HEY GUYS! SO THIS IS MY FIRST CHAPTER OF STATIC AND I REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOY IT! NONE OF MY CHAPTERS ARE EDITED SO IF YOU SEE A MISTAKE PLEASE POINT IT OUT SO I CAN CORRECT IT! THANKS SO MUCH!! XX
*Imogen pictures above*
Once, long, long ago, there was a girl named Imogen Vast. She lived in Colby Kansas with her beautiful older sister, Charlotte, and both of her happily married parents. She had a lovely golden retriever named Daisy who's glossy coat never lost its shine. Her neighbors had a farm that she would visit in her spare time just to watch the cows and wonder if they knew what was coming to them later on down the road when Farmer Scott sold them off to the butcher. She did well in school, bringing home straight A's to proudly present to her parents on every report card. She had friends who cared about her and who were great fun for her as she was for them everyday.
She would escape to her dreams every night, creating stories of islands with buried treasure, knights in shining armor, and girls with strong hearts who proved all the boys at school wrong. She liked to think that reality wasn't as bland and boring as it appeared to be. She liked to think that the cotton in the wind was little fairies playing tag in the sky. She liked to think that she was the lost princess of some far away kingdom, kept a secret from her until her parents saw her worthy enough to rule. She was a girl with a wild imagination, always assuming there was something magical in everyday ordinary things.
Imogen had the kind of spirit that makes others envious. She had the kind of smile you remember because it always hit you when you least expected it because she had come to understand that people don't need a smile when their already laughing, but when they're down in the dumps waiting to be lifted up. She was brave and kind hearted and had never wronged anybody.
Ever.
Yet they still broke her.
They shattered her from the inside, tearing every last piece of good in her soul to shreds until they broke through.
In the beginning she would keep her chin held high when they whispered threats in her ears. And she'd get back up when they knocked her down, again, and again, and again. But nobody can be brave forever. Sooner or later the walls around her fell down and crumbled, crashing to the ground as she sank to her knees and surrendered.
I should know better than anyone. After all, I was Imogen Vast 3 years ago. Then they took her and molded her into nothing but an empty, unfeeling shell. The me now, it's a heartless robot, operating without question, carrying a dead spirit inside. My rebellious streak is gone, the fire in my soul just a pile of ashes thanks to the shroud of darkness they smothered over it.
I'm no longer Imogen Vast. They stripped me of that name when they took me. When they crushed me. They gave me a new name. One that represents all that I am and all that I will ever be. They gave me a name that is supposed to prove to me how measly and little I actually am. The name that they branded me with serves the soul purpose of humiliating me forever, for as long as they still have their claws around me.
The name they carved into my skin the day they took me. The name that reminds me everyday that I am nothing. They won't let me forget how easily they can squash me. Because what's easier to stomp all over than a Roach?
END OF INTRODUCTION
I couldn't stop running. Running, running, running. Not that my legs were actually moving. It was in a dream. No, a dream is something beautiful that makes you warm and happy inside. This was cold and dark, a nightmare, really. A nightmare that I was aware I was having but was to drained to wake up from. Just running in my sleep along a blank black and white landscape with no sun, swallowed up by darkness. I was running from something, I could feel its presence, only, when I looked over my shoulder, there was not a thing behind me except the identical expanse of nothingness that stretched out all around. Yet the fear was still there. Like a knife in my side, a constant ache and never ending pang. Like fangs sinking into my skin, deeper and deeper until they hit bone and then going beyond that.
That's how it was every night here, constantly running in my dreams from the unknown. I've tried to decipher its meaning, like it might be metaphorical for something that I fear in real life. Only, there was so much to fear now that it was hard to connect the nightmare with just one of them.
When I finally did wake, it wasn't to the smell of cinnamon bread that my mom used to bake before things went all wack and they took me from her. It wasn't to the sound of my older sister Charlotte shaking my shoulder gently, softly telling me I'd be late for school if I didn't get up. And it wasn't to my dad at the other end of the hallway, humming soothing tunes as he got ready for work. It was to a harsh, blaring alarm that banged around in my ears, rattling against the edges of my skull. They say you get used to it but it's a lie. You never get used to waking up every morning to a sound that represents exactly how your feeling inside. It's a screaming sound. A sound of a hate that drills into your brain until you can't forget it. It haunts you there, begging you to pay attention to it, hurting you in places you thought you could keep safe from the monsters. Maybe I'm being a bit to metaphorical with this, maybe the others in my bunker get used to it because they don't connect the angry sound with the thoughts clouding our minds.
