Dream Child

Chapter One

Screaming her daughter's name, Amanda slipped and slid her way down the small incline that descended into the woods behind their home.

Just ten minutes ago Amanda and her daughter Jenny were playing a game of hide and seek in the back yard.

It was her daughters turn to hide and Amanda couldn't find her.

After searching the house and the front yard she was unable to locate her, and a sinking feeling had taken root in her gut when she headed to the back-yard and found the gate ajar.

She was terrified, her 5-year-old daughter was possibly roaming in the woods that surrounded their house. Not only scared of her being lost in the woods, but the woods also had a creek that ran through it.

Panic filled her body, robbing her of her breath as she darted through the woods, throat raw from screaming out for her daughter. Branches snagged on her clothes and pulled at her hair while she struggled to remain balanced on the slippery leaves and pine needles.

"Jenny!" she screamed.

She raced to the creek and whipped her head back and forth trying to catch a glimpse of the red shirt that Jenny was playing in, tears blurring her vision. Streams of sunlight trickled through branches of the trees, creating illusions of movement.

"Jenny, come out right now, the game is over!"

Finally, she reached the embankment and searched the water. Wrought with fear as she ran alongside the creek, Amanda lost her balance and tripped over a tree root. Her brain screamed at her to keep running, but her body felt like it was disconnected from her instincts to control her limbs.

Falling, she saw a flash of red just ahead of her, and though she tried to stop herself, she continued falling and splashed into the water. Gasping and spluttering as she inhaled water, she fought against the current to get back up, frantically searching the water ahead of her.

She spotted the red shirt and screamed her daughter's name. The red blur was on the left side of her up ahead, and Amanda fought against the current and back onto the embankment. She ran, legs heavy as her jeans were bogged down, and her shoes squished with water with every sprint she made.

"JENNY!!!" she screamed.

Slowly she was catching up to the blur, and soon she could hear her daughter's screams cutting in and out as she bobbed in and out of the water.

Once she thought she was close enough, she jumped back into the water and tried to swim to prevent Jenny from going further downstream, or further out into the water.

"Hang on baby! I'm coming," she yelled.

Finally, Amanda was fingertips away from her daughter and grabbed out for her shirt, hair, for anything and missed. Despair filled her as Jenny went under again, and Amanda dived desperately under the water and was able to snag something and she pulled it to her. Jenny's body slammed into hers, and she kicked herself up to the surface and tried to get to land. Jenny was struggling against her mother, wrapping her arms in desperation around Amanda's neck, and was pulling them both back under.

"Stop baby, I got you. Just hold on to me," she gasped between being drowned by her daughter. But Jenny continued to try to climb out of her mother's arms and repeatedly dunked Amanda's head underwater as her body's instinct was to go up.

Amanda tried to swim under the water and hold her scrambling daughter above water, but she couldn't get a good enough breath to hold and was suffocating.

She finally gripped Jenny's shoulders and thrust her in the direction of the water bank, took a deep inhale of air and shoved after her. Closing the distance between her, she grasped the back of Jenny's shirt. Instantly, the battle between them began and again she threw Jenny to the side and jumped after her.

Exhausted, they soon were feet away from land and one final time she slung Jenny towards it and lunged after her.

Jenny landed on the dirt and Amanda a few seconds later.

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