I don’t remember much about before the crash. But I think I can remember some of it. I think there was a nice, big cushion that I was sitting on. It was… green. And soft, very soft.
And my mom was there too!
She didn’t get a cushion though.
She said that they weren’t nice enough to give her one. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t matter. It was dark in there, so I couldn’t see much. I remember hearing the groans of metal, and that smell. I asked my mom what it was. She said it was oil. I don’t know what oil is.
It was cold in the storage compartment. But my mom was warm. So warm. She held me tight while we sat waiting.
Mom said that we were hiding. I don’t know why, the people who came back there seemed nice. She told me that it was all a big game, and that the men in the suits found us, we would lose, and wouldn’t get to go the fun-place. I wanted to go to the fun place, so I sat still, and didn’t move a muscle. Every time they looked in the back room, Mom made us hide behind the crates. Behind the cages.
They were very big cages, like the kind an animal would be in,  with lots of scratches and thick metal bars.
There was nothing in them though.
I don’t know what kind of animal they would keep in them. But they smelled familiar.
We spent a really long time in the cold room. I waited with mom. I told her I was hungry. She didn’t have any food. She was hungry too. She found some though. It wasn’t very good, it smelled rotten inside. But I ate it anyways. I was very hungry.
More people started coming back to where we were hiding. They looked scared. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I wasn’t scared though. My mom was there to protect me.
One day there was a lot of lights. And a lot of noise. The lights were red. They flashed and twirled, and were very bright. I remember horns and beeps and lots of yelling from up front. Mom told me that we can’t go up there, they can’t see us. They can never see us. WE would lose the game
The floor began to shake. It had shaken before, but never that much. I was scared then. Mom held me close. She said it would be alright.
She said to stay close to me, and no matter what happened,
To stay with her.
And to never, ever, ever leave her side.

I felt a big crash, and I remember seeing the big cage falling towards me. It almost crushed me, but my mom jumped in the way and pushed it back. I think it hurt her, but she didn’t show it. She didn’t want me to know. She wanted me to stay safe.
I felt water on my bare feet. It was leaking through the big doors behind us.
Suddenly there was a bright flash, and the door began to open up. Water seeped into the room faster now, and I got scared because I had never swam before. Mom told me to just stay with her, just stay with her, just stay-

BOOM!

The light from the sky hurt my eyes, and the cold, cold wind blew at me. It was kicking up even more water, the room was filling up so fast that it was like it was sinking. The boxes around us started floating out, and I saw a big, yellow…. Thing…. floating in the distance. There were people in the water yelling, they were screaming but they couldn’t say anything, the water was over their heads, and one by one, me and mom watched them go under.
They didn’t come back up.
I told mom that I was scared.
She told me that it was all part of the game.
I said that I didn’t want to play this game any more.
She was holding me as the water went swirling around us.
She kept a hold on me. She was warm. Very warm. It  got very dark.

But when I woke up, it wasn’t dark anymore. And she wasn’t warm anymore, either.

Mom was still holding on to me. She was sleeping, I knew she was, most of the time when we were in the room she would sleep. We weren’t in the room anymore though. I didn’t know where we were. It was very sunny, more than whatever would shine through the windows of the room of the “plane.” Mom said it was a plane. I didn’t know what a plane was.
There was a little wind that came through and blowed the long bars. They had big green fluffs at the tops that looked like pillows. I think they were trees, my mom told me about them too. The ground was soft and squishy too, just like my pillow. I rolled around in it and chased the flap-flaps in the water. They were shiny, and darted back and forth. It was hard to catch them.
After a while, I decided to go back to mom. She was still sleeping, so I let her be. I didn’t want to make her angry.
But then I started getting hungry. I couldn’t find anything to eat, so I just curled up beside her and slept.
It was days before anyone found us.
I remember hearing a sound. I looked around and saw a small little man walking down the beach. I recognised him from the plane. He had come back and looked for us a couple times before. I didn’t know if he was still playing the game with us, so I hid behind a big rock. Mom was still sleeping, so I tried to wake her, but she wouldn’t get up. So I just left her. She probably just needed some more sleep.
The man went over to mom first. He didn’t seem very friendly. He was holding a stick in his fand really weirdly, and poked it at her. I didn’t think he knew that she wasn’t playing the game anymore. So I decided to jump out and surprise him. That seemed like it would be fun!
But he didn’t look like he was having fun. He looked scared. He looked hungry. He looked at me, and threw the stick towards me. It missed me, but I realized what he was doing. He wanted to play a new game! So right away, I picked up the stick,
Aimed,
And threw it back at him.
He caught the stick too!
But not with his hands, the silly, strange man caught it with his stomach. He fell over and went to sleep. What a weird thing to do, falling over and sleeping in the middle of a game. I thought it to be quite rude.
And so I sat for even longer. I wish that the man would wake up, so we could play some more. I decided that I had waited long enough, and so I began to explore. I went along the big sandy beach, and walked in the water. I must have walked forever, and I hardly found anything. I did find something to eat though. A couple sky-flap-flaps went and landed right in front of me. I was so hungry that I just decided to eat them. They weren’t too hard to catch, they were dancing really weirdly with rocks tied around their bodies. The feathers got caught in my teeth.