Strip the alarm of its metaphor cover and all you have is a wailing siren that signals to you it's time to get up. So I do, no matter how much my body protests. The other girls in my bunker are responding to the alarm much the same way that I am. Shoving their fingers in their ears, dragging their blankets off their tiny twin beds as they stand before replacing them again.
As I stretch my stif arms and legs I let my eyes wander to their equally weary faces. There are 12 girls in my bunker, all of us either 16 or 17 I'm one of the younger ones here, my 17 birthday still a good 6 months away. I don't know their names either. I mean, I know what I'm supposed to call them but I don't know their names before they came here, we are strictly prohibited from telling anyone our original ones. But I don't care. I'm not who I was 3 years ago and I don't want the other girls calling me a name that ties me down to my past and makes me think that I haven't changed at all. That I'm still Imogen Vast, the helpless dreamer, from Colby Kansas.
I only know their ages because its stitched right above their heart on every uniform along with their designated "nick-name" so to speak.
I turn back around to face my bed and kneel down to the floor. I reach under the bed where we keep our two sets of day clothes and one set of night clothes. I pull out my own uniform, a standard white long sleeve shirt and white pants made of some sort of cheep scratchy material. I change into it and ball up my one pair of night clothes in my hand.
Then I walk in the middle of the bunker, through the 12 beds that are lined up neatly on either side. At the other end of the bunker there is the one thing that is not some shade of grey. It's a door, a white one, that leads to the showers, bathrooms and laundry washing machine. I pass through the shower stalls, all two of which are empty since we aren't allowed to shower in the mornings. Then there's two toilet stalls and one sink with a sad cracked mirror mounted on the yellowing tile wall above it. At the end of that section there is one washing machine and one laundry dryer. A girl stands there, a black laundry basket full and overflowing covering her face so that I don't recognize her immediately. Then she sets the basket down with a thud and yanks open the washing machine door. I can see her face now and I know by her dull grey eyes that seemed bright at one time, and her tangled mess of black curls that sits on top of her head, that it's Ant. She's a tall girl, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. She's strong, you can just tell by looking at her, physically. I guess that's why I once admired Ant. That and the fact that she used to always walk with her head up and her back straight like she was sending a silent and subtle message that she wasn't all gone, most of her was, but not all. Now though, I can tell, there is nothing left.
"Hey, Ant." I say as I walk over to her. She turns her head in my direction but her expression doesn't change. Still blank. Always will be.
"Got room for one more?" I hold up my hand with my night clothes and she takes them from me and tosses them into the open washing machine. Then she starts tossing in the other pieces of clothing from the basket.
I watch her for a while, expecting her to say something but she doesn't. Ant used to be the most talkative one here in our bunker. But just two days ago she made the horrible mistake of talking back to one of the monitors. Not only was this totally out of line but it showed that she was not the hallow soldier that they wanted her to be. That they want all of us to be. So they took her away, only for one day but they inflicted so much torture into her that when she came back, she just wasn't the same and I never saw her eyes glow again.
I stare at her eyes now but she seems totally unaware of my attention. I stare at her eyes and I wonder what they've seen. What horrors she'd witnessed with those eyes. I think about her life before they brought her here, another subject we are forbidden to talk about, but I imagine it filled with happiness. I wish that I could see what her eyes have seen. So I could understand what she's feeling and help her out of the blackhole that claimed her so greedily. But I can't see anything in her eyes now. Just a vacant pool of stagnate grey water without a trace of light that comes with being an ordinary human like she used to be.
I shake myself out of my trance and linger there a moment longer.
"You have very pretty eyes." I say, my voice cracking as I tried to Rangel my emotions. When she doesn't respond I turn away, giving up, figuring that I shouldn't have wasted my time trying to breach the untouchable shell the monitors enveloped her in. So, I walk back the way I came. Just when I'm nearing the showers I hear a voice, so small, so quite, it was hardly even a whisper. But I hear what Ant says as clear and sharp as if she were right next to me.
