The cold wind scraped across her cheeks as Cassie Conway stared up in amazement at a street lamp.
She had always wondered what a street might look like at night. Empty and open and made up of patchworks of dark and light. Slowly, Cassie extended her hand and inched it into the circle of light the lamp provided, halfway illuminating her palm. She giggled, a strangled sound that clearly she had not made very often, before removing her hand from the light and slowly limping away.
The cold Vancouver air made her bare legs and arms sting, and it certainly didn't help the thick, clumsy slash across the inside of her forearm. It stung, but not worse than anything she'd felt before. She clutched the wound tighter against her already bloodstained hospital gown as she stumbled in only thin socks through the snow banks, leaving a trail of blood in the pure white. She could get out of the snow, but she refused to walk along the street. The snow would melt in the morning, muddling her DNA, but if she left her blood on the road, it would freeze and they would find her.
If she lost a toe or two to frostbite, so be it.
Finally, she came across the glass doors of a convenience store. Cautiously, she wiggled the handles of the door, hoping that they would easily open, but no such luck. She whimpered before quickly looking both directions. No one was around. Perfect.
She raised her eyes to the wires that clearly ran to the security cameras both inside and outside. They needed to go. Quick.
Slipping her long, pale fingers up towards the cables, she roughly tugged them out of the wall, crudely but effectively disabling them. Then she took out a long piece of wire from the disabled camera and worked clumsily at the lock before it gave way and opened the door.
The blonde teen fell through the door quickly, stumbling through the darkened halls in search of a bathroom. She spotted a sign just around the corner and stumbled over as quickly as she could.
Once she was inside she slammed the door behind her, locking it for good measure, turned on the lights and went over to the sink. She tripped over her blood soaked socks, nearly causing her chin to collide with the sink, but she caught herself just in time.
Shakily, Cassie raised her eyes up to the mirror. What looked back at her was unfamiliar, almost ghostly. She hadn't seen herself in a mirror for almost a year, and, unfortunately, things hadn't improved.
She ran her fingers over the undersides of her eyes. They were dark and deep in stark contrast to her too pale skin. Her blue eyes looked pale and scared. Her long blonde hair hung limp around her shoulders, unwashed and heavy. Even her nose looked odd, too sharp, almost like it could be used to poke someone's eye out. Every inch of her was only half real, half human.
Slowly, Cassie drew herself up and looked her reflection dead in the eyes.
"I- I am Cassie Con-Conway", she sputtered, feeling her throat scratch and protest against being used, "M-my name is Ca-Cassie Conway. I-I'm f-fifteen years old. I am n-not scared."
The name felt simultaneously foreign and familiar on her tongue. She'd never said it out loud, keeping the little piece of identity deep in her mind.
Satisfied but not entirely convinced, the teen nodded to her reflection before turning on the hot water tap in the sink. She quickly tugged her socks off and brought the foot that hurt worse up to the sink and under the stream of water. Her skin was bright red, but no toes had been lost, so that counted as a win. Her arms, however, were another story. The skin was a purple and black patchwork of shot veins. She probably shouldn't have ripped the IV's out as roughly as she did, but it was too late now.
As the water helped her blood circulate, she lifted her arm up to look over the wound. The cut was deep and clumsy. She hadn't really been paying attention to the pain as she did it, which she should be grateful for considering she had been using a pretty blunt razor. Nonetheless, it had left a thick, Y shaped wound, effectively making her tattoo useless.
She switched feet after a few minutes and then set to work washing her hair, rubbing and twisting the smell of iodine out. After all that, she turned back and made her way to the bathroom door. Carefully, she pushed the door open and checked her surroundings. She wouldn't be able to fight if anyone snuck up on her. Satisfied that the halls were empty, she tiptoed out into the halls. It hurt less to walk, so she padded barefoot across the linoleum floor.
The silence of the empty store was unfamiliar. It made her skin itch and her mind ache. Cassie had never known anything to be completely silent. There was always something. Whether it was the hum of machinery, the hammering of an MRI machine or the screams of children she never saw, there was always something.
Out of the corner of her eye, Cassie noticed a burst of color. She turned her head to see a pair of thick, rainbow colored socks hanging from a display. Transfixed, she slowly made her way over to the garments and ran the tips of her fingers over the knitting. The stripes of color stood in stark contrast to her nearly paper white fingers. She'd never seen something so colorful in her entire life.
Taking the socks down from their hook, she removed the tag with shaking fingers and tugged them onto her bare feet. The sights of something so bright and beautiful adorning her skin made her smile. Sparing another glance down at her feet, she continued to walk down to the clothing aisle.
