Olivia Batchelder

Dream Date

When Bella woke up that morning, it was just another day for her. As a college student, she woke up around five AM to meditate and go on a run before starting her day. It was Monday and Bella was on her usual route she took every morning six days a week. Sunday was her rest day. It was probably around five thirty and she hadn’t broken a sweat yet. The sun was just started to peak through the clouds. It was that time of morning when you could still see the moon, fighting the sun for dominance of the sky. Bella had her air pods in, The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala playing on her phone, which was zipped up in the pocket of her wind breaker. She stopped running to take a sip of water. Her parents used to take her to this state park when she was a child. She knew the trails by heart. Living in a small town, this was one of the known places people came to ride bikes and hike. It wasn’t big enough to be a camp ground but people still came to admire nature... and leave trash all over the place. Bella always brought along a compostable trash bag with her in case she saw anything that needed picking up. Today it was a McDonald’s bag and a few crushed beer cans tossed into the bushes. After closing the cap on her water bottle, she walked over to the bushes to pick it up. The sun was shining a little more now, peeping through the trees of the trail. As Bella was hunched over, she heard the snapping of twigs. She stood up straight to take a look around. She thought perhaps it was an animal or a fellow jogger. But she wasn’t able to finish that thought because she was grabbed from behind. Someone much larger than her had placed a damp cloth over her nose and mouth. She struggled as much as she possibly could for someone who was five foot three inches and a hundred and thirty pounds. She struggled until her vision became blurry and her limbs weak, until everything went dark and her eyelids could no longer stay open.