Some Aren't Meant to Win

2023

Peter felt weird, like he had pins and needles all over his body but when he tried to move his hand...

It wasn't there...

Then it slowly started forming from what looked like ash.

He screamed, not understanding what was going on with his body.

He slowly gained feeling in his hand back after a few seconds of attempting to wiggle his fingers. 

He looked up in front of him to find himself surrounded by metal with only a small window in front of his face.
It took his mind seconds to be taken over by a claustrophobic panic. His feet were bare on the metal floor, his legs squashed tightly against each other and the walls of the metal, his back was against the wall, his chest against the other wall restricting the movement of his chest from breathing, his shoulders and head were crammed into the tight space, his head on a slight angle putting a kink in his neck.

Air went in and out of his lungs fast enough that it served little to no purpose for his body.

He pushed his entire body's force against the wall in front of him with as much power as his malnourished body could muster.

He groaned as the metal did, falling onto the cold cement when the metal gave in and the hinges broke away from the rest of the coffin-like structure.
Peter inhaled, hoping for some fresh air, only to get stale dusty air instead. He coughed it back out as soon as he could.

He looked around the dark room only to find it abandoned. There were a few metal tables, one knocked over and all of them were covered with a layer of dust and something that was almost black crusted to the metal.

Peter groaned, pushing off the flood to stand in the musky room with no clothes on. He shivered when he felt the cold air hit him and attempted to warm himself back up by wrapping his arms around himself.

He soon left the room through the dark open doorway. He walked down the foreboding cement and brick hallways, ignoring the smell of mold and death, and the blood stains splattering the walls.

The dark stories of people who entered the building but never truly left even though their body might have if it wasn't sent to the incinerator.

Peter's big question was where the heck everyone was, the last time he was dragged through the halls to the room of pain, the halls had been bustling with people in uniform with stoic looks on their faces. It was unusually quiet.

If Peter himself wasn't screaming or begging, someone else down the hall was.

When he finally found his way out of the building, he stumbled through the door and out into the real world. It was dusk and it was getting colder and darker than it had been inside. The sky was a painting of oranges and pinks mixing around behind the wispy clouds.

With no clothes and no sense of direction, Peter walked in the direction he was facing. It was the middle of the night when he found a paved road and followed it to a small town.

Going back to his roots, his instincts, he found a shelter between two houses and a bale of hay. He curled in on himself like he was a five year old orphan in Manhattan again, protecting himself against the fall breeze.

His eyes closed before he could stop them and his mind fell into a peaceful dream of a picnic with James and Rebecca away from the chaos of the depression and money problems and the issues with Germany arrising.

The sun rose in the morning, rays of light gently combed over his eyelids. Though his mind dtarted waking, he didn't open his eyes, he simply enjoyed the warmpth of the morning. His ears listened to the slow sounds of civilization awakening, the smell of someone's breakfast cooking, he could feel the poke of hay in his back and the brick against his side.