"I have my mothers eyes."
The morning went by like it always does, slow and dreadful. It takes all the girls here ten minuets to change clothes, brush their teeth, and tie their hair back in ponytails. Then we adjust the covers on our beds, making sure there isn't a wrinkle in sight before standing at the foot of them, facing the girls on the other side. Sometimes we stand there, perfectly still and unmoving with our hands at our sides, for up to 30 minutes. Of course, we estimate that, there isn't a clock in our bunker but we know what time it is when the people we've been waiting for come to collect us, they always arrive at 6:00 sharp. The monitors are soldiers from the U.S. Army, or were to be exact. Now they work here, at the zone, training teenagers with our particular skill sets to be soldiers against our will.
There are two monitors for our bunker, bunker number 3. They knock once on the grey door opposite of the bathrooms and laundry room before barging in, gleaming black rifles slung over there shoulders. The first one to enter is Officer Jennings. She isn't necessarily kind but she isn't cruel. I favored her over the second monitor to enter. His name was Officer Connors and he was the closest thing to the devil I'd ever had the chance of meeting.
"Attention!" Barked Jennings. I stepped in unison with the rest of the girls so that my feet were close together and my arms straight and stif at my sides.
Both officers began walking between the beds, taking their time to inspect them along with the soldiers standing at the foot of each.
Connors was on the left this morning, they alternated every day for which officer should inspect which side. Unfortunately for me, my bed happens to reside on the left side of the bunker.
"Worm!" Connors snarled at the girl who's bed was just one away to my right meaning I would be next in the hot seat.
"Yes sir!" Worm shrieked, her brown eyes bulging with sudden rising fear.
"Did your mother ever teach you how to make your bed?" The question was a rhetorical one, it was meant to sting but not be answered. Worm balled up her fists at her sides and you could see her jaw move as she worked it back and forth.
"Yes sir!" Was all she squeaked out. Her voice had gone up at least half an octave. I could tell Connors was stirring up emotions Worm had fought to keep hidden when he mentioned her mother.
"Well then." He said, somewhat taken aback that she bothered to answer at all. But he brushed the initial shock off and returned his features to their normal state, the state of looking at us like we were trash and belonged outside in the cold January air, freezing to death.
"Why don't you do your mother proud then, and tuck in this corner! You filthy fowl creatures, you have no brain! You are worthless, insignificant, I could kill you right now and no one would feel your loss. Your life is meaningless, so tell me, why is it that I haven't taken it yet?" Connors didn't seem satisfied, like he hadn't fit enough insults in his words. So he struck her across the cheek with the back of his hand. She jerked her head towards me, brown eyes sporting tears that were threatening to spill over. She readjusted her self but her chin was slightly lower.
"Well?" Connors said, wiping his hand on his camo green monitors vest as if he'd just touched a real worm instead of a girl. "I'm still waiting for an answer."
"Sir, I do not know, sir!" She stammered.
"Wrong answer." He hissed. "Your still breathing because we think you could be of use. All of you are only here because of your so called "special talents". The United States thinks you are a danger, a threat, if left untamed and in the wild with the rest of civilization free to do whatever you want." He turns to the rest of us here. Worm seems relieved to not be the only one sharing the heat of Connors anymore.
"So we brought you to this zone, fixed you to behave the way that is expected of you. That way, once you are fully trained you may serve for your great country in the military forces. You may be ghastly beings with very little brains at all but we will take advantage of what you can do and mold you to become soldiers. Mold you to become something other than rotten bugs."
There is yet another rule that must be followed here. No one can look a monitor directly in the eye. So I kept my gaze on the grey wall across from me, the little patch above Flea's head as Connors approached.
He looked me over, staring at me with his beady black eyes for a solid minuet. One minute of complete terror. He glanced at my bed and spit at my feet as he moved on. I struggled to keep from sighing in relief as he walked away.
It took 10 minuets for the inspections to be completed, I counted each agonizing second. Then, Connors and Jennings joined each other at the door where they'd come in.
