Snipers in the city

Chapter One holes in our lives

(Cassia)

As I raced down the boulevard, I brushed auburn hair out of my eyes. This was a minor hindrance and really was the least of my problems at the moment. My skins pallor, was reflected off of the weak moon illuminating from the sky above. So pale in coloring it was startling to see, with even my own eyes. This of course was caused by only venturing out in the witching hours; in the darkest part of the night where the shadows acted like sheilds to unwanted attention. The streets seemed to become endless as I quickened my pace. I have to keep going I cannot risk stopping for even a second. I continued to think unable to let myself forget my own vulnerability. My deep green eyes where, wide and wild a result of months without any real rest. As I ran they stared determinedly at the cracked and splintering sidewalk, diligent to never look up. This movement, was a last desperate need to survive; to not vanish off this earth to kept moving, my mind and body exhausted; but I would not be another soul taken by them. They who called themselves The Crows, a dangerous gang of powerful people with money, that overcame the city's already weak government years ago and established to kill who they felt an undesirable. I was their definition of a that, too weak to work in their factories producing suspicious results, and often ending with the workers leaving in the morning covered in blood and gore quite with sights of untold horrors. Which unsurprisingly gained millions for those on top but next to nothing for the working class. Too weak to take and make use of as one of their own. For them the only use I would have is to be an example to those nearing my possition to stay quite and give up. To reinforce that to rebel was useless their only hope would be to surrender to their oppression. But what more was to expect of Snipper City were your eyes are never the only ones watching.

My name had been Cassia, I was a child. But days of childhood fantasy have passed and the dark days of adulthood have fallen upon this City. It wouldn't matter if you were a child who just learned to stand, from the second you could hold your own, you were expected to fend for yourself, or die trying.

The destination for tonight was the next safehouse and anyone who was alive, smart and not curled up in a alley drinking mysterious substances to numb the pain and quicken the death, was on their way here. This place was commonly called The Rats Den the code word for any place of safety for the people, it offered shelter, food, and resources for the rats of the city, those who just escaped into the corner of The Crows cold beady eyes.

If you're smart you would be given the information in small hidden doces, of where the next Den would be in within the time of a month, a tantalizingly slow process, but safe. For many to be open at once or to have information sowed readily was like candy for greedy Crows who took great elation to torture and kill unlucky or unwise rodents; for information, an example or for the shear pleasure in watching a innocent suffer, and a life being snuffed out like candles on a children's birthday cake.

This months location happened to be a abandoned warehouse one I myself had hidden away in, years prior. I could recall easily many a night huttling in with all the comfort supplied of a shivering sister, damp newspapers to keep out the chill, and thoughts wishing to be elsewhere. A familiar place one filled with memories of good and bad. As I reached it, the extori showed all the known setting of being the same, the cheerful sign that read out BERTS PLANTS OTORIUM, hanging now with ads for opium the front glass shattered and its bulbs dead or stolen. Fires lit by the brave and the desperate to huddle by flared up in odd corners of the alleyways in old oil tins, and the cracked windows in the top floor were replaced with rotting boards. The only difference was the concrete gray walls seemed to offer a friendlier and inviting glow welcoming the sick and the weary, that only a place that breathed family and belonging could provide no matter the cold exterior.
Looking behind for any obvious followers of benevolent or wicked, I casually walked up the two steps to the steel patio and to the side entrance. Becoming increasingly careful to look fearful and weak, my shoulders hunched and my eyes to the ground. Another stray looking for a place to sleep nothing more.

The door creaking open slowly on broken hinges, greeted me to a entrance of flickering LED lights that ran down a long and deserted hallway. In past times it would have been full of salesmen angrily snapping to use the front entrance, holding elegantly styled saplings. That was all gone now, the doors to many rooms had been sealed off locked away to times unrecorded in history. All that was left was this empty shell of a building, forgotten. No noise was heard through the concrete, a perfect insulator exactly why the rats chose this I could only suspect. When I reached the end of the hall a unseen shaft of metal slid to the side, connected to a door in such disrepair it had forgotten what it was initially supposed to be and had bled into the background of the wall, and a pair of distrustful coal eyes peeking thru, met mine.

"Eh whatcha wanting, this a place not welcome for a gurl like yerself," a gruff voice spoke muffled slightly from the metal, and asking coyly for the password that proved me not a spy.

"I-I am j-just looking f-for my Ivory Star," I relented my voice choked and horse from weeks of silence, you didn't get a chance to speak much here when each word uttered could be you death phrase if overheard by the wrong person, though the password that allowed my entry was strong, not the most inconspicuous password but one you had to be part of the den to know.

The eyes broke away from their distrust and I heard a arawy of locks being unhinged.

"Always nice to meet a Rat! Fairweathers to you child," the voice happier now, and losing the inner city accent that few spoke natively, but used as a coverup to being helpless and alone not someone to bother messing with, as the final bolt clicked and the door slide open without protest.

I stepped into the room the mood and the scenery completely transformed, many voices of different people swarming around my ears; while lovely pillars of faux mahogany held up the makeshift ceiling of the dens, transportable common room. In seconds the room could be, and eventually would be when the time came folded up like a napkin and unfolded in its full glory when the space was again provided for it. The material itself was some sort of thin sheet metal where it had came from no one knew. Loud laughs bubbled up from every corner of the room, and drinks being heartily poured around was a blithe and common sight. The young and the old sitting alike on benches, pillows and to the few the floor. Though no one minded, all were happy to see familiar faces and new timid mice. Speaking in the accent of before and the inner city free to shed their odd disguises and distinguish as respectable people of the society of before. For the first time in weeks my face broke into a honest smile at the gatherings of my people. I did my best to holler at the bartender for a drink of something warm and grabbed a meal from the trays being passed around digging in with great gusto. The bread may have been stale the milk might have been sour, but it was food, it was safety and it was the only family that felt like family, and not the ghosts I had left.