She giggled as she ran at him, right up until the moment when they both realized that she wasn't going to be able to stop in time. Not wanting to shove him over the edge of the cliff they stood before, she turned just in time and slid off the edge right before his eyes. He tried to catch her, but there was no use. Her small hand slid from his as if it were greased, and she tumbled down, down, down.

I should have known better than to run at him like that. He was standing so slow to the edge, what was I thinking? Stupid, stupid, stupid. There was no reversing it now. It was nearly impossible, as I sped down the hill, to just turn myself enough to avoid hitting him as I flew over the edge of the cliff and down into the abyss.

He had tried to grab me before I fell, extending his hand and attempting to take hold. But she was going too fast, there was too much force behind her, and their hands slid apart and she began her descent into the canyon.

After I'd been falling for a while, I realized that I should have hit bottom by now. It almost felt as if I was spinning, swirling uncontrollably in the darkness. There was no way that the canyon was this deep, or that there was enough air current in it to swirl her like this, as there was hardly even any wind that day.

Then, I hit the bottom, but it was not at all the way it should have been. I fell onto what seemed to be a pillow. I let my eyes open and took in what was around me. I was sitting in a very well-lit chamber, with no pillows at all, but a very hard, tile floor that seemed to have somehow cushioned my fall. I stood up and found that there was a door in front of me. I approached it, and, expecting it to be locked, tugged hard on the doorknob. It flew open, throwing me back.

Once I had regained my footing, I stepped out the door onto the path outside. I looked up at the building I had just exited and was shocked by what I saw. Decrepit and bleak, the building seemed as if it had been abandoned long ago. I peered back through the doorway and saw a sight that did not at all resemble the room I had just exited.


The faded, grey wallpaper was peeling off the walls and lying in strips on the floor. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling and peppered the floor. The door slammed shut in my face as I looked at the room in disbelief.

Then I realized that, not only was the wallpaper grey, but everything else was. Everything, even myself had turned from vibrant colors to shades of grey. The buildings around me all resembled the one I came from: old, broken, and depressed. Everything in the landscape surrounding me seemed this way, especially the people who walked by on the street. Hunched over and lanky, it appeared that they had not eaten in quite a while. While they frightened me, I knew that they were my only hope for escape, so I approached a woman walking by.

"Excuse me... miss?" I said.

She looked at me with a stare colder than I could have ever thought human.

"Yes?"

"I'm not from here. I need to get home. Where do I go to get home?"

"Ah, another one of you. Popping up every once in a while, panicked and confused, trying to get "home." But guess what, this is home now. Once you're here, you're here. "

"Aa... Uh... What? There must be a way out. What about the way I came from?"

"It's a one way street. You can come, but you can never go. And this is your future anyways. Your "home" will look exactly like this in a few years. There was color here once, the buildings were cared for, there was food to eat. Nowhere was always like this. This is caused by a change, and your world will go through it soon enough."

"So... this, this horrid place, is the future of my world?" I said in disbelief.

"Yes."

"No. There must be a way to stop it, to escape this place. TELL ME!" I said, driven mad in my panic.

"Well, there is one way."

"What? Tell me, I need to get out of here."

The woman reached into her bag and fumbled about for a while. Then, seeming to have found what she wanted, she looked up at me and beckoned for me to come closer with her finger.

"Serial number is filed off, so when you use it, it can't be traced back to me. This is no use to me, only to people of your world. They've made it so that we can't use them to escape anymore. We're forced to live it out," she explained as she handed me an object wrapped in cloth and scurried away.

I unwrapped it and dropped to my knees when I saw what she had given me. In my hands was a shining, grey revolver.

"No, no, no. There has to be another way," I said in horror.

Then, I heard a rustling behind me and saw that there were millions of shotguns, all floating and pointing at me. I ran, attempting to escape the awful truth, and they soared behind me, refusing to let me go. I ducked into an alley and slid behind a box, breathing heavily.

There was silence, and it appeared that they were gone. I closed my eyes and let myself relax, until I heard the sound of the safety on a gun clicking off and I swallowed as I opened my eyes and found myself staring down the muzzle of a shotgun. There was no escape, and if I didn't do it to myself, the gun would do it for me.

I looked at the revolver in my hand and raised it to my head. I felt the cold metal press to my temple and closed my eyes in one last moment of peace and aloneness as I pulled the trigger, releasing my freedom into my head as my mind finally went to black...