Excerpt: no working title

She went around a couple more bends, climbed over a fallen log and took a right fork when she stopped cold. Ahead of her was a person laying in the middle of the gravel, limbs splayed in all directions. Gertie let her breath out slowly and forced herself to walk towards the unmoving body.
It was an elderly man, probably in his eighties. His mouth was open, jaw slack, and there was a glob of drool hanging out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes were open but unseeing.
"Oh god oh god oh god." Gertie felt herself panicking. You've got to calm down, she told herself. You've seen plenty of dead bodies in Hidden Shadows--
"This is not a game!" she said aloud, not even realizing it. "This is real life! Oh god what do I do?" She tried to tell herself that maybe the man wasn't dead. After spending a minute working up the courage, she crouched down and grabbed the man's wrist. His skin was stiff and cool to the touch. There was no pulse. She looked over the man's body and saw that he must have wet himself in his last few moments; the pants around his crotch were soiled. Gertie recoiled in horror. She tried to back away, but tripped on a fallen branch and fell backwards. She curled up and whimpered, holding back tears. She didn't know why she was so disturbed. Death happened all the time, and she didn't even know the man. Still, she had never seen a dead person before. Not even at her father's funeral. His body had been so mangled that the visitation and funeral were closed casket, and her mother had not allowed Gertie to see the body before hand.
"What do I do? What do I do? I can't spaz out, I can't spaz out, I can't!" she repeated. Eventually she got back up. She knew she needed to tell someone. She turned back and started to run in the direction that she came. It didn't take long for her to start huffing and puffing. My god am I out of shape. Fuck me! She cursed herself for being so lazy. She slowed down her pace enough that she could catch her breath. She refused to stop. She was on a mission. Then a new problem arose--she couldn't remember which way to go. She was sure she needed to go left, and then probably right. Or was it left again? She picked the fork that "felt" right to her.
It didn't take long, maybe five minutes, before she had no idea where she was. She began to get really scared. In another hour, it would probably start to get dark. Then it hit her--she could just use her phone and call someone! Why didn't she think of that sooner?
The answer came to her the moment she slid her hand into her pocket--her mother had confiscated her phone along with her computer.
"Damn you, Mom! Damn you to hell! Fuck you! Bitch!" Gertie screamed all the obscenities she knew at the top of her lungs, directed all to her mother, who was just struggling to raise a teenager all by herself. Eventually Gertie composed herself and continued on. Two or three minutes later, she reached a spot that looked very familiar. In fact--
"It's the log!" she cried out joyously. It was the log that she had climbed over. Just before she had found the body. But if that was the log, then where was the body? Gertie looked around, bewildered. The body hadn't been that far from the log. She went back to the spot where she thought it would be. She found wet gravel where the guy had pissed himself, and a few bent weeds from where he had been laying. The body was simply gone.
Gertie felt a chill crawl up her spine. She hadn't even been gone for ten minutes. If someone had came for the body, she should have seen or heard someone. The woods wasn't that dense here. There was no wind and only the occasional bird chirp. The forest was eerily silent. Where did you go, old man?
This was weird. Far too weird. She wanted to get out of here, and now. She stared back, being very careful to look at her surroundings. She didn't panic and she didn't run. She was quite certain she was taking the right routes out of the woods this time. She was sure she only had a few more turns left when something glittering along the edge of the path caught her eye. Upon closer inspection she saw it was a very small pebble. She picked it up and saw it was actually a rhinestone, or diamond of some sorts.
"Cool!" she said, momentarily forgetting about the disappearing dead man. It looked real enough and had a nice cut. She could probably make some kind of jewelry out of this. She put it in her pocket. A few minutes later and she was out of the park. She nearly jumped with joy, but reminded her she still needed to bike all the way back home. She retrieved her bike from the bushes, and after cruising down the street, she reached an intersection that she recognized. In a couple dozen blocks, she'd be back in her neighborhood.