Note: Sooo this is an alternative universe for Endless Summer. Since I read the idea of @cheesepots for AU (this one x), it has been stuck in my head. I had to let it out in some way. This was the result, It's the first time I write something like this, I hope you like it!
She had spent the whole day with a strange feeling, she was very irritable and volatile, anything could unleash her bad mood, and things only worsened. The temperature increased one degree with every minute that passed, the air conditioning despite being at its maximum power wasn’t enough to calm the heat. As if that was not enough, the bustle of the city didn’t contribute much either. At least every half hour the sirens of an ambulance disturbed the little silence that was obtained from time to time. Apparently, the new seasonal virus wasn’t as passive as the ones they had each year. She just hoped that the allergy that had been bothering her early was not related to that.
The murmur of people talking was despairing, couldn’t people live without speaking for more than 5 minutes? Also, if she heard the siren of another ambulance or a patrol, she would go crazy. Music was the perfect solution for that problem. Boredom was something easier to kill. It was enough to open the book which was in her backpack. That was how she was isolated in a room that was full of people. She was trying very hard to justly block everything around her. That's why at first she didn’t notice it.
By times, the noise surpassed the volume of the music. Out of the corner of her eyes she vaguely noticed people were moving from one place to another. But at a certain point, the noise stopped being intermittent and became constant. And then every time someone passed by her he would crash into her, or trip over her feet.
The girl raised her head to see what the hell was happening to these people. She swept the whole place with her eyes and instead of men and women who chatted animated, she found worried faces, frowns and fear. Some moved restlessly, and others kept peeking out of the windows, but not one of them seemed happy with what was saw. She paused the song, at that moment if she wanted to find out what had those people so agitated. However, she only had a second to listen before the madness and hysteria took that place.
That's when the real chaos began.
The glass in the windows and the door exploded at the same time in a shower of sharp splinters that embedded itself in the skin of everyone it encountered.
The screams took her by surprise, even though it was what anyone would have expected in a similar situation. The panic wasn’t long in coming, then the screams were accompanied by bodies colliding with each other, in an attempt to reach the exit. The warm smiles of earlier had dissolved into bleeding lacerations and cordial handshakes into shoves. Everyone there had the same goal, they wanted to go out as possible.
The girl took her things and kept them as she could. She wasn’t an idiot, she knew that by the front door she couldn’t leave, at least not immediately. With the amount of people crowded there, it would take at least 5 minutes just to get close to the door. And she wasn’t willing to wait for it to be that it had caused the windows to strike again.
Against the current, she headed towards the back. Between nudges and pulls she managed to get through the crowd of people. The employees had left their posts to try to bring order and calm to a crowd that wasn’t interested in what they had to say. A few, the most intelligent, were heading towards the back of the premises, looking for another possible way out. She didn’t have to think twice before following them, if anyone knew the place, they would end up guiding her to an exit, if not, she would have to improvise, almost any window was a good door.
She had to run a little to avoid losing the boy she was going after, crossing a series of corridors, turning in some corners and opening a couple of doors before reaching the exit.
When she got outside, the light that radiated from the sun blinded her, while the heat of it struck her mercilessly. For a couple of seconds her senses were unable to perceive anything beyond the whiteness of the light, it was as if she were in a bubble. After the initial bewilderment, the world around her was taking shape little by little. Her eyes adapted to the lighting gradually and the noise enveloped her suddenly.
If someone had told her what she would find outside, she wouldn’t have made the slightest attempt to leave the building she’d been a few minutes before. Because everything outside was 10 times worse.
Everything around her was a total disorder, people ran terrified from one place to another. And the noise, the noise was almost overwhelming. Not only were sirens and screams, they were also cars running at full speed, honking and crashing, the blow of metal against metal, the cracking of broken bones, outbursts of violence and people hitting each other.
Her eyes couldn’t settle on one thing. The confluence of so much disaster stunned her, for a few seconds she wasn’t able to move and just stood there. The scene was so unreal that it gave her the feeling of being inside a movie.
