Otis sat with a small rag cleaning his gun outside the stables. He was going to go hunting, as the electricity in the fridge was cut off weeks ago when the rest of it did and what meat that was left in the freezer had long been eaten. Pixie was his dutiful assistant, meaning that she was sitting on a crate next to him, knees to her chest and watching him very closely, periodically levitating bullets and letting them drop to the ground. Mainly, though, she was giving him a look of utter confusion.
"I'm going out into those woods, see?" Otis pointed at the woods at the edge of the property. "Then I'm going to take this and get us something for supper."
"Vas a volver?" Pixie asked, voice quiet.
Though Otis didn't know a word of what she said, he still replied. "Yeah, that's right. Look, sweetheart, how about you go inside the house," he pointed at the old farmhouse for reference. "And find Maggie?"
Pixie nodded and hopped off the crate, padding towards the house. Otis loaded his gun then set off towards the woods.
"Pixie, sweetheart, where's Otis?" Patricia asked as she reshelved a book.
"Woods," Answered Pixie, despite not knowing what the word 'woods' really meant or what Otis was doing.
Patricia cursed before brushing her hands off on her pants and storming outside. "Pixie, in the cellar there's a jar with carrots in it. Can you get it for me, please?" She called as the door slammed behind her.
Pixie jumped a little at the noise, but went towards the cellar as she was told. She didn't like the cellar- it was cold and dark, and spiders lurked in the corners where they couldn't be reached and swept away- but Patricia told her to go down there, so she went.
Orders... always follow orders.. She reminded herself as she opened the door and took the first harrowing step down into the black room.
Pixie was quick, heading to grab the first jar filled with orange things she saw, but the door creaked and closed, enveloping her in darkness.
"No," She whispered, backing up then running as fast as she could up the stairs, but on the last step her foot caught on her other and Pixie tumbled down the stairs, whacking her head on the solid floor.
Her knees were scraped and bleeding, but Pixie couldn't think about that. She only could think of getting out of there as fast as possible unless-
Oh no, these people wouldn't do that. They wouldn't have locked her in. She wasn't bad, and Hershel or Maggie would never, ever lock her in a dark room, right? They were nice, they gave her clothes, food, a bed to sleep in! But she had only known them for three days, and that was plenty of time to be lulled into a false sense of security before being thrown in a dark room and locked inside.
Pixie did the only thing she felt capable of. She curled up, knees tightly against her chest, and sobbed. The cellar was so dark, so cold, she could feel the warmth the sun instilled into her leave her body, and her cold fingers against her still relatively warm arms made her shiver.
Pixie sat there, sobbing quietly, backing up further and further until her back hit one of the shelves. the jars sitting on the shelves rattled, as if they were about to fall over, but they didn't. Pixie closed her eyes, felt her brain clench together, and the shelf stilled.
Blood dripped out her nose and ran down over her lips- she wasn't used to holding something this long, and the longer she did it, the more it took from her. She held the shelf and every single one of those jars up tightly against the wall, no matter the amount of blood that trickled out her nose.
The door opened. "Pixie?" Maggie asked as the light from the open door exposed the small girl curled against the shelves.
Maggie ran down the stairs and Pixie looked sadly up at her, eyes watery and tears making their way down her face along with the blood. "Oh, sweetie, it's okay," She reassured, picking the girl up like she used to carry Beth when she was a baby. "I'm gonna take you out of the cellar, and I promise you, you will never, ever have to go down here again."
YOU ARE READING
United We Fall
Fanfiction"You look at her and you think, wow, that's one young kid, but then you look in her eyes and you realize... that ain't how a kid should be behind it." The world as it was known has come to an end, but for one, it has only begun.
