Window Cracks

▶️Hannah Rose◀️

She uses the fenced perimeter of the Tank to nimbly escape, and from this distance, I can make out her crawling through an obscure hole.

Her finery. She has probably done this for more than twelve times now.

I must follow suit, and like her, be unrecognisable. I wait some time; she will not be able to see or hear me when I move. I am aware that I move like an elephant, compared to her swiftness.

She glides into the nearby wood. I attempt some strides in the same tracks, and I eventually spot her comfortably sitting against a firm-looking grey tree trunk.

The wood looks vacant of life, yet it whirrs and smells of death of the leaves and twigs gone stale and dry as their weightless bodies shuffle about in the dry grass, taken up by the streaming wind that weaves through tall and smooth tree trunks.

I see that the girl has taken out a paper and pencil from her bag.

I hide behind another tree, maintaining my distance.

I expect for her to write or sketch something, and hopefully, leave it behind and move away again. The paper shall be mine.

She holds the pencil in her left hand and places the paper on the grey-looking grass and slowly leans forward to engage the paper's surface. I have stopped breathing.

"What would you like for me to draw?" She booms a beautiful but startling voice, and her talking surprises me. I fall forward into a pile of dead leaves. She does not flinch. She knows I am here.

"I'm holding this pencil and paper, I am going to draw or write, yeah? That's never always the case. I was going to... eat the paper and the pencil was my fork." She gives a soft chime at "fork". That must be her chuckle.

She looks in my direction. I remain fallen, entranced.

She looks away.

Hastily recovering, I approach her slowly. Still, she does not flinch.

"Why?" I ask.

"Not everything will turn out to be what it seems like at that point."

With that, she looks straight at me, and I can feel her turquoise pupils boring into my eyes. Her looks of guilt and stress have vanished, like they were never of her.

She puts the paper and pencil back into her bag, and looks away. I feel reduced by her silence.

"Do you know me?" I manage to muster up the courage to speak again.

"Do you know me?" She counters.

"You are Hannah."

"Okay, that confirms you don't. Well, I actually don't know you. I just couldn't help but notice you."

"I feel like there's more to it."

"There's more to everything, Mike."

"It's Den."

"I like Mike."

Why Mike? I am confused.

"Don't you need to be back at the Tank? Have you learnt there before?" I ask.

"The Tank is a place you can be at. I don't want to be there."

"So this is your escape?"

"More of my home, but yes, my escape."

"Why do you leave the Tank? Have you learnt there before?"

"I don't like being asked too many questions."