Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Day of the Weak ❯ ONE ( Chapter 1 )

ONE—

Soft light emanated from the glass wall, casting a shadow deficient half-light on all planes and surfaces. Pieces of rain fell out of a lavender sky; creating an enshrouding fog of fresh, wet sounds like smooth pebbles hitting the supple earth.

The peaceful feelings that could once be associated with this weather were awash with those of unsettled solemnity as Friday gazed forlornly into the sky. Her reflection ghosted over the perfect surface of glass, broken only by the intrusion of bars running vertically across the entire plane of the wall.

The outline of curled tendrils was only slightly colored with a golden hue, lost in the violent purple that was painted across the horizon. The gently rolling thunderheads were a threatening shade of indigo and swelled to map the sky with their heavy burden.

Two identical circles of black, her irises, created a distorted mirroring effect of the landscape spread before her as she let them follow the dips and swells of her bleak surroundings. Those eyes drank it all in, looking vainly for any flaws. She might have been scrutinizing her own life; nitpicking every little nuance with the same amount of diligence she was paying to the land before her.

And she was. The back of Friday's mind was working furtively, searching for the one pivotal moment in time where it all went wrong. No matter what she chose to keep herself busy with (staring mindlessly out of the window was the latest in a long, long list), it was always there, lurking like a rotted sliver of wood and infecting the rest of her.

Where did she go wrong?

Because of her and her immaturity, they were all gone. Because of her whining selfishness, they were all dead. Because of her, she was now alone. Miserable. And after all of this, her selfishness had still won out. The only thing that really mattered, that resonated was the fact that she was alone and pathetic and wallowing in her endless self-pity.

Friday was barricaded in her room after all of her escapades. She didn't expect any less.

What she hadn't expected, however, was to be married off to the first noble pig her parents laid eyes on.

Her last memory haunted her; the last thing she remembered before waking up in this modified jail cell. When she woke up she found herself in this modified cage of a room.

Her wall, an expansive, continuing stretch of glass that extended the length of a wall, had been barred long ago with welded iron, which sealed off the only other exit from the room apart from the front door. Her door was locked, triple locked, and chained. Even if she'd somehow gotten past those obstacles, a man who befitted all the stereotypes of a typical guard--sweaty, large, looming, and dull all rolled into one--had been placed outside of the opening, given explicit instructions to only allow the maid and meals into or out of the room.

The milky sky above seemed to echo the numbness inside of her. It would rain later on. Friday felt the angry storm before it was even here. It was going to rain on her wedding.

A strange feeling welled up in her stomach like vindictive hand and clasped around her heart, searing and ripping. She felt like a thousand columns of flame were tearing her apart. Friday immediately forced the painful sensation out of her brain, squashing her awareness until it was easy to disregard.

She sat morosely on a deflated-looking chair that gave her an optimal view outside of the window, its thick bars slicing the angry sky into equal cuts of light. Her dark eyes swept across the land without actually seeing. She'd burned the landscape outside the glass into her mind's eye log ago. The still-impressive garden could be counted so insignificant now after what seemed like the ten millionth time Friday had seen them. What solace could a picture of a garden hold?

Comfort was achieved when one could experience the small haven: observing, touching, and listening to the quiet, melodic whispers of nature. It was silent, but only enough for one to gain a sense of mind and of peace. Here she didn't know what to think, choked by a stifling fog of eerie silence that clogged her senses and prevented her from anything. And yet…there was one thing she thought of, one thing only.

Like a splinter embedded in her mind, the dull throb she was painstakingly aware of seeped into the forefront of her mind. A single memory, one that replayed in her conscious almost every waking moment, almost driving her insane. With nothing to keep her mind away from the crushing thought that repeatedly assaulted her, she simply let it play out. Her guilt and the hopelessness of the situation forced her to wallow in this destructive well of pity and wreckage. She closed her eyes, envisioning the crux of her life. When everything unraveled…

“`One-hundred percent contraction with a one-hundred percent mortality rate,'” read the man with little inflection in his sonorous voice, his eyes trained on the clipboard held loftily before him.

Then his gaze dropped on the girl below.

She bit back the urge to look away, instead daringly meeting his look evenly and coolly, as if she wasn't even aware of her current situation: chains looped cuttingly around her ankle and binding her wrists tightly behind her back.

The rusty links of metal spiraled around her to the large circular loop of iron bolted into the concrete before her.

The blonde was gagged with a strip of filthy cloth marred with stains of what she didn't want to think about up until a moment ago. She'd stopped struggling against the guard (who was entirely too touchy-feely) the second he dragged her into the room, sensing the eminence that rose off this man in waves.

