Darkness

Chapter 1- The Awakening

                The white tree. Its white trunk stood tall behind me, acting as though it were my shadow. In its branches above, a long rope hung from their clutches. This was the rope that tied around my neck. It slowly suffocated my lungs. My heart pounded quickly as the rest of my body shot sharp pains. My face in particular felt as though someone had stuck a thousand needles into it. Why was I feeling this pain? How did this happen? I reached up to my face and gently touched it. I felt the burning of the needles. Bloody. Why was my face so bloody? I looked down at my hands. Then my arms, then my legs. The skin was completely gone.

            Struggling to breath, I looked at the scenery. The sky, so red you could’ve said it was bleeding, was full of enormous black ash clouds. Ash in the bloody sky. What an odd combination. The mere thought almost made me smile. Almost.

            My eyes then traveled through the blue tinted air, expecting to see something new. They only found the strange colored air covered in its usual black specks. Losing interest, my eyes soared back to the skies. I couldn’t help it. I loved the way those clouds moved so slow, yet so endless. The site was mesmerizing. How could red and black create such a view? The colors natural sense of death seemed to be miles away.

            After a few moments I snapped out of it. My time was running short.  My lungs started losing air more and more quickly. The blue air that managed to seep back in only made the situation worse. I quickly turned my attention to the sky, looking for answers.  The feelings of hope engulfed me. Look for a change. I glanced toward the ground. A pool of thick, red liquid was several feet below me. Small bursts of it sometimes jumped into the air. Lava.  Even from that high up, I felt the heat of the powerful liquid. If I wiggled too much, the rope would lose its grip around my neck, sending me to my death.  I had to be careful.  I turned my eyes to the blue air. There had to be something. I steadied myself by holding onto the white tree, the very object that held the rope that was killing me. I looked in all directions. Nothing.

            I gave up. I endured the pain that was slowly taking my life away. If I were to die, I wanted to die looking at the clouds, so I looked up. In the sea of black ash, a white speck could be seen. The change. That was it. It had to be.  I watched the speck sweep down to the blue tinted air. Wait. It wasn’t a white speck. It was a sheet of paper. I watched it descend towards the ground. As it got closer, I struggled more and more to breathe. I took my last breath as the paper landed safely on a rock, away from the lava’s grasp.