She wakes up, burning eyes as if she was crying just moments ago.
“why me, why does it have to be me?” Uma says in a sorrowful tone.
“It’s going to be okay Uma, I promise.” The stuffed giraffe responds. The dust on the attic floor flying up as she starts to move about. She struggles to get up, bruises up her arms. She sits for a moment looking into the mirror and thinks, “it’s time I leave.” She gathers her stuffed giraffe. She grabs a rusty knife she sees in the corner of the attic floor. Uma tries to push it into the keyhole, but alas it’s too big.
“What else could I use as a key?” she says to the stuffed giraffe as she looks around and takes an assessment of her inventory.
As she scans around the room, she spies a rock, dark and hard.
“What about using a rock as a shaper to make a key?” The stuffed giraffe says.
It’s covered in dust and glass from the time she broke the window playing catch with a weighty rock. She holds her arm remembering how her dad broke her arm afterward. She grabs the rock to see if she can shape the knife.
She slams the rock onto the knife trying to make a mark on the rusted metal. Little flakes of rust and cheap steel come showering down with each strike. Slowly it begins to take shape into the form of a key. When she is done she jams it into the keyhole and turns. At first it seems as though the knife would break from the pressure. She stops twisting. Back the other direction she twists the knife, trying to get the edges to catch the hidden tumbler. Right as she thinks the knife is about to snap, the door opens.
Only the first steps are fresh carpeting that made her quiet as a mouse, but before she could make it all the way down her long thick black hair catches on a nail sticking out of the uncarpeted stairs. Her head jerks back and she trips as her hair rips out of her skull leaving a now bare patch on the side of her head. She tumbles down the stairs, feeling every edge, every pointed aberration jabbing into her already bruised body as she rolls down the rest of them. When she gets to the bottom blood and fresh bruises all over her body from the tumble are evident. She’s well beyond the simple owies of a child, and has moved onto full contusions and the familiar pain that comes with visiting with her parents.
“I have to keep going,” she whispers to her stuffed giraffe.
She gets up. Suddenly she hears a bang from the door on the other side of the wall she is leaning against. The vibration from the sound causes her heart to beat as loud as the banging. A door starts to creak open, darkness spewing forth like a northeastern fog into the room.
“Run,” the stuffed giraffe states quietly, “run now!”
She pushes off the ground with so much of her strength she thought the floor would collapse beneath the pressure of her intent. She darts for the next set of stairs, nimbly avoiding errant carpet nails and prying ears. As she slides her already bruised skin up against the carpet adding carpet rash to her already injured body she looks down to tell her companion that they’re almost there. Suddenly her eyes widen realizing she left her stuffed giraffe back on the last landing. She gets to the stairs and looks back in fear and agony that she has to decide between the darkness with a friend, or in the light on her own.
“Just leave me Uma, you don’t need me, you got this.” The stuffed giraffe states as it’s picked up by Uma’s father.
A gnarled grin crosses his face, revealing teeth riddled with stench and decay. Uma’s father tightly grips the stuffed giraffe with both hands, and the more he twists and pulls it apart the wider the smile of lunacy becomes.
Uma chooses.
“CRACK”
Before Uma could realize the consequences of an untimed and unprepared decision she would make by jumping down the flight of stairs in one leap, she smashes her elbow directly into the hardwood floor. The impact was both untimely and damaging. Bone sticking out of her now shattered elbow. Blood rushing from the wound and yet into her head. Her eyesight wanes in and out from the pain. She can feel a warmth streaming down her now limp and bleeding arm. She is screaming in agony, but she refuses to allow herself to give up. With tears rushing down her face she gets up and continues to the front door. Her arm is a cyclical explosion of pain, so much so that she feels as if she might pass out. She smells the fresh spring air as she exits the front door.
“I am finally free.” She says with bones sticking outside of her arm, reminding her that she cannot rest yet.
She scans the area beyond the house and sees the forest.Wrapping her arm up in her shirt she makes for the trees. Just as she gets within the sanctity of nature she hears a gunshot back at the house. She looks back to see holes in her stuffed giraffe.
“NO GIRAFFY” She screams, and closing her eyes she turns back to the escape for her survival.
Running through the forest cracking every stick she can to prevent her arm from being hit, while still crashing through the brush with her available shoulder. It almost feels as if her arm is going to fall off, and her eyes are starting to droop.
Finally she no longer feels eyes on her back, but she knows she’s not going to be able to continue much longer with all the blood she is losing. She looks at a vine and thinks to herself;
“Giraffy would wrap this around my arm to make it better.” So she does just that. Pulling down the vine with lots of struggle. When she finally gets it down she wraps it from her good shoulder to her bad arm making sure her arm doesn’t come off. She continues on her way to town.
She finally makes it to the road where she needs to sit and takes a break. She sees a car driving by when it hits its brakes, peeling it’s wheels deeper into the ground. A dark woman gets out of her car. Hair blacker than darkness itself and a rosy polka dotted dress to match it.
“Hello, are you okay little one?” The woman starts to talk.
Without hesitation Uma collapses before she could speak.
Uma wakes up unfamiliar to her surroundings. A cast has been put onto her arm and she has wraps up and down her body. She starts to hyperventilate.
“Where am I?” She says with exhaustion.
“Why you’re in the hospital sweetie.” The lady continues, “My name is Terra. What is your name?” Uma sits still just staring at Terra. When her tears of her now bulletholed giraffe isn’t here to protect her any longer.
“It’s okay, what do you want? A stuffed animal?” Terra responds, and sets a brand new giraffe beside her bed.
“Giraffy!” Uma’s tears become joyful as she smiles. Uma starts to look at Terra again, “my name is Uma.”
End