I still haven’t been found.

The moss, pungent with loam and decayed leaves, has returned. The rains have long since leveled the slight mound that concealed my body. There are bones, my bones. Mostly healthy, once framing me with veins, muscles, meat. Life.

No more.

If someone were to find my bones, they’d still be vibrant, starched against the blackened earth beneath. Someone might even see the slight knot on the femur where it once broke and healed when I was eight.

No one wanders this deep into the forest. Or at least not this way. The campgrounds from where I was abducted are half a day’s hike to the south, closer to the road carved along Blackshear’s base. My burial site is well beyond the creek or the exposed rock face where many of the locals like to climb.

Ten years since I’ve been murdered. Ten years since I felt the flaming incision of the blade against my throat and then cold and sleep. Ten years, and I still haven’t been found.

But he returned today. My murderer. With another body.