It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘I told you so.’ Those four little words dangle in the air between us, producing tension thicker than the fog we wade through.

Ben huffs as he halts. His hiking boots stomping a bit petulantly on a large flat rock that the shallow stream caresses.

“Alright,” he relents, hands on hips, “we’re lost.”

I match his stature but decide to add a smile.

“Was that so hard to admit?”

“Yes, Violet, it was,” he replies in a barely restrained whine.

My laugh echoes off the infinite mist that exists between the identical trees we’ve encountered for hours.

Earlier, he’d assured me he knew the way.

It was in the same convincing tone he used to get me to try this hike with him in the first place.

I’d silently expressed the lack of trust I have in his discernment at this point, but neither of us were in any place to argue.

Well, I was, but this all seemed like punishment enough.

We’d heard the burble of water and decided to follow its path back, but there has been no semblance of civilization in sight as of yet.

The fog was a nice touch to cement our misery, further damaging our morale that has descended to a level that is dangerously close to hopelessness.

“What if we had a snack break?” I propose.

I watch him debating the merit of breaking into our supplies, but you don’t date someone for a year without rapidly learning the dangers of withholding cheese from them.

He seems to remember this and peels his backpack off emergently.

We silently inhale cheese, nuts, and dried meat as we think.

Hopefully, his thoughts are forming plans.

Mine are too busy considering payback.

Condensation from the fog beads off my black rain jacket sleeve as I reach for some small rocks.

“At this point, it probably wouldn’t be wise to go back the way we came,” Ben muses aloud.

I give him a look so severe that he immediately hands me more cheese.

He tosses the hood up on his matching jacket and shivers within its confines as if I’d terrified him, both of us chucking as I eat with one hand and rearrange stones with the other.

I finish and present my masterpiece to him with a flourish of my hand – a heart made of pebbles – a peace offering of sorts.

Ben smiles at me but there’s an apology in it.

This is hardly how we’d intended to spend our anniversary.

I just nod, allowing our silent way of communicating to speak my understanding as well as emphasizing how much he owes me for this.

He snorts and shakes his head as he rises, reaching down to help me up as well.

Curiously assessing my creation from this new perspective, he comments, “It kind of looks like a butt.”

I can’t help but maturely mutter, “You look like a butt.”

His fingers attack my sides.

My ticklish squeal pierces our eerie surroundings.

The contrast interrupts our temporary levity.

He releases me.

“Am I at least a butt worth checking out?” Ben asks earnestly, yet quietly.

I frown.

“Meh. You’ll do.”

Our small smiles can’t hide our unease with our situation despite our comfort with each other.

We simultaneously lift our hoods, huffing laughs at our synchronicity, before striding ahead.

A minute passes before a breach in the thin trees along the shoreline reveals the stream again.

He points to it.

“I forgot to get water at the last one.”

We head in its direction, but my eye is drawn to something that has me grasping at his slick arm to stop him.

He jolts, opens his mouth to question the action, then shuts it as he follows the path of my shakily rising finger.

There, on the flat rock in the clearing, is a heart made of stones.

I hadn’t noticed how quiet it was until now.

No birds, bugs, shuffling of critters.

Just the stream and us.

Silent enough to hear Ben’s nervous gulp.

“That’s the butt heart, right?” I whisper, as if it can hear me.

Ben releases a shaky breath.

“Let’s m- maybe walk in the s- stream? It’s not that d- deep,” he suggests with the same amount of confidence that I feel right now.

My nod is a little manic like a demented bobble head.

We slide warily past the stones and enter the stream, but then it’s Ben that’s holding me back.

I scan frantically around his feet for more butts before my eyes are drawn upward.

There, shrouded in fog ahead, is a silhouette of a person in a hooded raincoat of their own.

I deflate in relief.

Regardless of their posture being rigid enough to easily confuse them as a tree if they weren’t seemingly shifting nervously on their feet, it’s a sign of life, and that’s good enough for me.

Maybe they’re just shy.

My arms take on a mind of their own as they begin to flail in the air like I’m signaling a plane from a deserted island.

My mouth similarly possessed.

“Hello?” I call out, “We’re lost! Can you help us find the way back?”

My words seem to have made their nerves worse.

They stumble backward over their feet as if I’d threatened them.

