✄ .・。.・゜✭・. red, theblood of angry men black, the dark of ages past ━━━
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██ 000. / SHADOW LINE
█ ✄ ... / IT HAPPENED on a cloudless summer's day, at twilight. That was the easiest time, you see, because the hollow streets of Eight were just light enough to see, yet still somewhat shrouded in darkness. Only a sliver of half-light peeked out from beneath the setting sun, managing to just break through the thick blanket of smoke that shielded them. A pale glow flickered from the streetlights, bathing the cracking pavements in a brooding yellow hue.
At twilight, it was light enough to see just about what you needed to, whilst still leaving enough darkness to obscure the ghastly details. Nobody could pinpoint faces. Most couldn't recollect exactly what they had seen.
It was the perfect interval of time between night and day; between the hours that those in Eight were out working, and when they tucked themselves into bed. It was a time of ambivalence and of transition, when people found their minds almost overtaken by the lull of sleep, and everything felt hazy. The final moments of civility, before the night would fall, and the demons could come out to play.
Genius, really, when you thought about it.
Coming after their district-wide curfew, twilight was the time of day in which everything in Eight fell unnaturally still. Throughout the day, moments of silence were rare — the hands were always working, the machines always humming, and the district was so monotonous that it was difficult to hear yourself think. Stillness was the only place where people found the space to breathe.
But with that stillness, came the fear. The formidable feeling that things were too quiet, and that they were all only sitting ducks, helplessly waiting to fall into some kind of trap. Most days, the hours of unease passed by without trouble, and the paranoia went away with sleep. But there were occasions, when the chilling whir of engines disturbed their restless slumber, and the men in white suits poured out into the streets. And they never came quietly. They didn't need to — there was no danger for them in raising their voice.
Instead, they shouted and they screamed.
They fired empty bullets, until their blinding sparks of fire burned through the blackened smoke. They banged on doors until people physically dragged themselves out of bed.
You knew you were in trouble, if they came for you first. If there were still splinters of silence between the engine noise. If nobody else had moved. You see, they never made things messy — not unless they had to. The governance of District Eight was rigorous, running like one well-oiled machine. Everything ran within its perfect structure, because that way, there was no room for anybody to step out of line. Not without paying the price. They did not want to break the system, when it was the only thing sustaining their tenuous control, so that was why they came at night — when things were hazy, and people were too idle to fight back.
