Myths Gone Wild (The Hook)

This is a story that I had to write for an assignment about nine years ago for my introduction to writing short stories class in college.

I have been locked away inside this mental facility for five years now. I have a hook for an arm due to having my arm bitten off by an alligator when I was a young boy. The doctors at the hospital said they couldn't replace my arm, so they just wrapped it up so it wouldn't bleed out. I decided to find a way to find something I could replace my arm with, so I went searching in junk yards, abandoned properties, and all sorts of places, until one day I came across what seemed to be an abandoned beach and there laid what looked like an old pirate ship. I decided to search the ship and eventually I came across an old pirate hook. And from that day I have used that hook as my arm.

They locked me in here and ever since then I have been planning my escape. I have observed every inch of this facility and all the guards around it. I will make my escape at midnight tonight since that seems to be when most of the guards aren't around or aren't paying attention. They usually lock the doors at night but my hook should be able to unlock the doors just fine. All I need to figure out is where to go after I make my escape. I have no idea where this facility is located, they haven't said a word about the location to us. My best decision to make when getting out of here is heading into the direction they least expect me to take, but the smart decision is going somewhere where I can easily hide from the search when they realize I escaped.

It's fifteen minutes to midnight now, meaning it's almost time to put my escape plan in motion. I should be out of here in five minutes if everything goes according to plan. They check the rooms every fifteen to thirty minutes. It's 11:50 and one of the guards opens the door and says “just checking how you are doing.” The same thing the guards always say when they check the rooms unless they are giving us our medicine or food. It hits midnight and now I start to make my escape. First I go up to the door to my room, and pick the lock with my hook, which turns out to be much easier than I expected it to be. I take a look around, the facility is mostly dark with some faint lights coming from only underneath a couple doors, which I assume is either where the guards take breaks or is the main office of the facility. There is quite a few cameras all around the facility but I carefully figured out which areas the cameras aren't able to detect. I move stealthily until I reach the main doors of the building and I easily get through the doors, which turns out to be even easier to unlock than the door to the room I was locked inside of.

I take a look around, it's dark but the moon provides enough light that I can make out my surroundings very easily, one way has a road that leads to nothing, which I'm guessing eventually a city. The other road leads to a small town, not that far from the facility. I can't take that way, as soon as that alarm goes off, I would be right back inside that facility. I decide to take the way that seems to have nothing around it. I walk for about ten minutes and I see woods in the distance, a perfect place to hide when that alarm sounds off. Just as that thought crosses my mind, the alarm of the facility goes off, and I have to get to those woods in the next couple of minutes or my escape is over. I start to run as fast as I can, I take a break to look back and I can see the red and blue sirens in the distance, but it seems as if they are going towards the town first, just as I expected them to. They'll find out soon enough that I didn't go through that town, then they will come searching this way.

I reach the woods, and I hide in the most concealed place I can find. I decide to wait until the sirens past my location and hope that they don't decide to look through the woods. The sirens eventually pass me and they completely ignore the woods. I decide to delve deeper inside the woods until I am as far enough away from the road that I feel comfortable with. I decide to set up a make-shift tent to rest inside of. It's been a few hours so the search is probably still going on. All of a sudden I start to feel hungry, I have no hunting equipment so I decide to search the trees for berries. I am no expert on berries so I decide to stay away from the ones that look unfamiliar to me and go for ones that I recognize. I know it's never good to eat wild berries due to the chance of being poisonous, but I'm starving so I decide to take the chance on eating the berries. I decide to take a rest and I end up sleeping for about ten hours.

I wake up and the weather makes it feel like it's around noon. I start to trek through the woods. I see there is an ocean far out which make me guess I am either on one of the coasts of the country. It also means there might be a road that leads out to look at the view somewhere along these woods. I continue to walk and it is starting to get hot outside, so I try my best to stay under the shade of these trees. I figure since it's almost been a day since I made my escape that eventually a radio broadcast will be made about the escape that took place. I decide to walk for a few more hours and eventually I come across a log that looks safe to sit on. I take a seat on the log, and nearby I hear a car engine running. I hear the car stop and this car has the radio blasted. Sure enough on that radio a broadcast is sent out saying “Yesterday at midnight a man with a hook for an arm escaped from a mental facility, if you see this man report to authorities immediately.”

I watch the vehicle, and inside it seems to be a young couple. After the broadcast I hear the car doors lock. I watch the two while they talk, the boy seems daring while the girl seems scared for her life. The girl begs the boy to take her home and at first the boy doesn't listen. I carefully get up and start to move towards the car. I carefully sneak behind the car so they don't see me, I get as low as I can so I can move along the side of the car. I eventually get my hook on the door handle of the car, but as soon as I do they drive off and rip the hook off of my arm. It hurts too much to scream so they'll find an unexpected present on the car. Suddenly I feel a sense of deja vu going through me.