Chapter One

In which we learn even more about the unnamed girl.

            Chapter one

             

            The girl woke up abruptly to the sounds of a guard opening the door. It was the younger guard, the one that started more recently than the others. He didn’t treat her as harshly as the others did, and most times he was the one who brought her the books she so cherished. He was something of a curiosity to her. Being unnecessarily mean to her appeared to have no appeal to him like it did all the others.

   They stared at each other for a second and he cleared his throat. “It’s shower time.” The girl looked at him strangely. Shower time happens every other day, and she’d only just taken her shower yesterday, hadn’t she? He noticed the expression on her face and gave her one of his own, something flashing in his eyes. She thought it looked a little pleading, but she couldn’t be sure. What was his problem?

   He ordered her to stand up. When she did, he grabbed her arm and gripped tightly, leading her out of the door. Out in the halls there wasn’t a second guard like there usually was. The young man didn’t put the abrasive bag over her head either. Instead he led her down the hall, turned and kept going.

     This wasn’t the normal direction to the showers, or the testing room. She was positive. Confusion and a little fear filled her. She considered breaking away and running but knew there would be horrible repercussions if she did. And where would she run to, anyway?

      As he pulled her behind him she took in her surroundings for the first time in her whole unknown number of years here. Everything was made of cement, just like her room. There were rows and rows of doors along the walls, none of them so much as hinting what was behind them. There could be more people in those rooms, she thought. Maybe more people like her. Freaks.

   She turned her eyes to the man dragging her along with him. He was taller than her, which was not uncommon, and had dark blond hair. He wore the guard uniform and the hat, hiding half his face under it. He didn’t look cruel, and she wondered why he had chosen this job in the first place. It was possible he was as mean-spirited as the others, but hid it better. Under a mask of false sincerity, perhaps.

   Finally the girl decided to speak for the first time in years. “W-where are we going?” Her voice was a little scratchy from misuse, but she found she liked the sound of it. The guard stopped and turned to her and she flinched, expecting to be hit for speaking out.

    “I’m not going to hit you.” he said, his voice gentle, “I’m taking you away from this place. I’m rescuing you.” As he said this the man continued pulling her down the hall way, twisting and turning, leading them to the outside world. Fear and excitement fill her, each of these emotions warring inside her. Should she believe him? What if he’s lying, she thought.

      What if he’s taking her somewhere to hurt her? It had happened once before. She remembered the horrible smell of body odor emanating from the older man who had snuck her away from her room and into another, could remember the stink of his breath. He had tried kissing her and she fought back, repulsed. He had slapped her, once, twice in the face. Hard enough to knock her back into the wall. She was dazed and had tried fighting off the darkness that threatened to take her, not wanting to be left defenseless against this man.

   Other guards came before the man could attack her again and she had been grateful. So grateful. She was confused as to why the man had wanted to kiss her. She could only imagine what she looked like to the others.

        Scraggly, never-been-brushed black hair that went past her shoulders in the cut they always gave her when it got too long to handle. Dirty feet and chewed on finger nails, a baggy, scratchy gown covering every hint of curves. Not that she was particularly curvy. She was stick thin because of the scarce food they fed her. Though she got three meals a day, it was mostly the basic nutrients necessary for her to live, and didn’t satisfy her bodies want of actual food.

         Not knowing what her face looked like, never having access to a mirror, she didn’t know if her face was pretty, or even beautiful, but she knew her nose was small and pert and that her mouth was a little too wide.  Her eyes were big too, and she thought that she might look like an owl if she ever had a chance to look in a mirror. She didn’t even know what color her eyes were.

        Her thoughts coming back to the matter at hand, she wondered if she should truly consider breaking away from the young man. He could have ulterior motives. But the girl had seen the look in his eyes. He had seemed truthful. And he’d said he wouldn’t hit her for speaking up.

      “Why are you doing this? Rescuing me?” she asked. Her voice was still a little scratchy and she had to clear it a little after speaking. He answered while keeping up the brisk pace he set, only glancing back at her for a second. “I don’t really work here. I come from outside this place, where people like you and me aren’t hunted and killed or captured.”