I’m honestly considering doing exactly that at this point if they’re so intent on being unhelpful.

But their reaction has Ben grasping tightly to my wrist, speaking lowly through gritted teeth without moving his lips, “Get the knife.”

I’ve never seen such an expression on his face.

One of all consuming terror as though he’s facing a waking nightmare.

It’s a distinct possibility.

I acquiesce without question.

Slowly bending down, as not to further startle the still present and watchful figure, I grab Ben’s blade out of his ankle sheath as well as mine.

I’d felt so cool putting it on earlier.

Not so much now as I slowly straighten.

But the move might as well have been the gunshot at the starting line of a race, because they’re off.

“Wait!” I cry out after the figure as they bolt into the trees to our right.

“I got it,” Ben declares as he runs after them, his

knife filled fist doing no favors for my attempt at friendship.

I know he’s only doing this in hopes that they will help save our anniversary.

He so badly wanted today to be perfect, as did I.

It was impossible to miss that suspiciously ring box shaped protrusion in his pack.

Throwing my head back to scan the fog filled sky for patience, I sigh and bolt after my future fiance.

I have no concerns about finding him.

We’ve always been connected in a way that defies reality, easily finding the other no matter the obstacle or distance.

We’re inevitable, he and I.

I breach the trees just I hear my other half shout, “What the - Violet?!”

I speed up.

“Violet!” He cries, “No, wait, what are you -“

A grunt and a thud follows.

My heart plummets through my stomach, pricking itself on every rib along the way.

I ignore the foreboding sense of knowing, bolting through the trees in the direction I’d heard him call for me.

The journey blurs until I’m upon them.

The still shrouded figure stands with hands raised in innocence.

My boyfriend is face down before them, pack discarded at his side, the tip of his own knife protruding from between his shoulder blades.

My scream dulls out all other sound.

I drop to my knees and dazedly roll his body.

His vacant eyes meet mine, mouth parted in permanent surprise.

The life we could’ve had flashes before my eyes.

I grip my own knife with a battle cry.

“He fell on it!” I vaguely hear the stranger protest as I tackle them to the forest floor.

“He tripped! I couldn’t stop it,” they cry beneath me, “Make it stop!”

I care not for their lies but deliver on their plea, inflicting the same wound on them that they’d delivered on the love of my life.

The knife in my fist arcs downward, gleaming blade landing in their torso with a hollow meaty thunk.

Over

and over

and over again.

Each slash serves as a severing of my sanity that ended when he did.

I lose myself in my rage, allowing my grief to overtake me until I’m as lost in it as I am in these woods.

Silence still reigns when I return to myself.

Heaving breaths punctuate the passage of time.

I numbly note what I’ve done to this stranger.

My glazed gaze glides up to their face.

My body seizes.

All senses fail me as I look down at them.

As I look down at _myself_.

The more I take them in, the harder it is to deny.

She has my face, my eyes, my hair.

She even has my jacket and the shirt I’m wearing, albeit freshly shredded versions.

I tremulously tilt her head to the side.

A sob saws out at the ‘B’ for Ben tattooed behind her ear, one of the matching ones he and I had gotten for each other on that drunken night.

I scramble back on my palms without taking my eyes off the unbelievable sight before me.

I’m shaking my head but the image isn’t erasing.

It’s me.

I killed_ me. _

A scream nearby punctuates my panic.

I immediately launch up and bolt in its direction.

_People._

_They can help._

_Help. _

_I need help. _

Leaving the wretched knife behind and ignoring the corpses I can’t comprehend, I make my way through the woods and back to the water until the trickling stream overtakes the pounding pulse in my ears.

I wade halfway in until the chill grounds me slightly.

But then I turn toward the source of the noise and go still at the horror before me.

A short distance away, a couple emerges from the trees on the other bank and submerges in the shallow stream.

The man sees me and halts their progress, posture rigid in obvious discomfort.

I’d recognize his silhouette anywhere.

Even in the darkness my life has become.

I know he senses the familiarity, too.

The impossible knowledge mocking our inevitability.

_Does he feel it? _

_The tether between us, now splitting in two?_

The form at his side takes a moment to locate the source of his unease, immediately waving her arms wildly in the air upon spotting me.

“Hello?” my own voice calls out to me, “We’re lost! Can you help us find the way back?”

I stumble backward.