Cruel by nature

Chapter 9

Flying. I've never been bothered by it before. Heights have never been an issue to me but now, after keeping my feet glued to the bare soil of nature for eight years, it terrifies me. The disturbingly intrusive feeling of being helpless is nearly suffocating. For the first time in years, I'm not in control of my own life. I can't be, not right now. Not when I'm thousands and thousands of feet up in the air.

When the man who recently ruined my life told what seems to be his right hand man Feliks they were leaving within the hour, he wasn't joking.

Before I knew it, he forced me into a car and nicely told me to stay there unless I wanted both of my legs to be crushed beyond saving. Needless to say, I stayed put and silently watched through the tinted windows as more people walked out of the house and into the driveway. To my surprise, Bree joined me in the backseat at the same time as Feliks and Adrian got into the front. Then, we drove off, eventually reaching some kind of airfield where a plane was waiting for us.

And there's that.

We've been in the air for what feels like an eternity, but I doubt it's been more than an hour. Two at tops.

I've been staring out of the oval-shaped window for the entire time, trying to suppress the growing feeling of anxiety that's creeping up my throat whilst pretending that the man in the seat in front of me doesn't exist. Although he's been talking to Feliks for the most part, I've still felt his eyes burning holes through the side of my face - I've refused to meet his gaze, pretending to be deeply fascinated by the world beneath us. I tried to listen in on their conversation, hoping to hear some kind of information that might be useful to me, but it's pointless. As soon as we entered the plane, they started talking to each other in a language that I don't understand. I think it's Russian, but there's no way for me to know for sure unless I ask them, which I won't be doing any time soon. There's no use in me knowing what language they're speaking if I can't understand it, anyways. For some reason, it still upsets me that they're not speaking English. Most people abandoned their native tongue somewhere in the midst of the war. The entirety of the human race was being threatened, and if we wanted to survive, we had to cooperate across borders. Understanding each other was key, so naturally, English became our new standard. It was the language most of us could speak, or at least understand.

It's been so long since I spoke my native tongue, even my brain has re-programmed itself. I haven't been home since the second day of the war, and it's been almost equally as long since I heard the language I grew up with. During that second day, a neighbor of mine had found me on my hallway floor, crying my eyes out. The night before, my mom had turned to me the minute the front door broke down, telling me to get out through the door in the kitchen and run as far as my legs could bear. I tried to protest, not wanting to leave my family, but she assured me they'd be right behind me, so I ran. As far as my legs would bear. By the time the chaos was only a distant sound in the night, I threw a glance over my shoulder, only to realize there was no one there.

I had returned back home the very next morning, only to find the walls and floor to be painted in a gruesome red. Shortly after that, my neighbor found me when he was looking for survivors, the sound of my cries guiding him to my whereabouts. Needless to say, he immediately took me under his wing. I clung to him for weeks, barely even letting him out of my sight. That was until he had to go into a nearby town one day to get supplies, and told me to stay in our camp. I waited five days for him to get back until I realized I was on my own again. He was gone, and with it, my last connection to my home and native tongue, for we had managed to travel outside of our country's border a few days prior to his departure.

I push the memories into the darkest corner of my mind, forcing the horrible pictures out of my mind. It's been eight years, but it still hurts to think about. Of course it still hurts. I lost everything to the war . My family, my friends... even my childhood.