Her stupor dissolved when someone pushed her as she passed. The shoulder received the greatest impact when it hit the wall. A wave of heat spread all over her arm and shortly after the pain accompanied it. The other person, a girl she could see, didn’t stop or even turn to see who had pushed. The girl only caught a couple of piercings, a shaved side of head and a black jacket fluttering in the wind before the stranger disappeared with the same haste with which she had arrived.
She didn’t know what was happening, but one thing was for sure, she had to find a safe place to take refuge. And it must be soon. Around her there were only stores with broken glass windows and the few which still kept some part intact, were immediately destroyed by people trying to take what was inside or by others who were crashed against them. She knew one place that in spite of the conditions could resist that madness without any problem. Only to get there would have to go through the center of that hell.
Without stopping to doubt another second, she ran as fast as she could. She slipped through the narrowest alleys in order to avoid the center of chaos. She also waited patiently on some occasions until it was safe to move forward. Always alert and vigilant.
The muscles in her legs began to ache and with each step she felt that her knees would give way and she couldn’t take another step. The lungs cried out for a rest. And her heart was beating so hard inside her chest that she could feel every one of its movements. She was a couple of streets from the place, and until then nothing had stood in her way. She had avoided being distracted by what was happening around her, she couldn’t have made out anything between the blur of colors that passed by her even if she had tried.
In the last corner she stopped again, a couple of meters more and would be there. The street was relatively quiet. She saw some fleeting shadows move between the buildings, but what predominated there it was an identical chaos to the places she’d left behind. The same low murmur of unintelligible words. The cars continued abandoned in the middle of the street and others shattered after a crash. Belongings left behind in the middle of the flight. She was about to leave where she was hiding when she saw him.
Under ordinary circumstances she’d not have even taken a second look in his direction. Although she convinced herself that she did it because afterwards that wasn’t normal, she knew there was something else. It was a difficult feeling to explain, something inside pushed her, even though she didn’t know him, she only knew that she had to help him, even when the instinct of self-preservation shouted at her to get away.
Perhaps she’d regret what she was about to do, but there was no going back, she’d already left the security of the place where she’d stopped, moving in the boy's direction.
He was being beaten. A man was on top of him pressing him to the ground, dropping punches on him without mercy. The boy writhed and stopped them as best he could, but still it was not enough. His mouth was already bloody and the skin of one of his cheekbones was acquiring a purplish, painful-looking hue.
The girl scanned the place in search of something that could be useful to her, she knew that only her forces wouldn’t be enough against that beast of irrepressible anger, she needed something that could be used as a weapon. After several seconds, she found a metal bar, took it and immediately went to the rescue.
"Hey, leave him!" She screamed, but the man showed no signs of having listened to her and kept unloading blow after blow on that poor boy.
She didn’t waste one more of his words, instead swinging the bar in an arc that reached the subject in the stomach. Unlike what she expected, the man didn’t stop, but then he’d noticed her presence. When he turned to her with eyes injected with rage, she hit another blow again, but this time in the head.
The man collapsed to the side, finally leaving the boy free.
"Are you okay?" The girl asked between gasps and offered her hand. The boy looked at her and then at the man lying next to him. There wasn’t much to think about, but even so he hesitated. "Come on, we have to get out of here." She told him, this time with a smile. The doubts dissolved on his face and the boy took her hand.
"Where are we going?"
"Just follow me." Having said that, she started running again towards the hunting tent, which was her goal from the beginning.
The momentum with which they went didn’t allow them to stop in time and they practically crashed against the door. She went to turn the knob only to find it closed.
"Damn!" She muttered under her breath.
"So, what do we do now?!" The boy asked with a note of panic growing in his voice.
A howl silenced them and both turned. The man who only a few minutes ago lay unconscious on the floor, was standing. His eyes fell on them and as soon as he recognized them, he began to run in their direction.
