Edge of Dreams
I hop my pink bunny around the room on every surface available, even on my fathers face. He laughs and grabs my bunny, only to pick me up and throw me over his shoulder.
"Mummy!" I squeal. "Help!"
I push myself up enough to see her leaning against the doorway smiling happily. I laugh and wiggle as he tickles me.
"She can't save you!" My father chuckles out, still tickling my sides and holding me so I don't fall.
Soon enough, she comes to save the day, scooping me out of his arms. I squeeze her into a tight hug, and she holds me just as tightly.
I pull back grinning, to look at her beautiful face. "You helped me." She smiles whilst brushing my blonde hair back.
"I'll always help you."
✭✭✭
"Attention everyone." We all listen and go silent. "Make your way to the other side of the room." Nobody moves for a second. "NOW!!!" The man's voice booms and we all jump and scurry over.
I notice something that I didn't when I walked into the room. On the other side of the room there are metal bars a couple feet above our heads, all of them crossing over in a checkerboard pattern. We all walk to stand beneath them. I can't see who our trainer is, from the people in front of me. Sadly, it's the people with the pins that are in front of me.
"One of today's challenges is for you all to grab those bars above you and hang without touching the floor of course." He says.
A part of me is happy that it's as easy as that. It seems simple enough, although looking at the sort of overweight boy to my left shaking slightly, I'm sure there's more to it.
"On the count of three, I want you all to jump and grab hold of the bars. One. Two. Three." We all jump and pull our feet off the ground in sync.
"That's it? Just hang here? That's easy." A girl calls to the man.
"When will newbies learn when to shut up?" I hear Stephanie mutter to my right.
I hear the man's footsteps move away to the area we were all waiting before. The next thing I know, I hear a slow whirring and I see the floor below slowly slid away.
My eyes widen. For a second I think I'm going to fall, but I tighten my grip.
"Holy shit." I hear someone mumble. The people in front of me cheer and whoop in excitement.
Looking down, all I see is darkness. I know the tunnel is deep, but it's too dark for even the artificial lighting above to light up how deep.
"What's down there?" The same girl who asked a question earlier asks the man. "Water or a net or something?"
The man chuckles and it echoes slightly around the room. "I don't know. Why don't you find out yourself? No funny business." Then I hear the sound of the door sliding open and shut.
At first they're quiet, but then the bars we're holding onto begin to shake as the people in front start to mess around. Some start to do pull ups, some swing around, whilst I hang on for dear life.
I hear people behind me grumble and groan over the shaking of the bars. I turn my head to Stephanie. "We have to hang on to this with them practically shaking the whole thing down? What if we drop? Is there a net at the bottom?"
"Pretty much, and if we drop, we die, or at least break a lot of bones. There's nothing at the bottom."
"How do you know?"
"Give me a second." She says with a distantly focused look. I realise that she's taking her shoe off with her other foot. "Listen." Her shoes drops and we watch it disappear and it's at least three seconds before we hear a small thump echo below.
"Crap." I pull myself closer to the bars and wrap my arm around it to get a tighter grip. There was no way I would be falling off here.
Then I hear a voice whimper "Help me," to my left. It's the slightly over weight boy and I can see him slipping and barely holding on. Nobody else hears him but me- either that or they purposely ignore him. We make eye contact, grey against grey. One hand slips off, and he whispers, "Please."
I don't move. I can't move.
He goes to grip the bar again but someone makes it shake and he misses it. The boy hangs from the bar with one hand and finally, someone pays attention to him. Only it isn't the good kind.
"Oi Blaze!! Check this kid out!!" A girl shouts getting the attention of the dark haired boy I had seen shout earlier about fresh meat. The name fit his dangerous persona. The girl has dark skin with her hair in an array of shades of brown braids hanging from her pony tail.
"What Sara?" Blaze says as he swings his way around people to get to her. He makes eye contact with me for a slight second before looking to the boy. Sara has a wicked glint in her grey eyes that matches the one in Blaze's when he sees the precariously hanging boy.
