She tastes salt in the air and stops screaming. She realises that she is lying on something cold and wet and so, quite rightly, she gets up. A field of dark green stretches all around, confined only by the open water in front of her and a dead wall behind. Green twists made their way up through the small rectangular gaps in the wall, rapping themselves round and round in perfect spirals until they reached the sharp point at the peak.
She sees some small brown things with eight eyes and four legs step
curiously towards her from the green. The woman starts to dry what she can with
her hands before reaching down for the little moving shapes. Two manage to
scramble onto her open palm and start to explore it with their feet and not
used to the funny itchy feeling of their movement, the woman mindlessly makes a
fist. Something splatters across the inside her closed hand, and she sees the
other forms scurry away.
She feels the inside of her hand before opening it and, looking down in disgust,
wipes it on the green, smearing it an odd purple colour that shines like the
water. She thinks about screaming again, screaming for the walls to take her back
into themselves. She gives it a try for a few seconds, starting, stuttering steadily,
then stopping.
She hears a distant groan from all around and nowhere and watches
as water ebbs in and out, standing still and silent. Then she looks slowly behind
her, taking a proper look between the lines of metal that make up the wall. At
the bottom of the low slope beyond it lies more green and, in the far distance,
rising black and grey structures of brick.
She smells the air, longing for the familiar scent of wall and floor and so, steeling
herself, she tries to squeeze through one of the gaps in the metal barrier. Finally,
with the crack grudgingly widening with each of her attempts, she pops out headfirst
and tumbles down to the ground.
She lies there awhile, then she gets to her feet and sets off
towards the many walls beyond.
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