Yaaaay Chapter 3 is out! And badly unedited! Guess you’ll just have to suffer through it. 😛

Read! Comment! Loose your mind! Play baseball! Yaaaaay!

Chapter 4 is on the way! Hang tight!

 

Chapter 3

 

 

 

The forest seemed to go on forever.

Ell trudged along, stepping over fallen branches and the occasional rotting stump, as the sun inched across the sky. The day had grown warmer, unseasonable weather for late fall. Steam rose from the endless conifers, creating the illusion of a woodland on fire. The beauty was lost on Ell, who paid her surroundings no mind. For the most part, trees bothered her, all skeletal arms beneath a bulging skin of green, perched atop a stocky wooden leg. Pine trees, however, she loved quite a lot.

Every Christmas, her father purchased a tree for the hospital foyer. Ell had spent hours watching the staff decorating the towering evergreen, wrapping it in blue and gold tinsel, adorning its branches with glass baubles of every shape and size. Strands of multicolored lights set the room aglow, ringing the tree in a halo of light.

“Are they fireflies?” she had asked.

“What?” said her father.

“Fireflies. In the little glass jars.”

“Oh, the lights on the tree? No. No, they are electric lights. There’s this tiny particle, see, and it makes a bit of gas inside it glow. When you plug it in, see”

“You’re making that up. They’re fireflies.”

Her father thought for a very long time before answering, “You’re right. They are fireflies.”

“Aren’t they sad? Stuck inside those tiny jars.”

“No, Ell. They are special fireflies. They like the jars.”

“So what is the point of their existence?”

Her father looked startled. “What? Existence? Where did you learn a word like that?”

“Dr. Heiman said it. He was reading a boring paper the other day, and he said ‘point of existence’, in a funny british accent. I asked him what it meant, and he said it means poor… pur… porpoise?”

“Purpose. Yes, I suppose. He said that?”

“Well, first he told me to shut up, but then I stole his clipboard and told him I’d eat it if he didn’t tell me. So he told me.”

“Ah. Well, Ell, the fireflies’ purpose is to make us happy. That’s all they want. If you are happy looking at them, they will be happy, too. That’s their purpose.”

Younger Ell nodded. “I see.”

Then, a minute later, “They must be very small fireflies…”

A stick snapped nearby, bringing Ell back to reality. Mei had been fiddling with some dead wood on the ground ahead, breaking a low-hanging branch in the process.

“What are you doing, Mei? Shadows shouldn’t touch things. You aren’t solid.”

Mei drooped a bit.

“Oh, cheer up. Shadows can do other neat things! You can’t be hurt, for one thing. No one can ever punch you or kick you, or stick you with a needle. And you can grow really tall when the light’s right. I’m solid, so I can’t do that. I’m stuck like I am…” she let her sentence trail off. Something was beneath the dirt and twigs Mei had been playing with. An odd-colored rock, all but invisible amid the dead pine needles.

“What have you found, Mei?”

She brushed the pile of wood out of the way. The “rock” was actually man-made, some sort of mechanical device…

A bear trap.

Ell snatched her hand away, taking a step back from the thing. After a moment’s inspection, she realized there was no cause for alarm; the horrid thing had been set years ago, and had long since rusted beyond any hope of further use. Its orange teeth were blunt with age, and several parts rattled loosely as she lifted it.

“Hmm. Be careful, Mei. This was made to bite bears, make them hold still so hunters can shoot them. I think it’s broken, but there might be others. Watch where you step.”

The trap was tethered to the ground with a heavy chain. The rusty links popped with little resistance when she pulled at them, plinking to the ground in rough disharmony.

“I don’t know, Mei. Should I keep it, or not?”

The shadow didn’t reply, sitting sprawled on the ground. Ell wondered if Mei had fallen asleep again, reaching down and tapping the shadow with the bear trap.

Mei contorted at the touch, a huge smile filling her face again.

“Silly, you worry me sometimes. Do you want the trap, or no?”

Mei shrugged, uninterested.

“Fine, I’ll keep it. I’m not sure if Dr. Fahlman would approve, but I haven’t seen him for a while now. Maybe he’ll finally leave me alone. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Mei shrugged again, curling around a tiny green bug that happened to be passing beside her.

“Hmph. No help you are. Well, if there’s a trap, then someone must have set it here. Maybe they’ll know how to get back to daddy.”

