Chapter 10: My Loneliness
The day was cloudy and dark. Blue sky was non-existent, and grey clouds and howling winds filled the air. A small young girl was sitting at the top of a large hill, underneath a well-grown tree. She held her head in confusion and in fear. She wore a dark cherry red tank top, stained in places with an even darker red. One of the straps dangled around her arm, the other well supported on her shoulder. Her midriff was visible from her clothing. She wore a long, also dark cherry red, skirt, which flowed all the way down to her ankles. She wore bands of fabric around her ankles, her wrists and her neck. Everything she wore was lined with red lace. Her feet were bare and muddy.
"T-This place… what is this place?" She whispered to herself, shaking. "This place is horrible… I-I hate this place, I want to go home!"
The girl began to cry, and the sky began to cry as well. Her clothes quickly became wet, but the stains did not wash out. She clutched her head tight, scared and alone. The only thought running through her mind was the vision she had seen when she had arrived…
An Hour Earlier…
"Wow… this world is amazing! There's so much life, and color in this world, just like ours…" Spoke the girl, admiring the beauty around her. She twirled a little in excitement, and sang a special song to herself, the words in a different, almost gibberish language. "It's so pretty and—"
Her words were cut off by something she had seen. A man, tied to a tree, with three other men around him. She stood behind a different tree nearby, watching the group and listening to them carefully. The three men were all of different heights, holding different objects in their right hands and holding different coloured books under their left arms.
"So, you think you can get away with trying to tell our secret, do you?" Spoke the smallest of the three men, smacking a baseball bat across the palm of his hand, grinning menacingly.
"No! I don't know what you're talking about!" He pleaded, but was struck in the face by the baseball bat with great force, causing bleeding in his mouth and nose, which dribbled out on his face.
"You see… our plans are in jeopardy because of you, and we have to make sure you won't be snitching on us." Said the second and middle-sized man, wielding a short, silver knife.
"But I don't know what's going on! I was just looking for someone; I'm not trying to spy on anything!" Cried the roped man, confused and afraid. The man rose his hand up and stabbed the knife into his right arm, dragging it through and tearing his whole arm open, with blood pouring out almost endlessly. The man began to cry and scream, and the girl behind the tree's eyes shrunk in terror.
"We don't need to do anymore, just promise that you'll keep your mouth shut… or I'll have to kill you." Spoke the third, and biggest of all the men, in the deepest voice of them all.
"Please stop… I have a wife… a-and children and they need me…" He cried, barely able to speak from the pain.
"Then promise us you'll keep quiet…"
"But… I don't even know what I'm being quiet about! I didn't see anything! I just—" The man tied up kept pleading and pleading, his face awash in tears and blood. He kept begging and begging, but he suddenly came to an abrupt stop when the third man had driven a second knife into his chest, right where his heart was. His body stopped moving, but blood kept pouring from his arm, and now from his fresh chest wound, as well as his mouth beginning to spew blood out as if he was vomiting.
"Well, dead men tell no tales… let's dispose of this body." The smallest of the three said, and the other two were in agreement. They untied his body, which collapsed across the ground in a large red puddle of his own blood. The girl behind the tree was horrified, and began to run as fast as her legs could carry her. The largest of the three men heard the rustling of the grass beneath her feet, and turned his head urgently.
"Someone's seen us! Go find whoever heard us and kill them too!" He ordered, and the other two men were off and chasing after the little girl in the maze that made up the forest around them.
The girl kept running, weaving through the trees and breathing hard, trying to make as little noise as she could that would attract their attention. She fell to her knees several times as she ran, making her dress dirty with mud, but she got up fast and kept running. The further she ran, the closer her pursuers became. She heard them yelling at her to stop and give up, but she kept running.
Just as she thought she had made it to safety, her foot was snagged on the root of a nearby tree, sending her to the ground and covering her whole body in mud. The men drew closer and closer as she tried to pick herself up, but she was too late, as a cold hand gripped her by the leg and picked her up in the air as she dangled upside-down.
"Well, well, a little girl was spying on us." Smirked the shorter of the two men, shaking her back and forth in the air. The girl's face became pale, her eyes small as she knew her life was about to end.
"Little girls shouldn't be meddling in the affairs of big people… or else they get hurt." Spoke the other man, holding the knife against her ankle and dug it in, just starting to slice her entire leg open. Blood began to pour out onto her top and stained it, even against its dark red color. The girl screamed out and shook herself free from the short man's grip, fell to the ground and began running. The two men began to give chase again immediately, but were tripped up by the same root that had caused the girl to fall.
The girl ran, and ran, and ran until she had finally escaped the confines of the forest. She ran to the top of a hill, and hid behind a tree that rested atop it, where she sat now.
End Flashback
"This world is horrible… these people are horrible… I want to go home, where it's safe!" She began to cry loudly, and then came to an abrupt stop when she heard the rustling of footsteps in the grass. She knew it had to be the men chasing her earlier. She knew there was nothing she could do now. She stayed silent, hoping they would pass by her without notice. The footsteps drew closer, and closer, until the footsteps stopped beside her, and felt something poke against her shoulder. She closed her eyes tight, and remained silent. It poked her again.
"It isn't… sharp." She thought to herself, as she opened her right eye, to see someone completely different, someone she had never seen, who wasn't one of the men chasing him. He was a bit younger than them; he looked around the age of 15. He had black hair, a large strand covering his right eye. He wore black clothing, with red and black striped sleeves that seemed more like they were sewn onto the short sleeves of the main shirt. He wore jeans, which were a bit darker than the usual navy blue color, but were still blue. He wore simple black and white sneakers with red laces. He had piercing on various places on his face, and had chains dangling from several places on his clothing.
"Is something wrong, kid?" The boy said to the girl, huddled down beside her.
"… a-are… you going to kill me?" The girl stammered, shivering from the cold rain and her own fear of dying.
"Uhhhhh… no, I don't think so." Replied the boy, in a rather dark, almost sarcastic tone.
"Then… then what are you going to do?" She still shivered, but her stammering had stopped.
"Well, I usually sit here. But why do you think I'm going to kill you?"
"There were… these, these humans, they were trying to kill me, and, and, I d-don't know why, and I'm scared, and I want to go home, I hate this stupid world!" She began to break into tears again, stammering in her sadness and sobbing loudly.
"Well, we have something in common then."
"W-what do you mean?" She stopped crying and looked up curiously.
"I hate this world too. This world is a miserable place." The boy sat down beside him and stared up into the crying sky.
"You… hate this world too?"
"Yes… human beings are miserable people." The boy tucked his head into his knees, sighing softly, but his groans were covered up by the downpour. "They're all… horrible. They kill, they steal, and they betray… they're the worst beings on this whole planet."
"They… they do those things?"
"Without remorse. They only care about themselves, and they'll do anything they can to get what they want."
"… Humans… are horrible people…" The girl inspected her leg, where the bleeding had already stopped.
"I come here to get away from it all. This is a special place, where no one goes but me. That's why I was surprised to see you."
"… Say, can I… ask you something?" The girl asked nervously, but in a completely different tone of voice, as if she was a completely new person.
"Sure." He turned his head a bit to make eye contact with her.
"Can you read this book?"