The Hunt

Chapter 9: Naya

I’m in a room, with lots of windows and black and white chairs, and modern furniture. I’m playing with a doll. I’m listening to my parents talk in the kitchen.

Then I’m screaming. People are shouting outside. There are sirens. My parents are rushing around. I am still screaming.

The windows shatter. There are gunshots and everything around me breaks and explodes and there is chaos. I am hiding under the table, screaming with the doll clutched in my hands.

My parents are grabbing me. They have blood on them. They have guns. They are crouched and shouting at me. They are shouting something.

Go Naya. Run.

And I’m running, out the back door, because my parents are shouting at me, telling me to. And there are gunshots behind me. But I don’t look back. All I hear is my parents shouting.

Go Naya. Run.

I am running through the back alley, barefoot, clutching my doll. I hear gunshots and sirens far away. I still don’t look back.

I am screaming. Men in uniforms are cornering me. I am running through the alley. There is no way out.

The men in uniforms grab me. I struggle. Their hands hurt.

Then there’s a needle. A large needle. And there’s a prick in my neck, and I am screaming, and then everything goes dark.

I wake up to a sound in the forest. I’m clutching my knife already, holding it out, but it was just a mouse.

My body is adapted to wake up at the slightest sound around me. I don’t sleep often, but every now and then, I need it, need the energy.

Out here, sleep is a dangerous thing. It means turning your back on everything, shutting down awareness. I’ve grown to run on as little sleep as possible.

I’m glad I’m awake though. Those nightmares aren’t something I enjoy. Another reason I don’t like sleeping.

It wasn’t a nightmare this time. It was a memory. The only memories I have of my life before the forest. After I was injected with that needle, I only remember waking up in the forest, cold and alone, with nothing.

I was eight.

Sometimes I remember other things about my life as a citizen. But I don’t like remembering. Remembering means going back and reliving the moments I will never live again. Being in places I will never be in again. Seeing people I will never see again.

It’s how exiles go into depression, really.

I check my sack, to make sure everything is in it. Always good to be cautious.

It’s dawn, so I can see everything relatively well.

The food from my recent trip to Tanek, the money, my card, rope. I am wearing all the coats I have, to keep me warm. I have a few items I can sell, small clothing items, and water bottles, that I also bought in Tanek.

My knife is at my side.

I’m not a sentimental person. I don’t keep things I don’t need. But that doll from my memories, if I ever found that, I would keep it.

It’s somewhat a fantasy to me. I’ve given up on it a long time ago, but when I was younger and filled with life and hope, I always thought that one day I would go and see the gates magically open, and run through, and kill everyone inside the city, all the men I could find with those uniforms from my memory. I thought that maybe I would work my way into the city hall, hold my knife to the hegemon’s throat, and threaten him to tell me why I was exiled. To tell me what happened. And then, I would find my doll and run away to a town far away from the forest, where they don’t have exiles.