"At ease!" Commanded Jennings. Again, in unison, I widened my stance and clasped my hands behind my back.
Jennings held up her hand and waved us on, signaling the girls to march forward.
Connors opened the grey door that led out into the rest of the zone.
"Advance!" He ordered, and we did.
The zone was nothing special, it was small and dry. There were only eight bunkers, 3 were reserved for girls, 4 for boys, and the last one housed the monitors. We never saw any members of the boys cabins. Me and my friend, Flea, had come to the conclusion that they're schedules were flipped, meaning while we slept at night and worked during the day, they slept during the day and worked during the night.
We exited our bunker in a neat and orderly line, resisting the urge to shield our eyes from the blinding white that came from the rising Suns rays bouncing off the piles of snow that blanketed the ground.
I was stationed at the back of the line, being the youngest with the eldest at the front. Our white shoes crunched along in the snow that covered the path that desperately needed to be shoveled. I could see out of the corner of my eyes that the other two girls bunkers were exiting and being guided by monitors of their own.
"Halt!" Came the sharp command from Jennings. We were now in the center of the camp and I could see everything from here.
I could see the circle of eight bunkers, and the electric wire fence that lined the area just beyond them. There was a break in the circle of bunkers where a large, no, ginormous, building was located. The mess hall. And the training center. And the infirmary. And the storage facility. It was in that monster building where we spent most hours of our day either eating, training, or organizing the storage. And of course, if you were lucky enough, you were there spending time in the infirmary on a break from your never ending duties because of some health issue or injury. Flea and I had nicknamed the place the Block because it really was just a giant block in the middle of the zone.
All of the lines that had filed out of their separate bunkers and into the middle of the camp were now being instructed to enter the Block. Our line was third to enter since our bunker was number three.
The Block was claimed to be heated but it was not warm. The first floor was the mess hall which unfortunately did not serve breakfast so there was no need for anyone to stop there. So we kept walking to the stair case at the far end of the building. We walked down one flight to the training center. It was even colder in the basement which didn't help my already shivering body.
Here we had more freedom than I'm sure the monitors would have liked. Here we were able to talk and move around on our own free will. Sure they were still watching us closely, making sure we didn't use our abilities against each other in a way that could suggest we really were trying to kill someone.
Ha. Abilities. That makes it sound like what we can do is a privilege. Like others would do anything to be in our shoes so that they could do the same things we can. Trust me when I say, there isn't a soul left in this world who wants to swap places with me or any of the other girls and boys in our zone. The things we can do are not Abilities, they are curses. Curses that we pay for everyday. Curses that haunt us during the day and devour us when we sleep. Everyone's curse is different but we all suffer in the same way and it kills us more than the monitors ever could. The monitors are just big bullies but these curses, they're monsters in the dark that hit and kick us harder than the fists and feet of any of the monitors. We can't get them back, we can't stand back up and fight.
I file further into the cold, clammy room along with the rest of the girls in my bunker and in bunker number 2. They join us down here for the first 6 hours of the day and then we eat lunch and finally diverge while we carry out the rest of our duties in the afternoon and evening.
The room is some odd material that squishes when you step on it. It could be some sort of styrofoam, I think, only, it's a metallic color, shiny and lustrous. The walls are made of it, the floor and the ceiling are made of it, the targets across the room are made of it.
"Roach, wanna spar?" I have my eyes focused a girl from bunker two being beaten to a pulp by one of her monitors. I hardly even heard Flea calling me since the disgust and the hatred I was feeling drowned everything else out. She had to ask several more times, apparently, before I actually responded.
"Roach?" She inquired, placing a hand on my shoulder. I shook myself out of my trance and slid my gaze over to her as she stood beside me.
"Don't look at them, you don't want them to think you care." I nod and she ruffles my brown hair with her hand. I think at one point, in Flea's other life, the life before this one, she was the definition of beauty. She had creamy brown skin that was the color of the hazelnut coffee my mom used to drink on Saturday mornings. Her eyes were a striking blue that contrasted greatly to her tan skin and dark black hair. Her high cheekbones and petal pink lips were just another factor that added to her flawless physique. However, the dark circles under her eyes and her frail limbs that seemed to have her skin sucked tight to her bones made her look weak and broken. But she wasn't.
