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ˢᵒᵐᵉᵗⁱᵐᵉ ⁱⁿ '⁷⁷
ᴅᴀɪꜱʏ ᴡᴀꜱɴ'ᴛ ꜱᴜʀᴇ ʜᴏᴡ ꜱʜᴇ ᴇɴᴅᴇᴅ ᴜᴘ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ.
In a parking space, two miles from where she was before, her ears ringing and her feet still bare and pruned from earlier. There is no one and nothing except the store, the lights, an ice machine, and a "Whatchamacallit" candy bar wrapper. There is a fog, dense and curling through the fir trees, and a vehicle left running. The car is familiar. The store is familiar. The place is familiar. But all she can focus on, is the splintering migraine shooting hot waves down her limbs.
"Hello?" Her voice is meek, low, the crickets chirp louder and the wind blows harder. She isn't sure how she can speak. Her body feels light, like it isn't her own. Like the world around her is some parallel universe, a nightmare where she is left in a daze, where she can't walk or run. The pockets of her cheeks are coated in a layer of filmy fresh water, moss and algae, and her hair is heavy from the sticky contents of the lake. She was swimming, and it was daytime, and then it turned night. She fell asleep in the lake. She fell asleep in the lake. Was she dead?
"Get back in the car NOW!" A voice, her brother's? How can she hear him? She feels her arm being snatched and her heels drag across the gravel, the edges bleeding and peeling from the friction. She kicks her ankles but cannot cry, only gasp and watch as the tinted windows of the vehicle expose shadowed outlines of heads.
I didn't mean to, she wants to say, I don't know how I ended up here. Please tell me where we are. Are we home? This doesn't look like home. Who is inside the car? Hello? Who is inside the car?
