When It Rains, It Pours – Multi-Perspective Storytelling Ft. Kristian

Kristian from “Life Lessons Around The Dinner Table” and I have decided to do a multi-perspective story collaboration. Our introduction remains the same and at one point our story splits off into the first-person perspectives of our two main characters. This was an extremely fun and creative writing exercise, and Kristian was an absolute pleasure to work with on this. We had a lot of fun brainstorming how this might all go down. Don’t forget to check out Kristian’s side of the story afterwards to see how things unfold from Serena’s end.

When It Rains, It Pours

Mitch and Serena had been out all day for a family dinner. It was late Sunday night, and they had somewhat of a long drive ahead of them through rocky hills and dense forest. There was laughter and chit-chat in the car, and the mood was light. The sun was just beginning to dip beneath the horizon and a pink-orange glow painted the landscape ahead. As the drive carried on, the conversation began to fade, the night grew darker and the stars appeared.

Mitch

We’d been driving for a couple of hours now, it was always a long drive and after talking for a while, Serena and I just kind of ran out of things to talk about. Long drives always do that to us. If you try to keep the conversation going for too long it just feels forced. She was half asleep in a ball in the passenger seat and I was just trying to keep my eyes on the road. I could feel myself getting a little tired but another hour and we should be there.

There was always an eerie feel to this stretch of road, and this rain beginning to drip wasn’t helping any. There weren’t too many cars out at this time of night on a Sunday. Our vehicle hugged the curves of the mountain and life seemed surreal for a moment, and then something terrible happened…

It all happened so quickly, but I just remember taking a bend, and just as we were rounding the corner a truck coming from the other direction crossed the center line. We were bumped, we hit the railing and tumbled. It all went black.

When I finally came to my leg was in agony, there was a sharp pain in my hip and I had a throbbing headache. My mouth was dry and I could feel warm drops of blood dripping down my body. Oh yeah, we were upside down. Serena was trying to help me out of my seat-belt.

I hit the ground with a thud and it felt like lightning had just hit me. Serena seemed on the verge of tears, so, I expected I wasn’t looking too good. Her face looked a little cut up but she seemed in much better shape than I was. I’d checked my cellphone in my pocket but there was no reception, just our luck.

“Just go,” I told her, “Head up to the road and get help for us. It’ll be quicker.” Serena helped me out from the wreck of the vehicle and we bandaged my wounds with torn rags. I couldn’t bear to listen to her cry at the sight of me anymore, it was just making me worry more.

Laying there outside the vehicle in the rain, I drifted in and out of consciousness. My head was feeling a little light, and my right leg felt numb. Like it was smashed repeatedly with a baseball bat, filleted open and filled with broken glass. The world was swaying from side to side as if I were on a boat out to sea. I wanted to vomit. The only thing that helped calm my nausea was the pleasant scent of pine-needles in the forest and the cool drops of rain that dripped on to my face from off the treetops.

“Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad place to die,” I thought “Snap out of it Mitch, you’re not going to die. Not today.”. After an hour I faded out of consciousness there against the side of that car and I was woken abruptly by a huff. Right before me was a massive grizzly bear, and it was sniffing at my bloodied leg. I tried to flip over and crawl back into the vehicle but it grabbed me by the ankle and started to drag me off deep into the forest. I screamed, but no one was around to help.

It felt like it was pulling my hip right out of it’s socket. I tried to grab onto trees, branches and roots as we passed but this bear was stopping for no one. I grabbed a stone at one point and kept it with me in my hand in case I would need to fight.

He dragged me for quite some time through dense foliage in this dimly lit forest. The ground was wet and my clothes were soaked and bloodied now. I could only hope my bloodied streak on the ground beneath me might lead to my rescue. Eventually, the bear dragged me to a hillside and the entrance to a cave.

This was my last chance, I took my stone and I whipped it at the bear as hard as I could, hitting it straight in the head. It dropped me, roared and ran off for a moment. I was free! I began to drag my body back towards the forest, and in only a moment I could hear the large thuds of that massive animal running back towards me. This plan wasn’t well thought out…

I saw the rage in the bear’s face, before it’s large jaws opened, and took hold of my skull. Then everything went black…

Click here to see what happened to Serena!