Ell turned the toothy snare over, looking for anything that might indicate the owner. If there had been, it was long gone, eaten by corrosion. The remains of the chain yielded no clues, either.

Finding no further clues, Ell gave up, returning to her journey through the endless trees. The trap dangled from her fingers, jingling against the broken handcuff, clinking out her steps. Without direction, without any point of reference beyond the sun, the pair walked onward, oblivious to the hopelessness of their goal.

They had no map.

There was no sign of civilization for miles.

They were utterly, completely alone.

“This way, Mei.” said Ell, humming to herself as she walked.

 

—

 

 

The forest grew ever thicker, oaks and willows filling the gaps between the conifers. Above, the clouds had all but vanished, leaving only the vast void of endless blue. Ell’s legs had begun to tire, but still she trudged on, unwilling to spend the night outside. She could already imagine the softness of her bed, the smiling face of Maria, the hospital chef, as she served dinner, the…

A hand closed around her ankle, sending her face-first into the sparse grass. She twisted around, flailing about her feet with the metal trap she still carried, but there was nothing to hit; the hand was gone. For a minute, she stayed seated, trying to get over the shock.

“Mei, what…”

A tree crashed to the ground beside her in a mighty crunching of branches and dead leaves. As she scrambled back, it burst into flames. The surrounding trees followed suit, becoming a conflagration that filled the sky with black smoke. Faces swirled through the fire, howling, moaning, screaming in wordless terror. Ell rose to her feet, fell to her knees, found that she was still standing, lurched backwards and landed on her face once more.

“Help…” she managed to gasp out.

The words were echoed by the lurking apparitions in a laughing melody of madness.

A headless body crawled past, chasing after a dog.

The ground became water, and the landscape sank below the surface, leaving Ell standing alone on a plane of glass..

A ship of stone broke the surface, falling from a cliff of bones to shatter on the rocks below.

A tar-colored monster, miles away, ran towards her, its wrinkled arms flinging boulders into the sky.

“Medication,” said Dr. Fahlman, chewing on his pocket watch.

“Medication,” said Mei, in Dr. Fahlman’s voice.

The words swam lazily through the air, turning a variety of shades of green before finally penetrating the dreamlike haze in a flash of realization.

Her medication.

The pills.

The ones her father gave her, to keep the bad things away. In the zippered pocket in her shirt.

Ell fumbled for the bottle, her arms already heavy with fatigue. The hallucinations grew ever closer, darkness and grinning skulls and Whispers whispering words louder and louder…

Her hand came up, and the bottle was there, clasped tightly in her numb fingers. Her hands seemed so far away, every motion creating double images. There was pain as well, a sharp stabbing pain in both temples.

Three pills in the bottle.

She shook one out of the container, but there was nothing to catch it with. It tumbled to the ground, becoming a white worm that squirmed away into the flames and shadows. In a sudden surge of desperation, she brought the bottle up to her mouth, tipping both of the remaining pills in. She swallowed hard, feeling the soft pills slide down the back of her throat. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and waited.

Gradually, the pain, noise, and fear drained away, folding back into the recesses of her mind. The forest rose whole and quiet around her, glowing in the evening sun. Mei was lying at her side, watching her with hollow eyes. The shadow didn’t seem concerned, contemplating her human counterpart with a flat disinterest.

Ell took a deep breath, wiping perspiration from her brow. She had completely forgotten the medicine. Usually, her father would remind her about it, and she would take it then. “A pill every four hours” was what her father said. Anything longer than that, and it was only a matter of time.

A brief search about her feet turned up the remaining pill. She popped it back in the bottle, screwing the lid on tightly. One more dose. She had just taken a double, which would probably make her sick, but it would keep the scary things away for a good eight hours.

Eight hours to find home.

“Home,” she said aloud, her voice hoarse and dry. She cleared her throat and spoke again. “Home. We need to go home, Mei.”

Mei looked from Ell to the pill bottle, apprehension making her outline jitter and blur.

“I know, Mei. I know. One more. There are lots more at home, Mei. We’ll make it. Don’t worry. Daddy will be there when we get back.”

For some reason, Ell found herself blinking back tears. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, rising shakily to her feet.

“Daddy. Home…”

In the distance, the edge of the sun touched the horizon, standing tall in a farewell salute.

Night had come.