Triple Rainbow Delight

     She couldn't understand why, the thought of that triple rainbow.  She couldn't get it our of her head.  What did it mean?  Probably nothing.  Paranoid personality disorder, she reminded herself.  It was nothing.  A refraction of light in moisture; what's visible to the naked eye.  Glimpses of another world we can't see in plain daylight.  She realized how much time had passed and took back to running.  It's nothing, she whispered.
     In the distance a car crash rings out.  She hears the screech and bang of metal and glass colliding.  Without hesitation, she rushes towards the violent sounds to help.  A woman is crying in a blue sedan, nearly smashed to bits.  She's lucky to be alive, thinks Alicia.  Peering around quickly, she assesses the carnage.  Another car is splayed several feet away.  No movement inside.  Just as she is about to remove her phone from the armband strapped to her left bicep, a truck horn blows behind her and Alicia turns to see the monstrosity.  "Oh god,' she whispers.  'What is that?' horror filled face, Alicia takes in the creature.  It's looming figure moves forward, grabbing bodies and stomping closer.  She looks again at the woman in the sedan.  If she could only get to her.  Alicia rushes over and shouts, "I'll get you out of here!  We have to run!"
     She attempts to open the car door, but it's jammed.  "Can you push it open?" the woman looks at her and frantically shakes her head no.  "Okay," Alicia says, "Gimme a-"
     Alicia is scooped upward by the creatures clawed hand.  She is screaming now.  The creature begins to squeeze, and her breath fades.  Her eyes are closing.  All she can see is the mouth.  It's getting closer.  Then-
     The woman in the sedan screams and cries as the monster passes by.  She stops screaming as she watches it step right beside her car.  It continues down the road.

On Acceptance of Mortality

Death is a monster that lurks

Casting his ominous shadow

He strikes when we least expect;

A ruthless and honest beast

A piece of all of us

The unspoken truth that awaits.

We may cry, and fight against

But his will is strong; it is righteous.

And as our time expires

It becomes clear;

The pain lessens

And acceptance,

Brings peace.

The rabbit hole

There she is now. Floating, falling, faster and faster down the hole. Where does it lead? She wonders. A kind of acceptance, as she allows herself to be taken. Will it hurt? It chose me, she thinks. But I want it to mean something. Perhaps I'm foolish, it's just random. It could've been anyone. It's dark in here. Shadows cast along the sides, but there isn't any light. Then how? She wonders aloud. Why me?

She shouts.

Falling still; it seems endless. How long has she been falling now? It seems like hours, but only minutes, surly. Time is irrelevant, is it not? This could go on forever, but what would that mean, really?  If time is simply a sequence of events, our understanding of how one moves and experiences existence, then her existence, in this hole, is infinite, immeasurable. Or is it?  This fact doesn't satiate her yearning for something.  A sign, even the faintest.  To know that it will come to an end.  To know that she will have the answer.  If she can just proceed a little further, down into the abyss.  She'll 

know why.  

She recalls, many moons ago now, it seems, the moment she understood how meaningless life could be.  Her fascination with the unknown depths of this space that she is now descending upon, grew stronger when it happened.  He didn't deserve to go, so young.  Older than she, certainly, but young in spirit and body still.  He was everything to her.  And yet, when he was gone, she realized that it meant nothing.  Their time together, was but another event, a passing occurrence in a cosmic realm, where there were mysteries of far greater import.  But why then, with such an epiphany, did she still ache at 

the memory?

She doesn't feel anything in this current state. Like her senses are at an extreme calm. She is not alarmed, only very aware of the feeling of...nothing.  And yet, everything. She knows she is falling, that her dress is fluttering ever so slightly with the movement, that air is passing along her skin as she falls faster. But is it really faster? She can see everything. She knows she is falling, but the images perceived are quite clear. And that her body feels nothing, feels not the moving dress or passing air. How is this possible?  Logic is not here.  In this place of possibilities unknown.  The quiet and 

deliberate death.

She knows not how to proceed. The black abyss below. So endless. She's gone this far. If she could just reach out, perhaps she could brace herself. What holds her back? If I reach out my hand, I'll touch a wall. I must, she says. Of course, what if she reaches out, only to discover she feels nothing? Not that it isn't there.  The wall exists, surly. How else are the shadows...?  They dance and laugh 

at her.  

In that moment she recalls the first time she had her finger pricked. The doctor said it would hurt a little. The blood oozed out in a tiny bubble of deep red.  He took her blood into a vile.  'Just running a few tests,' he'd said.  She pouted at the sensation of pain, but then, entranced by the blood on her finger, she felt agitated when the nurse wrapped it with a band-aid.  As soon as she was able to, she would rip off that band-aid and squeeze hard until more blood came.  Not much, of course, as the area had healed.  She stomped her foot and gave a grunt of disapproval.  Startled, she said, 

'Father.'  

When he saw her doing this, he didn't yell, not like her mother would have.  He only inquired about why she was doing it.  She told him, 'I want to make the blood run again.'  'But why,' he would ask.  She paused and bit her lip.  She shook her 

head, uncertain.  

Shortly after, he bought her a microscope and together they observed his blood; a quick prick of the finger and he placed a droplet on a glass slide.  He told her how it worked, blood.  How the body reacted to a wound in attempt to heal.  That it would coagulate, with platelets.  'This way,' he'd said, 'you wouldn't bleed to death.'  She asked him what death meant.  What happened after death?  Her nanna had gone to this place of death when she was just a babe.  She only remembered the cold stare of nanna in her casket.  'Is it like sleep?' she asked him.  'Yes,' he said, 'I suppose it is like a sleep.'  He told her of glorious sleep and the quiet black void 

of nothingness.   

The shadows suddenly disappear and there is a stillness.  She's hanging there.  Now is the time.  'Reach for the wall!' she shouts to herself.  She extends her left arm and braces for what might be or not be.  Nothing!  She can feel nothing!  Her hand keeps reaching, but there isn't anything to grasp.  And then her arms and legs are flailing about and panic strikes her thoughts.  I can't scream!  What would that do, they won't hear me.  I'm so far down!  Why did I go, she thinks.  Her lip pouts, but she won't cry.  She finally halts her moving limbs and closes her eyes.  A few deep breathes, stay calm.  'In the blackness, the great void, there is peace'.

His words.

'Father!' She weeps, remembering his eyes.  How cold they looked, unmoving.  The blood ran down his face and onto the floor.  There was so much blood.  She plead, and told him to coagulate.  But his body wouldn't listen.  Her mother came in soon after.  She looked dismayed, tears forming, whispered a soft and broken,

'no.'

When she opens them, her eyes peer downward.  It's dark, so dark she can't see anything.  In fact, she realizes, all trace of light is gone.  She wills herself to move, to keep moving.  Surly, there is an end.  What's holding her?  Could it be-?  No, that's impossible.  And then she is falling again.  Much faster, so fast that her dress flies nearly above her head, she flails about.
She screams!  

And then. A soft light in the distance, as Lily opens her eyes.  A surface beneath her.  Her hands brush the ground.  She looks up.  He is there.  Is it him?  It must be.  The silhouetted glow of a man she once knew.  So long she has waited to be here.  With him and to know for certainty.  She moves towards this figure.  In her heart she knows.  Without doubt. 

He's safe.