You make hundreds of decisions everyday. From the small ones, like choosing what to eat for breakfast, to the big ones, like what study at university. Each one has a consequence, or several consequences for that matter. Some decisions are more far-reaching than others and they set a series of consequence in motion like a row of  falling dominos.

But then there's a very different kind of decision. The type that only comes around a few times in a your   life.  They are the kind of decisions you make that change EVERYTHING.  They alter your entire life, they change you beyond recognition and their consequences can be felt like ripples through every aspect of you life.

And often when they come, you don’t know it’s them…..

My preparations were completed.

1. Ladder climbed and map to my salvation downloaded

2.     Route planned- as best as I could

3.     Bags packed

4.     Change into warmest clothes- a Zebra print tracksuit that Clay had bought me, again with the African Ironic Aesthetic.

5.     Had a drink to calm my nerves

6.     Drew map on paper in case I lost GPS signal.

And now for the hard part… taking the car. I’d noted earlier that they kept the keys in the ignition, so all I needed to do was sneak up to one, jump in and drive off- without being spotted. I decided that the best time to make my escape would be at 10:00 PM, when lights went out.  

It seemed like such an easy plan; escape under the cover of night, take the car and drive to Mecca. Simple. What could go wrong? And just to clarify, I wasn’t stealing the car, I was just borrowing it without asking. As soon as I reached my destination I would get someone to drive it back, no harm done. They had plenty of cars, they wouldn’t ever notice that it was gone.

The lights had barely gone out when I dragged my bags outside as quietly as possible. There was no one in sight and I was good to go. The car was exactly where I thought I would find it and the keys were exactly where they were supposed be- everything was going according to plan. Except that the car was a manual, not an automatic! I should have guessed, Africa had a habit of making things difficult. After a few failed attempts at pulling off, I finally seemed to get the hang of the whole clutch thing and pulled off at high speed. The wheels spun and kicked up a cloud of red dust, it was wildly exhilarating.

I clicked ‘start route’ on my iphone and headed out into the night as fast as I could. I probably should have felt afraid that I was driving into the middle of Africa by myself, but I wasn’t. I was too wired; abuzz with a million zinging emotions that were sloshing through my veins and that had opened the sluice gates to the adrenalin that was now flooding me. Besides, I didn’t feel alone, a nice polite sounding lady was telling me to “Keep straight for 2 km’s and then veer left”

This was it! I was going to the Lost Palace come hell or high water, fire and brimstone, fricking elephants and lions and whatever else lurked in the bushes.

Bring it on!

 Nothing was going to stop me because I was woman on a mission. With a deadly, pointed singular focus.  I felt like some super- hero boss bitch that kicked men in the balls for sport and then laughed about it HA-HA-HA! I was she who killed the enemy with a sharp saber tooth ninja sword while wearing a skintight lycra suit and looking fucking hot while doing it. Move over Angelina and Uma there was a new woman in town… *evil laugh.

But then, half an hour into the drive, that feeling started fading as fast as the cell phone reception. I stopped the car and climbed onto one of the benches in the back hoping to get reception by standing with my hand in the air- nothing.  But there was no need to panic, I had planned for this possibility. I pulled the hand drawn map out of my pocket and unfolded it, but it was absolutely illegible.  The lines were wavy, the names of the roads were scribbled and it looked like a three year old had drawn it.

Fuck, what had I been thinking when I was drawing it? An image flashed through my mind, it was of me drawing the map with one hand while I sipped a drink with the other.

It was pitch black and absolutely freezing, I’d never been to a place where there was such a difference between the day and night temperature. The night air was filled once more with a million different sounds that seemed to come from everywhere all at once. I desperately tried to remember what the map had said. I closed my eyes tightly and tried to remember what I'd drawn, but I couldn’t make out a thing. The woman had said straight for two km’s- but what came next? Veer left?

In the distance I could see a large cluster of lights, it was obviously a town and that meant civilization, cell phone reception and national roads. I took a deep breath to quell the rising panic and started driving towards the light- like wise men following a star.

It was dark. Not the normal kind of darkness that one expects when the sun is no longer hanging in the sky. But a different kind that you can almost feel. It’s a thick, spongy darkness that devours everything in its way. It destroys and suffocates the light and anything else that tries to escap it- like the headlights. The hungry darkness was consuming them fast. They barely illuminated a meter in front of the car… and that’s why I didn’t see the embankment.

Suddenly I was flying off the road, all four wheels felt like they lifted into the air before they thumped back down and the car started rolling down, down, down… It was picking up speed by the second but seemed to lack the momentum to go up the other side of the embankment.  So after several violent pendulum sways, the thing finally came to a complete stop with one almighty sound. The sound cut through the night like a knife and caused all the creatures to go still, and silent. For a few seconds there was nothing, just the sound of my rapid breathing and the creaking of the car as it settled into its final position. The eerie silence was jarring and it made me shiver.

It took me a minute to get my bearings again- I wasn’t hurt, other than a few bruises and scratches- but I felt disorientated, panicked and confused.  I turned the ignition back on and the engine hummed to life. I put it in reverse and pressed my foot down as hard as I could, but the car didn’t budge. The wheels spun and the engine shook, but it stayed put. I kept on trying until the spinning wheels had kicked up so much dust that I was choking on it.

“GREAT!” I screamed at the top of my voice. “Fucking Great!”

