Trapped in Stone

Chapter Four

In a clearing, deep into the woods Minou stared at a tall teenager with bright yellow hair and an eyepatch lean over Dipper's shoulder. She didn't breathe; had she forgotten how to breathe? Had she ever learned to breathe?

She couldn't think, her mind seemingly full of static. She felt air in her lungs- that was good, she was breathing again. But now she couldn't see, or hear anything. The deafness filtered into a dull ringing, and then a loud ringing. She groaned and rolled on the grass, trying to grab her head. Her arms didn't move.

She felt something grip her left wrist and pull. It lifted her arm up and stepped her her chest. She couldn't breathe again, and she suddenly wondered if she was being killed. She gasped for air, but everything was heavy and slow. Her lungs felt punctured, like balloons that were torn. She was a child fighting to fill two ruined balloons.

She saw her fifth birthday party. Her parents told her she was going to be a big sister. She was so excited. She then remembered Valentine's Day four months later. The baby was stillborn. She never understood why the nurse insisted the dead baby be held by her mother. It was sick, wasn't it?

"Wasn't it so sick to make your poor mother hold the child she had been expecting for nine months?" A deep voice spoke. She took a breath.

"Who...there?" She coughed and looked up. The sky was turning dark! It had to be at least eight o'clock. She was late for supper. "Parents...kill me."

"Just relax. It's past your bedtime." It released her arm. Her shoulder was throbbing and her wrist was definitely bruised. She stretched herself out and did as the voice instructed.

Soon she was asleep, and still wondering whatever she could wonder with her oxygen deprived brain.