The empty halls were disturbed by the light footsteps of the escaping girl. Myself. I kept my feet light and was able to creep down the corridor. Opening the fire escape and throwing myself over the barrier I fell down the two stories and landed lightly on my feet. I could feel the billowing cloak wrap around my back as I kept in a crouch.
From there I was on my own, from there I knew nothing from the outside world, from there I was Free.
As I walked, I saw the world for what it really was, what they were meant to be protecting us from, and for once I believed they were. The stench had hit me before I even walked two steps. The stench of death, I had only smelt it once before and it was weak then, now it is strong.
I walked out to the street, and I wanted to go inside. The world was full of ash, flesh seemed to make a carpet across the streets, it would have made me sick, were there anything I could have thrown up. I turned my back and walked with out looking down the streets towards where I believed to be the city centre. The only place to see a building that still stood. My slow footsteps sounded eardrum-bursting-loud and I placed my hand over my ears and my long hair fell into my face. As I came to the city they became quieter and I pulled the cloak around me trying to hide, but I was entranced, I needed to go there, I needed people.
I walked down the small alley way and looked out, there were people, even though they were freakishly dressed, stranger cloaks than mine, pointy hats, and everyone had a eye tattoo on the back of everyone's hand. I hid my hand and walked out into the crowd of people.
They all seemed to be going to the same place, so I followed. They all went to a large building where they all stood outside. Waiting. I looked up to a large clock on the top of the building, I read it to be 1 minute to twelve. It may have been one of the things I remember. As soon at the clock chimed twelve and bald man walked out to a podium. But he did not look like a man, there was something strange. His face, it wasn't… human.
I forcibly stopped a shudder and looked up to listen to what he says, his voice echoed around the town and to what I believed to know-man's-land outside. It wasn't that I didn't notice what I said, but to what he was standing on. It was a man. A man crouched into a ball. A broken man. I felt sick, he was so contorted that it was so hard to look. I looked away to listen to what he was saying, his kin will live forever. But I couldn't look away.
Standing trapped between the people who seem to look up to this man stood on top of a man, this man who was not a man of good. I lowered my head to look at the floor. I did not believe him to be a man who ruined his life by accident. I felt a breath of movement next to me and turned to look. But before I saw, a hand had clasped mine and was guiding me out of the crowd and towards the outline of shops, once to a shop with a blackout window they knocked quietly on the door and it opened and they pulled me inside.