Elizabeth Rossi (11) | STAFF REPORTER
The hallucinations were the same as always. The same three-eyed felines and one too many winged birds slinking between the branches outside her window, singing away. Pollen and dust clouded the creases of her walls and furniture in a hydrodip smog. Her hands wove around the stem of one of the cocooned buds, too young to flower. The plant couldn’t help its innate hunger to spread, seemingly starved and equally as determined to leave no surface within the basement untouched.