The Fourteenth Cookie

1 - The big bang

It was daytime, the sun shining hot and cheerful and yet she was in the darkness. Outside there were smiles and laughter and ice cream and joy but where she found herself there was nothing; just an endless blackness. She woke-up with a loud bang and a feeling that the world had turned suddenly upside down. She couldn't tell what had happened nor even whether she was face-down or face-up. Just as she was starting to gain consciousness there was, it appears, some movement. Then, something resembling sliding. The sliding was getting faster. A screeching sound started to become more and more noticeable and its volume started to increase. There were no other sounds and everything was still pitch-black. And then suddenly, another loud bang as if they'd hit something. She now felt like she was thrown abruptly up in the air, just as if she'd entered a zero gravity environment. She felt suspended, weightless, in the middle of only empty space.

Burning sunlight suddenly hit her in the face and an invisible, extremely strong force pulled her out of the lorry and through its damaged, now half-opened, doors. She literally flew across the open air before landing heavily into some type of road surface. She was on her side, rolling down a small hill, the asphalt scolding-hot. She started feeling queasy and uncomfortable. It was an unreal thought but it felt as if a piece of hers had become detached. She was suffering, wondering what had happened to her and why. She was getting further and further away from the lorry but managed a rapid glance at what was going on around her. The lorry had clearly been involved in some sort of traffic accident. It laid there immobilized, on its side, its back door was now completely open. She could clearly see a large number of cookie boxes discarded pretty much everywhere. She tried, but could not see what had happened to the other thirteen cookies from her own cookie box. It appeared it was only her, the fourteenth cookie of the packet, who had survived the crash unscathed. She found herself all alone and she hoped that all the rolling down the hill would end, she begged to the skies for someone to finally just magically make this whole awful experience stop.

Soon enough, her rolling-down begun slowing, it seemed. As if she was reaching the end of a long hill. She felt happy about it but wasn't truly certain whether at the end of the day, stopping would in fact turn out to be a good or a bad thing. She looked up and saw a tall big white building. For some reason, it seemed as if this building had a million windows and a thousand balconies and what was that? Was it really a swimming pool or was she just starting to imagine things? "Ouch!" she said, as she hit something solid with her head. All of a sudden, she found herself fully stopped, in front of whatever the thing was that she had banged her head against. It looked like steps of some kind or perhaps a doorway, but she couldn't fully tell. She was too shaken-up to know for sure. Just as she begun to slowly regain her senses and understand where she was and what was going on, she instinctively raised her eyes up and started looking slowly upwards until her eyes met someone else's eyes. It was a little boy, looking at her.