Cloud Fire - The Sentinel Project

Shadows

"She'll be here somewhere." A deep and gurgling voice complained. "Pretty?" Another one called through the shadows of the alleyways.

On damp and filthy ground, the girls emerald eyes slowly dragged themselves open. Upwards, she stared, seeing the ledge high above from where she had fallen. There were sounds of traffic. Horses and engines. Voices and street bells. But it was a far off land. From where the ledge began, down to where she lay, there was only this silence, broken by dripping pipes and scurrying. Enshrouded and blackened by a snide shadow, which seemed to encase the entire world from down here.  Rats and and other small creatures had gathered around her, nipping at her unsurely, to see if she would move.  Slowly, her breathing rose to normal and she tried to get to her feet.

Instantly, her arm crumbled beneath her bodies weight. It was broken. Bent in a strange way at the elbow.   Her expression grew tiredsome as she gazed at the injury. It hurt only a little to her. As if it were a graze, a mere annoyance.
Slowly the voices grew closer and slowly, she began to crawl away from them. 

"Pretty?" A voice called again, this time so much closer.   "Is that-  Hey boys!" Terror struck through her like lightening. The mans footsteps drew closer behind her. Ten metres. Eight metres.
She was dead. She was fucked.

She twisted and scrunched her face, desperately trying to claw herself away. In the muck of the alley, rats scurried around her, hissing at the man who approached and still nipping at the girl.   Her head was covered in blood from where the pig man had struck her, and from where it had met with the ground.   Down her face, it dripped from her chin.

"C'mon now, darlin, let's go home." The man breathed as he lent over. His huge hand, reaching towards the small girl, over her like a shadow, like a tidal wave.

"Mm-mm." She girl shook her head in terror. In horror. In disbelief almost that she had come this far only for this. She wouldn't go back. She would rather die.

Just as the thought struck her, she noticed a small glint in the muck. A large shard of glass. It was long and slanted, like a blade. It seemed sharp enough.

She didn't really think about it any more than that. There was no reason to. As the mans ogre like hand gripped the back of the girls neck, her small, petite hand lifted the shard from the soot and mud.  Her eyes hung calmly. Relaxed and completely okay.    She would not go back today.

"Look at you... you're all broken.." He complained almost sorrowfully. But he said it as if she were only a damaged toy. She was not a human to him. To any of them.

As he held the girl dangling in the air, the man turned his wrist slowly, to view her pretty face. As he did, she closed her eyes and held the large shard toward her own heart. In that moment she thought, "This is fine. This is good enough."

But as her body slowly came to view the man whom siezed her, she realised one thing.  It wasn't.

Fury and hatred suddenly filled her eyes like never before and in a moment like glorious fire, she stabbed the shard through the mans throat and out the back of his neck.

"Hhoouughh" He convulsed instantly as she tore it out. His neck was thick and muscly, like a thigh almost. But that did nothing. The slice was large and messy, pouring with dark and thick blood.  Spitting like slop across her already stained face. Quickly, he dropped the girl, stumbling back as she starred upwards at him.    "This is good. This is enough."  

Coming up behind him, two more of the Creeps approached. "Yelt, you found- Yeh..." The man stuttered as his aquantance turned around, viewing unto him his own gutted throat.     

"YOU BITCH!!!" They screamed, pushing the bleeding man aside as his dying body became a mere obstacle to them. Drearily, she stared down at the shard in her hand. This piece of shattered glass. This is what separated it. Her life of torture and agony, from a life of something else. "Such a small thing." She thought to herself. And slowly, she began to smile. She grinned, watching the men approach.  They were going to kill her. Yet she just couldn't help it. It was like a drug. It was fantastic.

"AAAAGH!!!" The man screamed as he smashed her against the wall. Like a doll, she hit it and fell. It was violent and sudden, and the man grimaced at her as she made no noise from it.   Suddenly, a searing pain shot down his arm. Blood sprayed from it as long gashes opened themselves like blooming flowers.

He stared towards her, realising she had done it as he struck her. It was so fast. He hasn't even realised.
"FUCK!!!"  He screamed, holding his arm painfully.  The second man instantly stepped in, smashing the girl across the face with his boot and grabbing her ragefully. With one hand he took her by the neck and with the other, he siezed her glass blade.
"FUCKING KILL HER!!!" The man with the lacerated arm squealed. The glass had been dirty and his wounds were deep. They would infect and fester with flies and maggots in only a few days. He would die because of her.
"KILL HER NOW!!!"
"NO!!" Her captor yelled. "The big man wants her alive."

While he was distracted, the girl bent back his thumb and stuck it in her mouth, chomping down on it hard.  
*CRACK!*     "AAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!" He bellowed as he let the girl go. With his hand shaking, he stared down at his now missing thumb.     And as if to mock him even more, the girl spat. Out onto the mud, the mans bloody thumb rolled.   Several rats squealed as they began to fight over the piece of meat.

"MY- MY-" He stuttered in shock. In a flash, she kept at him, climbing up to his face and winding her good arm backward. Without hesitation and before the man could even react, she plunged her fingers into his eye, twisting and tearing it out.   Screaming even more, he fell to the ground grieving in agony.

"You're gona fuckin get it now." The other man suddenly said. Without warning, he lifted her up from behind.  She felt the blood rush to her head as he spun her high into the air and whipped her straight back down.   A loud thud echoed through the alleyway as her body hit the ground. And everything went all so suddenly quiet.

Up, up into the air, her body flopped around, and thud! Violently back down, into the dirt.

The man with a missing thumb and eye, sat against the wall, wallowing in his pain and hissing at the rats that dared approach.   Again the young girls body was thrown upwards and ripped back down, smashed into the muck that was now mixing with bits of her blood.   Again, the deep and echoing thud. And once more.

It was fading quickly; the light. And all the while, a third shadow seeped ominously through the alleyway behind them.

Every time her body hit the ground, she felt it less and less. This was fine.    This was good enough.  As the mud splattered against the walls and covered the girls body, she let out a soft smile.  It was about to be done. And it had been the best day of her life.

"What the fuck!" The one eyed man yelled as he suddenly saw the figure. The other Creep whipped around, but the darkness of the alleyway wrapped around him like a viper and in those shadows, the mysterious figure moved in an instant.   A sharp glint shot through the dark and his limbs fell from his body, sending his head rolling to a stop at the feet of the one eyed man.

The silhouette towered menacingly. One side of its collar, spiking up over its head, looking like a horn in the night. He was surely a demon of some kind. And as the one eyed man drew a final breath, he thought, maybe even the devil himself.  

There on the ground in the mud and filth, the girl lay. Barely alive, her squinting eye slowly closed on her beaten and bruised face. Through her final vision she could see him; the cloaked shadow of a man staring at her.   What life would await her now?   Should she even survive this night, that was.  Never the less, she had done all she could. There was no power left in her.  And slowly, she closed her eye.