Erika walked along quietly, deep in her own thoughts about nothing in paticular. It was the next afternoon, and the sun was trying it's hardest to peak out from behind the drizzling rain clouds. She had just finished another miserable day at work, sitting in the back room, packaging and sterlyizing needles, with an endless hum of tattoo guns in her ears. The streets were oddly empty and silent, and Erika glanced around confused. Who cared. Just less people to bother her. She walked along for 10 more mintues, through appartment-lined alleyways and back streets. A few company buildings began to show up around her, and she shivered. Her pace quickened, along with her heart. It was this part of town, this area that was the metal ball on her shackles, the thing that made her life a prision and hell, that she could never find the means to get away from. She bit the inside of her lip, trying with all her might to will back the painful, terryfing memories that always awoke around this street...she tasted blood. Nothing helped. The memories came, flashes of sceens, walking down the street, turning that corner, comming eye-to-eye with the man that beat and tortured her mentally and physically for no reason but his own sick pleasure. One person, along with the absence of kindness and understanding from a hundred others, had made her feel always seperated from the rest of mankind, alone in her dark thoughts forever. And there it was. The tall stone building, littered with graffitti, as normal looking a place as you could get. For no reason at all Erika sat down on the curb across from it. There was a heavy feeling in the air and you could almost taste it. One of the doors on the building was open, she noticed. Erika took a deep breath and mentally slapped herself. She was tired, bone tired of being afraid. She hadn't clawed her way out of depression, just to be thrown back into it by one shadow-lurking bastard with murder on his drunken brain. Once, long ago, when her family had seemed ready to rip apart, the city had seemed a utopia, a haven from it all. She'd actually counted down the days untill she was legally old enough to move away, and now she wanted back. But no more. This was her life, and she had the power to control it. No more being the goddess of saddness. She stood up straight, filled with a strange confidence. She forced her mind to believe that she could face her fears and finally lay them to rest. Stiff-legged, she walked toward the abodandened building that had haunted many of her day and nightmares. The man who almost killed her had been working late, and apparently had steped outside for some fresh air. But maybe the pressure had been too much, because he had used booze to help through the night. Too much. Erika had been in the wrong place at the wrong time when the mans hidden anger at no one flashed out and let itself loose on an innocent girl. Herself. One step at a time, she climbed towars the open door. Each memories came, worse than the last. Being dragged inside to his office. He was some sort of important boss or something, to have his own office. It was off of a huge area of machinery, at rest in the late night. She pushed open the door quietly, trying to remember where the place was. She had to get there, something pulled her on. Once she got to that room, all would be well. But something else pulled her on, a voice in her head, begging for her help. She almost turned and ran, wondering why she was making herself be in this god-awful place again. But the voice continued, needing her help for something, wanting her to start a reaction. There was something there. She turned corner after corner, winding her way deeper and deeper into the heart of the building. Up stairs, around, down, she lost track of time. Then the machinery came into her view, and her breath caught in her throat. She remembered every painful moment, up untill she kicked the man in the head, knocking him unconcous. Unknowinly she began to tiptoe, afraid the empty metal would awaken at her footfalls. She looked in every door, but couldn't find the supervisors office.

Her mind was exausted almost as much as she was, and she sat down hard on the lip of a giant metal bowl-type machine. She glanced at it absently, and ran her hand through the black gunpowder that almost came to the brim. It must have been 7 feet deep, she mused. The dust sifted through her fingers like air, leaving her hands blackened. Something touched her fingers, causing her to jerk back suddenly. Nothing moved, as she held her breath. A minute, two minutes passed by. She smoothed back her long hair and tried to calm her overwired nerves. She finally let her breath go and sighed. As if to prove her mind wrong she gently put her hand back into the powder. There was something in there, and her curosity overcame her. She shoveled the powder away, trying to reveal whatever was hidden benieth. It was probably some article of clothing that a careless worker had let drop into the machinery. But her hands worked rythmically, and she stoped. Every fiber in her body stood still in a kind of absolute paralyis. There, a few inches from the lip of the bowl, was the side of a boys face. He looked about her age, maybe 18, with black hair and closed eyes. There was one difference. He was dead. A spasm of an unknown emotion racked her body, and she jumped up with a speed she'd never known before, practically throwing herself down every flight of staris, needing to put distance between the body and her. She reached the loby and began to shove things aside, looking for a phone. There wasn't one at the large main desk. She opened the nearest door to find one, and a scream burst from her mouth. Across the paper-littered desk was the supervisor, she knew him right away. The papers were soaked with blood, and his eyes were rolled back into his head. She screamed and screamed, not able to contain any amount of sense. She fell out the front door, sobbing wildly at the dead faces ethched before her eyes. By some miracle there was a police car at the end of the street, and the young officer got out of his car as she ran to him. Her knees colasped right as her caught her, holding her shoulders.

"What? What's happened?" she couldn't answer, the tears where choking her. All she managed to do was point to the building. The officer gently moved her to the backseat of the patrol car and shut her in, radioing for backup as he drew his guna nd ran back toward the building. Erika hugged her knees and rocked, a stragnly calming motion that humans do without thinking in times of great stress. The boy, his closed eyes, the blood around the supervisor, burned in her memory, refusing to go away.

Time slipped by quickly, more cops came, dawn broke, and eventually the bodies were found and recovered, coming out on strechers in black bags. Erika got driven home, where she fell into a fitful sleep for the next day. The police questioned her, and the famous yellow tape went up around the factory. She eventually calmed down enough to hear the story. One boy, a worker and the supervisor had been apparently murdered, and some plans for a super weapon had been taken from the supervisors office. The boy she'd found and his father had been drowned in the powder, then it seemed that the killers found the boss and got whatever they wanted directly from him. Erika said she understood, and was allowed to go home. She skipped work for a week and was promtly fired, but it didn't matter. On the day of the funerals, she got out one of her nicest black dresses and attendend, standing silently among the small crowd of sobbing mourners. She looked at the casket of the boy and his father. Her momentary terror was gone, now all she could do was wonder. What could have happened to end this boys life? It was sad. Someone so young, without a chance to really live...she placed a rose on his casket and went home, to her appartment, quiet with her ponderings.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~*