"You said you want to spar?" I ask her, trying to block out the screaming from the girl being pounded in the corner. Don't look, I think, they might catch your eye and you'll be next.
I stand about ten paces away from Flea, facing her down.
I don't know how to explain the feeling that comes when you summon a curse. It's almost like a rumble, like a train is driving circles in the pit of your stomach and its presence suddenly becomes the only thing your aware of. Then the sensation spreads, it spreads to every limb, every nerve in your body, electrifying every last atom that makes up your existence. It paralyzes you, permitting you from doing anything other than feel the adrenaline coursing through your veins and the power that's mixed in your blood pumping through you to the beat of your heart. The process is as painful as it is exhilarating, but it doesn't last longer than a few seconds even if it feels like an eternity when you actually experience it for yourself.
There is no signal to begin the fight. You just go once you feel your blood has been entirely replaced by the steaming power that comes from the fowl thing that cursed my DNA 3 years ago.
I strike first, holding my hands out in front of me and lunging forward as is if I was trying to push over some imaginary shelf that was too heavy to shove over with just my arms, like I needed my whole body to get it to tip.
But nothing falls because there's nothing there to push. So my power goes into something else, it goes into my curse. The train in my stomach trudges on faster and and faster. It speeds up my torso and into my arms, welling up in my palms until the pressure becomes to great to bare so it flings itself towards Flea. My power, it comes in a hideous form. It comes as electricity. Mini lighting bolts shooting out of my palms at Flea. Thats what cursed me, electricity, static, the stuff most of us depend on to live ruined my life and turned it into something foreign, something that boils down to just scary.
The charged bolts of purple and hot glowing white jet out of my palms, releasing the pressure that was pushing so unbearably hard against my skin. There is no greater relief than when it leaves.
The force of it knocks Flea down and the shock holds her there for a while but she scrambles back up to her feet. If Flea wasn't cursed, she'd be lying dead on the floor right now. The monitors had told us the day they brought us in that we aren't effected by each other's powers as much as regular old people are. No one really knows why, well, actually, I'm sure they do but they refuse to tell us for some reason that is beyond me. In a real fight I would've kept the electricity flowing until I had come out the victor. But this was not a real fight, it was a practice one, a sparring match. So I held myself back and allowed Flea to make the next move.
Like I said, everyone's curse is different, they may have similar qualities but no two are exactly alike. Flea had something in her blood, something that was as hot as fire and as desperate to escape as we all were from this zone.
I could see the agony on her face as it contorted and twisted into a definite look of pain.
And then she snapped. The air in the room rushed in to greet me like a stampede, it knocked me off my feet and sent me skidding on the ground until my body connected with the wall and my head snapped back from the impact.
Flea could manipulate air-wind- make it swirl into tornadoes and create wind storms that could lay a major city flat in seconds. I could tell she was holding back when she sent the blast my way.
I rubbed my neck now that I was standing again and held my left hand high and waved it back and forth until Flea got the message that the fight was over and I'd surrendered. It wasn't that I was to weak to continue, I could've won if I kept fighting, like I usually do everyday when we spar, but I wanted to boost Flea's confidence so I let her win now and then.
Now that the electricity in my veins had subsided for the most part, the bodies of the people around me came into view again, appearing as if out of no where only they'd been there all along.
They were emerged in matches of their own, totally oblivious to each other, distracted by the heat of battle.
I clapped Flea on the back.
"Well, I'd say you got the best of me this time, girlie." I kept my voice low when I spoke and my head tilted down so that the attention of the Monitors would not be attracted to us.
"You let me win." She said her voice somewhat shaky, "you surrendered, you could've beat me." I don't deny it because I know that Flea is too smart for her own good.
I let my eyes wander, sweeping the girls battling around us. One girl has shape shifted into an alligator and is snapping its jaws at another girl who's managed to divide into three more of herself to take on the gator. Theres another girl who looks like she some how turned herself to solid metal and is landing punch after punch on a girl who's skin is now soft and squishy like jello, as she takes the hits without staggering. Theres so much commotion in the training room that the monitors are too distracted to notice that Flea and I are taking a break and risking a brief chat. Flea takes a step closer to me and lowers her voice ever so slightly even though the noise in the room would be enough to drown out whatever it is she has to say before it reached unfriendly ears.
