If I had to name only one reason I’m still alive it would be the endless hours I burned through the midnight oil reading and studying every piece of information I could find in the library pertaining to survival and diy guides. However, right now they are currently doing jack shit to help me orient and determine my current location. I’m eighty-one percent sure I crossed the state line a few days ago. I just fucking hope to hell the increase in the number of Oregon plates I keep spotting when I venture out from under the protective canopy of the forest tree line means Oregon was the state line I did cross three days ago as well the state I’m currently hiking through from one end to another. I’m a little surprised that so far on my journey to flee from my worst nightmare, the lowest point of rock bottom I’ve hit was staggering into a Wal-Mart at two thirty am to douche with the Normal Saline and antibacterial soap I mixed together as I straddle over the public toilet with one bare foot hiked up on one wall and the other firmly planted on the ground. I don’t know what solution I should be using on vaginal and rectal burns, nor do I know what soap I should be mixing in it, but this has to be more hygienic than resting my obliterated bottom on an algae covered rock submerged in a brook or a creek with fucking fish swimming by. After I’ve done the best douching job a woman can in Wal-Mart’s public restroom stall, I stumble through the women’s clothing and randomly snatch pieces of clothing from their hangers before helping myself to a fitting room and layering as many outfits as I could without looking like I was…well, layering clothes for shop lifting purposes. I continue my escape through more wooded acreage. After polishing off three of the ten apples as well as the handful of blackberries I foraged earlier today while trekking in the woods from sunrise to sunset, I swish the water I bottled from a pseudo clean stream around my mouth and through the spaces between my teeth before spitting it out in the grass. I wished four times and prayed twice while rinsing the seeds from the crevices of my teeth for a single goddamn toothbrush and some motherfucking toothpaste. I’m hungry but not weak. I’m tired but refuse to allow my steps to falter. I’m at my wits end, but my grasp does not slip, it only tightens its hold. I’m scared to death, but I can’t afford to give my fear any power by looking too closely at it. My only thought now: VENGEANCE. I release a sigh of foreboding and impending defeat as I plump my belongings in my Louis Vuitton bag before using it as a pillow and snuggling as close to the fire I started when I stopped here as I can without catching ablaze. Once my body settles in, realizing the dewy earth will again be the bed we rest upon just like every night before and every night since leaving the Ranch, a calm contentment blankets me. I smile as my daughter’s face flashes behind my eyelids before I’m swathed in the blissful numbness that always accompanies my loss of consciousness. Only instead of finding the blissful numbness I’ve secretly began to crave, the nightmares of what I endured in Gorman’s Ranch as well as my overactive imagination concocts one unimaginable offensive scenario after another to play out with my sweet baby girl being forced to endure fear, pain, loneliness or sadness at the hands of the monsters she unknowingly trusts. She believes they love her, believes they are the guardians who will keep her protected. Let one hair on Winter Ivy’s head be touched with anything other than love or affection and I will fucking come unglued, tearing every last motherfucking one of them down to the lowest bowels of Hell and remain there in the afterlife to make damn certain Roman and Sebastian spend their eternity exactly where they belong. These thoughts alone fuel my growing need for revenge. Then…finally, my blissful numbness consumes me and washes away