Chapter Text
As the days passed the noises moved closer, suffocating the home, troops laying down their supplies. The structures rose and the marching of boots up and down the ranks leaving their cold marks on the dirt became background noise to the children’s studies.
The day the girl with auburn hair and a face smattered with freckles appeared like any others. Mundane, ordinary and filled with the gruff yells of constant commands. The girl appeared barley 10 years of age, her skin was alabaster as if death had already seeped its way inside and settled itself in her bones. The girl seemed to have a dark shadow cast over her eyes as if there was a darkness to her very soul.
A dull chatter floats around the young girl. Whispers of poor behaviour and constant moving from place to place. Questions of the performance this school may hold for her. Mrs. Burke’s steely, cold hand fixed on the girls back leading her through the homes bleak hall.
An unsettling feeling lay itself over the girl, where she could usually find a gap in a door or a fault in the system, here, she could hear the locks turning and the whistle of wind brushing over the tall fence walls outside.
Fear slithered its way into her heart pumping it faster and faster. The girl had been here before, home after home and yet each time the same sense of entrapment forced the walls of each place to settle around her, pushing closer.
It would be the same as it had been before she just had to find the crack in the system.
Soon after all the introductions and tours where each person’s face appeared the same blur of muted colours, night fell, and the girl was free to stay in her room. As it had been in every other house the girl found herself in a shoe box room filled with two beds. Though this time the one beside her was empty despite the room briming with a certain personality.
Curiosity sparked inside the girl pulling her to the other side of the room. In the sliver of moonlight provided by window just above her head something twinkled from the bed. The girl extended her skeleton like hand grasping for the object. A sharp sensation tingled over her fingers as she held the object up.
It’s a broken key, dented at its based with much of the tip snapped off. It seems as though the key has been weakened over time, broken down due to misuse. They key fits the slight gap at the base of the window, as if the two things were made to be used as one in spite it not being their intended purpose.
As such, the girl eagerly slides the key between the gap, gingerly wiggling it waiting breathe bated for the pop signalled her hard work has paid off.
When the pop did come it was accompanied by a groan from the panes as bony fingers slipped beneath the now larger space between the window and the wall, pushing it higher.
The girl’s movements were practiced, fast and careful, she had done this before, mastered the art to a tee. Pushing herself up and out of the window like she had graced this ground before.
The cold air and ghastly noise that accompanied it swallowed the small girls figure allowing her to ghost across the towering fence. After a few shuffling steps her elbow snagged on something sharp sending a stinging sensation up her arm. The girl paused pushing her elbow back on the thing that had stopped her. A gap.
It was a small one, but she had fit through much smaller before. The fence was loud as she forced herself through, yelling at her to turn back, but its cry could never be heard over the wind and that made it easy for the girl’s heart to stay steady and her legs to continue pushing her forward.
A sharp whistling alerted the girl, her head snapped forward. In front of her was a sight she had not yet witnessed. The space had been vast but instead of empty and filled with the darkness night dragged with it, the area ahead of the girl had been bright. Too bright like something unnatural had intruded upon nature itself.
The lights shone from above casting deep shadows over the area filled with rows upon rows of uniform tents. Huge vehicles had weaved in and out of the space sending a thrumming rhythm out over the zone. Men had seemed to be marching up and back like it was one whole grand machine and they were just a small cog in the works.
The sight caused the to drop hastily to the ground, legs now jelly, and her heart had begun to thump loud in her ears. It was like nothing she had ever seen before, the atmosphere was heavy and unsettling.
The girl pushed herself back against the fence, her trembling muscled had acted as if they were fused to the wood.
It had been obvious to the girl that she could not go back through the fence, her time had been ticking from day one and the minute she had stepped foot in the knew home she had felt the ticking speed up as if time was about to run out.
However, easing her way around the perimeter of the strange area caused a new feeling to arise within the girl. For the first time it felt like the ticking was slowing down, something was coming to an end.
“…Found this when we stopped by back in Texas,” a shaky floating voice had pulled the girls attention halting her movements. “Today marks one year, so I thought I’d clean up the frame and give it to ya.” The voice had sounded uncertain, and the uncertainty is what called out to the girl. The sick curiosity had found its way inside and pulsed through her catapulting her towards a tent cast purely in darkness.
