Prologue
Very few things are as unsettling as waking up not knowing where you are. As Lucy stirs, she tries to awaken from a sickening nightmare. She finds her conscious and subconscious minds at war, both using her senses to wage battle, trying desperately and simultaneously to both wake her and keep her asleep by grasping every horrific detail in the forest and making it surreal; because sometimes nightmares are better than reality. Capturing all her senses her subconscious mind tries to focus on the hard ground beneath her, enjoying the uneven texture caused by the tree roots spider webbing across the forest floor as if it were massaging hands caressing her. Lucy’s nose delights at the smell of fresh skunk spray perfuming the rotting deer carcass that lies nearby, each breath invoking a wonderful memory of camping as a child. Her mouth is served a stew prepared by the close-lying dead chef deer of the forest. A surprising blend of animal feces and maggot ridden flesh, mixed with blood stained earth. Each flavor blended in her mind to bake a memory of her mother’s home cooking. Her taste buds have never enjoyed such a delicacy Her ears hearing creatures slowly surrounding her. Little eerie claws scratching as if the forest was made of chalkboard. These sounds made pleasant as if hearing her teacher writing her name on the board, safe and back in class as a little girl. The large trees above blocking the light leave her in eerie darkness. Normally she is afraid of the dark but now her eyes embrace the blindness, hoping the light may never shine again. Even the grandest soldiers with superior skills can still earn defeat and no war is more heroically fought than one of a dying noble cause. Lucy’s conscious longing to wake up and leave the hellish nightmare behind fights back, slaughtering through her senses each one falling slain in over dramatic cinema slow motion. The war over her subconscious defeated, Lucy awakes to find why her conscious mind fought so valiantly. A young boy lies beside her, cold, lifeless and even though she can’t remember how she got here or what exactly happened, she knows he’s dead because of her.
