"Come on, Ali!"
"I'm coming!"
Ali pushed herself over the fence that separated the main road from the city park, and followed her friends toward the playground they had made their nighttime hangout.
The six kids that met there included herself and her best friends, Jody, Lauren, Shelly, Jack, and Katie. They would talk and mess around in the park for hours on end, and then go home to catch four hours of sleep before school.
It was a normal night for her.
"-so then I was like 'Hey, why don't you leave me alone?' ya know?"
Katie. She tried so hard to prove she wasn't a dumb blonde, but it was so hard not to think she was. She wasn't stupid, anything but, she just had this air about her that practically screamed "Playboy Bunny of the Month in Training".
Lauren shook her head, sending her voluminous black hair flying. "That was such an interesting story, Kate. Please tell another." Her voice was dripping with it's usual sarcasm.
Her twin, Shelly, who was sitting next to her sister on the slide, laughed and flipped her short black hair out of her light brown eyes. She was the joker, and the most likely to get in trouble for being a smart-ass in class.
Jody, who was pushing Ali on one of the swings, sighed heavily. Lauren and Katie always got into fights, and she was starting to get sick of it. She was the sensible one, the level-headed one. At least, the most level-headed out of the rest of them. She also had a short temper, which made her all the more scary.
Ali laughed a little as she came close to kicking Jack in the head on her forwards swing. He was her only male friend, and had been so since 6th grade. A little quiet, but fun to hang out with. Ali's favorite pastime was tackling him with hugs.
He glared at her through shaggy dark brown hair, and caught her foot the next time she came at his head.
"Hey! Let go!"
"Then stop aiming at my head."
"I'm not," she tried to look as innocent as possible and gave him her sweetest smile, "you just happen to be in the way."
He sighed and chuckled at the same time and let go of her foot, sending her falling back to Jody.
An hour went by like this and Ali got quiet. She had really needed to think, but when Shelly had thrown a rock at her window she couldn't refuse a night out. Maybe she could sneak away for few minutes. Just to clear her head.
"Hey, I'm gonna go for walk, be back in a few."
She got off her swing and began walking down the bike trail through the forest behind the playground.
"Ali, wait!"
Lauren had come after her.
"What's up with you?"
"I just need to get away for a while, you know?"
"Oh, okay, but if you're not back in an hour we're filing a police report, kay?"
Ali laughed. "Sure, Laur."
"Have fun."
She turned back and walked toward the sound of Jack being yelled at by Jody for making a comment about something, leaving Ali alone.
Ali kept walking deeper into the forest. It was cold, and she wished she had brought a warmer jacket than her red blazer. She ran a hand through her long strawberry-blonde hair and pulled her red scarf tighter around her neck.
A russle in the bushes next to her. She jumped, then took a deep breath. It wasn't a psycho... she hoped.
"Jack? Jack, if that's you, I'm going to kill you."
Russle, russle.
She took a step forward and pushed the bushes apart. Nothing.
"Weird..."
Russle, russle, russle. It was coming from up ahead.
She pushed farther into the bushes and found herself in a tiny clearing, not much bigger than enough for her to stand in. She saw something (it was human sized) moving deeper into the underbrush and as she went to follow it, she saw a glint of gold in one of the bushes.
It was a pocket-watch, like an old one that people used to carry around, except that it looked brand new. She grabbed it and her brain instantly started working.
Anyone who owned something like that wasn't going to kill her. And if this thing was as nice as she thought it was, they would be looking for it. She should return it.
"Excuse me? Wait!" she called out to the person that was quickly retreating into the forest.
She was now pushing through very tall bushes and trees that were very close together. She could barely see anything in front of her.
"Wait!"
All she could see was a bit of white moving just ahead of her. She could also hear the person talking to themselves.
"Damn it, I'm going to be so late. So late, so late! The queen certainly won't be happy about this, no."
Not a psycho, not a psycho...
"Excuse me! I said wait, damn it!" She felt insane.
Suddenly, she was in a rather large clearing. The person she had been following stopped, but he certainly wasn't what she expected.
He was albino. Pale, pinkish-white skin, red eyes, and white hair in desperate need of a brush. He looked about her age. But that wasn't the first thing she noticed. The first thing that caught her attention was the two huge white rabbit ears coming out of the top of his head. She didn't see anything holding them on, just white hair.
Other than that, he was thin, and he was wearing a black suit with a red shirt and white tie. He was also looking at her like she would pounce and eat him at any moment, his eyes wide.
"Excuse me... but I think you dropped this." She held out the pocket-watch.
Red eyes glanced to her hand and back to her face.
"I'm sorry," he finally said, "b-but I'm very late." And with that he ran toward one of the trees and squeezed himself into a hole at it's base.
It was the strangest thing she had ever seen. The weird albino guy just went into a tree. Okay then.
Something was telling her to follow him. She wasn't sure if it was just the fact that she had his watch, or if she wanted to know what he was so incredibly late for in that tree.
Either way, she did follow him. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the hole at the bottom of the tree.
It was a rabbit hole, except a little bigger. She barely fit. It was impossibly dark, and the air was no good. Her back, hands, and knees hurt after a while and she wondered if it was some kind of magic trick he used that made it seem like he went into the tree.
Just as she was about to give up hope, her hands were no longer on something solid. They pushed through the air.
"Oh, God, someone help-"
Then, suddenly, horrifyingly, she was falling.
