No Place Like Home
The characters in this short story belong to L Frank Baum. The rest of the writing is all mine. I Sometimes I dream of Kansas. The vast grey desert touches the endless grey sky so you can hardly tell where they meet. So different from Oz with its bright colours and shining cities. It surprises me how much I miss it. My aunt and uncle’s lined faces smiling at me as we rose before dawn to do the chores. The way everything tasted of dirt. Not things you think you would miss. There really is no place like home. But I can never go home. II “Dorothy, are you awake?” He tries to sound casual, but I hear the tremor in his voice. The Scarecrow, the last of my friends. And even he fears me. I sit up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. They feel gritty, but everything feels gritty now. He’s smiling from the outside of my cell. Too scared to venture in. I can see from his face that it’s worse today. “It’s spreading faster now, isn’t it?” His refusal to reply is all the answer I need. I have no mirror...