Excerpt
Heather opened her eyes. In another place.
A strange ashen haze hung over stormy skies. The Puget Sound was gone. She jolted up from tall, billowy grey grasses as a sharp breeze fanned over the ground. Wind whispered across her body as she stared at a forbidding forest of massive, dark, twisted trees all around her. Except for the sea of tall grasses fanning across a windswept prairie behind her.
The cool air smelled like dirty rain in dusk's dull light, fog collecting on the forest floor, hanging like specters. No lights shone in the fading daylight. No sounds of planes overhead or cars rumbling along the interstates. No mournful blast of the ferry's horn. Only the hiss of wind whispered above the rapid hush of her own breath.
Where was this dark place? Was it hell? A crazy Molly-infused hallucination?
Or something much darker?
She'd never been religious and didn't believe in eternal damnation, especially for people in more pain than they could bear. But this place bore little resemblance to the mystical Washington State forests or bay shores that she knew. Or anything else from the world she'd left behind.
The colors were…wrong. Washed out. Shadowy. Unnatural.
For so many months, her world had squeezed her into ever tighter spaces, growing darker and colder until she couldn't take the strain, couldn't blunt the raw-edged pain any longer. Even now, it gouged her heart, a constant ache that death hadn't soothed.
Right or wrong made no difference now.
She was—here…wherever here was. She wasn't sure and it didn't look like anything she'd imagined.
She huddled in the cold grass, shivering as tears threaded down her face. She felt so far away now, more lost than she'd ever felt before. Without even Charles, her little white bear, to comfort her.
And this was so much worse than anything she'd imagined.
Hadn't she just died? Left behind all the bad stuff? Wasn't that what happened when you killed yourself? Wasn't all the bad stuff supposed to stop?
Her head was spinning now. This wasn't what was supposed to happen! Now, she was lost in some surreal landscape, still stuck inside her own head with all the pain and memories she'd tried so hard to escape. Only worse.
How did killing herself make everything worse?
A dark shadow fell across her as some huge, dark creature took flight in the indigo sky, beat of huge feathery black wings like great drums. Its tortured shriek tore across the sky.
Heather rose on her knees and crouched in the grass, cold fear pounding through her body.
What was that thing? What was it looking for?
To her right, tiny amber lights cascaded through massive, towering trees—like redwoods—flickering like fireflies against the grassy grey plains.
Moving toward her, she realized.