After days and nights and days and nights I finally found some other people.
They had built a shack out of the fluff from the trees, and some shiny rocks that looked like the floor of the plane. There was a big fire, with flap-flaps on sticks. I don’t know why they need to do that, they taste good enough raw. When I was walking over to the shacks, I tripped over a mound of rocks. They smelled funny, like a person. I kept walking towards the people, they were waving at me! They had big sticks in their hands, so I knew that they were ready to play the new game. They started throwing the sticks at me, so I picked them up and threw them right back. It was so much fun! But then they started running into the trees.
Soon, they were all gone, and I was alone again. I took some of their flap-flaps off of the fire, so they wouldn’t burn. They strangely went missing after that, I don’t know where they went, but I’m sure that they must have tasted good. Even better cooked than raw, maybe. But I wouldn’t know.
I started walking back to where mom and the other man were.
When I got there, they were still sleeping.
But something was different.
Mom wasn’t all there, there was little bits of her missing. She was stained red in those spots, and there was little specs flying around her, with sky-flap-flaps pecking at her body.
I yelled at them to get away, and ran to her. I started crying, and told her to wake up. She had to wake up, she had to!

But she didn’t wake up.
And I think I realized then, she never was going to.
I started to cry.
I cried for days.
I just couldn’t stop crying.
I cried for so long, that I got hungry again.

The man was still sleeping, well not sleeping, there, and the birds had already pecked at most of him too.
No one would know.
No one would see.

I put his clothes in a sandy pile, and put them by the trees.

I didn’t want the birds to come back and bother mom any more, so I started to dig a hole. I dug and dug, and eventually I made a hole just barely big enough for Mom. I dragged her into the sand, and one last time, I put myself in her arms. The last hug she ever gave me.
After I finished burying her in the sand, I think I noticed that it was getting dark.

It was lonely in the dark. I missed mom, but I couldn’t stay with her. I had to go find those people from the plane. Maybe they could play with me. Maybe they could have even fixed mom!
With that thought in my mind, I rushed really fast to their shack. It didn’t take too long, I was going really, really, really, really fast! Faster than anything ever!
I didn’t want to ruin our game, so when I saw the light from their fire, I decided to sneak through the trees to them.

I slowly crept through the bushes, hiding just like mom had taught me on the plane. I got really close to their shack, and I saw that they were all gathered around the fire eating sky-flap-flaps. I remember them talking about a rescue coming for them, and I got confused. What’s a rescue? Is it friendly? Does it like to play games?
I accidentally stepped on something, and it snapped right in half. The people all turned and looked towards the trees I was hiding in. They started talking about the bushes.

“Sam, I think that there’s something in the bushes.”
“You don’t say! Why aren’t you the cunning little bugger, Max!”
“You don’t need to be sarcastic, that thing could be back.”
“What’s the matter, scared of a little lizard?”
That thing wasn’t a lizard, and it certainly wasn’t little. Whatever it was, is, we need to be careful.
Scared it’s gonna get your girlfriend?

The girl next to him was looking pretty embarrassed, and I think Max was too. It was hard to tell with the fire. So I started creeping closer.

“SEE! There’s more rustling over there, it’s probably back, and maybe those other ones too. We should get inside.”
“Quit being a baby, Sammy’s gonna protect the both of you from this big-”

I knew that they could see me, since they were talking about me, so I decided to surprise them. So I got ready to jump out and scare them.

“-ol-”

I got ready to jump, and-

“-scary-

“SURPRISE!” I yelled at them, with a great big smile on my face!

“LIZARD!”
“EVERYONE GET TO THE PLANE!”

Sam must have been really surprised, because he fell backwards right into the fire! He got up and started running towards the water. I knew I had to help him, so I ran after him into the water.

“Sam! It’s coming after you! Get to the plane!”
“I don’t know if you noticed Max, but I’m currently ON FIRE!”
“DO YOU WANT TO BE CURRENTLY DIGESTING!”

Sam started running back to the metal-rock shack, and jumped inside, locking the door. The other two people started banging on the door. They were all yelling at eachother.

“SAM LET US IN, IT’S STILL OUT HERE”
“Thank goodness some water!”
“SAM, THAT’S NOT WATER, I PULLED THAT FROM THE ENGINE, IT’S GASO-”

BOOM!

The plane exploded into a big ball of fire. The other two people got thrown back. The girl was limping away, and the man looked hurt too. I didn’t think Sam was alright, so I went over to try and help. The two people just started screaming, and I started ripping at the metal of the burning shack.
Some other people must have heard the explosion, because they came running out of the woods. Two of them, and they looked just like me and mom. But for some reason, they ran right past me and went straight for Max. They must have tried to help him, but he was struggling so much that he accidentally got stabbed. In the throat. By a mouthful of teeth. He tried to say something, but it sounded really gurgled, like his lungs were being ripped out. Something about “Ri’ ‘bove you?”
I looked up and didn’t see anything, but I looked down, and saw the two other people ripping into the girl.

When they were finished, they looked up to me. They couldn’t talk, and they were smaller than me, but I knew that they wanted to be friends. It was in their eyes. I knew right then and there that I had found a new family.

Mom was right.
I was going to go to the happy place.