The Story Dump

*Traffic: The Escape

She hit the ground running.

The tipper-tapper of her feet against that solid and cold marble floor resonated throughout that long hall. There wasn't a place she wanted to be more in the world than the very end of the endless chase. If adrenaline was a serial killer, she wasn't the first to be victimized in a mad escape from the room. That room meant the end--defeat--and she didn't want to find herself there. Never, at all, did she want to be in the chilliness of that frigid and empty place. It would be a death sentence, to be entrapped in that emptiness.

There was a darkness at the very end--an unknown outcome, situation, path. She wasn't sure if it was better, over at the other end of the hall--but by any logic, it had to be better than that room.

No. No doubt, it had to be better than that room.

She was exhausted. It was perpetual. She couldn't possibly hold out. But she had to. There couldn't be another way. It was as if the tipper-tapper of her feet were that short and rapid reminder to her--"keep going". She just couldn't give up.

But even she could see how dark and distant the end of the hallway was. Her feet were numbing as her bare skin slapped the floor, over and over. The thin white sheet over her entire naked body that substituted as a dress, though flouncy and airless, only made her feel vulnerable and transparent. Control of her legs was fading, like her mettle. Her breaths ragged, her eyes watering, her skin burning like rubber on asphalt--the escape was crumbling apart. There wasn't a way to reach that end in time.

She was praying for a miracle. God, help her--she couldn't do this. This was her life. She'd give it all if he just answered this one prayer. A searing tear slid across her unhealthily pale skin.

She just couldn't run.

Her body collapsed like a doll, shuddering as it slammed against that marble floor near the end of the hall. She was nothing but a bag of bones--her muscles had run dry long ago, in that room. She wanted to cry, more than just that single drop, but the water had been sucked from her. Her body was a lifeless, porcelain doll.

The clip-clop of the devil's approach suddenly pounded in her ears. She couldn't escape the devil and his menacing hands--hands that slit and pried--that could choke her nearly-empty self.

God--where was he?

Her hair became the devil's leash as he lifted her head from the floor, grasping her chin. The tug of each strand was torturous. His nails pierced her skin but produced no blood--she wished they did. The devil was a man who appeared too perfect--unnaturally, like a symmetrical crowd of people. He had her alone, tied on an invisible chain.

That devil, that man--he snaked a finger behind her ear and down her nape to the collarbone. He whispered into her ear, the words smooth as a sharpened scalpel. She shuddered, and, as her voice escaped, the devil bellowed a laugh. It was back to the room for her--fate was set, the path locked.

She was so close.

Where was God now?