MultiColor Mashup | 2023 ✔️

Color #6 - Little Boy Blue

Round 3.1
Word Count: 1,686
Dystopian and Horror
Prompt:
Write a short including the three elements provided. *elements at bottom of page*

- - -

Shrinking in and out of the nameless corridors is simple. It is just walking, letting our figures constrict and grow in the mirrors angled at each aisle's end. The store doesn't have labels drifting back and forth from the top of rickety shelves. I wouldn't have expected it. At least not after the resistance's not-so-peaceful protests. Labels mean order, one thing the resistance aimed to reconstruct.

The resistance tore the city apart a week ago... or maybe it was a month, two years, I don't know.

"Just one," I said, patting Blue's back.

"But Mommy!" he whines. A yellow rubber duck clutched in his right hand and an ancient-looking plastic truck in his left, he gave a disgruntled pout.

Raising a brow, I gestured to each toy in turn. "Just one," I repeated.

I shifted uncomfortably as clawed five-fingered toes pressed into my back, meaning the creature in my bag was equally disgruntled. I unbuttoned the clasps and unwound my bag's knots, placing a calming hand on the shaking white rabbit.

Clarke. Named after my fiance, the rabbit resembled him in a way, spastic at times and eerily calm at others. I doubt my fiance had anything to do with B6565's—that was his "name" before—behavior. Only after Clarke—the human—snuck him home from the lab did the furry white fellow receive a real name. I still wish Clarke had made it out of the protocol break himself.

I gulped, muttering quiet words to Blue in an effort to hurry his indecision. Trips into the inner city were rare for us. Mainly because I couldn't risk our lives more than necessary, meaning a quick trip to the market and occasionally a stop at a place that sold cheap antique items, for a bit of fun, of course.

"Put your hands where I can see them!" The voice thundered through the thin shelves. From my position, a black-cloaked figure held several vials in their hands. Only God knew what the cloaked individual chucked into the most likely potent fluid.

Whatever the case, our safety mattered above all else. Taking Blue by the hand, I crept against the shelves, picking a stick-like thing—a child's toy—from a lower shelf. I looked to the skies, praying I wouldn't have to use this makeshift weapon.

With foreign words strung together and shouts of coin in the air, the shopkeeper kneeled behind the counter.

The words the cloaked figure spoke weren't so foreign and vacant of coherent meaning to me. They were a derivative of the people who lived in the Outbounds, one of the many things I learned from Clarke.

The tongue belonged to people with names longer than a syllable. In short, people who didn't fit the parameters the Council set for the genetics lab, the place all children came from. The Council made sure of that. I couldn't imagine a time when they let anything slip... five years ago. Now, I could believe it. 

There was something unsophisticated about this robber. Maybe their identifying attire or method of madness that set them back a few centuries was the culprit. Either way, something was wrong. I knew it in my bones. Why would someone from the Outbounds do this? They already had enough problems with the Council.

Blue crept along at my side, gripping my hand in silence. We slunk through the maze of shelves, not spotted yet. The only exit was a few yards away. We could make it out without confrontation. I was fifty percent sure of that—not great odds.