“Alice,” I cried, desperation in my voice, “where are you?”
But only deafening, painfully so, silence all around me.
Could she, in the blink of an eye, have disappeared and how?
Do things like this happen in real life, I thought only in the movies.

Early evening it had been and we were sitting quietly drinking tea.
Faint glow in the sky as the sun slowly sank beyond the horizon.
Gathering storm clouds billowed like manic riders across the sky.
Hideous screams rent the night and sudden lightning flashes.

I could see nothing. I had been temporarily blinded by the brightness.
Just as I was beginning to panic my sight started to slowly return.
Knowing that there was something amiss was almost instant.
Left of me there was a tree with a red trunk and black spikes on it.

Moreover from this tree were hanging small animals with green fur.
Nothing else that I could see resembled anything that I was familiar with.
Only then I suddenly realised that nowhere could I see Alice.
Panic took hold of me , I am ashamed to say, and I called out for Alice.

Questions kept racing around in my mind but not one could I answer.
Round and round my thoughts did go but no solution’s ending.
So there forlornly I sit in a foreign land, reality has left me stranded
There’s no way, sense to make, for sanity has surely left me.

Under my feet I can feel the ground, there’s movement like a heartbeat.
Very faint and very soft there is sound, a bit like angels singing.
What does it all mean? As I pondered everything around me changed.
X-ray, that’s what it reminded me of. Shades of gray and see through.

“You will be alright. Don’t move, the ambulance is on its way.”
“Zaria is my name and I will look after you until it gets here.”