"Look over at Ant." She says and I have to strain my ears to hear. I search the sea of cursed girls before my eyes find Ant. Shes alone. Standing out in the middle of it all, eyes staring at everything but registering nothing. Her shoulders are slouched and she has her head inclined to the ceiling.
"What is wrong with her?" Flea asks, a slight bit of concern rising in her voice.
I consider this for a moment before deciding on a statement to speak in reply.
"I think she's just... Tired." I settle on that even though I know it's not true. I mean, I'm sure she's exhausted but that's not why she's acting like that.
"Aren't we all." Says Flea matter of factly. "Ready to go again?" She asks and I nod.
"This time, Roach, don't go easy on me." I hesitate before nodding again and taking a couple steps away from her.
She doesn't want me go easy? Fine, I won't, I've got more power in my veins that's just itching to break free and I'm going to let it.
We fight for hours, taking only one more scheduled break to get a sip of water with the rest of the girls. Then, we go at it again until the monitors blast a high pitched scraping sound, like nails on a chalk board, to get our attention and signal that it's time for lunch.
Flea and I don't speak after that, there's no time to during our transition from the basement to the mess hall and of course there's the whole thing where we are severely punished for any noises that sound remotely anything like communication.
The mess hall is quite a sight, it's yellowing and chipping white tiles to its strange sent that seems to emanate from the kitchen. Not to mention the food they serve is the same disgusting slop and tasteless pieces of bread.
We walk through a line, us and the girls from bunker two, and receive our portions of the repulsive concoction and stale bread.
After, we go to our assigned seats surrounded by the girls from our bunker and eat in silence. Worm is on my left and a girl named Grub on my right.
I'm not sure when the monitors have their food, I never see them eat and whenever I dare to steal a glance at them, they're always watching. Like Hawks, they watch, they're eyes darting around the room, searching for anyone of us who might be breaking the rules.
I've mentioned before how empty and lifeless the eyes of the girls here look. How they are seeing things the way the people here want them to see the world. But the monitors, they have a totally different emptiness in their eyes. The absence of love giving them that look that the other girls have mastered without knowing it. I can't stand the way they look at us. Like they don't see teenagers who's souls are being striped out of their bodies, but instead they see animals, vile creatures who don't deserve to live and are just wastes of space and air.
We finish eating at sometime around 12 o'clock and the monitors guide us up another level in the Block up into the storage facility. This is where we break away from bunker two. We switch responsibilities every day, while our bunker organizes the storage and shelves newly delivered items, bunker two goes outside where they shovel snow and in the summer they do various yard keeping chores.
The storage facility is massive. To put it in perspective, the training room was about the size of a football field with a ceiling hight of about the length of a school bus.
The storage facility, it's still about the size of a football field but it's height is nearly four times that of the training room with shelves that stack from the floor to the ceiling. The shelves are in isles with those ladders that you used to see in libraries propped up against each side of each isle.
The monitors direct us to the new shipment of food and blankets and show us where they go. Then we start shelving them. This part doesn't last long but the monitors won't let us end early. So of course they decide it's time to switch the places where the uniforms go with the spot where the soap is. So we travel back and forth all the way across the length of the place from the uniforms to the soap and back again and again and again. Now, you might be thinking that this couldn't have possibly taken the five hours that it did. But don't forget the fact that there are only twelve of us and we are all extremely exhausted from the 6 and a half hours of training that we'd just gone through.
Once we finish we are escorted out on our weak and weary legs. As we walk once more down the stairs to the mess hall for dinner, we pass the girls from bunker one who are heading up to where we'd just come from. We'd finished organizing the storage but they had the task of cleaning the floors, dusting the shelves, and anything else they were told to do.
