CateTren
"You're stalling, Maria," Johnny said as he took the girls hand, "You remember you can tell me anything, right?"
"Yeah," replied the girl, her hands shaking slightly and her head throbbing, "I just can't admit everything to myself."
To be adapted. Oh how incredible that would be.
To swim in the ocean and to breathe the salt like air,
To climb a mountain without a rope,
To see in the dark,
To hear in space,
To be adapted, to be a new race.
The man smiled at me, a twisted contortion of the muscles in his face.
"I've got more in the back..." He left the sentence unfinished, an offer for me.
"Got more what?" I asked, my eyebrows knotting.
"In the freezer..." he left another unfinished sentence for me.
"Oh" Was all I could say in realization.
Got more bodies.
I looked out of the sight. My target walked up to a woman and kissed her on the cheek, gesturing to her in a way that can only have been with a complement. She laughed, then out of her handbag she pulled a out a small, clear plastic bag. It held one item, a key. The key that my team were looking for, the key that they were in the plaza below for. The chief nodded, the signal that we had had unnecessarily drilled into our heads. I adjusted my grip, then took a deep breath. I was a sniper, this was my purpose. Regrettably.
The braid in her hair lay delicately on cold, metal table. It was done with such precision and care, that one would think that a mother or sister had done it for her. But the hands that combed the hair were of no relation to the girl on the table. More hands dressed her in the finest clothes, whilst others cleaned the dried blood off her ashen skin. The girl was to be taken to the church, where she would rest her last, and the frozen morning air would touch her skin no more. She would be given to the earth in a final offering, and a plaque of stone would be all that was left to recognise her resting place. Time had caught up to the girl, the earth had taken her.
The instructor whispered heavily in my ear, his hot breath stinging my skin.
'I will ask you once more...you must get this right.' his breathing was ragged from the exercise and yet he insisted on more.
'Don't talk to me like that!' He shouted in his vile, slimy
tone. His greasy fingers took a hold on my hair, and he yanked as
hard as he could. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes as the
pain clouded my vision. My scalp was near to bleeding, and I felt
like I was about to faint. This was my last chance. If I fell
unconscious then I would be dead in seconds, I was sure of that. So
I took a deep breath, one that could easily have been my last, and
swung my head back. The revolting sound of bone breaking could be
heard as my head came into contact with his nose. He was
temporarily distracted, he loosened his hold on me allowing his
hands to go flying to his face. In that brief moment, it was as
though all time had stopped, and for the briefest of seconds, a
glimmer of hope was shining through the murkiness that had been my
life so far. I ran, ran as fast as I could, desperate to escape
this murderous cockroach of a man.
"Next" the man droned, as if he had said it for the hundreth time that day, and he probably had. The line, of which I was the head of, stretched for miles. Behind me lay a sea of broken souls, of hoplessness.
I gave the man my ticket and he stamped it, the red ink shining like blood.
Don't even think that, I told myself, because what if it is?
'You can pass" he sighed handing me back my ticket as traipsed through the barrier.
So what if I had passed through this checkpoint? I was on the road to death and a thousand more checkpoints lay before me, a thousand more souls behind me.
My mind was racing, this was my i last chance. My heart was hoping that all my work had been worth it. All the preparation would make it work. If not, what else was there in life? Not hope, certainly not.