a perfect storm 🌫

Chapter One: Stormy

I can hardly tell where the sky stops and the ground begins. It seems infinite... stretching on forever into the day after tomorrow. Everything is grey. The cloud-filled skies, the concrete, the people. Groggily, my eyes flick open to greet yet another depressing, hopeless day in this smog-choked urban shit-hole I call home.

I sit for a while, my legs splayed in front of me, my back pressed into the cold concrete. From my usual place on the doorstep, I watch as the people pass me by, downtrodden, their eyes glued to the ground. Of course, it isn't uncommon to see a homeless person and so they pass without bothering me. It's a dog-eat-dog world after all, and everyone's too busy looking after themself to risk a liability like me.

Eventually, the owner comes out to shoo me from their doorstep, and so I start off - ambling down the street at a lazy pace. My battered, black cargo boots slap safisfyingly against the crumbled path. Occasionally, a car will brave driving this part of town, where the overpopulation is at its worst. Otherwise, the space between the decrepit old sky-scrapers is filled door to door with stinking bodies. Keeping my eyes glued ahead, I weave through the thronging crowds, my small hands slipping in and out of pockets with practiced ease. Nobody notices the skinny, pale girl in their midst, with eyes like milky diamonds, her high cheekbones dusted with freckles.

I manage to collect a few coins and an apple, which I start munching on enthusiastically. I can hardly remember the last time I ate. It could have been days. Thankfully, I grip the food between my long, black dirt-caked nails. I keep my eyes on the sky, the impending storm emassing rapidly. Slipping familiar earbuds in, I turn on 'Sweater Weather' by The Neighbourhood. Soon enough, I arrive at my destination. I walk up to an old building, heavily graffitied, the door hanging from the hinges like an extra limb.

I walk straight in with a false sense of purpose, the whomping of the music filling me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. Flourescent lights blind me, second-hand smoke assaults my airways and I can almost taste the acrid stench of sweaty bodies. Pushing past the rave, I resist the urge to run right into the thick of the crowd that swirls to the rhythm.

I open the roof-top door, and walk out into the open air. My favourite spot. It's where I come to think, to clear my tempestuous mind. Sitting down on the ledge, my legs swing in the breeze over the dizzying drop but it doesn't bother me. The morning is fresh and dewy and I shiver in my raggedy, grey tee. It's ridden with holes and tucked into the top of my washed-out blue mom-jeans. They're not much better, ripped and scuffed from years of scuttling along rooftops. My long, dead straight chocolatey hair is gently lifted and tossed into my face, as a stare head-first into the swirling clouds.

Fiddling absent-mindedly with the ring on my middle right finger, I try not to think about it. I really do. But I can't help it. I'd had that dream again, the same one as always. That same day, 8 years ago when my parents...

A slight brunette girl, hardly 7 years of age; walked hand in hand with her mother, her father trailing just behind. Suddenly, a shaded figure slips from the darkness of a nearby alley, his gun pointed. Bam! Bam!
Absently, the girl heard disjointed screaming - only to later realise it had been hers. Her father was the first to fall, followed shortly after by her mother. Her palm slick with blood, her fingers slipped from the girl's small ones. Away, back into the darkness the man fled, his gang insignia visible on his leather jacket... but nobody followed him. Nobody cared.

But Stormy never forgot and she never forgave. That man; mere gang underling as he was; had been the first of many to die at Stormy's merciless hand. It had been that fateful night that had sent Stormy down the crazed, deranged path to what she now called her reality. If it weren't for that day, she never would have been forced into the keep, never have trained under Rowan. She never would have felt the ferocity and bloodlust that had driven her to become what she now was. And that was the saddest part of all, oh! what could have been.

A choked sob erupts within my chest, forcing its way out of my quivering lips. I cry a tear for my parents, murdered all those years ago, I cry a tear for the girl I once was, and a tear for what could have been. But I don't allow myself to cry for long, feelings were only going to get in the way. Cloud my judgement. I couldn't afford to be weak.

Almost on queue, the sky begins to let loose, showering me with raindrops that chill me to my core. I sit in the rain, feeling my own melancholy wrap around me like a bubble. I relish the feeling of the water on my skin, letting my sadness wash over me.

I almost don't notice the faint sound of careful footsteps placed into telltale puddles behind me... almost. I turn, my heart beating wildly to see...

✋ Who's sneaking up behind Stormy??
Who/what are the Keep and Rowan? What's going on with this society - what's with the gangs?? ✋

Author's Note: Hey there! I know this is a terrible chapter and has absolutely no plot but I just wanted to get it out there...  whatever the hell it is 😂😂