The World Without Sun

Prologue

Grey. Everything was grey. If there's one thing I'm certain about it's that everything was the same, monotonous color. The buildings' brick and the neatly-paved sidewalk and road, the lampposts and the claustrophobic walls that seemed to close in on you whenever you went outside. The trees were white as bone and had long twisting branches that had black wispy strings instead of leaves.

The sky was a perpetual void of inky darkness and it felt as if there was no light powerful enough to break through this infinite barrier, and this was probably true. There were no stars or moon or sun to lessen the suffocating blanket. The only light we had to see by were the few lamp posts that stood at the end and beginning of each road with virtually none in-between.

One got used to the lack of light eventually, unless you thought about the trees and their crooked branches and their strings that would sway in the wind and whisper dark promises to those that would walk by. I was one of the unlucky few -although one could easily argue that it would be considered lucky- that was unable to fall into the strict routine that governed us.

Missing person posters were plastered across the crumbling brick of the buildings and walls. You could hardly go anywhere without seeing one, although it made no sense to me that people bothered to put them up. No one ever looked at them and within a week or less a dozen more were posted on top of it. It was a common occurrence for people to go missing and no one ever really cared, family members might grieve for a day or two before going back to their fastidious schedule, for there was no time for grief and sorrow. No time for people to look for the poor unfortunate souls who disappeared without a trace.

There wasn't any extra time for anything, everything was planned. From the early hours of the morning to the late hours of the evening, from your outfit to the very last drop of water you drank. You didn't get enough sleep, four or five hours if you were lucky.

It was a pitiful existence but it was all anyone had ever known so we went along with it, there was nothing else for us besides clean shirts and houses to spotless streets and sidewalks. You find it hard to care about anything else when your whole life is set on such a strict path, you find it hard to make friends or step back and see what's really happening, so no one did, and no one cared.

This is my story. A tale of breaking the rules and demolishing the careful society that had been meticulously built over the course of decades and perhaps centuries. This is the story of how a little girl and her group of outcast friends broke free of the cage so attentively built to keep us unknowing and stupid.