Tumblefields [ONC 2021]

1

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" - Edgar Allen Poe

1

Tabitha bounced against a blackened, rotting table as she ran, sending her spinning, but she managed to catch her momentum and continue her headlong rush. Jennifer and Gwendy followed her, gripping each other's clothing, pulling each other along, leaving Rachel to bring up the rear, her breath erupting from her chest like ripped ribbons fluttering in a gale.

They could see the door, mere feet away. They only had to continue running. Running as though they had never run before. Reach the door, fall out into the light, released from the dust ridden claustrophobia of this hateful building. Only a few feet.

Jennifer tripped, her foot catching in a gap in the battered floorboards, tumbling to the floor and landing against a wooden faced wall. Gwendy looked, her hand rising to her mouth, but she did not stop, her feet carrying her further and further away from her girlfriend. Towards the light.

Without pausing, Rachel grabbed Jennifer beneath her armpit, hauling her to her feet mid-stride, dragging her friend as though their very lives depended on this one, exhausting race. Rachel's chest pounded. Her legs felt like bars of iron, heavy, unbending. She didn't know if she could make it. She didn't know if any of them could make it.

It seemed as though they had run towards that doorway for a lifetime, or only seconds, the difference immense and the same. She began to falter, Jennifer catching her stride once more, creating a distance between them that Rachel could never shorten, never catch-up.

Tabitha exited the building first, her long legs carrying her at a pace beyond any of the others, arms pumping, head bowed, ponytail whipping behind her. Gwendy followed feet behind, Jennifer catching up as they both burst through the doorway, almost trapping each other against the frame. Only Rachel remained in the building, now, her friends, a distance from the building, turning and urging her on.

The doorway still seemed miles away, right in front of her. Her vision began to cloud, unable to draw enough breath. Unable to control something that came so natural to the others. Dipping her head, she gave one, last effort, her heavy legs pounding upon the ruined floorboards. Closing her eyes, she held her breath and burst through the doorway.

Hands caught her, falling backwards as Rachel's weight bore down upon them, sending all four sprawling to the ground, the first rays of sunlight filtering through Rachel's closed eyelids. She turned onto her back, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her asthma inhaler, shaking it and then firing the life-saving concoction deep into her lungs as she heard hysterical laughter assail her ears.

"You left me! Oh, my god! I can't believe just left me!" The sound of a slap against an arm, unfettered laughter filling the air around them. "You are so basic!"

"It was you or me. I love you, babe, but I'm all for self-preservation." Gwendy's deeper voice, at odds with her cutesy personality, punctuated by unstoppable giggles came to Rachel's ears, then.

Rachel opened her eyes as she waited for her inhaler to do its work, staring upwards towards the stark, empty branches of the tree above. Her hand, resting beside her, clutched into the dirt, fingernails digging in and giving her the sense of reality she desperately needed. They had made it out. All of them. Safe, sound and together. Almost together.

"Alright, fess up! Who got what?" Tabitha, upside down to Rachel's eyes, stood as though she hadn't run like a madwoman from a broken down wreck of a building. Hands on her hips, grinning, she looked like she could run more. "I got a tuft of hair. Gwendy?"

"Bone! An actual bone! Look at it!" Waving the bone in the air, Gwendy, wide-eyed, couldn't contain her excitement. "I think it's from the arm? Is it from the arm? It's all twisted. I have a freak's arm bone!"