Race the Darkness by Abbie Roads

slicked her vision, then skimmed down her cheeks, riding the wave of her jawbone to slip and slide down her neck. Gran had told her about this. About happy tears. They had both cried rivers and lakes in that room, but Gran—until she lost her mind—always reminded Isleen that happy tears happened too. And that they were chemically different from sad tears.
    Isleen could feel the difference. These tears were full of peace and grace. These tears cleansed the wounds Queen had made on her soul.
    The air became a visible thing—wavering and morphing into color and texture, as if an artist was painting the environment one feature at a time. Splotches of white swelled into the palest of blues, then intensified, and suddenly the blue separated from the white into a pristine sky, perfectly spotted by cotton-ball clouds.
    The atmosphere rippled and pulsed. Green smears speckled the ground, then sharpened and defined and became tall grass. White blossoms dotted the meadow, then some of them transformed into gold, some into vivid purple, and the grasses became fused with beautiful wildflowers. Small birds, some brown, some red, some strikingly yellow, flitted among the flowers. A winding path cut a swath through the meadow and made Isleen want to stroll along and just exist in perfect harmony with the beauty surrounding her. This place was her version of paradise, of heaven.
    A cloud slid away from the sun, and the entire landscape went to hyper-vivid color.
    Heat blasted the environment—startlingly unpleasant. Her pale skin burned underneath the glaring rays of the sun. For the first time, she noticed a carved wooden sign next to the meadow entrance.
    Prospectus Prairie Park.
    Something about that sign wasn’t right. It was more than the way the wood had faded to an indistinguishable shade between brown and gray. If she were in heaven, why would the sign be in disrepair?
    Expectation and anxiety staged an emotional upheaval. Gone were the feelings of bliss and rejuvenation. Her happy tears dried to salt crust. Malevolence crawled over her skin.
    A woman jogged past Isleen, so close their arms brushed. Isleen flinched from the invasion of space. The woman appeared completely oblivious to having sideswiped another human being. She just kept jogging, her body slender of muscle and form. She carried herself in a graceful way that reminded Isleen of a ballet dancer. Her mahogany hair was tied up in a perky ponytail that swished over her shoulders like a pendulum. Like a countdown. Like a warning.
    Inside Isleen’s body, something shifted and changed, but she couldn’t put an exact name on the sensation. Impending doom thundered through her blood vessels. She could taste menace in the air. She jogged after the woman. Only she didn’t want to jog after the woman. She told her legs to stop moving, but they didn’t listen.
    An entity held dominance over her, trapping her inside the rind of her skin, forcing her to be a mere observer to what was happening to her body. She pushed against the prison of her own flesh with the only weapon she had—her mind. Nothing. Panic ticked down her spine one vertebra at a time and then knifed her in the guts.
    Stop. Don’t do this to me. Let me go. Let me out. She screamed the words, but no sound came out and her body continued to run.
    Breath sliced into her lungs, shot out, in and out, but oxygen seemed to be in short supply because she couldn’t get enough. Her heart was a time bomb, ready to explode out of her chest from overexertion. Her legs wobbled, and a profound weariness smothered her. Still the thing at her controls continued to drive her. Sweat dripped into her eyes, stinging and making them water. But still her legs kept churning over the ground and the sun kept burning down.
    The woman jogged over a fat culvert that served as a bridge for a dry streambed. A troll-like figure emerged from inside the massive pipe. His face was thickly bearded, his hair