Losing Wendy: A Dark Fantasy Peter Pan Retelling (The Lost Girl Series Book 1)

by T.A. Lawrence

“Oh, Wendy Darling. Have you forgotten?” The shadows circumvent me in a playful dance, resuming their taunting demeanor. “You’re already mine.”

A tutor once told me that humans receive more pleasure from anticipating an event than from the event itself. I can’t help but wonder if anticipation and terror share this phenomenon.

I’m not one to placate the mentality that just because this world is a cruel and unjust place, we should take it lying down while we wait for others to change.”

But to possess cowardice and call it meekness is a different sort of deception entirely.”

“Don’t worry, Darling,” says the Shadow Keeper. “I don’t like the idea of those men touching you.”

Just how far into the shadows are you willing to trail me, Wendy Darling?”

All my life, I thought it was the scaling I was grasping for. All my life, I’ve been wrong. Sidling up to the precipice, too afraid to grasp what my heart truly desired. I’ve been scaling, thinking the top of the mountain was what I sought. When all I ever truly wanted to do was jump. Fall. Plummet.

To stare down my future and feel the thrill rather than the fear. It lasts for a few seconds and an entirety. A moment frozen—no, separate—from time. Like the space distinct from time I’ve always searched for in my bed, not wanting to wake from my slumber.

Some people are brave naturally. Others of us have just enough courage for one shot, and even then our voices shake with trepidation, never quite loud enough to be heard over the bustle of a world that’s bolder than we are.

“Did I rescue you, Wendy Darling? Or did I steal you away?”

I wonder then how often the people whose smiles wash away our pain are only masking their own, overexerting themselves to make sure everyone else is okay, when inside, they’re withering away while no one else notices, too caught up in their own problems.