Nada's Escape

30- Safe House.

I can't waste the torch batteries so I hurl myself into darkness with a simple click. Darkness itself is not terrifying. But the things I see in it are. So I keep the torch tight within my grasp. Muscles taut, mind whirring I keep my plans at the forefront of my mind. A shield against the dark thoughts of my subconscious.

At least now I'm sure that Finley's on my side. For a Huntsman he's honest and nice, and yet he still controls that terrible power against which I have no defence, or at least I think I don't. I need to be sure I can beat his enthralment or else all of this will be meaningless. At this thought the sharp sting of hopelessness in my chest surprises me. I wait for it to pass but it lingers and my eyelashes become moist.

Pride sets a hand on my shoulder, now is not the time for tears.

Yes, I agree, tears are for when there's nothing left to do, nowhere left to go. But there's surely a solution to the enthralment problem. The sting in my chest, however, seems like it will never end and so I let this thought go. I continue the internal dialogue. At least the others have a chance now, with the monster gone and the ribbons on the way.

The monster I killed. A lonely sob rips through me. There. I've thought it.

What would have happened in the slippery, grotty bathroom had I not intervened? It feels as though millstones are grinding my soft parts, deep in my belly. Anger, disgust and sadness coil around the sting of hopelessness from before. It's far easier now to let go. To give up and sob at the frustrations of life than to fix them.

The tears well faster than I can stem them and then they're falling, sticking to my stinging cheeks. I choke, cannoning helplessly towards heedless sobbing. For what I've done they could kill us all. No mercy for the weak. No plan of straw to save us this time. Just a black hole in a dead man's house and a little girl sobbing.

Like itching a scratch, the sobbing becomes addictive. When I stop for a moment, gasping, the relative silence only highlights how alone I am, how pathetic, how useless to anyone. So I don't want to stop anymore. I fool myself that I can hide between the tears. That I'll feel better and the bad will wash away even as I pull out truth after truth and the millstones keep grinding, my insides liquefying in the face of my hopelessness.

All my escape plans fail. So I have to keep fighting, slog day after day. But I'm tired. I get nowhere. Why do I have to personify violence? Rebellion? This is never who I wanted to be. It grates against my very nature. I'm supposed to be sixteen years old. Where are the simple worries? The homework? The library fines? The big bright future I'd always had? My future is now a grave below this nest of monsters, however hard I try to deny it.

Each thought surfaces in those rare silences where breathing is required. But each brings on a new song of tears. My breaths turn short and hysterical and I'm no longer sobbing by choice. Tears without need leak and leak and my eyes ache and swell. Still, tears cling to my flushed ears. I can't wipe fast enough. Mess and mess and mess. I can't even cry myself to sleep; I'm too hysterical. I'm too tired, but on caffeine, but everything still hurts, the physical as well as the feelings. I'm a tiny island power plant manufacturing my own despair.

I'm half mad, just like Lily, when a firefly lights up in the darkness. As a hoarse voice starts singing, the light of the fly morphs into the soft glow of the dashboard. The familiar lullaby soothes my aching ears, the purr of the engine the only accompaniment. This is the only balm for all the aches I've ever known, dissolving the despair and anger from under me. So I sink below it all into dreams of before Seven, a place that only lives on in my dreams.

Somewhere there is sunshine...

Somewhere there is day...

Somewhere there is Morningtown...

Many miles away...