Hey, I know it's been a while, but life is hectic! I really want senioritis to kick it. At least I'll have an excuse for being lazy then. Ok. Let's go.
Once again he must dispose of the older pawns, as they sometimes referred to them as. He is a strong, handsome man, a honey blonde with pale skin, but he is covered in crescent shaped scars, especially his neck and face. It's a shame to see the hell he's been through, but the scars don't seem to bother him. The woman on the other side of the room, a friend of his by the looks of it, is also scared, though not to the extent that he is. They both have crimson red eyes.
"Mercedes? Will you come with me?" he asks politely.
He has a Southern drawl, and the way he carries himself, he is important, a soldier maybe. He holds the door open for Mercedes, a young, timid, girl with pale skin, red eyes, and a few scars. He is very formal about this, and he tries to make her feel relaxed, but she must see the pain in his eyes. He shuts the door behind her and looks sadly at the first woman across the room.
"Lucy, her, too? She's strong," the man pleads.
"No, Jasper," she answers. "She was never meant to be created anyway. You begging saved her a year ago, but it won't work now. However, that Peter boy… He reminds me about you. Strong. Military-minded. The two of you work very well together. Keep him, but the rest… well, let's just say, they can retire now."
Jasper sighs and nods before walking in the room with Mercedes. He looks at her, and instantly she smiles at him, all her worries gone. Foolish girl. In less than a minute, Jasper has her torn apart and in a fire. A strange, smelly smoke rises above the dead girl, and Jasper waits patiently before claiming his next victim.
I am scared at what I'm seeing, and I don't know if I want to leave immediately or stay and see why he is doing this to innocent people. I have no choice though. I am swirling away from the southern scene and back to my own darkness.
I opened my eyes and was instantly confused. I couldn't remember where I was or who I was. I felt very… strong and… hallow. So much was going on around me, but there was nothing around either. I was scared and began breathing deep. A rush of air entered my lungs, but it felt wrong. The air tasted like ash and dust and gravel, all very sickening. I stopped breathing and noticed that I didn't need to breathe. That wasn't right.
I sighed- that felt strange, too, but I was too distracted to care- and got up. I was instantly standing in the middle of a burnt room. Wondering how that happened, I sat down so I could try to get up like that again, but before I had finished thinking about sitting, I was down on all fours! Had I always been able to move that fast? I pushed that thought aside as began looking around at my surroundings.
There was ash, burnt beds and dressers, melted metal shreds, and scraps of clothes everywhere. Everything was black, brown, dead looking. Something horrible had happened here, but I couldn't remember anything about it. The only light came from the sky because there were no working lamps, usable candles, or ceiling. The sky above me was a beautiful blue, every faint cloud crystal clear. The sun's warm rays felt nice, and the hot breeze was surprisingly refreshing. It cleared away the strange, disgusting smells from the room for a second or two.
Very slowly, careful not to move too fast, I tiptoed to a large, dirty, ashy lump in the closet corner. Waling this slow was hard and took more concentration than I would have thought, but after one minute forty-nine seconds, I made it to the corner two and a half feet or so away. Had I always been good at math like this? I shook that thought to the back of my mind, which was beginning to feel very crowded now. A dead, decaying, and slightly appealing scent came from the lump. I cautiously poked it. It was harder than I thought it would be, but I was soft, too. I flipped it over and screamed, my legs sending me further back than I had originally been.
I walked back to the body, my breaths rapid, my heart… I stopped dead in my tracks and placed a hand on my heart. Nothing. I checked my pulse on my neck and wrists, but I still felt nothing. There was defiantly something wrong with me, but I needed to know what happened to the woman in the corner. She was dead, that was certain, and she had been burnt to death by the flames that destroyed this place. So why hadn't I? Looking back at my spot, I noticed that it was damp and not as charred as the rest of the room. Odd.
The girl, however, was in the fire zone. Her pretty skin was ruined and mostly gone. She had bruises across her neck like she'd been choked, so maybe she didn't die from the fire. There wasn't much left of her except enough skin to distinguish her as a young girl. I respectfully pulled a nearby blanket over her body, and that's when I discovered the source of the appealing smell. Her dried, old blood covered most of her body from the shoulders down, and a large part of me wanted to drink it! Without thinking about what I was doing, I bent over the dead girl and sniffed the blood. It was too cold and old for my tastes, but the thought of drinking it still sounded alright.
I shook my head, screamed at what I wanted, and ran out the room and down the stairs.
On the first floor of the building there was no sunlight and more ash and destruction. I could smell dirt, charred wood, melted iron, and rot everywhere. I smelt more blood, but like the girl's upstairs, it was cold and old and a little unappetizing. Nothing truly revealed what this place had once been used for or how long it had been dying under the flames. I walked all over the large building, always taking an extreme amount of time in order to examine everything, but I couldn't find any papers or name plates that survived the attack. All I could find was a thin trail of ashes that lead to a bizarre ash pile outside. The air around it smell funny, just like the smoke smell from my… dream? Frustrated, I walked out one of the doors and dramatically sat down on the ground outside.
It was very bright outside and very open. The only sign of civilization was a city off in the distance. I wondered where exactly it was and if I should go there, but one glance down at my bare feet told me a lot.
"Oh my God!" I screamed as I kicked my feet with lightning speed.
