Dr. Mallard's Diary: Entry 10

There is a field by a road near where I live. You wouldn’t know it was there, sequestered by these high concrete walls and barbed wire. There was just a single small gate, through which you could see it: That long stretch of untamed land. There the grass grows high and unbothered, swallowing anything that would ever dare to pass through. A patch of wild in the middle of the city. 

It’s been there for as long as I can remember. There was a time I recall that they let us kids in through the gate for a moment, just at the field’s edge, to catch grasshoppers. They’d never let us any further. But neither did I want to. There was something that felt inherently wrong about reaching into those tall blades. This place was old. It was here long before I was born. Probably before my parents were even born too. I bet they didn’t dare touch the grass either.
But I came close a few nights ago.
I was on my nighttime commute home, kicking the dust up on the black asphalt. There were very few cars that late at night, so I was just there, kickin up moonlight in the middle of the road. My house was just around the bend, a little ways past the gate.
I would have normally been home quite quickly, if I hadn’t caught a bit of movement from the corner of my eye. There was something swaying in the wind.
I stopped and approached. I could see it right through the bars of the gate: A balloon, tied to a blade of grass. It was one of those strange offbrand cartoon balloons too. Kind of like the Minions’ weird cousin. Normally such a thing would have been funny to me. But here in the dark, in the moonlight, I felt something prickling at the back of my neck. 

Now, if this were just a story I was writing, I, the persona, would be a huge dumb dumb and would have chanced jumping over the gate and taking the balloon.
However, I am not an idiot—at least in that sense of the word. 

I ran home. Because clearly that was a trap. A faerie trap. 

Now, you’ll find traps like these all over the place, scattered around your life. Be it an inexplicably small door in your cellar, or a box you’re sure you never placed, or a suspicious voice from round the corner, or that haunted house at the end of the street. If you’re lucky, perhaps they really do lead to nowhere and that logic and reason will prevail. Your inner child is dead and they have no use for you. Or, if you have the strength of spirit and a fire inside that could burn for multiple generations, then you might have the adventure of a lifetime, with stories to tell for ages. But, really, who do you think you are?

No, if you’re smart, you run. You remember but you don’t hold on. If you see their traps, they see you too. Remember, there’s usually only one person left to tell these kinds of nasty stories. And it’s usually the ones who aren’t in it.