Yours Truly 2016 / Cascadia College / Bothell, WA | Page 41

my chest and I could breathe again. Falling
forward, I gasped in the sweet, precious air
until I was panting. Drool dripped down from
my mouth, wetting the soil underneath me,
but I couldn’t care less. I could breathe, and
that’s all that mattered.
I heard a voice call out to me, but what
was said I could not tell. A giggle rang
through the air, and if I hadn’t known better,
I would have said it belonged to a little girl.
The giggle was high pitched, and innocent
enough, but I was all alone here. There wasn’t
supposed to be a child. Something inside of
me told me otherwise, that this was untrue.
My hair stood on end, and my skin was
covered in quickly forming goosebumps.
This wasn’t right.

“Worry tugged at my insides.”
Shakily, I brought myself back up onto
my feet and brushed off the patches of
dirt from my knees. Worry tugged at my
insides, twisting my guts and forcing my
stomach into somersaults. I took cautious
steps until I began to see a change in the
environment. The weight settled onto the
world itself, snuffing out the color that
had been around me. The leaves closed in
around my body more so than they had
before. To move forward, I now had to push
and shove my way through. They no longer
cradled the precious flowers, but restrained
them. The azure flowers had grown less
frequent, now that I noticed. Instead, many
more of the branches were robed in dark
reds. They seemed fake, as though someone

had painted them instead of grown them.
All I could think of was the Queen in Alice in
Wonderland. Was I in Wonderland?
Feeling something hot drip down my
neck, I gasped in surprise. Touching the
liquid, I pulled my hand back to see my
fingers coated in a sticky, copper substance.
It was the same burgundy as that of the
flowers. Examining it in my hand, it dawned
on me what the substance was. Blood. I
saw nothing except the flowers; they were
dripping. The leaves faded out into some
blob of green, harmless now. Worry on my
lips, I plucked one to look at. They were
oozing the substance, blood, down their
petals. Or so I thought, anyway.
I heard the crunch of footsteps and rustle
of leaves behind me. This is when panic
set in. I was not alone. I threw the flower
and began to run as fast as I could. Roots
seemed to pop out of nowhere, tripping me
in my mad gallop. The childish giggle rang
in my ears, taunting me as I tripped and
stumbled. I panted, unable to take in enough
air to sustain myself for much longer. My legs
burned, and soon I felt more burning gobs
of liquid dripping onto me, covering me. It
weighed me down, and as large globs fell
onto me, I found myself face first in the dirt.
The same weight pushed my head down and
held it, my mouth filling with earth. I spat and
spat, my saliva brown.
Struggling to move, I caught a glimpse of
a pair of delicately clad feet just in my line of
vision. They were adorned in pink slippers,

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