"Halloween really is stupid," I downed the liquor on my throat as I pushed a little harder on the swing, holding on to the rail.
"Maybe we just went to the wrong party." Alaska scrolled through her phone as she was seated on the swing next to me.
We had just come out of a party tonight, hoping for a good time, but not even an hour later someone already tried to force themselves on me as I went to the bathroom to get a refresher. I had no idea what happened to Alaska as we both split up, but now here we were, our bad night landed us in a park, in the middle of a forest.
Still carrying the bottle in my hold, I moved over to the tree across, a bit lightheaded by the swing already. I sat down on the ground, leaning my back on the tree, taking a sip out of the bottle every once in a while.
My head grew heavier as I found myself almost falling on the ground, but my eyes caught something on the tree. Through blurred vision, I narrowed closely to try and get a better look at it.
"What's R+M?" I spoke, barely looking at Alaska's direction, but she went ahead and walking closer to me anyway, lowering her gaze on the thing that I pointed out for her to see.
"What, you've never seen two people in love engraving their initials on a tree before?" She remarked.
"You're probably right," I took another sip, too tired to even argue. Despite my eyes that could barely stay open, my ears were alerted enough to hear a ruckus nearby. I widened my eyes, glancing at my side, "Did you hear that?" Putting strands of hair behind my ears to hear clearly.
"I'm sitting right next to you," Alaska replied, looking around the place, standing up. "Is someone here?" She shouted.
Though my legs felt like jelly, I rose up from my seat slowly, putting my hand on her shoulder. "We better get out of here," I warned, leaning down to whisper in her ear. "I have a really bad feeling," I added.
"Yeah, me too, let's go back to the party." She said, taking my hand, disappearing out of the park.
Chills ran all over my spine as I walked, having no idea whether it was caused by the alcohol or the wind engulfing me. Scooting closer to Alaska's side, both out of fear and imbalance. I didn't notice that we'd walked deeper into the woods already and decided to speak. "I swear when we made it to the park, it didn't take very long,"
"Yeah, I feel like we're just going further and further from the streets." Alaska added.
"Hey, what's that sign?" I narrowed my eyes at the sign before me, it looked like that it was written in a different language, yet I still tried to read it anyway in case it was just the alcohol messing up my system.
"I have no idea," Alaska left my side and moved closer to the sign. Creeps ran through me again as I crossed my arms over my chest, standing still.
"κινούμενη άμμος."
"That's funny, you're getting shorter," I pointed out.
"What the fuck, this is a quicksand!" Alaska shrieked, looking down on the ground as it continued to drag her in. "Help!" She reached a hand out to me, waiting for me to pull her back.
Panic-stricken, I looked around for a branch, anything, for her to hold on to. God knows that with how wasted I was at the moment, I couldn't take her by myself. I realized that I was still holding the bottle in my hand as I quickly poured what's left inside on the ground and handed it out to her. At first, she shot me a look of disdain, but then reached for the bottle anyway.
I pulled hard as I watched her cry out in pain, but it looked like that the quicksand didn't like that very much because the bottle flew out of our grasp and I fell onto her, splashing mud everywhere.
"Fuck," I muttered, trying to get up and noticing that Alaska's hand on me, catching me. "This isn't happening!" I cursed out loud, getting up from it but clearly failing as I fell backward again.
Alaska stared at me with desperation in her eyes, "I just want you to know that if I don't make it, and I don't think I will.." She trailed, I cupped both of her cheeks in my hand, waiting. "I love you." I was screaming as the words escaped her lips at the same time she disappeared out of my hold, the quicksand stopped moving to leave me all alone, still too weak to even make sense of what just happened.
Slowly, I took a step back away from the quicksand, didn't notice where I was going until I hit something behind me. It was just a tree. I sighed, looking desperately at the view before me, hoping that this was all just a dream, and Alaska would be back.
I dropped myself on the ground, exhausted, my head falling to my side. That's when I caught another engraving, my eyes narrowed. I put a hand over my mouth and had my arms wrapped around me, scooting away and couldn't believe what appeared before me.
"A+M."
