web. In panic, she swiped across her face, and felt the rest of the web give way in her grasp. It was on her ear, and her chin. Where was the spider? Was it on her face? Or, on her shirt? Was it big? Would it sense her presence, and fear for its life, and bite her? She knew that spiders used their poison for two reasons: to subdue a prey, or to defend themselves against a predator. Did this spider think that she was a predator? She ran her hand across her stomach, and shoulders, and arms, hoping to dislodge any unwelcome eight-legged stowaways. Nothing. Hopefully it was on the ground.
She kept going, down the ravine, falling over hidden logs and landing with her hands splayed out in front of her. “Ouch,” she’d yell each time, followed by a few more tears. A branch poked her in the ribs, tearing a hole in her shirt just to the left of her belly button. Her knees hurt, as she crawled across rocks and twigs. Another spider’s web tickled her nose. Another hidden branch pulled her down to the ground. Her struggle to find the trail was turning into a nightmare, a painful nightmare.
Elisa found herself kneeling in six inches of water. She had finally found the creek. Now, to follow it downhill, and find the trail. Soaked and shivering, she had hope. She had a plan, a plan to get back to the trail and find her way back home, to her father and to safety. If she was to do it, then she must do it standing up, walking. She raised herself to her feet, holding on to a nearby tree for support, and focused her eyes ahead of her. The sky above her would send what light it could so that she might see. The creek would provide the route of her escape. But it was up to her to will her legs to move, to take one step after another. Elisa bravely took one step, and then another, sloshing through the creek, hoping to find her way home.

 

Part XI

Flashing blue and red lights greeted him as he turned the corner onto his street. His heartbeat quickened. Two black and white squad cars were parked in his driveway, lights letting everyone in the neighborhood know that they were around. And, at odd angles in front of his house and his neighbors’ homes, were half a dozen trucks, cars, and one motorcycle. Vehicles he recognized.
He had just made a twenty-minute ride in fifteen minutes. His legs burned. His chest was heaving. He was exhausted. But, seeing his friends gave him an energy boost, so he sprinted the last hundred feet to his driveway atop his bike.
“Now listen carefully, everyone. Search and rescue is a serious task. We don’t want to have to rescue any of you, so here are several safety requirements. Number one, travel in pairs, with flashlights and extra batteries. Call in to my phone on the hour, every hour, until your legs give out. And then, get up, and keep walking, and looking. Elisa is OUR girl, OUR daughter, and we WILL find her.”
A loud cheer went up from those on the lawn. His best friend was there, standing on an upturned wooden box, talking to the others in his front yard. His neighbors were there. His closest buddies were there. And now he was there. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes as he saw the help that had arrived in such short time.
“Now, be sure to take lots of water. You will get hot, and need something to drink. It may be dark, but exercise will make you wish you had water. And, when you find Elisa, she’ll probably want something to drink too. Here he is, folks. Give me a minute.”
His best friend walked over to him and gave him a big hand-shake. “Hello, my friend.”
Setting down the bike in the driveway, he asked, “What? When? How did you get this organized so fast?”
“Shhhh! Don’t worry,” his best friend spoke seriously. “What was Elisa wearing? What is the color of her helmet? Her biking clothes?”
Looking around at all the anxious faces, worried eyes, but all of them ready to go out on the trail, he felt overwhelmed. “Okay. She has a red helmet, but it might not be on her head. She might have taken it off. I think that she was wearing a pink shirt, or purple, with a monkey on it. And her shorts. I don’t know what color they are. Her shoes are hoes, brown, with pink laces, her biking shoes. She’s probably just tired and lost, so if you find her…” He couldn’t continue, words choking him as he tried to speak.
“WHEN you find her,” his friend took over, “Call me immediately on my cell phone. I will call all other search teams and tell them to return here. Only I can make that call. Got it? Keep looking unless I tell you to stop. Okay, I need a team to go up to the horse corrals, and search them thoroughly. Every trailer. Inside. In front. Behind. On top. Underneath, if you can. There are probably 100 places to hide up there. Check everything. Then, check the whole place again.” He wrote down the volunteers, two neighbors.
“Now, I need a team to drive up to the top of this street, then turn right, and go to the end of that street. Get out, find the trail, and search from that point uphill. Keep going until you get to the poison ivy sign. Then, call me, and tell me which direction you’re going from there. Okay, you two. Thanks.” Two more names on the list.
“I need a team to start at the bottom of the trail, at the trailhead, and work your way up the trail. Okay, you two.” He wrote down their names.
Elisa’s father was amazed at how his friend organized the search and rescue teams. He watched as each team was assigned a different route, given instructions, and was sent off. They were told how to walk, then stop, call her name, and listen for five seconds, all the while looking around at every blade of grass along the edge of the trail. Is one bent over? Any broken tree limbs? Look for signs of human activity. Then move twenty feet up the trail, and repeat. Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier?
“You stay here, and call me if she returns to the house. Got it?” his friend demanded.
“I want to help you look for…” he started, but was cut off.
“No, you need to stay here at your house,” an officer spoke. “We need a photo of your daughter, and description, to send to all officers. Right now. And, we need to know her friend’s names and addresses. Right now. We need to make some visits, starting with each neighbor on this street and the next. Right now.”
He was needed here. He knew it, but it hurt as he watched his friends head off in their trucks, or afoot, flashlights beaming broadly across the grass and sidewalks of his neighborhood. They were heading out to find her, his baby girl, and bring her home, while he was stuck here, waiting. He wanted to go out, but they wouldn’t let him. Would they find her?
He hoped that they would find her, soon, and alive.
“Please, please,” he whispered. “Find my girl. Find my girl.”
 

Part XII

Silence doesn’t exist in the woods. There are always sounds, loud sounds, everywhere. Anyone who talks about taking a “quiet walk in the woods” has not been in the woods at night. Chirping. Buzzing. Humming. Croaking. Falling twigs. Scurrying rodents. Fleeing critters. Noise, noise, noise. All around her was noise, and Elisa was scared.
She walked, but her feet kept getting stuck in the muddy winding and twisting of the creek. She’d found it by accident, after crawling down the hill on her hands and knees. She was wet, and cold, and miserable. She’d lost her left shoe to wrestling match with a vine, and keeping her sock as a consolation prize. Her right foot kept trying to rid itself of her shoe, but she curled her toes in defiance, trying to keep it on. Step after step, she moved farther down the ravine, hoping to get to the trail.
And it was so dark. She could see through the canopy above her, to the night sky. But, there were no lamps out here, no street-lights, nothing to chase away the uncertain shadows that were dancing before her eyes, nothing to scare away the fears that shoved their way into her mind. The “dark” outside of her house was very different from the “dark” out her in the woods. She couldn’t see the rocks that rammed themselves against her unprotected toe. She couldn’t see the tree roots that shook her balance and sent her teetering to the left or right. She couldn’t see the thorny vines that ensnared her legs time after time, threatening to keep her tied up for eternity. She couldn’t see the