Hope

I tried a new style a while back, I feel like it's worth sharing.

the girl walked down the dark hallway, wrists handcuffed and wings bound. she was being led by a man with a knife to her neck.

 Endless doors passed, all painted white. Here and there, there would be a red stain on the walls, seemingly bleached, but not dissolved.

She started to feel just how cold it was. She had no shoes, just a thin hospital gown, and her hands were chilled with frostbite. But then again, the man leading her seemed fine in just his lab coat and doctor's uniform.

She wondered, was it her or was she going insane?

The man led her to the end of the hallway, and she stopped so as not to run into the door. she felt the knife against her neck painfully but didn't move.

"If you turn, I'll be the last thing you see."

Was that his voice? she couldn't tell. she heard a lot of voices all the time, and it seemed to blend in with the rest. 

The man in white moved around her to open the door, sliding the key card through the lock and pressing some buttons in a strange sequence. He then pushed her in and put the knife to her neck again.

 

Have you ever seen an abandoned hospital? The once white, fresh walls now overgrown with deadly plants and poisonous mold, and the toys of children long dead scattered around like the inhabitants had simply disappeared?

This girl with wings hasn’t, but if she had, that's what she would have compared this room to.

 

Honestly, this bird girl barely remembered anything. She remembered how to walk and breathe and eat, but not to speak, or even to cry. The man in white kept walking, past bed after bed. If she knew to observe, she would have noticed people like her on each of them, either asleep, dead, or dying. If she knew how to notice, she would have spotted the fact that each of them had the wings of a different bird. One girl,  probably dead, had the bright red feathers of a cardinal. Another boy, still dying, had the dark wings of a crow.

If she'd had these thoughts, she might've realized that, like the rest of these human genetic experiments, she probably wouldn’t survive whatever was ahead. But she didn’t have these thoughts. In fact, she had none. She'd most likely forgotten how to think.

Remember when I said she wondered? She didn’t. I'm sorry I lied.

The man stopped and so did she. If she knew how, she would have noticed the large metal door in front of her. She would have noticed the man in white opening it and pushing her in. she would have noticed the chemical smell that assaulted her sense from all directions. She might have even noticed that she spent a full two hours in this dark room. She could have noticed the smell getting more intense but she didn’t.

And if, by some stretch of the imagination, she noticed the scientist wasn’t in the room, his re-entering with a gas mask might have made a bit more sense.

It didn’t make sense, but it was completely logical.

The man in white pulled her out the room and made her stand against a wall, knife back to her neck and phone in his free hand.

"sir, we have a survivor."

Those words might have meant something to her. She might've started making connections. She might've heard the rest of his words.

"it’s the dove. A girl. We've got hope yet, sir."

She might've noticed the irony in his words. The dove, the bird of hope and peace.

But she didn’t.

Without quite thinking, she thought half a thought.

She accepted the name.

Hope.

She was Hope.

Author's Note

A good friend gave me the prompt, "If you turn, I'll be the last thing you see" and I ran with it. I have no idea how this happened. I know there are a ton of grammar and formatting errors but hey, this is like a year old. I feel like I might want to go on with it, after fixing it up. <3