The Portal - Pain Is The Password

Chapter three - Topa

Trees, some reaching so high that you can't see the tips and some so small that you can hardly believe that they're thousands of years old. Trees, some of them spreading out their trunks eagerly, others shockingly able to stand on their stick thin bodies. Trees with different colour trunks, leaves and branches, not a single tree is the same. Flowers, spreading out everywhere, there isn't a patch of grass that doesn't have a dainty daisy or black buttercup. Yes, the flowers aren't the same either, all different.

Audrey is in the middle of this beautiful scene, lying with her mirror on her stomach and her hands joined over the mirror. She flattens the flowers she is lying on, unknowingly rolling the dice, deciding her fate. Slowly, after hours of being unconscious, she begins to stir. Her eyes begin to move in their sockets, she still has not opened. Fidgeting, rolling her head from side to side like she's trying to wake up from a horrible dream, she still looks picture perfect in this picture perfect scene.

Her eyes open and for a few moments, she still believes she's at home, waking up in the same bed, ready to leave her house in the cold night. Like a switch, she realizes she's nowhere familiar, sitting up like someones watching her. Holding the mirror close to her like it's a teddy bear and she's had a nightmare.

"Am I in heaven?" She asks herself as she takes in the trees and looks at the flowers in awe. She picks the closest flower to her, a red stalk with indigo petals, breathing in the scent of something sweet but acidic at the same time. She looks down and the mirror is showing only her reflection, nothing to show it had just transported a girl to another dimension.

Audrey stands up the flower still in her hand and the mirror pressing into the side as she looks around the forest clearing. The sun is right above her, midday. She turns and the grass tickles her bare feet.

"Hello?" She calls out to the forest, no one replies, not even a sound to indicate another living creature is out there. Breathing in and out, no reason to get scared. "There has to be someone around, or this is just a dream." She decides, voicing her thoughts as no one is there to call her crazy for doing so. Walking the perimeter of the forest clearing, her eyes searching for an option; her heart speeds up, a different type of nervous, one she hadn't felt before. The forest spins in circles, she begins finding it difficult to breathe and before long she's on the floor wheezing.

Gasping for the air she's not sure she can get. Her mind is trying to get words to her mouth but losing motivation on the way. This horrific feeling continues for twenty minutes, twenty minutes of Audrey believing she really is going to die. Eventually, she calms down, her mind assesses the situation and she marks the experience down as a panic attack. Although not the same ones that she regularly experiences.

For a while, after she had managed to soothe herself, she is sat in the same spot. Drawing love hearts around the flowers. A slight breeze pushes her to try and find help, the breeze sending a chill to her bone, reminding her that the clothing she is wearing, isn't ideal.

Picking up the mirror she had ditched whilst her anxiety attack, she walks out into the forest. Twigs cutting her feet, begging her to give up along with the thistles, she isn't going down that easily. The forest changes in the most beautiful ways as Audrey makes her way through it. Animals eventually become known, not the ones Audrey is familiar with. Bugs, miniature at first, fly through the air. The magnificent creatures aren't as scary or as annoying as the ones back on earth.
These ones, most have the intricate details of a butterfly, one looks like a tiny green koala, another carries an object ten times the size of its self. Audrey continues on her way, knowing that if there are insects this way then there is at least some form of food or water source; some way to survive.

Hours later, when the sky has darkened to the blackish, purple blanket when Audrey's arms have grown tired and her feet have grown too wary, she sets down the mirror by a huge tree. The temperature has dropped and Audrey is as cold as she was the last time it snowed. The tree provides her with some form of shelter as rain plummets from the sky, thunder cracking and lightning striking.