crows nest // rabbit liddell ~ day 1

You only stop running when you see stars twinkling in your vision, chest burning and sides aching, desperate for oxygen. You hit the ground with such force as your knees crumble beneath you that it knocke the rest of the air from your lungs leaving you gasping. Your body meets the dirt, cushioned only by long grass that scratches at your skin, heart pounding in your chest.

Eyes shut tight, you lie there for a long moment in the cradle of grass, listening to leaves scuttling across the barren earth and the oh so welcomed silence. The air is bitter, but you feel heat against your skin as you lay there. You feel tears stinging your eyes, and as you scrunch them tighter the tears stream down your cheeks and pool in the grass, your whole body quivering with fear as you wait, half expecting to open your eyes to find yourself covered in blood; those images play on repeat on the back of your eyelids- hands drenched in blood, cold iron against flesh and a darkness and starch of rotting leaves.

The images force you to open your eyes, the cusp of sleep to tempting and terrifying for you to fall into its clutches and when you open them you find yourself staring into a pair of black beady eyes watching you curiously. You blink, and the beady eyes blink back and it's ebony beak opens with a loud and annoyed squawk, as if the bird is least impressed with you lying down and in a flurry of feathers it takes off.

Sitting your eyes widen, following the black bird with such awe as it soars over your resting place and takes roost on a sad looking man, hanging in sad, scratchy looking things and big straw hat. It sits and stares back at you, some of its kin flapping from their roost on the fence to join it in watching you. Their beady eyes should unsettle you, and you can tell they are much cleverer than you, but your lips spread into a grin and for a moment you forget where you are and find yourself jumping to your feet with your hands in the air.

"Boo!" Your voice scatters them to the wind, cawing in annoyance and anger which only makes you laugh, giggling into your hands as you cover your mouth to stifle it as you watch their black wings beating above you, swooping and swirling down back to the earth as they take new perches to watch you with their beady eyes and you stare intently back at them with your soft blue ones.

Incentives the birds had settled, you remember that you are in a strange land and there are monsters here. Turning, you look round at the place you find yourself in. You can still see the great wicker horn on the horizon, distant but looming like a great mountain, blue and hazy in the golden light. You realise that you are entrapped by a old, broken, wooden fence, full of holes and smelling of rot. It surrounds you in a big, square, yellow fading grass almost waist high, wafting in the breeze. Aside from the crowd, you find no other signs of life until you take a step forward and hear something crunching then squelching beneath your boot.

You exclaim, gasping as you hop back, looking at your boots. Half of you, a distant foggy part of you expects to see blood and for a moment your heart seizes in fear but your shoulders drops when you see a fruity flesh beneath your boot, stringy and seedy and stinking. Blinking, you pear.closer to find a small orange vegetable growing, broken on the earth and as you look you suddenly see more. Dozens of large, bulbous vegetables of a variety of colours and a lonely man with a sack for a face stood watching over them.

Humming to yourself, you sway, curiously approaching the man. You tilt your head, observing his hollow eyes and empty face and you cannot help but think that he is lonely and you gently reach out to brush his rough burlap skin. Your brow furrows, sad for the lonely man who must stand here and you cannot help but think you have seen something like this before, far away, distant, a memory trickling through the cracks.

As the light shifts above you, something silver catches the light. You spot it out the corner of your eye as you examine the scarecrow. Your attention is immediately captured, and you turn hand reaching out to pick the glistening weapon at your feet, curved blade and short handle. It feels heavy in your hand, heavier than it should and you hesitate before your fingers wrap themselves around the hilt. It is rusting, but still glistens as you turn it in the light, running your finger along its edge, your gaze now focused, on the sad burlap man.

And with a slice, slit his burlap throat, put him out of his misery. A beat. You step back, horrified, a sense of deja vu seeping into the edges of your mind as you watch the hay and stare seep from the wound. And a tear, spills downs your cheek and falls to the parched and thirst earth as you sink to your knees, staring up at the burlap man.

And his dead eyes stare back at you.