Ashes

Chapter One

Everyone has that one day where they drop everything and just go with the flow. This was my day. I remember it as if it was only yesterday, but then again, it could have been.

I walked through the freshly cleaned glass doors that led straight to my mother's red rose garden, also walking past three bushes then took a left toward the gazebo. I walked in, my sketch pad and wooden box full of oil pastels in hand, and almost sat down. The gazebo looked freshly cleaned too, or repainted. I put my hand down first to check if it was wet paint, when I saw that it wasn't, I sat down.

I turned so that I would get the perfect view to draw the roses without seeing the house in the background. When I got to the best spot I flipped through the book to an empty page. Every time I passed a picture, I stopped and thought about when I drew it. The one I stayed the longest at was the one of this dream I kept having. It was just this perfect garden like world with talking animals and other strange things. I then flipped the page to the empty one and started sketching.

I started with the green bushes. I blended a normal pastel green with a bright green so it would be the perfect green. I then took my red and dotted some red dots all over every single bush. I looked up and saw the weirdest thing. A white rabbit in the walled off garden. I stood up and sat my stuff where I was sitting. I slowly started walking and the rabbit started running away.

I don't know why but I felt the need to run after it. I chased it all the way to the wall and I thought it was cornered until it jumped into a hole and ended up on the other side of the wall. Without hesitation I jumped over the wall and ran after the rabbit again. It ran all the way into the forest and was running straight at a tree. I started to slow down because I didn't want to hit the tree as well. The all of a sudden it dropped into a hole and disappeared.

I ran to the hole and dropped to my knees. When I looked in, I saw nothing so I stuck my arm in. I felt around for a second then something grabs my arm and makes it to where I can't pull my arm up. Next thing I know I got yanked in.

As I fell in I looked down and saw a large pit. I tried to grab the wall to stop from falling, but when I grabbed onto a branch that was sticking out, I was yanked back and I hit the wall too hard and it knocked the wind right out of me. I was slightly still conscious when I hit the ground.

I was lying on the ground when I saw the white rabbit and an average sized man with a long trench coat that was a forest green. The coat was stained at the bottom, as if he had been walking in a creek at low tide. They stopped in front of me and just stood there, by looking at the rabbit it looked as if they were communicating but I could not hear them. Then the man got on his knees, inspecting me. I could not see his face because he would not bend down that far.

He pushed back his trench coat to reveal his dull blue pants. He pulled a pocket watch out of his pocket and jumped up quickly. I saw him running away and the rabbit turning around, jumping around furiously. The man turned quickly and came back and handed the rabbit a tiny bottle, he then pulled out a syringe.

He stuck the syringe in the bottle and filled it all the way up. I tried to squirm away but I did not have the strength. He put his filthy black boot on my back to keep me in my spot of which I thought I was going to die in. He took the needle and stabbed it into my neck. As he pulled the needle out I could feel the energy I had left draining.

He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder quickly as if to make sure I didn't see his face. It took a minute for the injection to kick in, I could feel my eyes slowly closing and my body loosening. Then my eyes shut, for which I thought would be the last time my eyes would close and never open again.

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My vision was blurred but I could just barely see that I was sitting. I was in a brown wooden chair that had arm that was sticking to my long sleeved shirt. My wrists were tied to the chair and my legs were tied at my calves to the leg of the chair and there were metal cuff like objects bolted over my feet into the concrete floor.