My Stepfather Sent Me To Patrol A Forest Sector With Standalone Wooden Stairs, Then Erased My Coordinates From The Dispatch Server
Nine days later.
The breakroom at the Cascade Ridge administrative center was cold, lit by humming fluorescent tubes at 5:15 AM. The air smelled of stale drip coffee and wet linoleum. Jonah sat at the Formica table in his pressed ranger uniform, eating toast off a paper plate.
Arthur entered through the back door, carrying his morning clipboard, his boots caked in fresh mud. He walked to the coffee pot, poured a cup, and sat down directly across from Jonah at the small table. Neither man said a word.
Arthur opened his shift log and signed his initials at the bottom of the page. Jonah reached over, took the pen, and signed his own name right beside Arthur’s, validating the morning’s Sector 4 patrol assignment. Deep in the woods of Sector 4, two miles off-trail, the standalone oak staircase sat silent in the brush, untouched, unexplained, and completely intact.
Arthur took a slow sip of black coffee. He looked at Jonah with hollow, weary eyes, then slid the vehicle keys across the Formica table. Nothing was fixed; the anomaly remained in the forest, the past remained unhealed, but the leverage had shifted forever.
I used to think survival was about running away from the woods. Now I know it just means staying put until the person who sent you there gets tired of waiting for you to die.
THE END – TRUE ENDING
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