"What the hell did you do to that guy?!" Panic also leaked into her voice.
"I didn’t do anything! You were the one who hit him!"
There weren’t many alternatives of refuge, at least not one that was close. She started banging on the door.
"Lila! Open the door!" In general, the owner of the store was there at that hour, finding the door closed was not what surprised her, but the fact that it didn’t open." Lila!" She called again.
The man was less than ten meters away from them, and was approaching progressively, if they stayed there much longer he’d reach them. The girl turned her head in all directions, looking for something desperately, but the only structure that remained intact was the one in front of her, with the doors closed.
"There's nobody there! We have to go, he's getting closer." The boy started to pull on her arm. She turned again, the man was much closer than she had expected. Reluctantly, she allowed him to push her away from the door. Although where they’ll go, that was something she wasn’t clear about.
They had only moved a couple of steps away from the door when it was opened. Their options were practically nonexistent, so it was pretty obvious what they should do.
Once they were inside, whoever had let them pass secured the doors and shortly after something crashed into it.
She slid down the wall until she was seated. In each inhalation the air burned during its entire journey, and with each exhalation it felt as if it was suffocating. The air that entered her lungs didn’t seem to be enough, it was a thirst that couldn’t be calmed no matter how deep her breaths were. In her chest began to spread a sharp pain with each insufflation.
"Are you okay?" Someone asked from above, raising her head she found the boy looking at her worriedly.
"Yes, well." She managed to say, although just saying those words took more than she thought it would.
The boy looked skeptical.
The girl’s hair was a mess for obvious reasons. The braid she’d done painstakingly that morning had been undone a while ago, hair that didn’t fall on her face, was pointing in any direction or even still entangled in the league.
The dress she wore had been torn apart in some places, as a result of the race or perhaps because she’d stuck with something. At the time she’d not noticed, but some glass splinters were still embedded in her arms. And in a trembling hand, she still held the metal tube she had used in the street. Some dried blood droplets were scattered in it, there were a few in her hand as well. She left the tube against the wall. The conditions she was in did not support what she’d just said, and in truth she wouldn’t have believed herself. Although it was she who saved him when that man was attacking him, now it was she who seemed to need help.
"I've been better." She opted for something more sincere, and with a shy smile she reached out and continued, "I'm Sophie, by the way. You?"
"Diego." He took her hand and helped her up. The smile of impeccable white teeth he gave her illuminated his face, and with that, the gravity of his wounds seemed to diminish considerably.
Mask
Inktober 31.10.2017
And thus I shall mark the end of Inktober.
Thank you very much for all your support, hearts and reblogs :) It's been one hell of a month but I've survived! :D
Hi! It's me, I'm in fact alive! And since I'm alive and in a way better chapter of my life right now, I felt like writing in here to let you all know that YOU are part of the reason that I'm alive and standing today. That financial help you guys provided to me in those desperate times not only helped me hang on for a little longer but It honestly gave me something way more important which is hope, I'm sure I wouldn't have any to keep fighting if It wasn't for you guys and for that I'll be forever thankful. Also, some updates on my life: My parents are a lot better now, my mom even agreed to go to therapy as well! They are a lot more understanding of their impact on me and more respecting of my space, and they no longer think I'm faking my symptoms because I'm a spoiled brat trying to get some attention, so yay! I've got into college! Yeah, that's right! Guess who's studying to be a english teacher in july? This mf! That also means I get to apply to a part-time job related to my major! I'm also on therapy and I'm doing a lot better ever since I got into new meds! I'm 21 now and I can legally drink! ( lol ) I've got diagnosed with bipolarity type 2 and OCD also and am getting the proper treatment foe that! So yeah, that's about it folks! Thank you all for everything <3 and special thanks to @himboprince for boosting my campaign
Guys I did it I survived my finals have been beaten and I am a lone survivor, exhausted beyond all belief but instead of sleep, I will curl up on a chair with pillows and blankets surrounding me and watch anime in all my tired post-finals glory
