Forest
I'm sitting on a stump in the middle of the forest- or what used to a forest. What used to be my forest, where I would play with friends, climb trees, listen to the birds, sit and think- and now the forest-my forest-was gone. The once skyscraper-tall trees had been reduced to stumps. The twittering and chirping of the magnificent, beautiful, free birds was gone, and the chatter of the animals had been ceased. The green had left the forest- the yellow had taken over. The yellow brown of the once luscious green grass, the yellow of the horrific monsters-bulldozers and cranes and construction-that killed everything in its path, the yellow of the sunshine shining through, burning my face, because the shade of the trees isn't here to stop it. The trees that had taken millions of lifetimes to grow were gone because of the yellow that took it in one night.
"Excuse me," said a gruff voice from behind me that sounded rusty, like a smokers'. "I need you to get outta' this place because we're about to gas it."
I turned around and saw a big, burly man with overalls smoking a cigar.
I turned around and saw a big, burly man with overalls smoking a cigar.
"Gas it?" I asked tentatively, not sure what he meant, but already knowing it was bad.
"Yeah, gas it. We fill the forest with toxic gas so that all the animals will die, so we can build the mall here."
A thousand terrible thoughts rushed through my head. Those poor animals! It can't happen! It couldn't! It wouldn't! Deadly images danced through my brain of poor innocent creatures slowly suffocating from the fatal toxins that filled the atmosphere. Death everywhere. Tears streamed down my face as I opened my mouth and let out a silent scream. And that's when I fainted.