"So, how's it hanging, burnout?" Blaze let's one arm go and casually holds on with one hand, like it's an easy task.
The boy just whimpers and tries to grab hold of the bar again.
"High five?" Blaze says holding up his free hand to the boy. "No? Too bad."
All I can do is watch. If I try to help him, there's a very good chance I will fall with him. There's that and the fact that I don't want to draw attention to myself.
Sara put her hand on top of the boys. If the boy blushes, it's hard to see from the fact he's already red in the face. "Need a hand?" She purrs to him noticing how the boys hand is slipping more. Then she starts to push them off, one by one until he's falling.
Down.
Down.
Down.
There's an audible crack and thump that echoes and grabs the whole class's attention. We all look down into the darkness in silence.
Then Blaze breaks the silence by saying "Somebody grab a forklift."
Most of the class laugh at the comment, even the burnouts. Even I couldn't stop the slight twitch of my lip into a small smile. The comment was inappropriate, insensitive and just plain mean, but still amusing.
I should feel guilty. I should feel like it's my fault he died because I didn't stand up for him. But I don't. In this place, it's survival of the fittest. Better him, than me.
"I think you should apologise Sara." Blaze says with a serious tone that my eyes snap to his face to see he was being anything but serious.
Sara nods in feigned sadness. "You're right." I'm shocked to see her look me right in the eyes. "I'm sorry about your boyfriend. Feel glad he's gone though, he seemed a little too clingy."
Blaze let out a laugh. "He must have fell for you hard." Sara joins in with his laugh.
They aren't even mocking me fully, yet I still feel intimidated. Just the fact that they are paying me attention makes me feel slightly inferior compared to them. Although a tiny part of me is happy that they now know who I am. And it's that part of me that causes me to say, "I'm Avery."
They stop laughing and look at me as though I'm some new weird creature they've just discovered. Then just as quick as the look of curiosity came, it disappears into a look of complete boredom.
"Who fucking cares?" says Sara, turning herself around.
I turn to Stephanie but she gives me a disapproving look. "It's like you want to be pack attacked." She says, only her heated cheeks give away her partial struggle of the challenge.
A few minutes go by and most of the people in front of me are actually sitting and standing on the bars, including Blaze and Sara. Which makes things worse for me, because I can feel myself getting too tired to hold on and with every shake, my grip loosens before I regain it again.
"Time's up!" Our trainer's voice shouts, making me jump and let go of my position. I hang with one arm and luckily reach with my other one. The only problem is I'm too tired to pull myself up. Whilst I hear the whirring of the floor moving back, my sweaty palms make my hands shift. I know that if the floor doesn't come quick enough, I'll fall to my death.
But it isn't coming quick enough, and I'm too focused on not falling, to care about the movement to my left. Soon enough, my finger slip off, one by one, like the boy. And when I know I can't hold on any longer, I close my eyes and accept my fate.
Only my fall doesn't last very long when an arm snakes itself around my waist and pulls me towards them. My feet are still not touching the floor so I clutch to the body holding me, wrapping my arms around their neck, refusing to open my eyes. The bars are no longer shaking and I feel safer than I have been since I first grabbed the bars.
"I'm just glad that it didn't take me long to calculate your weight and my strength to see if I could actually carry you." I hear and feel the guy say.
I frown and murmur into his shoulder. "Are you calling me fat?" I let out a squeal as he drops me and I open my eyes when I feel the secure ground under my feet. "Thank yo-" I freeze when I see who it is, or better yet, when I see the pin on his uniform. The blonde haired boy I had seen sitting on the floor earlier.
He smiles, and it's a nice smile that makes his stormy grey eyes seem brighter. I start to smile back until I recognise Blaze's voice shout, "Yo Link! Stop talking to that burnout and get over here!"
It's like a slap in the face when I realise he's one of them. And to him, I will always be a burnout. He doesn't say goodbye or look at me again, he just walks away like I don't exist. And strangely enough, I'm not okay with that.
It's then that I realise that everyone is already leaving the room, anxious to get to get a break. I see Stephanie waiting for me and I walk beside her. The group of dauntless teenagers cheer and jostle each other about as they walk. I can't help but let my eyes linger on them as everyone scurries to leave. There's something about them.
