Luck of the Fall

New towns were always a strange mixture of exciting and sad to Alanna. She had seen her fair share as a child when her parents would drag her from town to town. Self-proclaimed 'drifters' Marie and Michael Harris never quite settled down. Even now they were drifting somewhere in the South sending their only daughter postcards from various places.

Alanna was very much not a drifter. Leaving her new friends just after there was some sort of connection formed always sat ill on Alanna. Not that she would mention that to her parents, who viewed each move as a new adventure. When Alanna settled on a single college her parents actually stayed for a few years, wanting to give her a support system during the difficult time in her life. After Alanna landed a job in the campus radio-station and grabbed her own apartment her parents drifted off again.

Graduation made Alanna cry. After four years of being in a single place with the same group of friends she was being thrown into the real world. Thankfully after multiple Skype interviews and one in person interview Alanna had gotten a job at a little radio station in a little town that sat in the shadow of a rather large looking mountain. She had just enough money to afford her apartment, bills, and a meager amount of food.

Her apartment felt overly spacious almost lonely at times, but being surrounded by trees was pretty nice. The mountain gave the town a protected feel, though the locals were very wary of it. She had learned from a few different sources that the mountain was supposed to house the entrance to the Land of the Monsters. The local legends stated that there was a Great War a long time ago in which the humans won, and the Monsters, who took on various shapes and sizes, fled under the Mountain.

After a year of being in her new town she decided to hike the mountain, brushing away any passing concern from her co-workers or neighbors. She supposed her ignoring them was what left her in this particular situation.

"H-help." Alanna's voice echoed around the small chamber, but nobody came. Her leg was nothing but pain, and she was sure that she had skinned her hands and side from her attempt to stop the fall. The hole above her let in muted light which cast the small cavern she had landed in. Vines surrounded the hole and seemed to crawl down the darkened walls.

Alanna herself had landed in a rather cushy bed of golden flowers the likes of which she hadn't really seen before. "Please," she called a bit louder panic beginning to build, "please someone help!" Once again there was no reply. Alanna attempted to get up, but putting weight on her leg made it buckle underneath her.

"Well…." Alanna said breathing out in a woosh, "crap. Okay, keep it together….not that talking to myself is really considered keeping it together." She paused taking a small breath. "At least in proper society." Another heave and another fall. "All right, if I can't walk….I need to crawl."

Alanna attempted crawling, and though the dragging motion of her injured leg hurt, she was mobile. It was dark-ish in the cavern, but she slid herself along against a wall until she found a rather uniform feeling opening. "Can't stop now," Alanna scolded herself when she sat for a moment feeling the strange smoothness of the wall, "I've barely gotten anywhere. The exit is only just ahead." She lied to herself. "Just gotta keep going."

The next room was empty but a hole, smaller than the one she had fallen through, let in a single beam of light that illuminated a single patch of emerald grass. Alanna scraped along the floor until she hit the patch of grass.

"Yeah, okay….still light…..that's good." She spoke her own voice echoing back to her sounding more and more hopeless. "It really hurts." She admitted to the open space. It remained silent, offering no advice for her plight. Straightening her leg almost caused her to pass out. It was swollen, straining at the fabric of her jeans. "Shit," she mumbled feeling a numb sense of horror steal over her.

She had been this hurt before, but never alone. And certainly never stuck in the bottom of a cave system on a mountain that no one visited for fear of the 'monsters' that lurked underneath. Perhaps this cave was the monster. Swallowing people whole and keeping them until they starved. There were no bones that she could see, but the fact that the edges of the room were cast in shadow didn't help Alanna's already panicked mind.

"Oh no," she said feeling the familiar burning behind her eyes that signaled she was about to cry, "that's not good. No, I can't cry right now." Alanna quickly began to scrape along the floor until she came to a wall. She moved as quickly as her body would allow. She would almost say she was trying to outrun the hopelessness of the situation. "Nope." She said pushing the tears back as her hands skimmed along the wall as she crawled.

When she came across another uniform opening she watched as the first tears filled her eyes and made the darkness shift and blur before her eyes. "Okay, I can cry." She hiccupped her hand going to lightly touch her leg. "But I can't stop moving forwards." Tears began to fall, but she ignored them and forced herself to slide along the floor until she came out into a new room. It was rather brightly lit and the color of the stone threw her off. Different shades of purple shifting and fading into itself. The walls almost looked like they were made of purple bricks, and across the room from her was a grand looking staircase. Vivid red leaves were piled in-between the flights of stairs and a few were scattered in a square shape in the middle of the room. It looked as if someone had tended them lovingly until they took shape.

Maybe someone was down here. Or maybe nature is cruel and wanted to instill a small bit of hope in Alanna before it crushed her totally and completely. The way her day was going, Alanna expected it to be the second option.

"Weird," she sniffed hardly aware of the fact that she was still sluggishly crying, "why are there steps in a cave? Maybe they're ancient." She muttered dragging herself towards the base of the stairs. Her body was already getting sore. Purple dirt had caked itself along her jeans and on her hands. So much of it had pushed its way underneath her nails Alanna was sure that she would never be able to get all of it out.

Her hands were now a strange mix of purple dirt and blood which had mixed into a maroon that was constantly stinging. She had made it to the large pile of leaves that had bunched up in-between the flights of stairs. The slight crunch of the leaves underneath her stinging palms brought a strange surge of determination through the woman. There was a strange moment where she swore she saw floating words.

File Saved.Along with a small two note run.

Alanna shook her head and the words were gone as if they had never been there in the first place. "I must be hurt a lot more than I first thought." Alanna said quietly to herself. "Floating words don't just appear. Maybe I should rest?" Her body was horribly aching at this point, the strain of the day finally getting to her. She had hiked up the mountain for hours before she had fallen underneath the mountain. The air here was much cooler than that of the above world, and Alanna was beginning to feel the chill of it seeping into her bones. She pulled herself a bit further into the leaves making a small nest around her. She began to check herself over a bit more with the better source of light, though she had no idea where it was coming from.

There were more cuts than she had first thought. They covered her under-arms in long ragged swipes that spoke volumes about her struggle to stay out of the hole. Her pale skin made the cuts look horrible, almost already infected. She lightly lifted up her shirt and the same angry cuts had made their way up her stomach stopping just past her belly button. Her pants were ripped into angry shreds much like the skin underneath. Her jeans were already adhered to her skin, pasted there with blood and sweat. Her leg was the worst. It was swollen to the point that it looked more like a sausage stuffed into a too small casing, spilling out slightly where the tears and cuts were made.

It hurt. Alanna worried that the swelling was going to trap her into her jeans, but she already felt so far removed from her surroundings. It was almost too easy to lean back into the vividly red leaves, which were feeling more like a memory foam bed, and close her eyes. Some voice in the back of her mind was screaming at her to get up. That if she fell asleep she would never get up.

The voice wasn't loud enough.