Running faster and faster, dodging every log and twig in my path. Then my feet wouldn't move, looking down finding my feet were stuck in quicksand. As it was eating me away they were coming, almost here, only minutes away.

How did I even get here, I thought to myself. How did my life get this messed up? I look back and I can hear them slowing down, knowing I have no way to escape. I close my eyes and grip onto the sides surrounding the quicksand and try to pull myself out, I pull, and pull, and pull until I am freed from my death.

I now only have a minute or two before they catch me, so I run while every unnatural sound that could only be made by a human pervades my mind. I am smacking into trees and tripping over roots on the forest floor but force myself to keep moving. I have to keep moving. I have to make it back. If I can keep my speed I can make it out in time while they will be trapped in the monstrous place forever.

"You can't run forever, Faleen!" I hear a man yell, he is tired and out of breath. If his partner is in the same condition as he is I am sure to make it out alive. I am only thinking of Gracie, my baby sister sitting at home with my mother waiting for my return home. Fear crosses my mind, what if I don't make it back? What if I am capture and Gracie is next to be taken because of my acts? I start to run faster, harder, and refuse to relinquish and let them win. Let them win like my mother let them win, she gave up the chase and landed herself being scrutinized by all of the public and I am not letting it happen to me. All her efforts to escape the brutal life in our messed up country failed but I am not going down without a fight.

I can almost see the exit of the terrain when I fall. I hadn't tripped or anything, but a clear glass box was now surrounding me. I was being raised into the air and now see the two men who were chasing me, they were laughing.

"Nothing left to lose, Faleen. Nothing left to lose," one of the men shouts, the other repeats it. They keep shouting the same thing and now the box is causing me to shake. The bottom disappears and I fall through. I am hurtling towards the Earth at a dangerous, frenetic speed. All of a sudden everything goes black.

"Faleen. Faleen?" my friend Ellie is shaking my arm and repeating my name over and over. I open my eyes and I am in the middle of my class on the floor surrounded by my classmates. "It's okay Faleen, everything is fine," my teacher, Mr. Callahan, told me being very concise. I sit up and soon stand up and start to walk out the door. No one stops me. I continue to walk thinking, it was just a dream. Gracie is at home with mom. Gracie and mom are okay, they are all okay. I walk all the way home and run into Gracie's room and she is sleeping in my mother's arms. Safe and sound.