Her steps are slow, measured. Each hand clamps tightly over one eye. Underneath her feet the feel of texture shifts from broken glass and crumpled paper to odd liquids and unknowable things. All sense of direction dissolves.
Still, she thinks, there has to be a way out.
But the sounds from before seem to have reached the forest.
This world fades away, and a thin, light whine takes center stage hostage.
The whine is delicate, like a fingertip rimming thin glass flutes so far off you can’t be sure it exists in this reality. You wouldn’t want to be sure, either. But why does nobody else hear it? The scene around you brightens. On the rim of your brain some slick indentation slowly follows a chipped fingernail as it delicately drags its heavy sharpness across the interior of your skull. Pain is absent. At least, to some degree; its presence is palpable, like an unwelcome guest on the roof of your house. You wonder, for a moment, if your brain is a flute, if your mind is the glass.
But whose finger is that, then?
Your breath shortens. Bits and strips of it flee, escaping into the cracks forming around your being. This is too quiet, you think. This can’t be happening. Perhaps you see people talking but no sound coming out. Or, maybe, there IS sound, but it is most definitely not human in nature.
Your name. You hear it. Someone calls you from far away. But you cannot move.
Tremors, twitching, jerking movements. These arrive spontaneously and strong. They lack any hint of mercy.
You hear it again. Someone calls you from far away. But you cannot move.
You watch, wordlessly, as your own name crumbles right in front of your eyes.
“Hey.”
It was never yours, anyway; not really, not ever.
“Hey!”
Were you its?