Glass Souls

Prologue 1

The car splutters to a stop. Leann loses her power steering and starts cursing to herself as she fights with the steering wheel so that when the car stops it won't be on the road. The car rolls to a stop and Leann tries fruitlessly to restart the car. Finally it doesn't even make any noise as she tries to get the car to start.

Leann fights her tears even as she grows in her depression. She'd finally managed to get away from him just to be stranded on a lonely back road. Just how cliched had her life become?

She gets out of the car and looks around hopelessly. Night is coming on and there are few lights to be seen. Normally Leann would be thrilled, she loves looking at the stars and she has had few opportunities in the last few years. But now, there was something wrong, the night seems too silent. No cars to be seen going in either direction. There is one house some distance down the road, with no other house in sight.

The city she left behind over an hour ago and she has no idea just how far ahead any other cities might be. Or towns or any other civilization, he'd seen to that. Hell, she's not even sure where she is. He'd brought her to the city while she slept and kept her inside almost entirely for the last four years.

Her cheek still hurts from his last bout of abuse, as do her ribs. Her breath hitches even as she thinks that. Each step is a burning pain, but after four years she's well used to it.

She kicks at the weeds in her way and doesn't even notice the dark clouds swallowing up the bright stars. It starts raining as she walks up the sidewalk of what she believes now to be an abandoned house. A flash of lightning illuminates the house briefly, but it's the thunder sounding almost directly above her that has her screaming and jumping.

She lands wrong and twists her ankle and loses her balance. As she falls she hits her head. She was wrong her life had just gotten even more cliched. She wonders if she'll ever wake up as she feels the rain hits her and darkness overtakes her.