Dinner is the same as lunch. Same gross odd smelling substance and nasty bread. I sit at the same place that I did during lunch and I keep my eyes fixed on my food as I try to talk myself into eating it. Even though I'm starving, like at this point I would literally kill for a donut, this monstrosity is not a donut and I'm not sure it would satisfy my hunger. But I convince myself to eat it and little by little I gulp it down until 4:30 rolls around. At that point we are shown out of the mess hall and back outside just as bunker two is coming back in.
"Get a shovel and remove the snow from the left half of the zone!" Shouts Connors. "And be quick about it!" He adds as I pick up one of the bright red shovels that the bunker two girls left leaning against the wall of the Block.
I work with purpose along the wide paths that lead up to the door of every bunker. From the center of the zone. The paths are long and it takes us twenty minutes to finish each one and with five paths on the left side, we finally finish at at least 6.
"Halt! Return your shovels to the wall and fall in!" The order comes from Jennings and I follow it, resting my shovel against the Block and coming to my spot at the end of the line in front of Connors and Jennings.
Flea is a little behind, she's moving slowly and when she realizes she's the only one not in line yet, the utter look of horror that rises onto her face is enough to understand what's going through in her mind. She knows that if she doesn't find her spot now, she's going to be next on Connors' chopping block.
So of course she picks up her pace and her feet scurry over to the line. But of course, because life just loves to watch us suffer, she slips on a patch of ice and goes down with a thud. She's quick to her feet again and hops in line right in front of me. She's shaking now, and I know it's not just from the cold.
I've been here for three years. I've seen Connors every single day since they brought me here. I know that he is not going to let Flea off the hook. And I'm right. He approaches her, taking his time to get there.
"Flea!" He barks in her face and I can almost see the spit fly off his lip into her face.
"Sir, yes sir!" She squeals.
"You should be ashamed to call yourself a soldier, you are slow, clumsy, the worst example of obedience that I've ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on." He's not backing down and I know how much Flea's natural instinct is telling her to fire back. Back before Ant became just like the rest of them, the three of us, we were the only ones in our bunker who managed to not be as effected by the abuse and "introductory training", as they called it, when they first brought us in. I don't know why, Ant used to say it was just because we had the strongest minds out of everyone else. Sometimes I wish that I didn't have a strong mind, that my brain could just fall into sync with the rest of the girls. I guess it'd just be easier to go along with it willingly as opposed to faking it and constantly fighting your instincts to say something back, or to show that you actually care about how your being treated.
"You know, I don't care much for your complete lack of effort. Would to you like me to show you what I do to girls who don't give me their all for everything they are told?" He asked but it was for pure amusement. He wanted her to say no, he wanted her to back down, to reassure him that he was the alpha.
"Sir, no sir!" She replied. A slow smirk began to spread its way across Connors' ugly face.
"I'm afraid I'm going to show you anyway." No.
Connors had barley finished speaking before his fist collided with Flea's stomach and sent her flying back. Had I not sidestepped out of the way, I'd be sprawled out on the pavement along with her. I had to resist my urge to go help her to her feet.
Connors still wasn't done. He came closer and landed a swift kick in her side. Flea moaned and clutched the spot where he'd struck. He kicked her again, this time harder, and her hand was bleeding where the metal toe of his boot had sliced it.
I had never known this feeling before. Seeing my friend being hurt like this, me standing less than two feet away and watching it happen. It was a consuming amount of guilt that was threatening to swallow me whole and before I knew it, before I could stop myself, I let the guilt get to me.
"Stop, your gonna kill her!" I shouted at Connors, sounding as desperate as a I felt.
Well, he sort of listened. He stopped kicking Flea, but he turned slowly to me and I knew from the fire glowing in his eyes and the way he grind his teeth that I had made a terrible mistake.
HEY GUYS! THANKS FOR READING CHAPTER ONE OF STATIC. ID LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU ALL THINK OF IT SO PLEASE LET ME KNOW, I ACCEPT CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM BUT PLEASE DON'T BE JUST PLAIN MEAN! I HOPE TO FINISH A CHAPTER EVERY THREE DAYS OR SOONER IF I CAN. THIS CHAPTER IS A RATHER LONG ONE AND IM PLANNING ON MAKING FUTURE CHAPTERS SLIGHTLY SHORTER, WHAT DO YOU THINK? THANKS AGAIN FOR READING! XX