CARMEN
After LuLu said they’d added something to me, everything just went quiet. It seemed that even the forest itself took a pause.
She didn’t say it was around me— she said it was inside me.
My thoughts stalled out, like they didn’t know where to land. They added something? What does that even mean? Added what? Is it alive? Is it hurting me? Am I supposed to be walking around like some messed-up version of that movie Alien?
None of it made sense. And to be frank, she wasn’t helping.
If anything, she got worse.
She was incredibly vague. When she spoke now, it felt like she was being extra careful not to reveal whatever the heck it was that seemed to scare her.
Then she just stopped—like the examination. She said that that was enough and that we needed to head back.
That was it.
T