      The girl processed his words. What had he meant, “People like you and me”? She was about to ask him when a door ahead of them at the end of the hallway opened up and a startled guard saw them. He frowned and was about to say something when the man with his hand around her wrist thrust his other hand up toward the guard.

     In slow motion she watched as the other guard flew back from an invisible force into the wall and slid down, unconscious. Her eyes snapped from the unconscious man to the one in front of her. “How-“she was interrupted by the sound of an alarm ringing through the corridors. “S**t. They’ve been alerted of the burst of power.” He looked at her and said “Run.” Pulling her behind him again, he darted through the door the other guard had come from and they burst into sunlight.

    “Ah!” she let out a surprised yell. The light burned her eyes. She hadn’t been expecting it. She had her them squeezed shut when she felt the man jam his hat on her head quickly. “That should help.” With that, he pulled her across the yard they’d come out on, her bare feet touching grass for the first time in her life. A random thought flitted through her mind. This is the first time I’ve ever been outside. She reveled in the feel of the grass blades between her calloused toes.

    They reached a fence at the end of the grass and he let go of her hand to kneel in front of it with his hands joined together as a stepping stone. She looked at him curiously, then at the fence, and behind that, a forest. “Step on my hand and climb over the fence.” he told her. She glanced behind her, at the cement building that had been her home for years and then at the forest. The alarm was still ringing inside, but nobody had come to get them, yet.

      Should I go with him? It wasn’t much of a choice for her to make. That building held every nightmare she’d been forced to endure over the years, for the entirety of her life, until now.  The forest held an unknown future, with this unknown man, in an equally unknown world. She’d once read an interesting sentence in a book: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” She thought whoever wrote the book must not have been in a situation such as hers.

    Putting her dirty foot on his hands, she lifted her self up and grabbed the fence as the man lifted her the rest of the way. Swinging her leg around, she slid to the other side of the fence and dropped down. She landed on her butt with a gasp. This was fast becoming the most physically exerting exercise she’d had in a long time. Not bothering to dust herself off, she pushed off the ground and stood to wait for the young man to drop down.

    He dropped gracefully, and she felt a bit of envy. “Follow me. We have to hurry or the guards are going to let lose the dogs.” Dogs? What? She thought. She didn’t know they had dogs. She followed him into the copse of trees and deeper into the forest. The twigs and rocks might have been stinging her feet but for the thick layer of calluses on them from never wearing shoes. 

  The further they went, the further away the alarm of the building became until it was just a memory. She wanted to ask the man more questions, but knew they would probably have to wait until they were far enough away to be safe to stop for a while. They walked for an interminable amount of time. She developed a stitch in her side. Never had she walked this long and this far.  I hope he knows where he’s going.

     During the walk she took in everything. The feel of being outside, the smells of the forest. She touched trees as she walk, admiring the grooves in the bark. She picked up sticks and rocks, rolling them around in the palm of her hands, just to feel them.  And she thought about her situation. Weirdly, she missed her books. That was the one thing bothering her. Those books were her only safe haven in that place, and she’d left them behind. She shrugged off the disappointment. Surely she’d trade them for freedom again, given the choice. For now, she thought, I’ll just enjoy being out.

       

 

Author's Note

For those of you who have already read this, I've decided to split this chapter in half and make the second half the second chapter. For newcomers to the story, please review. Thank you!!

Reviews

[Sujash I. Purna]

I read the whole chapter in one breath! Very well-crafted yet simple English! Marvellous! At first, I thought you were inspired by JK Rowling solely and you compared Naries with Muggles and Wizards with Extras. But I can smell you have other inspirations too. But the jail place where they kept Ophelia reminded me of Ministry of Love from George Orwell's 1984.

Awesome work indeed! I want to read further! What happens to Ophelia Green? When it gets published I will buy a copy for sure!

[MR_BERG]

That's a good chapter! You use a lot of narrative to get through the past of Olivia and Clicker (good name).