Sweet Escape

Living in this perfect field with everything just a thought away was different. Another thing that I wasn’t used to was that there was no noise. Not a breeze or the sound of waves crashing. No sounds of cars passing on the road. Nothing. There was only total silence. At one point I might’ve been scared of this, this silence that had a noise all its own. It was like white noise, pressing in on your ears. It was almost hard to think with it all around you. I didn’t know if I could last much longer with this. I would just sit there and try to think but the silence made it so hard. My thoughts were too loud here; they seemed to echo around my skull.

A breeze started to billow in, slowly making the flowers move around me like a wave. The rustling of plants rubbing against one another fills the air drowning out the silence, the simple scraping of leaves fills my head. I smile as sound takes the air. Birds would be good too. But not big birds or scary ones, plant eating birds. Maybe humming birds. I look toward the tree as little humming birds pop into existence. They fly over my head, at least a hundred of them all together moving like a swarm. One mind, one destination, the honey suckle plants that just appeared in the distance.

The flutter of all those wings was a low hum barely audible over the wind. It was all so simple. I was no were near creating a world that had a loophole. Or whatever it had been that Bayard and the voice told me. They said I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. So I did simple things. Things that made me happy. What did I need to make me happy; the thought was barely out before I had another thought, something so amazingly simple that I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.

There is a crack and the annoying high pitched whine of drills followed quickly by dull thuds. Bookcases are everywhere. I am surrounded by them. There are rows of them in the middle of my flowers. It row of flowers, row of book cases. It’s perfect. Every book I could ever want. Every book ever written. This world was slowly becoming tolerable.

I had a stack of books in a wagon that I was pulling through the rows of books. I pushed flowers out of my way and looked at the shelves finding the books I wanted to read. When I got back to my camp I lay down and started to read.

That’s all I did. I just read all day and night. Except for the fact that my world was like Alaska. The sun never went away. It was never night time because all I wanted to do was read. The sun went in circles around me as I lay back and relaxed.

I could’ve been there for days. But it had to have been longer than that. It didn’t feel like any time had passed but things had changed. My body was engulfed in weeds and grass. The plants had grown over me and taken my body as their own. The only parts of my body that were free were my arms and head. Everything else seemed to be under a thick ivy blanket.

It seems you lost track of time, an easy thing in this world. The voice was back. This time it seemed to come from the plants hugging my body.

“How long have I been laying here?” I ask realizing for the first time that it’s hard to breathe. My voice comes out in a gasp and I start to cough.

How am I supposed to know? It’s not like I keep track of time either. It’s your world. You need to figure it out.

“Fine.” I know the voice won’t answer again. I know that it is gone from here. Somewhere else, wherever it goes when it isn’t criticizing me. I close my eyes concentrating on the pressure on my chest. The ground starts to shake, the plants rustle around me, moving off of my body. I start to breathe again as the plants unravel around my legs and set me free. My tights are torn and hardly even stay in place anymore.

“It’s nearly been two years.” I turn to look at Bayard. The mirror has fallen to its side and ivy’s are creeping up its face and sides. In the blink of an eye and the creak of the plants he is free.

“Has it really been that long?” I look around at the weathered book cases, the drooping flowers, and the bird poop that surround me. The humming birds have taken over. Ruining the clean surface of everything. Weeds have started to grow popping up wherever they feel they should.

“Yes and you wasted it reading books. Do you even want to escape here?” His voice is condescending like it used to be. He knows more than I do and he plans on proving it.

“Of course I want to escape here. I just wanted to escape it for a little bit in my head.” I whisper the last part, ashamed that I wasted so much time. Bayard sighs dramatically and disappears with one last whisper.

“You might very well be running out of time.”