Bloodless

Chapter 1 / Cressida

We fear the unknown, and what is unknown cannot be seen. In the depths of the night or pitch blackness your mind will race with thoughts that are willing to consume you. As you are overtaken by the darkness not knowing what is stalking in the corners, no perception of your surroundings, just the gaping black hole surrounding you and pulling you in. For all you know, darkness is your world and you cannot escape and that is what I awakened to.

The world used to be broken. It still is. The government controls us all. This is all the recent generations have ever known. If only they knew what secrets lie behind the false façade that they government presents to us. In reality, we know what they are going to do. That's why my parents were taken away and silenced forever.

As I looked around at my surroundings I became utterly depressed. I had no one. I began to walk on what was once considered a good road but is now in utter ruin. I just followed it, thinking about everything that had happened in the past. In my head I could see the men come up behind my parents. "Mother!" I screamed while trying to save her. "Let her go!" I cried as the man drug her away. "Father! Come back!" "You'll be fine Cress." he says back. "Stay safe and remember us always." "I know you won't disappoint us," my mother added. The last time I saw my parents was when that wretched man tore them away from us. My parents were gone in a flash. I looked around and realized that my safe haven that was called home looked like a war zone. Then there was silence, a deafening silence.

Soon after this turmoil we realized that we needed to survive. We couldn't stay here without nourishment much longer. We took to the streets. Scrounging around for small bits of food. Then finally what led me here. My brother was gone. I have no one left. Even when surrounded by people I feel lonely. There isn't anything left for me. I'm solely surviving on the thought that I can tell someone my knowledge and hurt the government. I hate to have a mind devoted to revenge but it's almost all I want to live for.

I thought about the past as I walked along the barren road. My thoughts kept falling into it, like a never ending torrent of rain. 'We were lying in the trees staring up at the sun and the clouds, making them into shapes or animals or whatever our minds' fancied. I knew it was just our brains trying to make logic out of nonsense and symmetry out of asymmetry but we did anyway. As he struggled to remember the name of some creature I looked at him. He had the facial features and build as our father, already strong for a little boy. He still had a slight chubbiness to his face from when we had a better life. The sun hit his features and gave him almost a halo of light. Lying there with him in the only opening in the canopy of the trees above, staring into the sky, wishing we could fly away to a better world together. That was the last good memory I had of my brother.

I snapped to the present as I stumbled over the cracking asphalt. I fell to the ground; my canteen and everything fell off and scattered away; and scraped my hands and knees. I ambled away from the road slightly dazed. I slid and sat down against the base of a tree trunk; unmotivated to go on any farther. I laid against the trunk and close my eyes, willing it all to go away. As I slipped into nothingness I fell to the cold, bare earth.