“I don’t want it, Tommy. You keep it. You remember her how you want.” A new voice, sharp and cold. It should have chilled the girl, should have sent her running back to the façade of safety back inside the walls of the group home. Instead, the chilling emptiness the voice had held catapulted the girl towards the entrance of the tent. She had wanted to see these voices contextualise such a human conversation occurring in amongst a system of robots just outside the walls of the tent.
“Oi! Who the hell are you and what’re you doin’ here” the words had startled the girl and she found herself pushed backwards by their force. A looming figure towered above her. Soon the figure had been joined by another. Time paused but the girl’s body was still her heart steady.
“Its just one of ‘em kids from the home next door.” The voice, still tentative and weary, came from the man she had assumed was ‘Tommy’.
“Damn kids.” Cold, but no longer angry. A rough hand has seized the girls arm pulling her up. “Let’s get you home now.”
Dirt had begun to scrape beneath the girl’s feet before she registered what was going on. Her fist met a rigid shoulder unmoving, and unfazed by the punches. “Let me go!”
“Kids aren’t allowed here.”
“I’m not a kid you fuck face!” That had gotten the man’s attention and for the first time the girl was able to see his face. The man appeared old but not by age, by something else, something foreign to the girl but also something familiar. The girl knew she should be afraid, afraid of him and this strange place she had stumbled upon, afraid of him taking her back and the punishment that faced her, but she was not.
At her words the man had slipped his gruff expression dropped for a millisecond. “Well, what are you then, a monster?”
“Ha Ha funny.” The girl had then yanked her arm away planting her feet in the ground. “I’m not from that place, just passing through.”
“Sure kid, whatever you say, we can take it up with the adults.” Acid had pooled in the girls stomach a sudden sinking feeling had passed over her. The heavy rumble of moving vehicles became overwhelming, and she had not been fast enough to fight off the man as he grabbed her again, pulling her closer to the evil building ahead.
“No, no, no, I’ll just leave again, you can’t stop me!” The girl’s voice had become shrill and childlike.
“Not my problem, just don’t go coming back near me.”
The girl had become desperate now clawing at the man and digging her heals into the ground. The stadium lights caught her auburn hair creating a halo around her as she thrashed around in the mans steadied grip.
It had taken her many moments, drowned in her blinding anger to not return to the haunted house, for her to realise the man was no longer fighting to pull her fragile arm forward. Rather the man has gazed straight through her ghostly face.
“Fine.” The girls voice had come out strange, hidden inside itself. Something about it pulled the man from his trance pushing him back away from the girl as he dropped her hand.
“Let’s get you back its safer.” The man turned quickly away from the girl creating a great a great distance between them without even looking back to ensure the girl had followed him.
She did.
By the time the pair arrived back at the main building the man had learned that it had not been the girls first time escaping, and most certainly wouldn’t be her last.
Every fibre of the girls being screamed at her to shut herself off, fight back against the man pulling her back into the depths of literal hell. Instead, she opened her soul to him even if it had just been telling him about her last escape that had landed her there in the first place it felt like she gave some part of herself to him.
The man never did speak to her again on their way back to the home just acknowledged her words with small grunts, but that had been enough.
The creak of looming double doors opened the path of an endless dark hall. A figure stood at the end phone torch in hand which had skewed the view of their face to the girl. A classic intimidation tactic.
As the figure approached, a mumbled exchange ensured between her and the man. Usually, the girl would have focused intently on the words, hoping against hope she would somehow end up out of trouble. Instead, her gaze was locked on to the shadowed movement coming from behind the woman’s stubby legs.
Deep brown eyes surrounded by a pool of white met the girls twinkling green ones, before a small chocolate face cautiously peered out observing the freckled girl.
A mischievous smile tugged at the edge of the mystery girls’ mouth, and like a string attached to the freckled girls’ own mouth a smile begun to show itself.
“Now you don’t be sneaking out again kiddo.” The man’s words sliced through the two girls gaze drawing the freckled girl’s eyes back to the man.
To the girl it had seemed that the man’s face morphed in the short period she had known him, the coldness had begun to defrost and was replaced with the lightest of smiles. At his words the girl had given him the slightest nod, then as if on cue he had begun to retreat back into the darkness.
The creak of old floorboards and the groan of an overused door signalled the man’s departure from the building but before his figure had completely faded the man’s head had turned and his eyes met the girls. Then as if the man himself had willed it to be the girl felt a small hand clasp her arm and as she turned her head mischievous eyes met her own.