THE FOREST LEAVES parted in a crashing melody of discord and water droplets, thrown apart by a girl running in a flurry of breath and fear. She slipped and stumbled and fell as she fled, stone over stone, twig over twig over twig. Her hands grasped at tree trunks as she passed, bark sharp and grounding beneath her fingertips. Her feet stung and bled, burning with pain and raw, skin worn away. The sky was weeping sorrowful rain, careening across the woods in sheets of tragedy which wrapped themselves around tree and skin and bone. The world seemed to twist and swirl around the girl, she didn't know where she was.
What was she running from? She didn't know. Her thoughts were clouded, breath heavy; thrums like pins and needles running down her skin, like static. She couldn't remember. She wanted to wind her fingers into her hair: pull, scream, but she couldn't focus, and she just kept running and running. Her feet stung and burned with blood and blisters. What was she running from?
"Here, right here." A jab through the helix of her ear, blinding pain, bound so she couldn't even clasp her fingers around it, tiles lined with white and more white, on every surface to see, so white that when it was smeared with blood the red looked like roses blooming in snow. Wire wrapped around and around, pressing into skin, a monitor, flashed, flashed, flashed, shattered like a star exploding in front of her eyes, and there was piercing, cold darkness closing in, and hearts colder.
Light stung her eyes; the Earth went blurry. The world warped around her: a thousand faces looming, a thousand eyes watching, a thousand arms grasping, grasping, grasping for her, and her legs moved and took her nowhere. The hundred arms clasped her shoulders and shook her, their hundreds of teeth gnashing and pale irises rolling.
The girl cried out and slipped. Her knees hit the rocky ground, and as she scrambled to her feet, she left a trail of blood behind on the lush green moss. There was rain on her face, her clothes, her hair, when would it ever stop? Too many thoughts, too many thoughts. What was she running from?
