choni: one shots

escape

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Toni cursed in between panting as her skin cascaded against the sharp branches along her way in the dark forest.

She kept running bear-footed, heading somewhere out of the map. Her face was covered in bruises and cuts and so was her body. Even her dark brown mid-back hair was sweatily splattered on her face. She has a deep puncture in her left thigh, one reason that was keeping her slow in her tracks.

"There she is!" shouted the man.

The loud voice startled Toni causing her to trip over something and roll over to god-knows-where having the same ridged path that welcomed her fractured body, all the way to the bottom of the hill. Her body got stopped rolling by a huge trunk and her stomach hit the hardened wood that made her throw up blood. Instead of giving up, she got back on her feet using her remaining energy and kept going.

Every count of steps she took became more at risk. The sounds of footsteps, against the leafy ground, coming near her ears terrified her that her mind got trapped thinking about signs of death. She tried to ignore them and continued until she stopped by a peak of a cliff, dead end, before a body of water. Looking down from her station with approximately 20 feet away from the water waiting below, she did her best to look for another way of escaping but her eyes met a group of men running towards her spot.

She had no choice but to jump and land her body in the freezing water, a safe place for now. It didn't take long for her to lack oxygen because of exhaustion, so she attempted to rise for air but stopped on her way when bullets came running through.

She tried swimming to different directions to dodge the bullets but her upper right chest welcomed one, creating a mixture of blood and water visible on top.

•••

Morning, 7 am

"Father, I'm just going to do the laundry in the river. I'll be back shortly after," Cheryl said to her father, Leonard, the village chief.

Leonard is the village chief of the place called N'yusses. His ancestors, the Blossom's, had been the leaders of the people living there for generations. He's currently holding the throne, soon to be passed to his older child, Jason.

Two years later after Jason was born, came another child—Cheryl, was a girl full of dreams. Even though she grew up in N'yusses, she has always wanted to live in the city. Not for any fun reasons but for education. She graduated high school through the help of a limited access scholarship, and started college but eventually stopped due to lack of financial resources.

"Who are you coming with?" he asked, holding a cup of herbal drink, while walking to his daughter.

"I'm coming with the neighbors, father." Cheryl smiled as she picked the hamper full of weaved clothes up.

"Okay," he replied, "remember to be back before sundown."

Cheryl nodded before she received a forehead kiss from her father.

"Hey, how are you?" Sienna, Cheryl's childhood best friend, asked while both of them were making themselves comfortable sitting on a rock.

Cheryl flashed a small smile. "I'm fine, I guess."

Sienna sighed. "Nah, you're not. Still about going to college?"

Cheryl looked down. "I just really, like badly, want to go to school. It's been two years and I still have the same goal, you know?"

Sienna replied, "Have you talked to your father?"

Cheryl nodded.

"What did he say?"