Golden Eclipse

one

The only ones who have control are working towards a common goal. Your sacrifice will put the light back into the world. Help to make our future bright and fill generations to come with delight.

•••

1063 days. 18 hours. 32 minutes. 45 seconds.

46

47

It hadn't always been this way. She wasn't always the girl who others had feared. The one who brought tears to the toughest man and smiles to the wickedest.

She had been loved once. Cared for. Appreciated.

Wanted.

But that had all changed, in the blink of eye. Faster than a speeding bullet. Much, much faster.

Rip out a man's heart and you're crowned a thief, left to sit upon a throne of disbelief.

They had not believed her when she claimed it was an accident. They said she was dangerous. That they were doing it for her own good.

They lied.

They did not care about her. Never had, never would. She was but an object to be used, toyed with in whatever way they pleased.

As she sat in her cage of loneliness and basked in the silence of broken dreams, she heard the familiar melody.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

It was always there; the incessant sound of a broken pipe or, perhaps, the blood of their victims. Never stopping and always a mystery.

It had a harmonious quality to it almost, a constant rhythm in a place filled with inconsistent frequencies and pitches.

In the corner she sat, knees pulled up to her chest and arms locked around herself in a tight embrace. From what she was protecting herself from was always different, always unknown. They reveled in the element of surprise, the cries of pain, the horror of defeat.

She was enclosed in a metal cage, no more than six by six feet. On days when the cage didn't seem so small—and they were too busy with other occupants—she was lucky to stretch her feet and pace back and forth. Freedom was a fool's joke in her cell but she liked to delude herself on certain days that she was normal. No different than the others in the world. A girl who went to school and did teenage things. What those so called 'things' consisted of, she had no idea, but it was comforting to believe that that could be her.

Silently she sat, never uttering a word. To speak would equal pain. To feel pain would mean she was alive. To be alive would mean that her life was nothing more than the four walls that surrounded her, with no possibility of escape.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Footsteps. Instantly she was on alert. The sound of their footfalls never meant anything other than pain for her and death for others.

The footsteps got louder and her heart went numb. She would not fight them. She never had and it would stay that way until she could kill them.