He bare feet felt the cool and wet tips of the wild and tall grass. She came here to get peace and quiet. Peace and quiet. It started off peaceful. Songs of owls and light chirps of crickets, engulfed her sleepy mind. But soon and slowly the voices came in. The voices rise around her almost as if the bodies of the dead had been sitting next to her to whole time. She tries to leave but soon the weeds and grasses seem to turn into hands, and she’s trapped. All the voices. All the voices. The trees come to life too. Tall and shouting, yelling at her to get over it, to move on. They call her names, she’s just a little girl. Go home they shout, live in your dollhouse. Go back to your perfect life.

No no no, she shouts. Her breathing gets heavy and feels as if her lungs have filled up with dark and murky mud. Her hands and nails covered in dirt and grass and old leaves. And it’s over. The voices gone. The trees are back as trees and their chilling voices turn into a cool breeze and whistling wind. It was all a nightmare?, she thinks. Was this real? She can’t help but regret coming here in the first place. She snuck out of her house to think but even deep in this old cemetery she still is screamed at.

She can’t even trust the winds anymore. She used to feel its soothing embrace, but now all she can sense is the sharp teeth of imaginary mouths shouting strings of insults through her body.

The walk home seems to be the only peace she’s had in weeks. Her body moving; it consumes her mind. She counts the lonely cars that pass her on the side of the road.

3 am. Her phone is dying and she is lost. She ran and ran. The cemetery long behind her, her home long behind her, and for a while she can just forget everything that town has made of her. The rusted town sign tells her she’s entered the neighboring town Whitesmith. It’s close, but it’s far enough that she can sit in a diner and forget the life she hates for a few hours.

She sits in the flat, plasticlike seats of the booth in Angela’s Diner. Home of the best coffee it says, she gets the coffee. She has 20 dollars. She’s always kept 20 dollars in her old jean jacket just in case, just in case. So she gets the toast. She sits in her booth alone with her coffee and toast and draws on the napkins at her table.

Her waitress, a sweet old lady with a folkish accent, checks up on her. Every now and then, the lady comments on the little doodles she has made all over the napkins. You can tell she is a mother. The way she looks and talks, almost as if she knows your whole story before you even have to tell it. No judgment.