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Creative Writing: The Mata Trail

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The Mata Forest is one of the most picturesque landscapes on the Israel National Trail, in the biblical lowlands, west of Jerusalem. Kay and Kristine walk down a dirt trail and further into the forest, little Peanut rustling in the bushes a few meters in front of them.
Kay, an Israeli tour guide, wants to show Kristine some of the more subtle beauties, taking her through the thickets and thorns toward the viewpoint of Bet Shemesh, where they stand and admire the pine-covered hills rolling into the horizon.

Walking back through the unmarked path, Kay sees two men crouching down in the thicket twenty feet away. Peanut is making noise in the bushes again. Her heart palpitating, Kay feels a rush of adrenaline run through her body, hoping the …show more content…

“Okay, okay you win,” she says.
They exchange bewildered, silent glances, neither daring to utter a word. The other man searches her pockets, finding a cell phone. He glares and hands her the phone. “Turn it off!”

Kay pretends not to understand.

“Turn it off!”

Kay turns off the phone and begs for water to find him wave the blade ‘no.’ The men are searching all the bags now and find Kristine’s passport. “I’m an American citizen,” she says. “Take it, have it!”

The man’s face lights up as he discovers Kay’s Israeli ID, exchanging a few words with his comrade before Kay shows them her Israeli guiding badge, explaining she’s with a large tour group. The sunlight falls and fades beyond the pines.

The man takes her glasses and puts them in his pocket, gazing at the Star of David hanging around her neck. He pulls out her keys. “What kind of car do you have?”

She tells them to take the car, take it all. She shows them her Israeli guiding badge and says, again, the tour group will be returning soon, the thirst for a sip of water….

Kay suggests to Kristine to fake an epileptic seizure to which she obliges.

“What’s wrong?” the man …show more content…

Then the smaller man moves away to make a phone call. The other man stands guarding the women, clinching the serrated blade in one hand, and burning a cigarette in the other. “Take off your shoes,” he says. “Now, take out the laces.”

The women follow his instructions. He then tells Kay to put her hands behind her back. Kay pleads for her life in Hebrew, Kristine in English.

“We good,” the man says, hand on his heart. “We don’t kill.”

Barefoot, hands tied behind their backs, gagged with pieces of Kristine’s fleece jacket, and led nearer to the brow of the hill by the two men who sit them down in the thorny thicket, delusions of reprieve consume the women.

The man takes Kay’s sunglasses and Star of David, separating her from Kristine.

Then a knife plunges through Kay’s side and rips through her organs, insides on fire. “Shema Yisrael…” she says. He grinds the machete into her bones and raises his arm, the silhouette of the blade blocking out the sun rays.

Peanut yelps as they stab her also. Kristine is drowning in her own blood, letting out the kind of groan one can only make once in their

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