Now let’s get back to present day.
After we touch this Adam guy, we are all knocked back on our butts by some crazy force. We almost black out for a few seconds. The shock that ran through my body is so hard to explain. At first, I literally felt like I was struck by lightning. My body got so hot and there was a moment where I thought I was going to explode from the intensity of the heat. But then that sensation immediately vanished and suddenly my body feels better than it has ever felt. All in the matter of a couple seconds. I went from almost exploding to amazing! My genitals aren’t even tingling anymore.
I look up from where I had been knocked back, and I take a family head count. Everyone is accounted for and coming back to reality from whatever just happened. Except for one person.
Adam is gone.
His entire body has disappeared- leaving only the blood stains on the tree he was laying on. I look around for footprints or some evidence of where he may have gone, but then I realized he had a hole in his stomach and was on the brink of dying! He couldn’t walk or move anywhere by himself! This has become a very confusing, strange day.
“Everybody ok?” I ask, coughing after I said it. There’s a slight smell of something burning in the air. Is it flesh? Is it feathers? Am I halluicinatining everything?
“I’m good,” Craft says.
”I feel great!” Hops screams and jumps to his feet.
”Why do I smell something burning?” Angela asks, coughing too. ”Does any one have any burns on them?”
”No I think we are all good,” Sage affirms. ”But Adam is not. He’s gone.”
”Where did he go?”, Haley wonders.
”I have no idea, babygirl,” I say. ”He gave us one big shock and disappeared. Some gift. All we got was burnt and dirty.”
”But that’s the weird thing!” Angela shouts. ”No one is burning or on fire! The smell is fading away but I swear it’s there.”
Oh it was there. The smell was there and now just like a lit match, it slowly fades away. My first thought is did Adam explode? Or burn himself into an instant crisp somehow? But I look back at where he laid on that tree and there are no burn marks. No sign of an exploding body. Wouldn’t guts and body parts be spread all over the place? No guts. No dismembered arms laying around anywhere. I am just staring at the tree- confused and mystified.
Then, Angela says to us all: ”Let’s get out of here. I am now creeped out by this spot.”
So we dust ourselves off, take an individual look back at where Adam had laid, and head back up that hill towards the rented Ford Flex. We are all quiet and speechless, and missing all the new things to see on the trail because we are in a daze of what just happened. So many questions. For example, where is this gift? I mean, I do feel different. In a good way. I feel heathier and more alive than I’ve ever felt before. I have small back and knee issues from sports injuries when I was younger. But my whole body feels great today. That knee soreness I would get from long walks or runs, I don’t have at all. Remember the bruise and pain from where my back hit the tree and I stopped Hops from hitting it? I don’t feel that at all. And like I said, the jewels are tingling no more!
So is that the gift? Some type of self-healing super power? That would be cool! But something tells me it’s way more than that. I had no idea we were going to find out in the next few minutes.