Vines and Thorns

Where was I anyway?  I had stepped through the portal into a world that certainly wasn’t Heaven, but certainly was not the world I knew.  As I looked around, a feeling of fear started rising in my body.  Questions began popping into my head like little electrical fires.  Would I ever be able to get back to the world I knew? Why wasn’t there anyone else here? Who was taking care of my husband?  Will they be kind to him?  Will they be patient with his needs? How long would he be without me?  The sensation of fear made its way up to my neck and gripped it tightly.  My mind continued to reel with all the horrible possibilities. Would I die here? Would my husband have to go through the pain of losing his wife on top of being so ill?  Was I already dead in that world?  One question birthed another, filling my brain.  I felt the grip I thought I had on my sanity and reality loosening.  The feeling of utter dread washed over me as a new thought dawned...I was having a panic attack on this side of the portal, alone.

As if panic attacks weren’t scary enough in the world I came from, now I was in a completely unfamiliar place with no other human life.  My heart raced and my breath shortened.  Trying to keep my balance, I put my hands on my knees and looked to the right.  Something was moving on the forest floor about twenty yards away.  It started snaking and crawling its way toward me, faster and faster until it jumped up in front of me!  It was a horrible looking creature made of vines and bramble standing as tall as a watch tower.  It had hollowed out eye sockets and a large round mouth on its bark-like face.  Its two vine arms shot out at my ankles like whips, smacking and wrapping themselves around my legs.  Its thorns scraped and burned their way up my skin, stopping just at my collarbone.  The sheer weight of the vines knocked me to the ground.  As I lay flat on my back, the creature looked down into my face, screamed an unearthly scream, and spawned more vines.  From out of the creature’s trunk, these secondary vines dove quickly and deeply into the dirt like giant worms, crisscrossing tightly over me, anchoring into the ground.  I couldn’t move.  I couldn’t speak.  I could barely breathe.  All I could do was look up...