A New Day

Chapter 4

Days passed, and Athens remained in her Village, living among the rubble, and searching for survivors. By now while the encounter with the ominous figure still weighed heavily on her mind, Athens was still more focused on finding some semblance of a new normal. Every night she in the open field in front of where her residence used to be. Everyday she searched among the rubble for any life at all. Each successive day with no one found built up more and more hopelessness within her, to the degree that one day she packs up what little belongings she has left, and leaves her home behind.

Without a map, or a sense of direction, Athens set off away from destruction, intent on finding something new to call home. In the back of her mind, she ponders why it was that no bodies were found amid the chaos. She would have been just fine with seeing body parts, or charred remains. Even that would have given her more respite than searching everyday to find nothing anywhere. While she tried putting the the thought out of her mind, she couldn't help wondering if the people who inhabited all of those dwellings, her family, had vanished prior to the Happening, as she had come to call it. And then the figure that had appeared to her. What was that all about? Why had they chosen her? Furthermore, why did she feel some type of strange innate connection with it...her? It felt almost as like they were related.

These thoughts kept Athens' mind so busy during her walking that she failed to notice, the guards screaming at her to stop. In fact, she was so oblivious to their screams that when the first guns sounded and the felt the bullets fly by her face, she turned around, stunned, rather than falling to the dirt as they had ordered her. Immediately she felt herself taken roughly by multiple hands and thrown to the ground.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" came the aggressive voices all around her.

She became faintly aware of a crowd gathering around her, but was unable to avert her eyes from the brown, dead ground against which her face was now pressed.

"I SAID", came the hostile voices again, "WHO ARE YOU?"

Struggling to find her voice, yet intent on not sounding as intimidated as she felt, Athens took a short breath and said calmly,

"My name is Athens, and I didn't mean to-"

She was cut off by those hands pulling, no...jerking her to her feet. Her muscles ached, and fatigue set in as she realized that she must have traveled a long way, because nothing she saw looked familiar to her. As she looked around, she saw grey uniform-clad men with official looking badges gleaming in the sunlight. No matter which direction she looked, she only saw stoic faces and guns pointed in her direction. Athens had never seen a gun in her life. In her village there had been no need for them. Of course, she had heard of them. Several of her family members, the less savory ones, had come running back to the village with bloody holes in various parts of their bodies. Some had survived, and some had not, so she knew what they were capable of in the right hands. Now her mind raced anew, trying to trace and retrace her steps. She remembered her first steps outside of her village and the smell of the fresh air and tree-lined pathways. She seemed to vaguely remember when the terrain began to change and shift from brown to green, and then back to brown. Her mind had been in such a contemplative mode that she simply had not paid close enough attention to where she was going, but to her credit, she had never ventured outside of her village before. Then, inevitably, her mind went back to the figure. This time, though, she could not dwell, because a dark-skinned man in thin-rimmed glasses was standing almost nose to nose with her. She could feel his spittle splattering against her skin, and she was instantly filled with revulsion both by the smell and the lack of manners. Yet, when she went to remark on such, her mouth was covered, she was blindfolded, and felt herself being dragged away.

Athens' senses betrayed her. Try as she might, she could not get a good bearing on where she was being taken. She only knew that it took a long time, and was a long walk. She could hear the officers complaining about having to carry her as far as they had to. She heard a few profanities uttered. Mostly though, it was quiet. Strangely so. There were no animal sounds, though eventually the air became cold and dank. She could make out the sounds of water dripping. She also heard chains, and then felt them as they were affixed to her ankles and wrists. Shackles. She was a prisoner.

Her gag and blindfolds were removed, and Athens' eyes widened in fear as she took in her surroundings. A single candle illumined the middle of a cell, casting faint shadows into the corners of a small cell. In front of her, was the dark-skinned man. He regarded her coolly, but said nothing. He snapped his fingers and another man hurriedly brought in a stool and set it down behind the man. The dark-skinned man sat down and crossed his legs, then took a long puff on a cigar. He blew the smoke directly into Athens' face, causing her to want to cough, but she refused to give him the pleasure. She stared at her. Neither of them spoke. For her part, though, Athens was busily making mental notes of the dark-skinned man. She saw how his eyes twitched every other blink, for a couple of times. She saw his teeth had been yellowed, and were missing in some places, probably from the tobacco that he took in. She also noticed how one of his hands shook horribly. She filed this away under useful future information. Finally he opened his mouth to speak.

"I am Captain Ybarrana", he began, "and you have trespassed onto our land. Why are you here?"

Athens looked calmly back at him and replied, "Sir..I mean..Captain Ybarrana, I don't even know how I ended up here. I was just escaping from my home, which was recently destroyed by..ummm...I don't even know how to explain it. But, after trying to find survivors and finding none, I just decided that it would be best for me to leave and make a new life. Sir, I lost all of my family. I have no one else, and I assure you that I mean you no harm."

The Captain looked at her quizzically, but made no immediate move to respond to her claims. After a few more puffs from his cigar, he tossed the butt into the corner of Athens' cell, watching the tiny light burn away. Then he stood up, straightened his uniform, and walked away without an additional word. Athens panicked at being left here alone. She thought about making another plea with more passion. Maybe she hadn't stated her case enough. Maybe she should be more fiery. Yes, that's it. More fire. But by the time that she found more words to try and explain what is unexplainable, he was gone, and she was alone in a rapidly encroaching darkness caused by a candle that was almost at its end.

That first night, sleep almost eluded her, but she found it in the wee hours of the morning. When she finally slept, the dreamed. Her dreams were scattered. They were filled with images and flashes of light. She went back to that day where the mysterious figure who looked like her spun around and around and around until she had been reduced to a blithering mass on the ground. IN the dream, though, it was different. Or maybe it was a memory; something that she had missed in all of the chaos around her? Either way, something was different about this memory. There were voices speaking to her from the whirlwind. At first, they all ran together, but as she focused in, she began to distinguish multiple voices.

"Athennnnssss, you caaaaan not hide from us", came one.

"Weeee will alllwaaaysss fiiind you.", came another.

Still another cried out, "Youuu beeeelong to usssssssss!"

The voice, however, that caused her blood to run cold was accompanied by a face. This was not just any face, though. This was the face of her mother, shrouded in a hood similar to the one she had seen days earlier. That face, her mother's face, had parted it's lips and spoken to her. IN her dream, she knew that things had not happened that way, but for some reason she was unable to wake up. AS her mother's voice began to speak to her, Athens felt herself beginning to drain away, as if she were sinking...sinking further and further into oblivion. She felt helpless against the tide of emotions, and finally succumbed to them when she heard her mother say,

"We are your family, Athens, and we are coming to get you."