A Call For Help 1

It was a Sunday morning. For most people, it was a sleep-in, or a lunch date with friends. I’m the sort of guy who likes to go out, but to be alone while going out. I suppose that makes me an introvert. I’m into self-improvement and enjoying life, but not being around people that drain me. I used to spend my time at the gym, but that was too much for me and I did more workouts at home. I recently got into walking, which is what got me exploring the local woods. It was actually a large central park, the kind that was so large that there were places that people didn’t go into and didn’t know about, which was exciting for me because I knew I could enjoy my walks without running into people I didn’t want to meet.

Or so I thought.

Today I decided to explore a different trail. The normal trails were used by walkers and joggers, sparse as they were around here -- perhaps I would encounter no more than five on a regular day. My route would take me on a long circuit through the back trails. There were a few old warning signs, most of which were so weathered that all you could make out was an exclamation mark. On my own, I felt adventurous enough to explore. It kind of felt like being in a jungle or being an urban explorer, except for the fact that it was a wood in the middle of the city that everyone already knew.

Despite its low usage, there was a distinct dirt trail, though different from the gravel path that marked the main walking tracks. The trail meandered its way through a dense, quiet part of the woods until it followed the stream that ran through the edge of the park. It was far from scenic -- the banks were steep, and the soil was grey and muddy. The local council hadn’t made much effort to develop this area, and the shadowy corner give it a cold feel compared to the rest of the area.

I was startled to see that there was someone else on the trail. It was a woman, probably in her 30s, jumping up and down, waving at me. Calling for me to come quickly.

Despite spending most of my time by myself, I have to admit that I am a lustful person. I am a straight guy and I like boobs, and this woman had boobs. Given what I would soon find out, I felt bad that my first reaction as to ogle. She had shiny, curly brown hair and deep tanned skin, more like a natural Mediterranean tan than a fake one. She wore a loose orange top that revealed her bare shoulders, exposed her midriff and had a plunging neckline to accentuate her deep cleavage -- a garment which looked fabulous on her figure, but somewhat out of place in this wooded area. She also had a black miniskirt and a pair of cheap heeled sandals -- not uncomfortable, but not a first pick for walking in the woods.

As I approached, she seemed to examine me in the same detail. I have less to write home about -- my skin was paler than most due to the time I spent indoors. My build is average, though my muscle-shirt drew attention to my broad shoulders more than my chest or abs. I noticed that her gaze also dropped down to my shorts. I hoped that I wasn’t sporting an awkward erection.

“Please, help,” she said, gasping. “My sister. She fell down the slope. She’s stuck in quicksand.”

She waved me towards the slope that led down to the stream. I couldn’t see her sister at first, but once we reached the top of the slope, I could see the peril. It looked like the sisters were walking along the edge of the steep slope when the soil crumbled. Below, in a part of the stream that had mostly dried up, the sister was submerged up to her ribs in greyish brown mud. She had shoulder-length curly blonde hair with sunglasses on her head. Her skin was smooth and tanned like her sister’s. She held up arms straight up, waiting for rescue, proudly displaying her ample chest, which was barely contained in a thin white tank top. The quicksand had a strong grip on her. She appeared to bob slightly, or perhaps the surface was undulating. The shiny surface and small pools of water dotted around the trapped woman hinted at the danger beneath.

“Christina!” the trapped woman yelled out. “Thank God. Did you find help?”

“Hold on, Anna!” the orange-shirted woman yelled.

Anna looked at me. I carefully slid down the slope and my shoes immediately hit soft mud. Looking at how the mud rippled, I could see that the quicksand extended quite close to the bottom of the slope. I felt lucky that I hadn’t just gone right in with Anna. The mud slurped against my shoes. I pulled fiercely, nearly losing them. If the quicksand was this strong here, it was no wonder that Anna was trapped.

“Pass me your phone,” Christina said. “I’ll call for help.”

“I don’t have mine here,” I said, looking back.

I had been trying to disconnect myself from the digital world and got into the habit of not bringing my phone on my walks. There was a slight look of apprehension from Christina. I turned back to see that Anna had sunk to her breasts. Her face also had a confused look until the quicksand began to cup her tits. She gasped and started to flail her arms.

“Oh God, I’m sinker deeper! I’m sinking deeper!”