It was safe to assume that he was in charge here. And he looked like he wouldn't hesitate to kill any little annoyance he might come across, especially not one stupid teenager. Although, he didn't look the typical bad guy or deranged villain.

He was attractive, almost embodying no defining features that she could mark as `evil,' were she to come by him through different circumstances.

His hair brushed his shoulders in a stylish cut, a pale, `pure' blonde so unlike her brown-touched gold color.

His jaw was defined, his cheekbones chiseled and his features perfect. The only hardness she detected in him was his eyes. They were a shocking emerald and cut through her softer brown eyes with diamond-like precision. His eyes were intense, but they were also hard to read. She knew he could be saying one thing but with a drastically different meaning.

He was clad in an expensive-looking designer suit sans jacket. His shirt tail also wasn't tucked in: another youthful quirk, along with the rumples that covered his black shirt. The silver tie was pristine, although it wasn't tied securely and his shirt was unbuttoned a few notches. He was dressed rather casually, she thought, as if he barely bothered when throwing his clothes on in the morning.

This man's appearance gave her the impression that he was only in his mid-twenties, yet something told Friday that he was, in fact, considerably older. Her attention was brought back to his face when he spoke again, this time a roguish quirk to his mouth.

“Something like this in our arsenal will make us invincible.”

It occurred to her then that he must've been talking to himself because although he was looking at her, she didn't have the slightest clue as to what he was talking about.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Suddenly his startling gaze snapped down to her eyes once again. He was caught off-guard, of course, that handsome smile disappearing from his face as it froze into a blank look. He was indecipherable now. A small twitch of his lips, and then he continued again.

“Of course,” he muttered as if to remind himself, his voice almost inaudible as a small smirk played around the edges of his words. The gaze fixed on her was a gloating one.

“You're still nothing but a child, but even you can see the kind of hole this place,” he gestured to the entire room with a sweep of his arm, “has sunken to. The fate of the human race is one that is rapidly approaching extinction.”

A pause.

At her look of confusion, he let a small laugh drip from his lips. The man suddenly stalked to the looped stake nailed to the floor in front of her. He knelt in front of her, his long legs folding over themselves. His pale hands were clasped in front of him as if to keep his balance, the wooden clipboard he'd been carrying abandoned on the floor some ways behind him. She sat in silence. She was obviously apprehensive of lashing out but that didn't stop her from meeting his eyes with a barbed glare.

A small grin pulled tightly at his face.

“Alright then. Let me tell you a story.”

He was patronizing her, trying to incite a reaction. She didn't know why he bothered and instead kept her eyes on his, silently goading him.

At what, she had no idea. But she couldn't do anything else, chained to the floor, heart beating miles a second. She felt useless just sitting there in fear, yet the truth was she had no idea what he—what they were going to do to her. Besides, she could tell she irked him every time he expected a reaction and got none and that counted as some small victory, at least to her.

“Long, long ago, before you or I or even your parents were born,” He licked his lips yet apart from that no emotion showed on his face. “there were many of us. More than ten hundred million. More than even a billion. People lived comfortable lives; in some places everyone was rich. But there were some places like the world is now, where everyone was starving and poor. The rich, however,” He paused.

“the rich generally didn't care about that. Everything was competition in these countries: who had the best and who didn't. And eventually that attitude bled through to the highest places, the government. Rich countries competed with each other on who had the best technology or the best weapons. This escalated until the countries that were rich were so powerful they held the power to walk the universe, to destroy the moon or even destroy the planet. And, in one war,”

His smile widened as he drew out the pause, the grin making him appear almost wolf-like.

“They did.”

Friday blinked, confusion marring her features. How could that possibly be true?

Her brow furrowed. Everything that came out of his mouth only served to confuse her. None of it made any sense.

Why would humans destroy the planet?

If they did, then where were the people living now?

. . .

Raern was led back in chains, his head bowed. His hair was oily and every inch of him was streaked with dirt. Underneath the healthy tan that he always wore, his complexion was pale, with a sickly yellow tinge. His footsteps were a quiet, unsure shuffle, as if he were in a dream state or just about to collapse.

What was wrong? He wasn't like this, was never…

What did they do to him?

Her attention was diverted from her friend by the guttural grunt emitted from behind him. The guard was trailing at a safe distance, clothed from head to foot in a strange garb: a large white jumpsuit that was much too long for his thick frame but looked tight on his gut and arms. It covered his head and created a rather bulky, square outline. The headgear had some kind of transparent visor which he could see out of but which she couldn't see into.

