Shift tø Black {ON HOLD}

Chapter 12 - Nice try?

I was falling.

 Down...

                   Down...

                                         Down...

 My body was jerked this way and that, a spectacular display of bold pulsing colors rippled in the shape of a bright tunnel guiding my descend through the dark. Or my ascend? I could no longer feel my brother's hand in mine, I felt like nothing more than a floating conscience. My mind was foggy, my sight blurry. It felt like a dream.

 And just like any dream, you have to wake up.

 My sight faded and darkened, a tingling sensation spread from my fingertips to my toes. Spinning, was I spinning? I could no longer see, I was shrinking so fast, jumbled noise blared into my ears as I was violently tugged and shaken around. Then, as quick as all the chaos had begun, it ended in a sharp silence. In that fraction of a second I understood what it would feel like to not exist. There was no color or life, no need to breathe.. just, nothing. Slowly, I began to grow, rising back to my senses. Like floating in water, I drifted to the surface of the dark. I felt like I was being pulled away, pulled from this strange place sitting on the edge of fiction and reality. Exactly like waking up from a dream, the darkness faded slowly to light.

 Suddenly, a resounding boom shook my small frame, leaving my ears ringing high and my heart pounding. I instinctively sucked in a sharp breath.

 And that was the first thing I noticed. The oxygen was way.. way to intense. I was instantly light headed and dizzy from the strange air. But the more bitter breaths I took, the dizzier I became. 

 Next, was the searing light that suddenly beamed through my eye sockets and penetrated the back of my skull. I yelped in pain and covered my face with my arms, the damp sent of pine and dirt still fresh on my sleeves. I was no longer hovering now, instead I was sinking once again. But it wasn't gentle.

 I lurched downwards like a five-hundred pound boulder, screaming and flailing all the while. I still couldn't see, I was dizzy..

 Blue sky.

 Abruptly, the blinding white light had fizzled out, revealing a vivid blue sky. Wind was roaring in my ears, my tangled black hair whipping my face and blocking my peripheral vision. Apparently, I was falling from the sky.

 What the..?

 A gust of wind flipped me around to my stomach in mid air, leaving my eyes darting around and frantically trying to register my new situation. Finally, they landed onto the ground. Mountains, fields, and a small snowy pine forest was all I could make out before I was sent into a spinning turmoil.

 Land, sky, land, sky, land, sky, land, sky..

 I screamed and in hurried desperation, tried to slow my fall, but I only spun faster.

 Landskylandskylandsky...

 From the glimpses I had caught of the distant ground, I knew it wouldn't be long before I made a possibly fatal impact...

 ***

 ".... alana.........."

 "... Alana..."

 "ALANA! Did you hear a single thing I just said? Stop spacing out and pay attention for God's sake!" A man's rough voice snarled at me from across the long counter, the smell of cigarettes and Bud Light potent on his rotting teeth.