down the rabbit hole.

An impossibly large and greying tree stood in front of a blindingly bright and bleak day, It’s branches curling downwards, as if they wished to touch the ground, under it, sat a wooden stool with a plump cushion and upon the cushion sat a girl, petite and pale, peeling a red apple.

The girl’s hair fell, covering her, though a careful concentration radiated from her face, her lips pursed,

She peeled and peeled, more furiously, her eyebrows raising, joining, her tiny bow mouth twitching. The cuttings of the apple curled to the floor, below her feet, nestled into the wet, green grass, and though movement was improbable, it looked too still where it lay.

The chilling realisation that no mindless task could move her mind from its present state dawned upon her and her hand trembled, shook slightly, cut away the last of the apple.

She stared at the shaven core and it stared back, unselfconsciously, as it had nothing to hide behind, it did not question her obvious sadness, perhaps under the assumption that she did not want to be asked. For a few minutes they contemplated conversation, but each became too focused on their own words, inadvertently ending up talking to themselves.

Becoming too drawn in to the conversation, the girl let her head drop, her shoulders sag, her arms go limp, so that the hand holding the apple fell to her lap, her fingers unclasping, the apple rolled to the ground, and finally settled next to it’s skin.

“You out to watch out m’dear”, called the apple from its place in the grass, “should one drop of blood from that cut you just made reach your dress, it’ll grow and grow, and I’m afraid you should turn quite red yourself!”.

Having no idea what the apple core meant by this, the girl glanced down to see bright red, she had cut her hand peeling the apple and was now bleeding quite profusely from between the first and second knuckle of the index finger of her right hand.

She soon became quite overwhelmed by a feeling, a familiar feeling, but not one that she could find a name for – she felt the shame behind being scolded, the loss behind seeing the last of something she had loved so dearly, the irritation of dropping something she had tried so hard to hold on to.

She then reprimanded herself, she had been given one task so simple it was rewarded to infants – to take care, to remove herself from harm’s path, and yet the only harm caused had been that which she inflicted.

Unable to hold the tense burning feeling in any longer, a tear, far too hot, slid down her cheek, burning her face, she tried to blink away the oncoming flood, her wet eyelashes were so long that when she squeezed her eyes shut, blinked and blinked, but it was futile.

The first tear shot down her cheek and slowed to roll over her chin, making a vast drop to her cold chest, which immediately reacted.

The tear sizzled for a second, before making a cigarette-sized burn in her chest. The girl was astonished to see that the burn was black, and, placing a finger on it, further surprised to see that the burn did not end, she could not see a bottom, just a small, black hole.

The girls eyes flew open with shock as she watcher the hole, with a silent burning around the edges, the hole grew.

Grew and grew, and yet she could still see no end to the hole, the beautiful and terrifying blackness that swept across her chest. “my” uttered the girl, “I am not so big that there is much of me for the hole to consume, I wonder will it finish at my edges, leave me as an outline? A black hole in the woods? Or shall the hole spread to include more of the world?” growing more curious by the second, feeling defenceless, she crawled inside the hole.

The girl was fast to observe her surroundings; sure she would have to make a note of them later, her first instinct being to measure the space. She felt as if she had accidentally locked herself in the cupboard – it was dark and she was unsure of what was around her, this made her nervous, tensing her neck and bringing her arms closer to her face, knowing that she’d have to find a far better place in the hole if she wished to survive with an ounce of sanity.

Telling herself she had absolutely no choice but to be brave, the girl climbed over the beaten and dusty rock in the depths of her chest, up into the cavernous landscape of her mind. A wall, marked with the word ‘conscious’ was the whitest, most noticeable thing in the room, which appeared to be lit by fluorescent lights, though she could see no ceiling, in this wall, there was yet another hole.

Thought the girl to herself; “all this business with holes lately, you’d forget the door had ever been invented! And surely people know there is a much simpler way to enter a room..”

She continued, nonetheless, wondering if this hole would sizzle and expand as the other had, she pushed a hand to it, searching for an answer but her hand found nothing but cold marble.

Without hesitation, she rushed to the other side of the room, planning to run at the hole as fast as she could, but before she could start sprinting, something across the room caught her eye.

‘Revelations’.

How she had dreaded thoughts anywhere close to this! And yet here she stood in front of the embodiment of all she’d tried so hard to escape. Hideous and irresistible, she thought, as she began to rifle through every one.

Stay true to the people you love, never tell your mother you hate her, never sit alone and smile, she grew increasingly frustrated as she pushed away the simplest of all, to get to the deeper, something she needed, there was not a part of him she could stay away from.

Relief and mourning ran cold through her veins as she found what she was looking for. A memory. A revelation all used up, criticized and forgotten. She remembered the day she had sat in the branches of rather a tall tree, not sure how she would get down but enjoying the thrill she felt being so high above the ground.

As she sat, she watched, and as she watched, her eyes fell on a mass exiting the church. Her mind stayed on this for a minute or two, contemplating.

She became increasingly curious as to why people felt the need to keep this faith in a large, invisible entity that had done nothing for anyone in a long time.

She remembered so clearly the day that the concept of faith had been dissected and pieced back together in her mind, realising the formulaic and intoxicating manner.

Faith, she had found, stemmed from a need to hold on combined with an admiration, the result of this combination was often an immovable dedication the whatever the person would choose to cling to.

She had been watching the boy, this new presence in her life, as he leaned back, exhaled smoke; she was stunned by the way he exuded confidence, lived without apology as exactly himself. Beauty and truth, and nothing more.

His smile, an archway to perfect words, words that would calm her, words that one could live by. His hands, mockingly steepled, like a child reciting a nursery rhyme, catching the light and creating patterns more magnificent in her eyes than any stained glass window.

Beauty and truth. Poison, opiate of the masses, the un-self actualised, the lonely, the afraid.

He was to her as a bottle to a drunkard, a mass to a catholic, they learnt from what they coveted, refused to see reason in anything else.

But though Catholics will ache to be saved by their lord, though disease will eat away at the drunkard, they stay; her temple of faith had abandoned her leaving her to live by nothing but a memory.

New revelations appeared before her on the floor as she reflected on this, but before she had time to examine them properly she had found herself falling back through the hole, back, until she was sitting in the grass among the apple peels, her hands empty.

Without faith, the girl was afraid she may have to rely solely on reason, and at this tough she grew colder still, aching, wishing for even the memory of the magnificent creature with the steepled hands.

As the full weight of the futility dawned on her, her neck went slack, her head reverently bowed, so that she may see the place where the hole had healed, the pink of scar tissue, skin twice as tough. She drew in a painfully deep breath of the chilly air, knowing that is the was to go on at all, she must accept what had happened.

And to her surprise she had grown to twice her normal size.