My ghost-white skin was sparkling in the sunlight. It looked like thousands of diamonds covered my feet, sending sparkles of purple, blue, pink, white, and a new color I couldn't name all over the place, yet they looked perfectly smooth. I reached down to touch them and noticed that my hands and arms did the same. I pulled up my ragged dress a little, and my legs were sparkling like that, too! And there was something else unusual about my legs, and my wrist. Someone-me?- had tied paper around them.
The paper around my wrist had been ripped and burnt until even my sharp eyes couldn't read most of it. The only word semi-visible was the name Alice. It didn't ring a bell to me at all, but I like it. At least, it was better than having no name at all. I peeled it off easily despite all the glue on the edges, and threw in in the wind. I untied the paper around my ankle next. There was no name or anything that told me about me or this place. Instead I read instructions.
"Run west, but do not be seen! Humans are scared of us, and though they aren't any threat to us, there are some that could spread word, rumors. If someone is hunting you, run! Don't kill in daylight. You'll see why as soon as you're outside. There's a barn a few miles from here with new clothes, pencils, paper, and money. Some say that our kind are more civilized up north and can be outside in the day. Having never been up that way, I do not know, but it sounds like something you might like. New York was a dream of yours anyway. Bt the way, the government wouldn't believe your vision. He died just like you said. Don't go looking for him or his grave! Human lives are nothing anymore. Best of luck."
I didn't understand any of it. Was I not human? If not, what was I? Well, that kind of explained the sparkling and the no heart and no need to breath thing. Was some hunting me? Crap! How would I know? Had I done something wrong? I didn't see any other choice except to follow the letter's instructions. I'd go to the barn to the west and get what I was supposed to get before heading up north to New York. Did I have family there? Was that where "he" once lived? Vision? Like I had predicted his death. Was "he" the man, Jasper, I'd seen killing that woman? Well, why would I care if he died? No, this letter was written before whatever I had seen. "He" and Jasper must have been two different men. Well, the letter said I didn't need to bother with any of that now anyway, and since I had no other understanding of what was going on, I figured it was best to obey.
Double checking to see if anyone was around, I stood up and started to run. I was running even faster than I had moved before! The occasional trees and other plants sped by me, but I could still see their leaves and flowers in good detail. The warm, floral air rushed by me, and I steadily breathed it in and out, my lungs not caring how much or often I took in another gulp of air. Each step was long, fast, and light. I couldn't see any footprints of my travel, and I couldn't understand how I was able to do this. I didn't have much time to enjoy the new ability before I saw the barn up ahead. I had only been running for a few minutes, but the letter said that the barn was miles away! How fast was I running?
The barn was sweet smelling and a little foul. Hay covered the ground, the loft stairs, the chairs, the cabinets, the stall doors, and windows. Besides that and a few tweeting birds, there was nothing else inside. The little birds stopped singing when I entered the barn, and most flew away, the blood in their little veins noticeable, but easily forgotten.
"Ok," I sighed to myself. "If I were going to hide something for someone to pick up later, where would I put it?"
I dismantled every hay stack I saw looking for something useful, but I only found more unwanted hay. For some reason, "finding a needle in a haystack" came to mind, but I wasn't sure what that meant exactly. Who would ever think of that to say unless that's exactly what they were doing? Weird, how random thoughts entered my head.
When I was convinced that my new possessions were not on the first floor, I jumped to the hay loft. I was afraid that I would crack the old wood underneath the thick layer of hay and sawdust, but I landed quietly and gracefully. Once again I tore every stack to piece until all that was left was a large crate hidden behind a wall of hay bricks. Unlike everything else in the barn, it wasn't covered in hay or dust or bird droppings. I lifted the lid and threw the top across the loft. It landed with a heavy thump! on the edge of the loft floor before crashing down to the first floor.
I shrugged it off and took out everything inside. There was a short, bright orange dress with large, green leaf prints all over it. There were also a pair of large magnolia flower earrings and white heels to go with the dress. I quickly cleared a small patch on the floor to put them in and went back to the crate. There was a brand new sketch book with a variety of colored pencils, regular pencils, erasers, and a sharpening knife. Under all that was a large traveling purse to put everything in, and inside that was a hundred dollars!
I changed into the dress and shoes and wished there was a mirror. I couldn't remember what I looked like, and I felt very pretty in the dress and wanted to make sure that was true. Some water to clean the dirt off me would have been nice, too, but I figured that if I'd be traveling away from humans dirt would be part of my life for a long while.
I knew I needed to start heading for New York, but there were a lot of reasons not to go today. I didn't know how to get to New York. I didn't know where I was to begin with! I wasn't even sure if Alice was my real name, but I assumed that it had to be. Why else would it be on my wrist? I didn't know what I was except not human. The no heart and no need to breathe thing made me feel like maybe I was dead. Where was the person who wrote all this? Was he or she the body I found upstairs or one of the dead bodies downstairs or the strange pile of ashes outside? Worst of all, what happened? Why couldn't I remember anything? I decided that I would mope until nightfall and pass the time thinking and drawing.
I spent all day drawing the man from my dream or vision. The more details I added to him, the more I noticed that he was unhappy. I tried not to feel sorry for him, after all, he was killing innocent people, but there was something about him that drew me in. I spent more time capturing every detail about the strange man than I did on Lucy, Mercedes, and the surrounding combined. I even took the time to color the entire scene, something I was finding more and more tedious, but still the night didn't fall soon enough. I finally gave up on nightfall and packed up my things.
I took one last look at the barn, looked at the sun just starting its westward journey in the sky, and ran north, hoping I was going the right way towards New York.
The Truth Can't Stay Hidden for Long. Any predictions? Comments? I love to hear them!