Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Followed

She sat on the front step of the church, behind her the tall gothic façade rose into the sky, a dark silhouette against a sky purple with sunset, streaked with bright orange and dark purple clouds. A cold Autumn wind blew up the street, and she sat with her arms around her, shivering against the cold. Her thin coat didn't do much to stave off the cold and her teeth knocked against her with a soft sort of chattering.

The streets before her were dark and quiet, but for the occasional leaves dragged slowly across the asphalt by a sluggish breeze. She shivered again, peering into the dark with eyes slowly losing their ability to make out detail as the light around her faded.

She shivered again.

The steps of the church were hard concrete, cold against her legs, but at the same time comforting.

She kept her back to that comfort, her eyes fixed forward on the darkness, waiting and listening for a sign of.

It.

The Malevolence.

Finally it had succeeded, chased her from church row and the under streets and back to the surface where she could finally see sky, and despite the warm glow of the sun, she still did not feel safe. It had been building for years.

And always on her mind she could remember the first times she had felt it as a child.

She didn't remember precisely, was glad that she didn't, for she had been to young to remember, and it was likely that memories like those would have scarred her beyond recognition.

The night that her parents had died.

More accurately murdered.

She had never looked at the police reports, didn't want to know that origin of the thing that had attached itself to her, for whatever act of violence which had brought that thing running, must have been an act so cruel, that it was best not to know.

Bust still.

She could remember the feeling. A cold clenching fear that was so meline her entire being rebelled against it., and since then she had never felt quite that way again. Not since the cops found her and carried her away from the thing, losing it for some years within the maze of the public system bounced from one foster home to orphanage to another until even she didn't know where she was anymore.

For years she had lived in relative peace, burdened by only the fears and pains of someone who didn't have family or home to call her own.

Good foster homes, and bad foster homes.

People who wanted her but couldn't take her for whatever reasons, and people that didn't want her but still kept her for the government payout that she entailed.

The memory of that feeling had begun to fade from her mind.

Until it found her.

She had seen it again in the eyes of a foster parent as he smiled, promised that she would be welcome and safe in his home, all the way she could feel the pooling evil at his feet, felt it so heavily that she could almost see it spilling out of his mouth and onto the floor.

She wasn't entirely sure how old she had been.

Old enough to run.

Old enough to run and never look back.

Another few years spent on the street, lying to adults getting education because of school lunch and breakfast programs, knowing there would be somewhere safe to shower and to sleep if she was clever enough, that was until the janitor found her and she was forced to run again for fear of being sent back into the system where IIT might find her.