Back to the Plains

Part 1: The Capture

"To die would be an awfully great adventure."

–J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

The blinding sun is high in the sky by the time Alison Bradley starts to come to her senses. Feeling dazed, she stares up at the clouds, as she used to as a child with her elder siblings, but now she is not fully registering their shape. Instead, she is merely seeing they exist and move; the way they shape, form, and disappear. She becomes aware of a ringing in her ears like they do when the altitude changes, though she cannot remember why or how it started. Ali reaches up, using a hand to block the sunlight from her eyes, but her arm feels heavy with aches and pains. For a moment, it takes her back into her memories of trying to join a gym after receiving a free two-week trial. She never made it past the trial, but used it well, turned around, and left the place, never going back. She knows why she hurts. That pain is nothing to this, however, because Ali knows the pain is not just physical, it is mental. She cannot forget, no matter how hard she tries. No matter how much she wishes she could.

A groan is the only sound that escapes Ali's lips as she forces herself to sit up. A wave of light-headedness washes over her and she has to brace herself with her arms to hold herself up. Woah. Take it easy, the voice in her mind says. Her hands dig into the ground, seeking an anchor, but only finding brittle sticks and thin straw at her fingertips. She tries to remember ever walking outside, but she cannot. Inhale...exhale, she commands of herself. She focuses, slowly and surely coming to a stand. It is a success, but barely. Every inch of her feels like it has been beaten with some random object, but she knows what it was. It only hurts now because I have not been moving, her brain tells her. There is a slight breeze in the air, rustling her dark tangled hair, and she can hear the swaying sounds of the weeds and grass. It is a calming sound to Ali; one that has stayed with her since she was old enough to understand what the sound was. It sounded like water to her, or like a distant and barely audible waterfall. Ali runs a hand through her hair, brushing it out of her face and pulling it over her right shoulder. She feels a sudden coolness on the back of her neck on the exposed side. Reaching up with her left hand, she places it over the spot. There is a stinging pain, and she winces while pulling her hand back. As she looks to her hand, a thick crimson liquid is blotched across her fingers and palm. She does not have to guess what it is, for she can smell the strong iron scent and taste the bitterness in her throat. Blood. Ever since she was little she was the only one that was sensitive to this smell. She could always pick up the tiniest traces from across the room if she were looking for them. Her siblings used to call her the bloodhound of the family.

Looking to the ground, Ali finds a large rock roughly the size of half a soccer ball sitting at the tip of the trampled grass, smeared with dark red, dried blood. "No wonder I have a headache." Ali mumbles to herself. She replaces her hand over the wound, and she can feel it trailing down her neck. She needs to find an emergency room. Great. Her thoughts grimace, I will probably need stitches. She groans at the thought of more probing needles. Ali observes her surroundings, finding no buildings within sight, and that she is standing in an open overgrown pasture, like the kind she used to see when she would drive to the lake in the hillier ground. To her, it looks like someone's pasture ground. She wonders just how far she had to travel to end up in the middle of a place like this. The ground is covered in overgrown tumbleweeds, Yucca plants, and Johnson grass. An occasional bush protrudes from the ground every so often, and in the distance, she can see random trees. The whole field is brownish green in color, and some spots are in desperate need of a drink. How, Ali wonders to herself, did I get here?

Ali tries to focus on what she does remember. Think, Ali. Think. She can remember the day's events and how she had gone home alone, walked through her front door, locked it, and sank to the floor, crying her eyes out for what felt like hours. After she could not cry any more she found her way up to the attic, looking for memorabilia like old pictures of her family, or forgotten toys. She can remember finding an old chest of trinkets from long-ago ancestors. Dusty, brittle, knick-knacks were all conveniently placed in a small chest. They held no real value, Ali guessed, but to her they were priceless. It was all she had left. She remembers pulling out a small clay pot that fit easily in her hand. It was a mid-tan in color with markings scratched into its surface, and rough to the touch. Ali remembers standing up, intent to take it downstairs into better light and find a spot somewhere in the house; the quiet, depressing, and suffocating old house. She remembers shutting the chest but then everything went blank. Now she is standing in an open field in the middle of nowhere Kansas. I know nowhere and this truly is nowhere, Ali thinks while half laughing at her joke. She was born and raised in the western Kansas countryside, at least ten miles outside of the close's town, but as she seeks out any sort of familiar structure. She finds none.