Dark YA Blogfest Week Two: Flash Fiction

Good morning, all! Because I totally dropped the ball last week, I got this done yesterday evening. Yay!

The prompt for Week Two was to write a flash fiction piece about the picture below. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to do something bize-sized and surreal, so that was what I went for. Whether I was successful remains to be seen!

I am super-nervous, as this is the first writing I've posted on this blog. So I will just leave this here and go hide. I hope you enjoy it!

(For more information on the Dark YA Blogfest, go here!)

The third day – she thinks it’s the third, anyway. That was when the trees began to whisper.

And she almost put her foot down right there, because she's already had more than enough of this Lewis Carroll shit, but the trees don't seem concerned with that. Possibly because they don't know who Lewis Carroll is. They don't seem very well-read, in any case, because they murmur the same words, over and over and over until it echoes in the thrum of her heart.

This is your place. You have always been here.

It's not true. It's never been true. She knows that, though she doesn’t have proof. Her wallet has fallen out somewhere. The hands of her watch spin without pause, as if waiting for someone to tell them the time. And with each step, memories – of passing time, of daylight, of chocolate cupcakes – unspool and wind into the dust. Still, she knows, even if there's no explaining that to the whispers. They're very persistent.

That is the day she stops watching her feet. It makes no difference when each patch of sky looks the same, and each branch above her splits in the same indistinguishable way. Even so, when she closes her eyes, she can hear it, louder than anything: the chime of the grandfather clock in her front hallway, the creak of pipes in her ancient house, calling her from far away. 

It’s a tiny, fragile thing, so small it almost disappears into the dirt between her toes. But like a trail of breadcrumbs, she follows it, deeper and deeper into the woods.