She found herself staring at the outlandish clothing, trying to figure out why he was wearing it. And then she realized his behavior was also changed--unless this was a different guard. She doubted that it was, though. He had the same height and build as the regular oafish man, the sadist she'd seen in cowering in the corner when she'd first come to this facility. When she'd heard a senseless story from a nameless man only a couple of weeks before. When she'd been catapulted into a captive whirl of terrifying confusion.

The guard acted wary, cautious of stepping too close to Raern. She also detected his nervousness: his movements were sharp and jerky; he wasn't brashly calling out insults or even shaking the chains to move the boy from his snail pace. Something was wrong.

When Raern toed his way into the cramped cell, the guard hurriedly unhooked himself from the chain leash and threw in the length slamming the rusted iron door behind him. Friday could make out the metallic “cling” of the various security locks which told her he was triple and quadruple-checking. After the last bolt was chinked into place, the heavy footsteps receded from their hearing.

The boy hadn't moved from his position at the door. Shocks of hair the color of blood obscured his face and his appendages hung limply at his sides.

“Raern…? Raern, are you…?” Friday let her question trail off uncertainly, her lilting voice touching the stale air in the most gentile of ways.

At her words, Raern's head had come up, dull eyes that had held the brilliance of the clearest water focused on her face. His cheeks were smeared with grime and filth, and there were faint marks of what appeared to be purple grape juice under his left eye. His clothes were in tattered remains, his visible arms bony.

She tentatively stepped to the door, hoping to reassure him and trying to ignore the interested and slightly alarmed stares drilling into her back. Friday was suddenly then all too aware of the stench exuded from her friend. He smelled awful, even worse than that of the cell itself, which was a washed-out, stale smell of urine and sweat. From her position about a foot away the scent of sweat, blood, and corpses assaulted her nose. Now she was really worried.

He'd been taken a week ago. The guard hadn't shown up that time; it was the blonde man. Without a word, Raern disappeared, kicking and screaming, from what was now her bleak life. She silently prayed that entire week, something she'd never considered doing before, and managed to rough it out in the small space with her twenty-something other inmates.

And now that he was finally back she was anxious to find out what happened. She wanted to know why in the world they were here and for what purpose.

His washed-out blue eyes were suddenly sparked to life, flicking to almost every inch of the concrete walls and the people that leaned against them with an distressed fervor that was only increasing. Friday compulsively pulled his face to hers, bringing his gaze to her again, if only for a moment. It was as if…it was as if he didn't recognize her.

Her hair was a messy waterfall of filthy, muck encrusted gold that spilled over her shoulders and down her back in loose rings, straw from her `bed' strewn throughout and sticking up in odd directions. Large circles of sleepless nights ringed large dark eyes, blood shot and concerned. A shiny film of sweat encased her thin frame in sheen, and tattered remains of (what was in another life) a nice outfit hung around her body. All of that seemed trivial now.

“Shh…Raern. Look at me…” He gazed at her questioningly, his back stooped low to get to her level of five-foot-one.

“What happened?”

That was his voice. Fretting. Young. Cracking. She was met with a close up of his familiar face: the boyish face that was normally painted a golden brown in a deep natural tan, a minute amount of freckles dotting his face. And his nose…was broken?

“Where am I?” The question startled her.

“Raern what did they do? What happened there?”

He looked at her like she was crazy, as if she were assaulting him by just touching him.

“Who are you?”

“Raern,” Friday's voice was now a little frantic, rising in pitch. “Raern answer the question. Why is your nose broken? What—what are all these cuts and bruises? Where did they come from?” At his drawn brows and incredulous look, she pressed on.

“Raern, answer me! What's wrong with you?! You—you know me! You…”

Her hands were shaking. She couldn't look at him, her eyes following the sharp, jittery motions of her fingers on his face. His gaze followed hers. And then he took her hands from him and stepped back with a dazed look swirling in his bright eyes, his eyelids drooping.

“Raern…?” A weak, disbelieving laugh came from the blonde girl in front of him, her face pulled by the small effort. His heart felt heavy, he didn't know why. His mind was faint, and his legs were dizzy. He didn't know whether it was hot or cold, up or sideways. His forehead felt strange, numb, warm, and not attached to his body. His head was floating. And the ground was now coming up to meet him…

Friday watched in horror as Raern collapsed in a heap on the floor. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, the chains that dragged behind him now tangled with his limbs. Friday dropped to his flaccid body, her eyes watering.

She swallowed and then shot a glance at the little crowd of grubby prisoners behind her.

