Running To Nowhere (Momentarily On Hold)

Pathways

I opened my eyes to see the sun begin to rise over one of the buildings that surrounded me. I wasn't quite sure when I had fallen asleep. All I knew was that I felt sick to my stomach from lack of food and could barely keep my eyes open thanks to the sticky tears that had run down my face. Somehow, as I pulled myself away from the garbage and slime of the alley way, I could only think about one minuscule little detail. Where was Tomas? 

He should have been able to find me at night. Having the ability to enhance your senses made it easy to find people. So why hadn't he found me? Was he captured again? But more importantly, what was I going to do without him? 

We had been out of the Institute for almost three days. Well, at least I thought it was three days. Sleep had apparently become my best friend in the past day and a half so I wasn't quite sure how long it had been let alone what time it was currently. Honestly, if someone randomly approached me at this very second and asked me what the date was, I would probably respond with, "no thanks," or "bless you," or maybe even "where did it go?" I don't know, something along those lines... Probably. 

 Anyway, the reason I had survived... That we had survived, as long as we had was because of Tomas. He always knew when people were coming or when there was food nearby or even if it was about to rain. Hell, if anything I should have told him to stay and distracted whom ever was chasing us this time, although, he probably would have gotten himself killed trying to save me if I had. He was just that kind of brother.

It took me a while to realize that I had wiped all of the grossness of the alleyway off and was still sitting on the grimy concrete. I had to move, had to get up and shake the soreness out of my muscles before I collapsed due to lack of sleep again. 

 I managed to command my body to move the way I wanted for the most part. My brain was reluctant to wake up which is definitely a bad thing. It wasn't until I was standing just outside the alleyway that I was aware of the people passing me by. They didn't give me a second glance; this area was pretty poor anyway. You couldn't pass an alley without seeing someone sleeping in it. 

 I continued in the shadowed steps of a woman on her cell phone. By the sound of her voice, she seemed overly excited about something. Whatever it was, I didn't care. I analyzed the buildings that I passed trying unsuccessfully to remember the path that I was taking incase I had to go back. I didn't want to wander too far in case Tomas was close by. The buildings that surrounded me seemed to get spread out more and more as I passed them and grow in size as well. 

 I stopped following the woman after I realized she was done talking on the phone. It was a good thing too because just as I stopped to look around she spun on her heel with a nasty look plastered on her face. I glanced at her like some other people did, just to see what the problem was. She turned back around with a look of terror on her face, as if she had suddenly become afraid of her own shadow. I was thankful when she had turned back around. It meant that I no longer had to look at her with an awkward questioning mask on while being forced to look at her plastic face. Anymore Botox and she could have been the spitting image of a Barbie doll. Now isn't that a frightening thought. 

 I originally had awoken with a gnawing pain in my stomach, hunger, one that I had become familiar with in the past couple of days. I was beginning to wonder where I would get money from. Somehow I'm not really sure that it mattered at this point.

 I hovered outside of a tattoo parlor, making the one time mistake of looking through the oversized window as a man was getting his back shaved, nearly ready for a tattoo. I spun away quickly, loosing my appetite almost immediately. Gross!

 A single questioned entered my mind as I watched these ‘normal’ people walking by me as if I was one of them. It was a question that had been bothering me for a little while now. How could they continue their average lives, pretending that everything was normal, when 'special' people, people like me, were dying all around them?

 "They don’t care because it doesn't affect them," said a quiet male voice.