Nostalgia filled me as I thought back to my old life. One without constant lament for loved ones that I knew would never come back. One without the drugs fed to me to keep me alive. One without emaciated children wandering the streets, looking for more food to eat.
I was an average person. Alright, maybe an average person with lower than average luck. I was a good student though, so my misfortune never really showed through. I was careful to steer away from activities that required luck such as card games or picking out of a hat. It was when my sister somehow persuaded me to play online mahjong, where my life really took a turn.
Unlike all my life, I excelled at it. The tiles were flying to my hand and I kept on winning. However, with my constant winning streak, and my family being elated on how I had finally found a hobby, I knew that something dreadful would happen soon.
And indeed, something did happen.
My regular routine of walking home with my friends was suddenly interrupted by screaming and shouting on the streets. People were collapsing, cars were veering off the road, and people were being run over. My friends had done what the remaining, still conscious, crowd was doing and ran in a random direction. With my curiosity unsatisfied, I sprinted into where the destruction seemed to be the worst. With numerous bodies, blazing fire, colossal pieces of rubble, and some lingering explosions on the ground, I wondered how I had walked though such pandemonium and not been injured in the slightest. I put it that my good luck might have not run out yet until I saw the silhouettes of four, burly looking men sauntering steadily towards me with one slightly more slender man in the middle.
The leader, or who I presumed to be the leader, was a man with white hair and had a svelte figure. His lackeys followed him, walking in an arrow like formation.
"Ah, look! We found our first one!"
"She's kind of cute too... Look at that cherubic face of hers'."
"She's alone, this'll be easy."
Wait, what? I continued to study the men who were slowly closing in on me, and suddenly noticed the clothes they were wearing.
I would have punched myself if I wasn't in such a serious situation.
The strangers were all wearing something similar, with the man that I had dubbed the 'leader' having some more flare to his. They were uniforms. They were part of an organization.
They were invading us.
My mind, suddenly comprehending what I should have realized earlier, told me to run, yet, I couldn't move. My feet were rooted to the ground and shaking in fear. These men had swords on them. Very sharp looking too if I had to say, and I was not looking to be a human shish kabob any time soon. My brain, calculating possible ways to escape my predicament, came up with the next best solution, which made me chagrin.
I had to surrender and give in to whatever their demands were.
Whatever these men had wanted, was not to harm me. They hadn't drawn their swords and I had no where else to run. Putting my hands above my head, I stood still and waited for whatever would come next.
"Aww… I had been hoping for more of a fight…" and with that, their 'leader' suddenly jumped high above my head, higher than what any normal human should be able to do, and I felt a swift chop to the base of my neck, causing me to fall into unconsciousness.
When I had woken up, hoping everything was just a bad nightmare, I stared at a cement ceiling. Knowing that my house walls were not made of cement and certainly didn't smell of stale water, I looked around to find a crowd all dressed in similar attire to mine. The group was entirely made of children who looked to be under fourteen years old and all were extremely haggard looking. I later found my friends in the same shelter that I found myself in and the only thing that stopped us from rejoicing in jubilation was the news that the world had been taken over by a virus and the only ones immune to it were children under fifteen and the new vampire race. We were now livestock, only here because our blood supply was needed for the vampires to feed.
In this hell-like world, I had found little solace. The walls of the building caved in on us. Escape wasn't possible, the exit was past a maze where only the nobles had the map. One of my friends, Mika, had recently become a sycophant in hopes of helping his family of orphans get by with some better food. It wasn't a bad idea, but my pride just wouldn't allow such a thing.
Many years passed, and with most of my family and friends gone, I eventually moved in with Mika's family. Then, one day, he thought of a crazy idea of how to escape. Yuu, Mika's sullen and brash friend, wholeheartedly believed in this plan and had gotten the children's hopes up. We could escape. We could leave this place, no more drab, grey walls; no more bitter medicine; no more regulations. We could return home, to where we ought to be. We ate our last meal, quite a delectable one at that, and left the cage that I had been in for three years.
We saw the whitewashed walls and the entire group started running. Not wanting to waste so much energy, I walked slowly after the children. I was going to be free. We were going to be free. After three long years of imprisonment, we would finally get out of this jail of ours.
Then I saw it.
The figure hidden by the shadows, the wicked smile on his face, the lithe man dressed in the clothes of the nobles.
The 'leader' I had seen all those years ago.
"NO!" I screamed, but it was too late.
The white room was stained in the one color that I hated. The fiery crimson red splattered the walls and ground. Finally, he came in front of me. I knew it was the end. Escape was something too good for us. We would never achieve it. I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst.
"RUN! Yuu, Tsubasa, I'll distract him! You two get out of here!" Was that Mika's voice? It was wasn't it? I saw his blond mop of hair from the corner of my eyes and stared as more red appeared in my vision. My sight became blurred as I ran. I caught the only other boy who was standing and pulled him toward the exit. He was too distraught to tell what was going on, and for that I was thankful; had he put up a fight, I don't know what I would have done.
I couldn't see, but I knew we were out when I felt the frigid air against my face.
Was this snow? I'd… forgotten what it felt like. When I finally blinked the tears from my eyes, the sight took my breath away. A silvery moon shone brightly above with the many stars of the galaxy surrounding it.
"Tsubasa," I recalled a long forgotten, poignant, memory, "do you want to know why we gave you this name? It means wing: the wings to fly away with when you are trapped. When a captured birds grows wiser, it tries to open its cage with its beak. Use your wings fly wherever you wish. You can never be caged, my little fledgling."
So... I may or not continue this... It's gonna depend on what other people think. I had this weird urge to write this so wala! Hope you enjoyed it, tell me what I should do to fix or to improve my writing. And I know, the name of my OC is bad. But honestly, I didn't really know how to end this without an ending like this one.
Review if you want, I'm not a stickler for those kinds of things.