Out of the audience, a large, burly man shimmied to the front with a sober look on his strong face, his mouth set into a grim line as he gingerly hoisted the unconscious and amnesiac teen onto one shoulder.

To his side rushed a woman almost the exact opposite of him: his wife. Selena looked on with a puzzled look in her moss green eyes, a small and tender hand laid on Tristan's arm. She was as pale and willowy as Tristan was tan and thick with strength. She also held the quiet disposition, yet in this instance both were speechless. Her pale cream-orange hair was starkly contrasted with Tristan's thick mop of curly, mud-colored hair, and she brushed it to one shoulder as Tristan set Raern down in a small cleared space of hay on concrete in the room.

“What's wrong with him?”“What happened?”“Who is that?”

Delicate murmurs came from the numerous curious inmates who were now bravely flocking about the returned prisoner. Hungry, drawn faces that were as mussed and dirt-streaked as Friday's eagerly gazed upon the fallen red-head on the ground.

“He could have information. Maybe he spied for us,” came a small, hopeful voice from the crowd.

“Isn't that the piece of shit who was rallying us in the first place? Fucking Yuul needs to keep his filthy mouth shut,” a gruff, filthy man with rotten teeth muttered darkly in response to the child who'd spoken. His mangy hair hung in a smelly, oily nest around his bearded face, and Friday recognized him as one of the ill-tempered of the homeless men who'd been captured.

“'The homeless could be taken up easily,'” he said in the beginning. Most of these people had no place to go and nobody of importance who'd come sniffing about for them. And as for the Yuul…people feared them. They came from the `other place.' Everything surrounding them was a mystery.

And Friday was one of the many who had been told all their lives that the Yuul were evil. That if she got close to one, it would kill her without a remorseful thought. She had been told to be especially aware of the people with the hair of flames, the one feature most of these human-like creatures had in common.

She glared at the man over her shoulder. He scowled, not intimidated in the least.

“Shut up about things you don't understand, you bastard,” the blonde ordered threateningly, bending to shield her friend from the accusatory eyes probing his unconscious body.

Tristan stood to his full height, shifting his weight between his feet uncomfortably. “If he wakes up, we'll have to get him to talk…”

If, not when.

Friday stiffened and with a terse nod, she clutched Raern's torso tightly to herself, as if he were an anchor of some sort, her life line in wild waters.

. . .

He did wake up. Yet they never learned what had happened during his time of absence. Because when he woke almost a full three days later, his skin erupted in a rash. A week passed and the itchy bumps grew to blisters and boils the size of golf balls. When the pustules started bursting, she noticed others wearing the sickly yellow pallor Raern returned with. One by one, the rest of them developed the same blisters all over their bodies.

They became delirious. Blood poured from their noses as they screamed and howled nonsense. Friday was forced to throw herself behind a wall of stacked hay to avoid the desperate pleas for help and the clutching, screaming people covered in their own blood…

The girl spent the days sitting in silent reconciliation: she knew that the moment she came out she would be trampled, overcome by the infected masses. A bruised face was what she had to show for even trying, the face that was now buried in her knees. Her small body was curled up on itself like a ball to fit into the tiny, filth-covered corner.

She only crawled out when the thick hush of quiet filled the cell. It was peculiar—Friday opened her eyes and all was stopped.

The sounds of tortured madness were no longer in her ears but hovered in her mind, she realized when she stepped onto the stone floor. Her foot padded in something sticky and wet and warm.

Blood.

Weeks-old carcasses covered the floor, hideous peels of clear skin covering arms, legs, faces; so much that many of the bodies were unrecognizable.

Scabs and bruises covered faces. A weak gasp escaped from her mouth. Her hand came up to shield her nose from the smell and suddenly she could taste the sour acridness of bile on her tongue.

Endlessly unseeing eyes ringed with a gray-purple stared at the ceiling above slackened mouths opened in a silent scream. Friday picked her way through, careful not to step on any of them. That in itself was a difficult task.

She made it to the vaulted door. It was a large, imposing wall of iron, lavished with bolts and screws and locks to keep them in. A few bodies lay against the cold metal, their rust-colored blood tainting the dull silver in dried blotches.

Friday didn't look at them. She didn't want to see the empty eyes colored like a washed-out sky, locks of scarlet hair, a waxy complexion mottled with purple.

She balled her dirty, small hand into a fierce fist and rapped at the door.

“...Hello?” Her voice called out hesitantly, thick from disuse and lack of water. She swallowed, her throat sticking to itself unpleasantly. It brought tears to her eyes.

