The first day had been the worst. Though she’d been armed with a good knife given to her by a nervous Alecto, the tiny girl had known instantly that hiding would be her best bet for survival. And she was good at it.
Tiny body an advantage, she was quick and quiet, feat bare to keep sound to it’s lowest and the sureness of her step at it’s highest. At first, she hadn’t been so lucky, and the desk beneath which she had hidden in an office was found quickly by a patient she’d never spoken to before and he’d come at her like a rabid wolf. She’d seen that look only once before, and instantly it had sent her fragile and cracked mind back to the night she’d killed her father as he’d looked down at her like that with his hands around her neck.
She’d managed to knock the weapon from the man’s hand, but he’d gotten her to the floor and it hadn’t taken much for him to overpower her with a bulk that was nearly twice her own weight, and sheer luck had the tip of her knife slicing through his thigh as she’d struggled against him.
The sudden and sharp pain seemed to take him by surprise and as if on muscle memory fueled by terrified adrenaline, she’d lifted her knife to slide the blade deep into the side of his neck, just as she’d done to her father with a jagged piece of broken glass. The difference this time was that she didn’t pull the knife from where she’d planted it, and he started down at her in wide eyed shock as the sound of blood bubbling up his throat and filled her ears like the most macabre white noise.
It was he himself who had lifted up with a face full of stomach churning confusion, and pulled the knife from his throat with a flood of thick crimson that followed like from a geyser, painting her top half in thick copper scent rouge. Only a moment later he’d collapsed over top of her, the weight of him pressing onto her chest and restricting her breath as she tried to fight him off of her as she felt the slowed river of his blood obey gravity and flow from his wound down and across her chest and one side of her neck and shoulders.
Biting back her whimpers with an instinctual knowledge not to give herself away, she’d finally managed to roll him off of her, and took both his knife and her own before hugging her blood soaked bear to her chest as she scurried once more to hide. In the end she’d found the kitchen, and though it posed danger for the food and water it provided, it also offered a plethora of advantageous hiding places for a petite woman of insignificant stature. Deciding that high would be the safest for the vantage point it offered, she knew enough from hiding from her father and his friends, as well as what few passing strangers stopped at the farm.. that few people looked up.
The top of the large fridge offered the perfect place, for if she curled up, she could rest there rather comfortably hidden behind a stack of pots and pans that created a screen with which she could watch what was happening without being seen herself if she kept completely still. That was where she had stayed, her look out point good enough for her to know when the coast was clear, and those were the moments that she’d used to crawl down to steal food and water to squirrel away up in what she’d dubbed her burrow, or to relieve herself in the sinks, unwilling to risk a trip to the washrooms. Many times she’d watched as others had come and go in the kitchen, and as some had been caught there and slaughtered as she’d buried her head in her arms. All she could do was tell herself that it was almost over, convince herself it was all a nightmare game of hide and seek.
Safe in her hidden little burrow she was safe from the danger below, but she didn’t feel that way, the constant threat and terror keeping her appetite low and sleep at bay until it wouldn’t be held back any more. It had to be over soon, she didn’t want to hide anymore, she just wanted to go home.