Something that radiates freedom.
We leave the room and one thought plays over my mind on a loop. "I nearly died today." I state, the thought is finally settling in. My life could have been over, and only on my first day here.
"I know, I saw, but you didn't. That's what you have to remember, not that you nearly died, but that you survived." says Stephanie.
There's a silence as I ponder her words and reply. "If it wasn't for those pricks, I wouldn't have had any trouble."
"Yeah, they're just kind of... reckless. Annoyingly so, since they're so good at pretty much everything they do. They're the one's who grew up here."
"So what are we doing now? A lesson? Food?"
"We wait, until we have our next challenge given to us. The point of this day is to see who the weak links are. Survival of the fittest. Bla bla bla." We enter a new room with the rest of the class, the door sealing behind us. "As you can see, they don't exactly have anything to worry about."
A loud cheer locks everyone's attention on the group of boisterous and arrogant teenagers. I look around to see one of them standing in front of the wall with their arms out. A knife is sticking out of the metal wall next to his neck. When Blaze goes for his next throw at him, he doesn't flinch, and it only takes me a millisecond to blink and see the knife disappear from Blaze's hand and land above the other guys head. The group cheer once again.
However, a quiet cry draws my attention away. A plain brunette girl is in tears as her arm is held by a tall skinny red head. And it's easy to see that the brunette is in distress with her face cringing in pain and tears roll down her face. She whimpers as the red head, drags a knife across her arm. The blood drips down her arms and the red head watches with a gleeful grin. Even from metres away, I can see that the grip she has on the girl's arm is too tight for her to pull away.
"Ember, stop it." A guy says to the red headed girl pulling on her shoulder.
Ember whips her head to him and hisses, "Back off!", before turning back to the girl.
"Sara!" Link surprisingly calls. "Go sort out Ember, she's messing with the knives again." He orders her pointing in the direction of the two girls.
Sara stomps over to Ember easily pulling her away from the crying girl. Ember let's her go with no trouble and doesn't react badly like she did with the guy. "Go clean yourself up. You're dripping all over the floor," says Sara to the girl. The girl runs off sobbing, with a few others following her out the room. "Ember you sadist," laughs Sara. "You seriously need to stop torturing the burnouts."
"They ask for it." Ember replies sweetly, throwing the knife up in the air and catching it swiftly. "They have to learn there are no limits. Why is that burnout staring at me?" says Ember, still focusing on the knife.
"Jealous of your skills probably. You know how awesome we look to them." They both snicker to themselves. I could see that they were close from their behaviour and from how Xander shouted Sara to help.
"Someone needs to teach her a lesson." says Ember slyly, and she slowly stalks her way in my direction dropping the bloodied knife to the ground.
For some reason, people move out of their way when they walk and before I know it, they're standing right in front of me. Stephanie had moved away before they had even reached us. I take a step to the left to move out of their way, but they follow me, making me realise, they came for me. My heart begins to race, as I think of her words 'Teach her a lesson'.
"You're new around here aren't you burnout?" says Ember in an overly friendly tone. I wouldn't be so easily fooled by her act since I witnessed what happened before.
I nod. Words fail to leave my lips.
"Do you know who I am?"
I shake my head. My heart was pounding in my ears, scared of what may happen. There are no trainers in the room with us, though I'm sure they watch us constantly. Stephanie and none of the others are going to step in and help me. There's a lot Ember and Sara can get away with, that much is evident.
"I'm Ember, 49653, and you are?" I see the smile on her face twitch, and it's clear that she's at least a little unstable.
"Avery, 79876." I smile back unsurely. Sara doesn't introduce herself, she just stands by and watches. Waiting for something to happen, like most of the people in the room watching. My eyes glance to Stephanie who stands a little away from me and looks in concern.
"Well burnout, welcome to the other side."
And it's safe to say I do not expect her fist to suddenly come flying to my face, knocking me out cold.
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*~Faith, Trust & Pixie Dust~*