The Municipality

Prologue

EDIT: This prologue hasn't been changed very much from the original, but the rest of the story will be rewritten and taken into a different direction. 

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This is my first story on Wattpad. Anyone is welcome to leave criticism as I am trying to improve my writing. Thank you very much for reading!

Also, thanks to some very helpful feedback, I've edited this chapter, so it isn't the same as it was before, just letting you know in case you go back and get confused. 

-eLEnArtistic

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She couldn't tell if her eyes were open or not.

The place where she lay was devoid of light, its silence the only sound she could hear and its darkness the only thing she could see. She cursed the icy chill that bit through her clothes and into her skin as she shivered, trying to warm herself by curling up into a ball on the floor- or whatever it was. The empty blackness continued even below her.

For a moment, she thought she was dead.

There was a ringing in her ears and a pulsing ache in her head as she reached out to grab hold of something- anything- to find that her hands touched nothing. At last she managed to pull herself to her feet, filling her lungs with air. No. I can't be dead, she decided, taking a step backward.

Her heart fluttered like the wings of a startled bird when her back immediately made contact with something, its iciness making her skin crawl.

A wall. It had to be a wall.

Or was it a wall? It was almost fluid- but yet solid and somehow metallic at the same time. She could feel it pulsing beneath the surface, like a beating heart was caged inside.

That thought made her flinch away. What if it's alive?

Maybe a ravenous creature was circling her in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to pounce and make the kill.

She wouldn't even see it coming.

If there was one, she reminded herself, it would find it all the more simple to ambush her while she remained standing still.

She set her left foot in front of her, and then her right, feeling only a peculiar buoyancy beneath her shoes that she had never felt before.

 Accelerating her pace, she charged into the blackness. The space could only be so big. If there was a barrier on one side, there had to be another.

Before long, she walked right into something numbing. She could feel its internal pulsing beneath her fingers. This time, she didn't flinch away from the wall as she had the first.

Except, it probably isn't one. There was something inexplicably fluid about the surface. She didn't know what was confining her - but it wasn't a wall.

She began to walk the length of the room again, bracing herself for it to end. Her pulse was beating through her veins like the rhythm of a distant drum.

It did end. But this time, she heard the pulsing before she could feel it against her skin.

She narrowed her eyes, and held out an uncertain hand to touch it.

If it was fluid, then she should be able to go through it.

Something inside her caused her to withdraw her hand the moment her fingers came into contact with the surface.