Stocking Stuffer: Part 2 (Five-ish more sentences)

Part 1 here: https://theprose.com/post/401438/stocking-stuffer

Edith had a hard time keeping herself upright as she tumbled down, down, for what seemed like forever, but soon she did not know which way was up or which was down. The vortex that had swallowed her—which used to be her Christmas stocking! she reminded herself; or was it a creature inside her stocking?—was a writhing mass of gray vapor with an almost glutinous quality to it that Edith felt like she could reach out and touch, but when she extended her arm, the air seemed to be polarized against her and pulled backward like a magnet repelling from her skin.

She could not touch it, yet was suspended within as it carried her down an unseen pathway through space and time, and where it would spit her out, she had no way of predicting and she could not think past the horrifying thought that her parents had seemed curiously frozen the moment she’d stuck her hand down the sock. Had they planned this to happen? Edith began to think, but quickly shoved the thought away—her parents loved her very much and wouldn’t want to harm her, she was sure of that; they’d been planning out the perfect Christmas together at least since Thanksgiving, and said plans had been conspicuously absent from any mention of sentient stockings and spontaneous excursions through whirling wormholes.

Edith’s thoughts were cut short by the sudden sensation that the vortex was slowing down—not that she could see it happening, but the swirling against her arms and legs had lessened, and the dizziness in her head seemed to clear a bit—and after several minutes and some rapid blinking, she realized she could identify some actual shapes in front of her past the gray nothingness of the vortex.

~~~

I’m still not completely certain where this will take me, but I have some ideas, so I will probably post the next parts as they gradually reveal themselves to me in greater detail. Let me know if you want to be tagged in future installments. :)

Also, I posted this part in Fantasy, but it’s still to be decided whether fantasy or sci-fi would be a better genre. We shall see...