BUNKER

Chapter One

The smell in the air is sweet. It smells like flowers. I open my eyes and see the sun directly overhead. I feel warm and comfortable, as though the sun is wrapping me in a secure blanket. I sit up slowly and observe my surroundings. A sea of white, yellow, and green floods my vision. I'm sitting in a field of daisies. It is beautiful, but bright enough to blind someone. I lay back in the flowers and close my eyes once more.

I wake, a few hours later. I can tell because the sun has lowered to bruise the sky a brilliant spectrum of colors. It starts as a lightish blue, fading into lilac color. From there it sinks into a pink, and then red, and finally, a gorgeous orange. I sit, slack jawed, and stare at this beautiful sight. I want to document this moment, this scenery pretty enough to move a man to tears. I check my clothes for pockets or any signs of a phone. I'm wearing a white t shirt and white sweatpants. There are no pockets. All at once, it occurs to me that I have no idea where I am. I've never seen a field like this in my life. We don't have daisies in my part of Minnesota. I start to get a little bit nervous. I don't enjoy the feeling of being lost. My mission, I decide, is to try to find my way home until I realize I have no sense of where home is. The next logical step is to follow the sun.

After an hour of wandering aimlessly, the light is too dim to continue walking. I sit down on the ground once more and allow thoughts to drift in my head. I begin to question why I am here. How did I get here? Where am I? Maybe this is a plot to get me killed. Why would someone want me dead? Will I ever see my family again? These thoughts are interrupted by a growling sound. I look down at my stomach. I realize I have no idea the last time I had something to eat. This could be a problem. I explore the rolling hills with my eyes and find no sign of anything I can eat. I let out a sigh and lie back on the flowers. That's it! The flowers. I can eat them, at least the petals. I pick a few of the daisies and pluck the petals from them. I put one cautiously into my mouth. It tastes sweet, almost like candy. I eat quite a few of the petals and feel better.

The sun has almost set now. I sit back and relax. A feeling of drowsiness overcomes me. My eyelids grow heavy, so I close them. I am asleep within seconds. My mind drifts into unknown depths. Tendrils of dreams swirl around in my head, none of them stick. This is strange. I am definitely asleep. But I can see everything that's happening in my mind. I can feel myself breathing, but otherwise I am unable to move. This is freaking me out a little bit. I feel my breathing increase and try to do my best to slow it.

Suddenly, a low rumbling wakes me from my cursed dreamscape. I open my eyes to see I am in a thick forest. This is not the place I fell asleep. What is happening here? Even though I could swear it was nighttime, the forest glows a bright green. Sunbeams dance playfully on the forest floor. It occurs to me that I am precariously perched in a tree. The rumbling I heard gets louder. This time, it is followed by a crack and a thud. I try to see what's happened from my tree branch. A few yards ahead of me, I see it. The forest is decaying rapidly. Instead of greens and browns, the forest changes to different brilliant shades of purple. The ground begins to bubble at the surface. The bubbles burst, letting out a scent worse than anything I've ever smelt before. It's a putrid cross between the state fair pig barn and someone's overweight grandfather after an hour of exercise. The smell alone is enough to almost knock me from my tree. The purple invades the land. It creeps ever closer, the smell getting stronger with each passing moment. It gets close enough to start crawling up the tree I'm on. If this poison can decay trees, what can it do to me? I look around for a way out and come up with nothing. If I jump from this height, I will surely break something in my body. At any rate, the poison has invaded all the land I could jump to. I am trapped. I start to cry, just a little bit. I don't want to die like this. I have so much more to do! What about my friends? My family? A horrible thought enters my mind then: I do not know who or where my friends and family is. I start crying harder. I'm about to die and I don't even know my family. How could I forget such an important thing? The purple gets close enough I can feel heat rising from it. It touches me, first crawling up my shoes. At first, it didn't hurt, but after a moment, searing pain shoots through my legs as it works its way up. It burns all the way up my legs and to my hips before I feel the falling sensation I would get from not being on the tree. I am floating, slowly and I feel at peace for the first time in a while. I laugh just before blacking out.