I took a moment to consider my options. Not wanting to wade out and get stuck in the same patch, I went around the wet patch. Knowing that I had to get dirty, I got onto my stomach and began to crawl towards Anna, spreading my weight and moving slowly as to not to get bogged down. I felt a movement under the surface, and Anna sank another inch.

“Don’t struggle!” I shouted as I crawled towards her. She didn’t seem to hear me and kept on thrashing around until the quicksand shifted and swallowed her to armpits.

“Oh my God!” she yelled. “It’s pulling me under!”

“Stop moving!” I shouted. I felt my body heating up as the adrenaline began to pump. I was never a commanding person, and this felt new to me. I reached my hand towards Anna. “Grab my hand -- SLOWLY!”

She was just out of reach. She tried to lunge towards me, but the quicksand held her back. The quicksand claimed her shoulders for her effort. Things were looking desperate. Only her head was above the quicksand.

“Grab a branch or something!” I yelled at Christina. Instead, she pulled off her top, leaving her in a black bra. She threw the flimsy material at me. The throw was pitiful and the top nearly floated in the wrong direction, but somehow landed on my head. The smell of cheap perfume briefly took over from the earthy stench. I pulled the shirt off and flung one end to the rapidly disappearing Anna. She grabbed hold of it, and I began to work my way backwards.

The rescue took around fifteen minutes but felt much longer. I couldn’t remember exactly what Christina was doing in this time -- probably giving moral support to her sister. I was inching my way towards the solid ground by the slope. I paused to make sure that the surface wasn’t going to collapse from underneath me, then made sure that Anna was still holding on. My slow pace seemed to frustrate Anna, but she had no choice and after a while she calmed down, working her way free at my tempo. Fortunately, I didn’t have to pull her all the way out. Once she reached where I had been laying down, she felt solid ground beneath the surface and could slowly walk through the thick mire until she was fully out.

Anna and I were exhausted. She fell into my arms as we lay on stream bank. She wrapped her arms around my necked, squished me and planted a very, very wet kiss. She was beginning to grind against me, and it would’ve gotten further had Christina not pulled her away. She helped me to my feet. Looking mildly embarrassed, she covered her bra and retrieved her muddy top, though holding it over her chest instead of putting it on. Anna’s large breasts had popped out of her tank top during the rescue, and she smiled sheepishly as she tucked them back in.

“Thank you so much,” Anna said. “You saved my life. Please, come back to our house and we’ll make sure you thank you.”

“Yes, please,” Christina added. “My sister is everything to me. We lost...we lost our parents years ago, and we’re all we have. We were just walking here to remind ourselves of what we have and...I nearly lost her. Oh, we shouldn’t have come here. We’re so lucky you came here. Please, come to our house. We’ll do anything for you.”

“Anything,” said Anna. She acted like she was still adjusting her top. I might be reclusive, but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what the offer was.

“Look, I can’t ask for anything,” I replied. Okay, maybe I was an idiot. “I’m just glad you’re okay. Maybe we’ll go out for a drink?”

Christina looked disappointed, but Anna nodded. “That would be great! Really, I mean it. How about tomorrow night?”

“We can’t do tomorrow,” Christina warned. Her voice was oddly stern.

“The day after. It’s a work night, I know, but...”

“The day after, then,” I said. I smiled. Maybe I got lucky after all.

* * *

The next day was Monday. As I worked as a sub-contractor from home, normal work hours didn’t bother me as much, and I found myself want to go for another walk in the woods. I felt really good about myself. Yesterday, I came across two very hot women, saved one’s life, and might get some action for myself the following day. I hadn’t consciously chosen to go back to the woods for any reason related to that. It was just my normal routine. Now, going there made me excited, and I needed that feeling.

I decided to take the same back route where I had met Anna and Christina, but this time go in the reverse direction for a change. The path took me on the far side of the stream, crossing over a dilapidated footbridge. A few minutes later, there was an opening in the vegetation, and I could look across the partially dried stream, where I had pulled Anna out of the quicksand the previous day. Gazing out across the sandy banks of the stream, my jaw dropped in disbelief.

There was Anna. In the quicksand. She had her back to me, as she was facing the slope. She was up to her waist. What was she doing there? Had she come back thinking she might meet me, and fallen in again? I was about to call out to her, but something else came into vision.

