Outside

0.0; Prologue

THERE WAS NO beginning nor ending.

          Drops of a dark warm liquid slid all the way down her arm as her eyes focused on the dirty landscape. The icy weather suddenly felt hot as a new explosion could be heard a few kilometres away. The sound echoed in the lost city like a mother's scream in an abandoned subway. The teenager couldn't bring herself to stop looking around. Her neck refusing to function made it impossible for her to move her eyes away. An irrelevant pain stroke, not her bleeding arm, but her now empty heart. The feeling was so strong her feet gave up the weight it held for seventeen years, and the redhead fell on her knees. Such a small thing in such a big World. Sharp rocks dug into her skin through her ripped jeans, but she couldn't feel a thing. Her mind was too caught up in the scene playing before her eyes. Soon enough her legs and knees slipped on burning dust, causing her to fall on her chest, face first. She was lucky her reflexes weren't touched. That may be the only reason her eyes had closed before her head was stuffed in the ground by the impact of the fall. There was no way she could have afforded a doctor to fix the damages it would have caused to her vision, if she ever saw another hospital again in her life. She felt like nothing was left but her and the pain stabbing her chest and thoughts. It was worse than the day she caught her crush kissing her best friend, or the time she got an F on her test. Worse than any every-day struggle any typical teenager goes through. Deep inside she wished she had never left in the middle of her class to go to the bathroom. To go back, wait for the bell to ring in the old school's microphone and only then leave the room. The fact she did - that she left earlier than the other students - saved her life. But that was the problem.

          Her hands ever so slowly placed themselves on both sides of her body. They were shaking almost as quickly as her thoughts were running inside her head, trying in vain to find a safe spot to hide from what was constantly trying to chase them; reality. She pushed herself upwards, a few tears sliding down her cheeks. She opened her eyes halfway through her attempt to stand up, but her left arm was too weak to support the weight she was desperately trying to force her body to lift. And so she fell once again, her throat and jaw now landing first on the road. She could feel her lungs contract inside her chest as she coughed and spit blood. More tears formed under her puffy eyes and she groaned of pain. She kept repeating to herself that she had suffered enough, that this was the end. It had to be. She couldn't keep going on this way forever. She had nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to talk to. But apparently she still had to keep moving forward, alone or accompanied.

          Ever so carefully, she rolled on the ground until her back was finally facing the road. Her entire body was bruised, and she wondered how she survived everything that had happened. Must have been a miracle, one she had difficulty accepting. She tried to sit down the same way she attempted to stand up. After falling again a few times, she finally sat down, straightened her back and stretched her legs in front of her body as far as she could. She brought her hands to her face and whipped off the dust and rocks implanted in her skin. She sighed as she was finally able to scrutinize the horizon. Some of the weight the young girl held inside her chest climbed all the way up her throat and into her eyes. Unable to keep it in any longer, she screamed. If anyone other than her was left, looking for its next victim, well now she was spotted. But no one came. She's been keeping so much for so long. And now it was all coming out at once. Tons of tears fallowed, exploding out of her eyes like the Niagara Falls, only it was very probably a horrible scene. She screamed again and cried as loud as her lungs let her, which was fierce considering the circumstances. She felt like a baby who just lost her favourite toy, only in this case we were talking about an entire town.

Another explosion cut the air and the oxygen in her lungs. It was loud, louder than a thousand babies screaming in a small crowded room. She could see a huge cloud of smoke and dust form over what was left of the town. The sound pierced through her eardrums like a few dozens of swords slowly slicing her ears. A weird buzzing sound replaced the noise echoing in her head, one similar to the sound you heard when calling someone already on the phone. Only with it came a horrible pain that soon scattered all around her body. The cold wind whipped her skin, causing even more damages to her body, as if she didn't have enough. She closed her mouth and eyes and rolled herself into a ball. She stuffed her face in between her knees and waited.

What she was waiting for, she wasn't so sure. She first thought she was trying to hold on just a little longer, that maybe hope hasn't completely vanished. Maybe once this last explosion came to an end, someone would come for her. Someone would take her in a new safe home, and with time she would slowly get over the events. But maybe she was waiting for her end. Maybe she wanted to join the others.

          In their painless never-ending nightmare.