Page 1 of Through The Woods

Prologue

One Year Ago…Age 21

My eyes fluttered open to piercing red and blue lights flashing all around me. Men’s voices carried from nearby as they yelled to each other, amid sirens screaming in the distance.

I had no idea where I was.

“Miss? Can you hear me?” A yellow man asked, as he knelt next to me, concern marring his features.I was disoriented—exhaustion threatening to pull me back into blissful oblivion. He obviously wasn’t yellow, just wearing a suit that color.

Aramid fibers, my brain urged, and I struggled to remember how I knew that.

“Miss?”

I began coughing until my eyes watered, but I couldn’t get a full breath. My chest felt as if it would crack open from the strain.

The outer shell usually consisted of a Kevlar type material…what was it called?

Someone else knelt down on the other side of me, shining a small light into my eyes. Mouths moved, but I only heard the rush of blood in my ears. I turned my head ever so slightly to the left and that was when I saw it.

An inferno.

Incidentally, that was when I remembered that the material was NOMEX, but instead of being relieved, I was left with more questions than answers. I felt the moisture on my cheek as a tear escaped, before being lifted onto a stretcher and driven away from the devastation.

I wanted to wail and scream, but I’d caused this.

Not so very long ago, the sirens wailed loudly and the world that I’d known ceased to exist.

I discovered that, sometimes, it’s not giants with booming voices or cackling witches who swoop down from the sky—it’s not even a curse cast by an enchantress. Sometimes, the foe that steals away everything you held dear is the reflection in the mirror. The villain you never imagined—the evil you never saw coming…you.

---