𝔸𝕟𝕒𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕞𝕒. [WRITING PROMPTS]

#4

Inhuman

It's cold. The kind of cold so damp and heavy it clings to your skin in the form of shivering beads of perspiration, coats your hair in a trembling sheen and dampens your clothes til they cling to you heavily. The kind of cold that unfurls beneath a cottony, turbulent sky, forever rolling and slate-colored above a bed of jagged pine trees and sour, empty silence. The only noise the crunch of my boots on the dead pine needles, fanned out on the forest floor. My breath slips from between my chapped lips in crystalline plumes, my stiff fingers curled tightly in the linty pockets of my jacket. 

Around me, up thick, peeling tree trunks and through the ribbed limbs of gnarled branches, I can faintly hear the skittering of miniature animal paws, the shuffling of subtle life through the hanging ferns and weeping brambles. Birds twitter occasionally, their songs falling flat in the still, wet air. It smells of loam and pine and spring, in a musty and forlorn way. A crow caws high above, it's shrill cry like a messy lightning bolt fracturing the sky, jarring and somewhat lovely. It gets no reply.

Sniffling, I rub the back of my sleeve across my frost-bitten nose, upturning moist earth with each step of my dragging feet. The ground slopes upward and I find myself shuffling through pebbles and acorns and dirt, until I rise into the long and thin clearing. Cut through with dormant, rusty train tracks. I look up on either side. To the left, the train tracks cut to the horizon, where they slope into a massive dip of greenery and above, electric wires slope in thin, curving lines. To the right, an ancient green structure of a bridge farther down, casting a bar of shadow over the dingy forest beneath. 

Still, all is silent, except for me. I am all alone.

At least, I hope I am.

If only I didn't feel her presence, then, lingering infuriatingly in the background.

I kneel in the middle of the tracks and wrap my arms around my bent knees. Burying my face in my warm lap, I screw my eyes shut. 

"Leave me alone," I say. Though my voice is muffled, I know she can hear me.

"Ari," is her reply. 

"Go away." I ball my fists until the nubs of my bitten-down fingernails dig into the soft flesh of my palms.

"Why?" She seems genuinely befuddled, like she can't imagine why I wouldn't want a near-stranger from school following me around like a lost and slightly rabid puppy.

"I don't even know you!" I say, a bit louder this time. "Just...Just leave me alone."

"What are you doing?" I can't hear her footsteps. She still hovers in the brush, her breath barely puncturing the scenery. 

"Just...leave me be." My voice breaks. "Okay? Go."

She doesn't reply, but she doesn't leave. I peak out of the corner of my eye, and she stands there, with long, tumbling black hair and brown eyes blinking thoughtfully behind her glasses. She's wrapped her arms around herself in the swollen cold, eyelashes fluttering as her gaze flits across the train tracks, and the rolling grayness of the vast sky.

I hear it first. A rumble, a throaty call that belches into the sky in the form of black smoke, and a vibration deep in my ankles, that lances up my thighs and into the nape of my neck. An oncoming train, barreling it's way forward, throwing it's massive mechanical hulk like a bullet on a mission down the tracks. Another call, another tower of smoke trailing into the sky. Like the warning cry of a frightened bird, like the scream of a flaming airplane as it jets to the ground, minutes away from impact. Nothing but airborne debris at that point.