Escape

She had been chasing her breathing for what had felt like forever but just couldn’t seem to catch it. The air in the room seemed to have grown too thick to swallow. The taste of the last bit of smoke from the extinguished candles caught the back of her throat. The blackness of the room went on forever as she tried to find the others in her panic, trying to listen for them but there was nothing. Not a sound echoed through the room that held five friends not moments earlier.

She shuffled across the floor towards what she hoped was the door. The decaying wood underneath her hands and knees stuck into her like little needles. Tears fell from her cheeks silently as she felt her hands move over the thick dried paint they had put there earlier in the night. She knew that meant she was out of the circle. The door couldn’t be too much farther. The cabin had not been that big.

Her shaking hand reached up where her mind thought the doorknob was, she was going to make it out. Suddenly the cold breath on the back of her neck told her she was wrong.