Foreverland Is Dead

nap would be nice. Kick the boots off and rest an hour or two. She’d still be back by lunch.
    Even though she already ate it.
    The aluminum strip rattles against the backpack. Her eyes get heavy, but she’s not going to do it. There’s work to be done back at the cabin. And she’ll need to treat the sores on the backs of her feet.
    She hoists the backpack.
    At the bottom of the slope, there’s an opening. A peculiar one. All these trees and just a blank opening. If she had binoculars, she could see if it’s anything. It would take half an hour to get down there.
    But it’s so cleanly open. So clear-cut.
    Cyn drops the backpack by the rock. It’ll go faster without the weight , and she’ll return to get it, anyway. It’ll be easier on her feet. She considers hoofing it barefoot, but forces her boot back on, wincing.
    Cyn half-steps her way down the slope, focused more on the topography than the destination. The buzzy, good feeling in her stomach dissipates as she descends, replaced with fatigue. She stops halfway, shades her eyes.
    Looks like an opening .
    A bit farther down the hill, and she sees a pair of depressions coming out of the trees and fading into the patchy grass. Tracks.
    She hobbles along a little too quickly for comfort but she’s going downhill. The impact on her heels burns; she’s paying no attention to the increasing lightness in her head.
    The buzzing in her neck.
    The numbness in her fingers.
    Cyn trots to the opening, more sure than ever that those are tracks. Someone drives through here! Maybe they deliver supplies along this route. Maybe someone lives nearby, or this is a hunting road.
    It’s something.
    Has to be.
    Cyn reaches the shade of the tall spruce when darkness falls on her. She leans back but her momentum carries her forward.
    She can’t stop .
    She tumbles into the clearing, recognizing the warning too late, remembering the sensation rattling along her neck, reaching around her face.
    D ragging her into darkness.
    Two miles from the cabins, Cyn passes through another fence.

22

    Cyn stares down. She’s looking at something, seems like she should know what they are.
    Ah, yes. My feet.
    She wiggles her toes, scratching at the bed of pine needles. Pine needles that are gray and grainy.
    The world is gray.
    No black.
    No white.
    Just every shade of gray in a pixelated world.
    The air is heavy, pressing all around. Her arm moves in a strangely slow manner, like animation trying to catch up with real time. She wiggles her fingers, dirt packed under her nails, as close to black as anything around her.
    She’s breathing sand.
    I’m in the dream. In the gray.
    She doesn’t recall the needles below her feet, though. Not in the dream. She reaches out, runs her fingers through the branches that suddenly appear from the fog, prickly, short needles that poke her numbly.
    She doesn’t remember how she got here, only sees the light ahead. She follows the path. Trees on both sides, branches criss-crossing overhead. The dense light is closer.
    An opening.
    Her hands out, she quickly steps ahead, almost running, as if there’s something on the other side—
    She skids to a halt. Her foot slips, hangs over the edge where the ground ends.
    A sheer drop off. No bottom. Just fog.
    Never ending gray.
    The trees continue to her left and right, growing up to the ledge, where they, too, fade into the gray. Do they go on forever? Or does the gray consume them?
    Cyn kicks a rock, watches it silently evaporate in to the mist.
    Gone.
    The distant nowhere of homogenous gray swirls.
    Voices are distant.
    Too distant to understand. Close enough to recognize.
    Like children on playgrounds.
    She reaches out, as if fairies will poke their heads out. The particles of gray begin to shimmer. A low thrumming bass rattles somewhere out there like thunder, reaching inside to shake her intestines. She feels something.
    Something coming.
    Stalking her.
    It’s coming!
    She turns, steps—
    Like a wave swelling from the deepest part of the ocean, something curls over her, drives her to the ground—

    Color.
    The world lights up with color.
    There are paisley flowers on the walls and a soft comforter beneath her arms. The sun shines brightly in her eyes. She covers her face, recognizes the bare light bulb in the ceiling fixture.
    “You’re a bad girl.”
    He’s heavyset, standing in a doorway. His head is closely shaved. Black and white whiskers cover his face.
    He unbuckles his belt, slides it from the