Abandon The Night

Chapter One: Maybe More

She unlocked her antique shop and walked in, knowing that today was going to be her last day dealing with that man. If she had her way. She eyed the rounded door that led into a rounded building and frowned.

Tyn wasn't in the shop, nor was Anca's only normal friend, Elise Xarati. Elise supplied the Worldwide News. WWN was sometimes shortened to broadcast or 'cast. Arduina developed it a decade or two ago and Anca couldn't hear it. Didn't want to know why either, just figured it was a way of life for her.

The government was Arduina, last Armeq, previously Arpahs, and originally America. The world as Anca knew it was lost into the depths of time. It was simpler now, though.

Outside, rain started falling in purple waves. And with that, rain mites. Rain mites came to be during the first years of the purple rain craze. They had large heads and small bodies, purple in color since they absorbed the poison from the water, with hundreds upon hundreds of small wiry tentacles. And they bounced. Bounced. Anca despised their existence more than any other new creature that developed over the thousands of years.

An overuse of acid, any type of acid, caused a disturbance in nature so catastrophic, animals were gone. Just gone. Dissolved into purple mush. Nothing survived the purple poisons for long, except the rain mites. And cockroaches.

All that, though, was the past that spoiled the future.

Anca gazed through the door's glass window wistfully; nostalgically. The feeling lingered even after noon passed and the sun was falling behind a purplish horizon. The purple poisonous rain was relentless and Anca, like so many other times, made bed in the back storeroom. It had a half bunk and the room had been retrofitted for days like this. Anca, though, tried to think ahead, which was why she had a fallout shelter everywhere she had lived repeatedly.

Morning came and with it, Elise. Elise was a blonde bombshell; youngish, but a very hard worker. She came in and set her stuff down while Anca stumbled blearily from the backroom. "Got stuck here again, eh?"

Smiling at her friend, Anca sat in her hover chair and was just about to joke, "At least-" she cut herself off at the 'cast. The info rang in Elise's head.

She looked Elise over and noted that she was perturbed. "What was the news this morning?"

"You and your tin hat!" Elise snapped. Anca raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Ignoring the news like that!"

"It's not that, I've told you." Anca stressed for the ninth time that month. "What has you in a knot?"

"There has been another disappearance." Elise picked up a broom while she talked, having finished taking off her coat. "A family of four disappeared late last night." She set about cleaning up the shop, sweeping away rain mites.

Anca swore and dropped the manuscript's paperwork. "Even in the rain?" Anca could smell the toxins in the air still but didn't let it bother her. Scientists were working on a cure for the purple poison anyway.

Elise stopped sweeping and nodded towards the front door, as if to indicate the government was outside of it. "And that is why it was broadcasted, I think." These disappearances weren't good. They reminded Anca of when her neighbors and then whole town populations vanished right before the whole country was under siege during the late 1940s in Czechoslovakia.

Sweeping bottle-darkened brown hair out of equally darkened brown eyes, Anca looked at her friend for a moment. The blonde was formidable. Strong in composure and beautiful in soul, of which Anca had more insight on the latter than any one person had a right.