I wake up in the woods, feeling like all my organs have been scrubbed like potatoes. My stomach bites with hunger, but not as much as usual. Which probably means I ate another squirrel. Full moons are fun, but sometimes I wonder if they're worth the mornings after.

A thick dense Forest. It went deep into the black undergrowth vanishing instantly into the gloomy darkness. The extraordinary anxiety that spread through me before I entered the mysterious forest. The anxiety creeping in tingles over the back of my neck. I tell myself I'm not frightened. Many people travel through here by day. There's nothing to dread.

She isn’t me, not really a hollow shell I long abandoned, left her weeping, loveless mess, all alone. I am so tired of this body. I don’t want a new one. I am so tired. Just let her rot make her pay for her existence for what she did to me. My skin was beginning to smell like charcoal. 

In the middle of a gloomy wilderness. Green and for of plant life that I've never seen in the past. There's no time to relax. I don't know where to go. I've never been this far into the Special Forest and there aren't even any trails. How am I supposed to get out of here? The trees sway around me. I promptly decide to follow them. Maybe they'll help me out. I follow into I get stuck in the ground. I was not paying attention. I instantly start to freak out. The exotic weeds tangled my ankle like an eager hand that decided to keep me there.

“Don't panic," an elderly woman's voice calls to me.

I stay still and look around. I think I see her but she's pretty camouflaged with the trees. 

"Concentrate and gently lift yourself up," the voice says.

I do as she says before I get swallowed up.  She's some kind of forest spirit. 

"I'm lost. The queen is about to murder my best friend and has to teleport me here. I’m unsure where here is. I'm assuming I'm still in Special Forest but nothing looks right. 

"You, my dear girl, are in the Lost Forest." She had a dark, time saturated, deep crevassed face with a dirty, wrinkled, toothless, open-mouthed smile. As soon as I’m freed, she disappears.

The heat is slaying me. Sweating so much. I don’t feel like myself lately. Uncomfortable in my skin. Tired. Depressed. Anxious. Not good enough. Like I’m overlooking something. Like I’m not supposed to be in this body. In this life. At this time. In this existence.

I need a bath. No sound of a river flowing nearby and not a cloud in sight. I can’t keep moving. I’m exhausted. My body aches all over. What had the goal been? What did that elderly lady want me to find? She said it was rare, but I should be about to kind it when I give up. What kind of riddle is that? Give up what? My life? At that point, I perceive a sound.

By Cristina Collazo