“” She gulped again, her other hand coming up to angrily swipe the water leaking from her eyes. She was losing it.

“Please, let me out!” Now she was frantically banging the metal with her knuckles that were starting to sting.

“Let me out! Oh GOD—Let me go!” The room grew silent.

The sounds of hyperventilation and gasping filled the stale air within the chamber, coupled with deep sobbing. Desperate pounding of an erratic rhythm so loud it could have woken the people in the other cells separated by the concrete, adjacent and parallel to this one. She'd seen the rows of small concrete rooms identical to this one when she was led to the cell in first place, out and away from the room with the man in it.

How many others were with her here, in captivity? How many of them were dead?

These thoughts swirled with a thousand other conflicting ones.

The man came into her mind. Pale, detached, and coolly observing. He must've known all along what was going to happen. How could so many just drop dead? He knew. He knew.

The day Raern came back…that man knew what would happen.

Friday hand stilled, sliding down the metal. Her face was blank. Vacant realization dawned behind dark eyes. The ends of golden hair, blackened by dirt, trailed in blood when her legs folded beneath her. She was drowning in a sea of corpses.

And she was never going to get out.

. . .

Friday snapped out of her reverie, as always, by that disturbing sensation. The feeling that something was wrong clawed at her brain, at the missing chunk of memory. Something was gone, either forgotten or removed and it felt like something crucial, integral was missing.

The memory played out a thousand different ways in her dreams, her nightmares, each way supplemented with details from her conscience, yet she still had no clue, no idea why she was here. Before she woke up, she was in a pool of scarlet, sticky liquid, the cloying stench of blood stinging both her nostrils and eyes.

She had been in her house for a few months now, exactly how long she wasn't sure of. Time was a lost sense in this place. Yet, in all those moments of waiting she'd gone over the scene, again and again unthinkingly, and still…nothing.

Conflicting memories hollowed her skull. She could not remember how…when…

The usual vague outlines and blurs whirred past

She worried her lip between her teeth and sat up from her position of the window seat. She paced, curling tendrils of tainted gold trailing behind her every step. Her eyes remained focused on the garden bed the estate rested on below, never moving from the marble terrace, the edges of which were barely visible under the roofing deposited beneath her wall of glass.

She was going to get married there, in the shelter of the wooden overhang. A hundred of more people were to attend, all of them guests of her parents, of course. Business acquaintances and people she was likely to have never have seen before were all going to be witnesses to it. Her mother had described it all in a frenzy weeks back, when Friday had been so filled with anguish she refused to speak to either of her parents after they'd dismissed her running away.

Her eyes were glued to the terrace below, yet her mind was nowhere near her upcoming marriage. What could have possibly happened in that missing time?

She didn't think to question her present state at all. She didn't think, she only dwelled. She focused her mind on the crux of her life and did nothing much of anything else. That really didn't matter now, though. She was going to disappear, taken away by the first greedy pig deemed decent enough to be her husband by her over eager parents. The future she was most likely going to have would entail several children with a greasy rich acquaintance of her father's who was probably already twice her age.

She might not see her parents ever again. She, Friday Tuesdale, would have to squash all those horrifying memories she carried into the furthest corners of her brain, forgetting all about her one attempt at living for herself. She didn't want to. She wanted to remember Raern. She wanted to keep all of them in her mind forever. It didn't matter what she wanted, as always. Life seemed to go on anyway. She came to the realization that she'd stopped her pacing and was standing dumbly, half facing the window and half facing the door.

A loud rapping cut through the fogginess, shaking her frame in surprise. Eyes the color of coffee grounds flashed to the wooden door, her eyebrows drawn in a silent question. Her foot moved of its own accord towards the door. Curiosity got the better of her.

A few steps and she was grasping the handle with both hands, finding—miraculously—the door had been unlocked. Just as she was about to pull the wood open, it swung inwards from the outside, shoving her small body behind its frame.

The click of heels on the stone floor came to her ears. The shiny tips of smart leather shoes peeked from the corner of the door. She shrunk behind the shadow thrown over her by the door left ajar, her body easily shrouded.

A man stepped into view. Or, rather, the back of a man, as he was currently surveying her room and facing away from her. What little she could see depicted the left side of a collared shirt which floated casually over a pair of black slacks that were of a fine fabric and were a tad too loose to be considered formal. Fine strands of pale hair brushed over his shoulder when he turned his head…

And suddenly her mind was screaming in what could only be described as sheer panic, her distress growing ever-present on her face as it contorted into a look of terror, internal struggle, and, most of all, anguish.

. . .