At the top of the slope, Christina appeared. It was almost like a replay of what I had seen, but from a third-person point of view. This time, there was someone else in my place. A young woman in her early 20s, perhaps one of the college girls who lived nearby. She was wearing a white sports bra and black jogging shorts with a sweater tied around her waist, and her dark hair was tied in a short ponytail. She had evidently been pulled off the trail by Christina like I had been, and the scene played out the exact same way.

“Oh my god, Christina!” Anna yelled. “Please, hurry, I’m sinking!”

What was going on?

The jogger slid down the slope and encountered the soft patch. She hesitated. Anna waved her arms, holding them up high. She legitimately looked like she was in trouble. Once the quicksand had been disturbed, she kept on sinking. Seeing that Anna only had moments before she went under, the jogger tossed her sweater aside and jumped into action.

Instead of crawling over the unstable bog like I had, she waded into it. She immediately sank to her toned thighs. She gasped, stalled and windmilled her arms to regain balance. The quicksand slurped and swallowed her legs at an alarming rate.

“Keep moving!” Christina shouted. “You’ll get stuck!”

What? That’s how you get stuck, I thought. The jogger didn’t seem to know that and kept on going. She lifted her knees above the surface and ploughed through the thick, quivering bog until she reached Anna. She sat on top of the quicksand’s surface, which gave way slightly underneath her weight, but managed to stay intact. With the jogger’s help, Anna managed to squirm free of the quicksand’s grip, loosening its hold on her lower body until she could crawl out on her own. Christina helped pull Anna free, and she was out of the quicksand in a much shorter period than my rescue. It looked all too easy.

Meanwhile, the jogger was sitting on the sagging surface, not realising that it was breaking up until it was too late. The entire section she was in buckled. The jogger’s weight was finally too much for the thinning surface, and she plunged into the mire, sending out a huge ripple that stretched far beyond what she could reach. She yelped as she watched the quicksand swallow her buttocks and climb up her waist.

“Hold still!” Christina yelled. She was still busy with Anna, though Anna looked fine. The seconds that passed were full of anxiety for the jogger, who was struggling to keep herself from panicking, feeling that there was nothing beneath her feet at all. Anna, meanwhile, was taking her time working her legs free of the shallow mud. I noticed from my angle that Anna was smiling, and Christina had an unusually happy look on her face.

When Anna was finally free, Christina turned to the trapped jogger. “Listen, we can’t get to you. You’ve made the quicksand soft and we’ll get stuck again if we come and get you. Do you have your phone on you?”

The jogger kept her phone in a waist pouch. She held the phone up out and out of the mud.

“Throw it here,” Christina instructed. “We’ll call 911.”

The jogger complied. She flicked it horizontally, sending it straight towards Christina. The movement caused the jogger to slip slightly deeper. She looked uneasily as the quicksand approached her navel. Christina looked with some puzzlement at the phone.

“What’s the passcode?” she asked.

The jogger yelled out the numbers and Christina unlocked the phone. Odd, I thought. You don’t need to unlock the phone to call emergency services. Then, as the rest of the scene unfolded, it all made sense.

“Listen carefully,” Christina said, her tone now slow and serious. “If you follow our instructions, we’ll get you out.”

“What do you mean?” the jogger shouted, feeling herself sink even deeper. “I got your sister out!”

“I won’t repeat myself. If you don’t co-operate, we’ll leave you there to die.” Anna was standing beside Christina now, and they both looked down at the jogger. “Tell us your bank PIN.”

At that moment, I wanted to jump out and shout at the women to scare them off, but I bit my lip and took a breath. They weren’t in need of rescue. They were looking out for good Samaritans and luring them into the quicksand. Christina was posted on the path to call out to innocent people while Anna got herself mired in the quicksand. Their plan was to get the rescuer trapped and force them to give up their phones, and then gain access to their personal accounts. I realised that I had nearly fallen into the trap -- they had tracked me as I approached the stream and set up the exact same scenario. I was fortunate that I didn’t have my phone on me, and that I knew how to rescue Anna from the quicksand without getting stuck. There was no doubt in my mind now that they had been trying everything to put me in a vulnerable position -- like the jogger was in now. She was the one who fell for the trap, not me, and her life was in danger. But I couldn’t run out there. I was on the wrong side of the stream and would have to run ten minutes around the trail to get to their location. And even if I could get across, what was I going to do? I wasn’t afraid of the two women, but there was no way I could rescue the jogger with the thieves there.

