There I sat, in complete darkness. I didn’t know how long I had been sitting there. Minutes? Hours? Days? I only sat there, upright, with the others, waiting to be chosen. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, I felt myself being lifted and tossed into a bag. I could hear the murmur of voices as I was carried out the door. The cool air of a fall day came to me gradually, blocked by layers of paper, cardboard, and plastic. I was being lifted again, and the crinkle of a wrapper filled the box we were enclosed in. The rest happened in slow motion: the fingers touching the flap, the package slowly opening, the sudden brightness that surrounded my comrades and me. We were almost squirming with anticipation, awaiting the moment one of us was selected. I felt light pressure on my sides, and I was slid out of the package, breathless. I had been chosen! I had only heard of what had happened to the chosen ones. We were all chosen eventually, but the first picked was considered the bravest. No one had returned to tell the story of what happens beyond the wrapper. Slowly, the silver paper I had been clothed in was extracted from my green body. Squished between two fingers, I stared up at a young girl’s face. She raised her hand to her open mouth, and I was, once again, shrouded in darkness. For a split second, I thought, this isn’t so bad. The split second after that, however, I was attacked from all directions. I was smashed between two things, the darkness so thick that I couldn’t make out what they were. I was chomped and chewed and stretched over and over again, distorting my once rectangular shape. Pain surged through me in an endless cycle of munching and masticating. Every now and then a hint of brightness would shine through the girl’s parted lips. Only then would I see the light glinting off the vicious white things, and a flash of silver would occasionally reveal itself from the front of the girl’s mouth. Eventually, the pain became distant, simply a numb aching, and I got used to it. In fact, I liked being pulled around like that. It would stretch me as far as I would go, and it would almost feel nice. Then, suddenly, the girl did something different. I was being pulled over the pink blob sitting at the bottom of her mouth, and she put it against the inside of her lips. A burst of air came from her throat, and I was growing, growing, growing… until I had expanded to a large green bubble. The view was amazing: a panoramic scene of kids, sitting at tables. They were staring at a white rectangle with red and black markings on it. I was just looking at the lady in the front of the room, when my vision exploded- literally. A popping sound filled the air and I was pulled back into the girl’s mouth. That was intriguing. I hope she does that again, I thought. I heard a muffled voice, which I guessed was coming from someone nearby. A moment later, I was falling, without warning, into a black bin. I lay there, misshapen, among what I guessed was other trash. A tissue, a crumpled piece of paper, a broken pencil, and what looked like a fake fingernail sat beside me. There I laid for what, again, seemed like a lifetime, covered in recent waste thrown on top of me. Hands appeared above me and tied the trash bag together. So there I sat, once again, in complete darkness.