Extend the Story - Add a Room

you awake in a cold sweat in your own bed, beads of sweat are running down your temples, neck and spine, pooling at your lower back. The room is dark, but you can see the silhouette of familiar furniture and personal effects outlined in the darkness. You can't quite remember what had happened, all that you know is you're short of breath, and gasping lungfuls of life giving oxygen. You swing a leg out of bed, the cool air outside the blanket makes you freeze, the even cooler contact of cold flooring against your foot as you take a step jolts you even more and you start to remember. Your head feels as if it's splitting open, a migraine tearing it's way through your brain in a searing, white hot light. images and flashes of a figure tackling you to the ground come to the fore and burn their way into your concious memory. You collapse to your knees, it's too painful--you hold your head, moaning in agony. Then in blazes of color and light blurring before your eyes your room desintegrates and melts away into greenery, the stagnant, stifled air of your bedroom is swept away and replaced with the earthy, fresh musk of the open wild of the forest. You are back again, fighting to regain some semblance of self-control, the world is spinning around you in blurred shapes of color. You feel as if you've been dumped head first into water and you can't find your way to the surface. You tell yourself to breathe, just breathe. You inhale a deep breath, but your lungs burn as if you've ran miles without stopping, a tense stitch is also painfully gripping your side and chest. You feel dizzy as you try to rise from your knees, you stumble, groping wildly for support. The rough, cragged bark of a giant tree trunk meets your seeking hand and you slouch against it, exhausted. you look around you and you're alone in the dim daylight of a forest, the sunlight dappling the forest floor in brilliant golden beams through the thick canopy. There is a buzzing by your ear, and you swat at the annoying insect, thats when you find you feel your ear has been cut off. Pain comes with the realization and you clasp the side of your head, a howl much like that of a wounded animal escapes your throat. You struggle to regain your composure, trying to comfort yourself with the knowledge that the bleeding has long since stopped.

Exhaustion overtakes you and you let your mind drift for a moment as you lean against the enormous tree trunk, nestled safely in the expansive v of the many roots, the tops of which reach your midsection. How did you get here? what happened to you? what is real? is this all a dream?

You grasp at straws trying to understand, trying to remember how you got there, why you feel like you've run a marathon, why your left ear is missing. You stop, however, mid-thought when you realize you are no longer alone. The constant break and tread of twigs and leaves echo in the silence behind you. You know its a person, as animals tend to walk carefully and incrementally. You can help but panic...

find a hiding place among the tall ferns of the forest floor and wait till they pass