I decided that if I was going to be in a position to do anything, I had to make my way back around to the other side of the trail. I prayed that the situation wouldn’t escalate, and that the jogger would still be there when I returned.

By the time I crossed the footbridge and got back onto the trail, the thieves were on their way back. I could hear them before I saw them. They were happy and jubilant. I ducked behind a big tree and watched them walk past. They were swiping through the jogger’s phone, probably already emptying her bank account and locking her out of her accounts. I was shaking with fury. I felt a strong urge to confront them right there, to force them to rescue the jogger. I wanted to physically hurt them.

But I stayed calm. Something didn’t feel right about taking that course of action. I had to make sure the jogger was safe, and the women were probably to run the moment they saw me. I would have to deal with them another time. For now, I had to wait until they left. For an excruciating moment, they paused and stood still on the trail, looking intensely at the phone.

“Whoa, look at these tittles!” Christina cried. “Shame we left her there, sis. She would’ve been fun to play with.”

“Yeah, better than that boring guy from yesterday,” Anna said.

That fucking bitch.

As soon as they went out of sight, I rushed over to the slope. When I saw the quicksand trap, I was both relieved and filled with dread. They had left the jogger there, and she was afloat. However, at some point she must have tried to push herself out by using her hands. Her effort was unsuccessful, and quicksand had greedily swallowed her arms. She was now up to her chest; the quicksand just below her breasts, her arms pinned to her sides. Her face was streaked with tears. She seemed resigned to her fate. When she heard me approach, she looked up and hope filled her eyes.

“Don’t move,” I said, repeating something that must have been muttered a dozen times already. “I saw what happened. I ran into them yesterday.”

“Please help me...” she said. “I...I can’t...”

It was clear that she meant. She was in real deep trouble. Around her, the quicksand’s surface was sagging, with her in the middle of the depression. It held her in a tight, sticky grip. My experience from yesterday reminded me of the quicksand’s unrelenting consistency. Not only was she unable to move, it would be difficult to breathe if she sank deeper. With her arms stuck by her sides, she might go under and be unable to resurface if she to yank them free.

“My name’s Kevin,” I said, filling in the silent air. “What’s yours?”

“Sarina.”

That was the full extent of our conversation. Talking was going to be difficult. Her short breaths were causing the quicksand to quiver, and she was continually slipping deeper and deeper. The moisture was turning her sports bra semi-transparent, and I could see over the next few minutes her rate of descent from her nipples to the logo over her breast. It was probably the only thing I could agree with the thieves on: she had nice tits.

Keeping my hormones in check, I formulated my rescue plan. Unfortunately, it looked like the quicksand had been churned up a fair bit, and it hadn’t settled enough for me to confidently crawl out again without getting stuck. I couldn’t risk her trying to pull her arms free without being sure I could reach her. I didn’t have many options to work with.

My eyes were drawn to something behind her. An old fallen tree trunk was lying partially submerged in the mud, and near that the stump that it probably broke from, looking like solid ground. The problem was that it was in the middle of the shiny, quivering morass, several metres from the nearest solid ground on the bank. It was the only route to reach the Sarina, and I was hoping that it hadn’t been disturbed much during the struggle.

Sarina stifled a cry, fearing that it would hasten her descent. The quicksand had finished swallowing her breasts and was now working on her shoulders. Not wanting to waste any time, I kicked off my shoes and ran across the expanse of mud towards the stump. It wasn’t the wisest move -- the quaking surface clearly meant that I was running over quicksand. As I expected, my legs plunged in after several strides, but the surface held up enough to keep me going and I lunged for the stump before I got stuck. There was only a small section of dry mud next to the stump, which acted as a staging area for the next move. The log was part of the liquefied section Sarina was trapped in, and the quicksand simply could not hold my weight. I slid right into it and made swimming motions towards the log, hoping that it would be enough to give me support. My rapid, decisive motions were being felt by Sarina, who had her head held facing forward to reduce all possible movement. She was disappearing fast, and I looked in time to see her toned shoulders vanish.