She bites down onto the stale black bread, ripping a large piece off with her plaque stained teeth. The bread is hard to swallow, but she forces it down. She continues to bring the bread to her mouth using her right hand while her left arm hangs down limply.

As she devours the bread, her eyes are fixed on the entrance of the alley. Fear could be seen in her anxious grey pupils. If the lady finds her, she wouldn’t know what to do. Everytime she hears footsteps walking past the entrance of the alleyway, she would feel her heart stop. Only when the footsteps fade from her ears would her heartbeat return.

Never would Emma have imagined that she would be in such a situation, hiding in an alleyway while eating a stolen piece of stale bread.

She feels despair for her current situation.

Before this, Emma was a happy girl. She grew up living a normal life. She was an only child, living with annoying but loving parents. Her friends were a bit weird, but within the range of what people expect as a normal weird. Her grades in school were slightly above average. She worried about her weight like many other girls her age, but she still loved to eat nonetheless

So, why is she in a dirty corner of an alleyway while hiding and eating stolen food?

***

Earlier today, she woke up as the sun peeked out from the horizon. She felt the chilling morning wind blow across her skin. When she tried to hug her body, she felt pain course through her left arm. Emma endured the pain by clenching her teeth, waiting for the pain to subside.

She looked down at the arm and sees a big dark purple bruise. This is where the pain originated from.

Emma’s eyes stared at the arm. At first it was because she wondered where the bruise came from, but then she noticed something. She was looking down at a thin arm of a child. The skin was tan from the constant exposure from the sun. The arm was so thin that she could see the outline of the bone underneath her dry rough skin. This caused her to be confused. This was her arm? Was she dreaming?

She looked around. Her body was laying outside, in an alley. A rat froze as Emma’s eyes landed on it. The rat’s beady black pupils made eye contact with her before it quickly scurried into a dark corner of the alley. Emma jolted as she saw the rat move. This disturbed her left arm which made her feel a dull pain.

Her eyes swept around again, making sure there isn’t anything else before her tense body finally relaxes.

This felt too real to be a dream. But Emma doesn’t believe that this is reality. It couldn’t be. She remembers that she fell down the stairs at the subway station. She was with her friend, Decker, and they were heading towards the new ice cream crepe place.

But the situation that she was in at the moment confused her. She didn’t know what to think until it dawned on her that there’s a possibility that she’s in a coma. Maybe this dream was so deep and real because she’s currently in a coma. She has never heard of it happening before, but it could be possible.

So how does she wake up?

She kept telling herself to wake up. She pinched herself and even moved her arm to feel pain, but it’s to no avail. She noticed that nothing she was doing worked, so she eventually stopped.

Would she dream forever? She could picture her body laying in a hospital bed, aging as time past.

Surprisingly, Emma didn’t panic. She only felt sadness when thinking about her parents. They loved her so much, always spoiling her. They were annoying at times, but Emma knew that they only cared for her. She couldn’t help as tears welled up in her eyes and trailed down her cheeks.

When her emotions calmed down, she finally noticed she was shaking from hunger. Her stomach was giving off an unbearable feeling. Even if this is a dream, she couldn’t endure the torture of being starving.

She slowly walked towards the entrance of the alley, both cautious and curious about what’s beyond it.

What she saw was stalls lining a wide path. Only a few people were walking around. As they pass the alley entrance, they would give her a glance before moving on.

She stepped out of the alley and looked around for food. Emma walked pass a few stalls until her eyes landed on one that sold bread. The basket only had two loaves left. They were black and looked unappetizing to eat. Emma looked at it and questioned how edible the bread was. But she knew that she needed to eat something. The trembling of her hands was becoming increasingly worst.

She was going to call out to the lady behind the stall for the bread, but she realized that her body only has thin rags for clothes and had no money. But her hunger was intolerable. She was hesitant to steal. When the lady behind the food stall wasn’t looking, Emma acted without thinking further. Her body reacted and ran forward, snatching a loaf of black bread from the basket.

Emma turned to run away, but she heard the lady behind the stall yell, “Thief! Stop!” Emma was about to stop, but when she saw the lady coming at her with a knife, she ran as fast as she could back to the alley.

When she returned to the alley, she hid herself in a dark corner.

“Wake up. Wake up!” Emma mutters to herself, hoping to be released from this predicament.

She gripped onto the bread regretting her actions. But what has been done can’t be undone.

The past can’t be changed. Now is the present.

She bites down onto the stale black bread, ripping a large piece off...