All my hopes of escape had just plunged into a ditch and died. I looked at my phone; I still didn’t have any reception and I was at a total loss as to what to do next. Without the whirr of the engine and the sounds of the tyres driving over the dusty gravely road, the night was even louder than before. 

And suddenly it hit me like a ten-ton truck…. Terror.

I was alone in the middle of Africa, in the middle of the night, in a vehicle with no doors or windows in a place that was crawling with wild, dangerous animals.

 What the fuck had I done?

What the fuck had I done?

What the fuck had I been thinking?

The cold air bit at me and I held myself as tightly as I could. Someone would eventually come looking for me. Wouldn’t they?

And then a terrible thought entered my mind; or would they? Why would someone come looking for me when everyone hated me?

I jumped as a terrifying noise clawed at my neck. It was the most disturbing sound I’d ever heard- a high-pitched wail that could have shattered glass. It was the kind of sound that your feel physically, with all your senses. It felt as sharp as nails being scratched down my back. It tasted of metal, and blood and salt. It smelt like something maggot infested and rotting and it looked like a crooked gnarled monster.

But more disturbingly, it was loud, and it was close. Very close.

My heart started racing so hard that I thought it might fall out of my chest- I could feel and hear the whoosh of my blood as it rushed past my ears at high speed.  I’d heard that sound before, what had Riaan said, “Hyenas’?”

The high-pitched ‘whooooop-whoooop’ was soon joined by an even more disturbing sound. It was almost like laughter, as if there were witches cackling around a cauldron plotting death and destruction. 

Plotting my death and destruction?

Where they laughing at me?

The sounds kept building on each other until they were coming from every single conceivable direction. Louder. Closer. They were everywhere at once, like echoes in a cave, bouncing back and forth.

I scrambled for the torch to see what was out there, my hands were shaking so hard that it was almost impossible to turn it on, and when I finally did and flashed it around me. I wished I hadn’t

Dozens of pairs of bright eyes reflected the light back at me. My primitive self took over as flight or fright mode was turned on like a switch. I scrambled to the front just as I felt the car move and saw the flash of something as it jumped into the back.

And then another one.

And another.

The car bounced and buckled under the weight of the creatures.

I was going to die.

I was going to be ripped apart and eaten alive by laughing monsters.

But much to my relief they went for my bags- my bags that still smelt of zebra. One managed to pull my bags onto the road and before my eyes they descended on them like vampires to a warm corpse. Like beasts pulling apart a carcass, they eviscerated them.  I looked down and realized that I was wearing my zebra print pajamas, and without a second thought I ripped them off and threw them into the road, one of the hyenas jumped towards them.

There was nowhere to hide, but I managed to climb under the steering wheel where I pulled the chair as far forward as it could go. It surrounded me like a metal cage- but not entirely. There were a few gaps that I suspected might just be big enough for a razor sharp claw or snout.

My almost naked body was freezing. I shivered so hard that my teeth chattered uncontrollably and threatened to chip and break. The agitated hyenas screamed and laughed louder than before, getting more and more frantic. Out of a gap I could see that some of them were fighting each other for the prize, whilst others ripped the bags to shreds.

I held myself and started to cry. It was a cry like no other- dark, empty desperation filled my lungs and throat.

I was so alone. Who would come looking for me here? The answer was no one- I'd managed to piss off every single person back at the lodge, especially Riaan.

His disappointed and angry face flashed through my head and I felt even worse.

I couldn’t seemed to do anything right.

That feeling that I’d experienced while lying in the thorns started washing over me again.

Resignation.

Giving up.

It was both morbid, but simultaneously filled me with a strange kind of relief.

I closed my eyes and gave up completely.

I was sure to die here tonight. If it wasn’t the animals, it would be the cold.

And I was okay with that.

My life started flashing before me now and the imagery was accompanied by a single question that seemed to be on repeat;  

What life?

What life?

What life?

Suddenly everything about my life in London seemed meaningless. And when I thought about it now, in the light of my current situation, all I felt was exhausted and empty. I had one friend, and a whole bunch of people who either hated me or hung around me to get something- gossip, money, notoriety.

I had no relationship with my father and I couldn’t remember the last time we’d laughed together or said that we loved each other. Did he love me?

Why the hell did we fight so much anyway? It all seemed so trivial now. Such a waste of precious time.

We’d been so close at one point, but my mothers death had changed that.

I went from one party to the next, spent most nights drunk and hardly remembered a thing.

Staring cold, freezing, terrifying death in the face was a sobering thought, and all I seemed to have were regrets. A list of regrets that were years long. .

I didn’t want to die with so many regrets and unresolved conflicts and broken relationships. Even with Riaan.

I started bargaining. If I lived I would change things. I would be nicer. I wouldn’t drink as much. I would give to charity. I would be a better person.

I would be someone that my mother would be proud of.

But maybe it was too late, I would leave this life with no worthy legacy, only a path of hurt and destruction in my wake…..

It was too late.

I closed my eyes and the cold was so intense that I felt like I might lose consciousness at any second.

I hoped my death wouldn’t be painful. I hoped that by the time the animals came for me I would have passed out.

I was vaguely aware of a new sound now, a humming that was accompanied by a stinging sensation, but it was too late to do anything about it.

I closed my eyes, I saw my moms face once more and didn’t open them again.