She put her ear to the door, the peeling paint crumbling away in little curls. The paint was white. The wood underneath was gray. Her callused palms lay flat against the blistering whitewash, and her face was barely visible beneath a heavy, lank curtain of hair. Blood trickled slowly down from a gash on her arm, but it bled sluggishly, as if the wound had been open for some time. The frayed white muslin of her sleeve was blotched with stiffening brown stains, but no further care had been taken either to clean the fabric or to dress her wounded forearm.

Her face was strained; her brows were creased slightly, and her eyes were cast downwards, as if in concentration. There was pain, as well: her mouth was pinched and too-tight about the corners, and there was an unhealthy, dull flush of red on the edges of her sharp cheekbones. The edges of her shadow shuddered jerkily with every breath she took, although she did so in perfect silence.

The silence. That was what was so unsettling about the entire atmosphere...it seemed as if the entire world was holding its breath. Rebekah's eyes flicked upwards for a brief moment; it was a spastic, uncontrolled movement. No, not merely a moment's pause in respiration; the world had ceased breathing long before. The world was dead. For so long, they had lived under the illusion of peace, of perfect order; they had been creatures within a bell jar, who had never seen things as they were. They all knew, now... they knew both the decaying world and the monsters within themselves. Would they have preferred the ignorance of their past lives? She let the question pass by, unanswered, as her eyes dropped again. There was no answer to give.

There was not a sound outside, just the ear-piercing silence, barely muffled by the cracking paint and the weathered door.

Relaxing somewhat, she pulled herself softly from the door, her fingers lingering a moment too long on the leaded gray knob. It was cold. It burned with the fire of a million million past suns... Rebekah closed her eyes for a moment, her hands hanging limply from her shoulders. Thank you.

The Vispili were growing stronger...they roamed Sevia and the surrounding lands, in search for supplies. Food. It was always food. Food, whether it was from beast or man...it made no difference to them. It was horribly repulsive to Rebekah, but the more sardonic part of her mind always questioned her- what was so fundamentally wrong with killing, with eating each other? The original Sevian rules had dissolved with their uprising.
But she could not.
And although some the Insurgo called it weakness, she did not agree.
It went far deeper than that.

But, she thought almost irrelevantly, it was fortunate that she had only encountered a loner earlier that night. It could have been worse: much, much worse.
Rebekah retreated to the furthest corner of the room, bundling her rags about her as she slowly lowered herself to the cold concrete floor. She shivered for a moment, pulling her loose clothes a little tighter around her. The warmth built up gradually, and she struggled against the drowsy feeling, but it was a losing battle. At any rate, she was quite assured of her safety... her head dropped somewhat, her vision blurred, and then...and then...


A slow, shuffling sound roused her from her half-asleep state, and she jerked her head upwards with a start. The entrance was as she had left it- locked, barracaded- the one florescent light on the ceiling still buzzed as it shone feebly through the darkness, the pile of old furniture threw odd twisted patterns on the opposite wall...

She blinked, almost uncomprehendingly, as she noticed another...detail on the opposite wall of the room. A small, squat door had been cut from the plaster, and she had almost overlooked it behind the ruined furniture.

With a chill, she realized that there was no lock.

Sorry- not much happened here, but I'll speed it up in my next post. I plan to introduce mysterious-stalker-man so we can get some running action going. Or...feel free to write your own twist xD

Fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. She felt it running along her spine, prickling on her skin, in the coldness of the concrete... She stayed silent. Unmoving. Vaguely, she noticed the feeble light on the ceiling rocking slightly as those blasted footsteps came closer...closer. All at once, she wanted to laugh. She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, at the futility of everything she had done till that point. So they were more clever than they had thought; they had somehow traced her and found their way into the building.

Animals. Rebekah's mouth curled upwards into a bitter smile as her eyes traced the outline of the door facing her. The edges blurred for a moment... strange to say, at the moment, everything began to numb.
More seconds flew by. Then there was a pause. Rebekah continued to sit, unmoving, unmoved.
Why was it that in moments like these, time seemed to drag on forever and ever and ever?

On and on and on, only interrupted by the buzz of the dying lights and the slow drip of water against concrete. Some part of her screamed at her, screamed at her to do something, anything: throw herself as a block against the door, push the remaining furniture in front of it, make a run for it...because she did not want to die, because she hadn't- but she did not twitch a finger. She knew they always attacked in groups; the end was inevitable, and she preferred not to make such an...undignified scene in her last moments. She did not want to be killed while she was begging for her life, trying to run as they bore down on her...
But they were taking so long.
An odd, out-of-place exasperation welled up in her, encroaching upon the previous feeling of numbness. So...they preferred to play with their prey before eating it... she was probably in some sort of twisted cat-and-mouse game. An ugly, absent-minded sneer forced itself upon her thin lips. Oh, since they'd forced her to, she'd play. She'd play.

Rebekah pulled herself from the corner, a sort of nervous irritation taking hold of her. She fumbled in the half darkness for something she could use...her grasping fingers caught hold of a loose chair leg. It fit easily in her hand- the polythlene was knobbed and smooth against her palm. It was a situation beyond ironic- these...monsters would not have existed if not for her and her...cause. The words escaped from her mind's voice with difficulty.

Then she knew. She saw it, she knew, she felt the door hinges strain against the wood and then...
She felt so, so cold.

Once there was a woman named Rebekah who thought that she knew best and joined a group. She joined a group that hated how the world was run. She wanted to see the sky, but when she tore away the paper and the machinery and the pretty pretty glass, she found that there was nothing. A gray nothing where monsters existed and where she could not get away, a place where she was cornered, a place where she no longer knew up from down and left from right. She was confused. She no longer knew.

The light sputtered one last time before it died away in a flurry of cooling sparks. A sound that Rebekah could not recognize escaped from her throat, and her fingers gripped the chair leg convulsively. The door shuddered and gave against the weight on the other side, and then it was open: the dank musty air from outside blew against her face and then she made to bring her arm down and the chair leg splintered against the wall she'd missed and then she was one large machine of fear and anger and confusion

It was only a boy. Only one boy. She hadn't seen one in forever. Not a monster. Not a bloodstained creature from the streets.
She dropped the splintered furniture leg; it rolled limply on the concrete. "Thank God." she said. "Thank God."

Relief. Sobbing, gasping relief.