Cassie spent the next few minutes changing into thick, warm clothes, discarding her bloody hospital gown and leaving it on the ground to be recovered later. Groaning, she relished in the soft fabrics easing their way over her skin. She moaned and giggled at the cotton of a bright blue shirt rustling over the bumpy scars that littered her torso. She managed to gather three jackets, two shirts, two pairs of jeans and hiking boots. Needing a place to keep her extra garments, she snatched a backpack off the wall and stuffed them towards the bottom.
She rolled up her sleeves as she navigated the aisles around her. Next, she filled the backpack with essentials: a water bottle, gloves, protein bars, tampons, extra underwear. She needed to disappear.
"Hey!"
Cassie spun around, tripping and falling onto the ground. Her sore tailbone screamed in protest as she collided with the ground. She looked up to see a security guard shining his flashlight in her face, nearly blinding her. He was holding onto her hospital gown, the blood smearing onto his fingers.
"Kid, is this yours?", he asked nervously, holding up the blood soaked gown.
Cassie whimpered, pulling herself up off the ground. She tried to open her mouth, to say something, but the words weren't coming out.
The guard's eyes widened as he took in the girl in front of him. From her bruised face and bleeding arm to the multiple dark, botched track marks in her neck, he seemed to be putting a few pieces together.
"Are your parents…", he continued, stepping closer and indicating her wounded arm, "Did they… did somebody do something to you?"
Cassie quickly slapped her hand over the wound, ignoring the sting as she did. She choked on her words, still unable to speak. She hadn't spoken to a real person in… well, her whole life.
"Is that a tattoo?", he asked, shocked. He had clearly seen what was under her cut. Shit.
"How about I call the police", the man said gently, beginning to look far out of his depth, "And they can-"
"No."
The man blinked in surprise. Clearly he hadn't thought she could speak, and he was surprised at the way she spoke. Cassie couldn't blame him. Her voice was scratchy, high pitched, and disjointed. It might even be funny if Cassie wasn't so scared. "Kid, I don't really have a-"
"N-no", Cassie stuttered, her shaking hands wringing together and smearing the blood over her fingers, "I c-can't let them- I can't l-let them know w-where I am."
She ran through every possible scenario in her mind. A missing girl, blonde, erratic. It was so obvious that it was deadly. The second the report hit any police database she would be caught. Even if he didn't turn her in, he would tell someone what he had seen. Someone would say something to someone else and word would find its way back to…
Her head began to pound, her thoughts buzzing together and becoming blurry. Her brain was moving too fast. She pressed her hands firmly against the side of her head, fingers tangled in her hair as she tried to control her breathing like the doctors had told her too when her mind worked too quickly.
"I can help you, just-"
"Can't g-go back", she continued, the world becoming hazy around her and she began to smack herself in the head, trying to get the world to stop feeling so blurry. Why did it have to hurt this bad? "I w-won't go b-back. I won't. I c-can't. I won't."
Her heart was slamming so hard in her chest she thought it might leave a bruise and her brain felt like it was on fire. Her entire body began to violently shake. She kept muttering under her breath, little phrases that had worked when she was a child. She shook, pacing around and hitting herself in the head. Her hits became more violent in an attempt to quell the burning feeling and she felt like her breath was being blocked, chest imploding.
"Hey, kid! Calm down, just-"
Cassie felt his hand snake around her arm and she let out a loud, piercing scream.
SMACK!
Cassie froze when she saw the security guard tumble to the ground, a bright red handprint on his cheek, matched with four scratch marks. Before he reached the ground, his head hit the edge of a shelf holding packages of gauze, followed by a sickening crunch. She screamed into her hands, trying to muffle the sound.
Horrified, Cassie backed away as she saw blood beginning to spill from his wound.
"I didn't…", she sputtered, tears streaming down her face in horror, "I didn't m-mean to…"
She kept her eyes on the guard, hoping that he might twitch, move a little. But no. His cranium had been cracked open, frontal lobe visible even through the thick blood clotting in his hair. She wanted to touch it, see if she could unspool such an intricate puzzle. She used to love puzzles...
Cassie slapped herself hard across the face, bringing herself back to reality. This wasn't a puzzle, this wasn't the Playroom. Things were real now, and she couldn't hide anymore.
Wasn't that what she wanted?
Now completely sobbing, Cassie shakily ripped the gown from the man's limp grasp and whipped her head around, looking for anything to cover the man's body. It's what people did when someone died, right? She had no clue, just a few stolen ideas from far away conversations, but it was the right thing to do. Noticing a roll of tin foil to her right, she grabbed it and desperately rolled half the roll out. The material crackled as she lay it over the old man's body.
Still sobbing and now bruised from her self inflicted punishment, Cassie snatched her backpack off the ground before running out of the store. She slammed her body into the door, ripping it open as fast as possible. The cold hit her again, but this time she was protected. But how long could that really last?
The world was cold and dark. The air hurt and the silence made her head throb. There was nowhere for her to go, so Cassie Conway did what she did best: she disappeared.