For Your Freedom

“Hey.”

A soft, young female voice called out to me. The haze in my head slowly started to lift as I blinked aggressively against the dim light that flooded into the space I had been curled up in. The events leading up to this point began to fade back, blotchy and distorted as I tried to sit myself up, but found I couldn’t as my body didn’t respond as I tried to move.

“You’ve got to get up.”

The voice called out to me again and I shook my head, I couldn’t move as much as I tried..

“You must get away. You have to escape!”

The voice, though it sounded far away, became more urgent and strained. Turning my head slowly to see where the voice was coming from, I found I was alone in a dingy, empty cell, the dirt floor stained dark in scattered areas around my body. An unmistakable metallic smell hit my nose as my senses slowly started to return to me as well. It was blood. More than likely, it was my own blood, but I couldn’t feel anywhere that there might be wounds on me.

The cell, that’s right. I was thrown into the cell because of the ladies of this home. Our world had turned upside down after an epidemic had decimated our populations and people had become irrational. Fear makes people do the worst kinds of things to each other. Mass shootings, suicides and all around killing for anything people thought they wanted or need became the norm. Soon, governments fell and countries failed to bring order. People became feral creatures until things finally started to settle. But those with the most stuff, the most control of a populace, became the leaders, they thought they would be able to lead better than others because they had ‘learned from the past’. Regular democracies were gone, and it became a hierarchy again. Though they skipped the title of ‘king’ or ‘queen’, they were the most powerful people that would run territories, keeping their inner circles purely devoted to them by threatening to cut off supplies to them or take away their abilities to make a living and provide food for their own families.

But where you have the upper class, you then have people like myself. They call us Ferals, as we live outside of the territories and survive without their leadership. Our outward appearances even holding differences against their own. While their skin is smooth and unmarred by years of scarring and being weathered by harsh outdoor conditions, our skin is rough, calloused and covered in scars. We even decorated our skin with tattoos that held particular meanings to us and those around us. I myself had stars tattooed on each of my cheek bones, small and delicate, they almost appeared like freckles. I had a crescent moon on the back of my left hand, and a sun on the back of my right hand. These vaguely symbolized my ability to move at night without needing any sort of assistance, my eyes adjusted to the dark better than most, so I was used as a night patrol and hunter on nocturnal prey. As well as the skin differences, their physical appearance was very soft and smooth, their teeth not sharp and their ears remained humanly rounded. While Ferals, our teeth had sharpened through generations and ears even pointed, almost imperceptibly, but if you looked close enough, you could see it.

Though we normally keep to ourselves, the civilized folks, as they so fondly refer to themselves as, like to hunt us for sport. We try not to fight back to make relations worse, but there is only so much one can take when we watch our families and friends get hunted down and laughed at, their bodies made a spectacle upon their return home. Where some might think that’s the worst that can come of us, they have not lived a day being a servant to them. While they hunt us mercilessly, if the person who comes across you fancies you enough, they steal you from your home, and force you to become their servant, or trades you off to another to gain their favor. But only if you are ‘broken in’, ‘well mannered’ and appeal to their personal liking enough to keep you alive. That is how I found myself here. Unable to defend myself against my attackers, I was taken from my home and muzzled and beaten until I didn’t know my own name.

For my own safety, I slipped into obedience, only able to endure the beatings for so long. I was set to work for the high ladies of the house I had been brought into and at any little misstep, I was severely punished. Beaten, whipped, flogged, I’d even had my food scraps revoked for days. My offenses were always small. Raising my eyes too high, not moving fast enough, making a simple noise like a cough.

My most recent offense though, I remember it now. One of the high ladies here in the house has a young daughter, Natalia. A sweet child whose parents don’t have the time of day or care for her. I had been left to care for her one day, with the strict order to not speak a single word to the child. They feared my very voice would corrupt her or some hogwash like that. When I had been allowed to enter her room, she had simply looked up at me with large, curious brown eyes, like clear amber shining in the sunlight. She tried so hard that first day to get me to speak. I didn’t know if she was trying to get me into trouble, or if it was simply a child’s curiosity that drove her to speak to me so frequently within the day, but it seemed she had taken a liking to my silent self as I was then further requested by the young girl to attend to her during the day. Much like a statue or suit of armor that used to decorate the halls in the old world, I would stand by, simply waiting to be told what to do. But she would just chatter away, clearly just lonely and in need of someone to speak to.

We went on like this for weeks, the more time I spent with her, the more my wall of defense was broken down. I learned so much about her, what her parents did, the fact that she indeed did have siblings, but with them being older, they rarely visited her. She showed me her stuffed animal collection, some from the old world, others hand made and brought to the home as offerings of good will to try and gain some favor with her parents. She asked me frequently about my tattoos, but I would simply shake my head, not knowing if she’d understand what they meant, and also unsure if my voice even worked anymore after so much time unused.

Even with my silence, the young girl grew ever more fond of me, and I began to enjoy her company as well. Though I am easily fifteen to twenty years older than her, her wonder in the things around her softened my heart to her. I had been lucky too when I had been taken, I was not leaving much behind. I left no lover or family, the only people who I left were the few of my community.

Natalia had relentlessly asked me about my family before, but again, it was a simple shake of my head, but I think my face finally betrayed my emotions because the girl teared up and reached out to take my hand, grasping my fingers tightly. Tugging me along, she led me to a small wooden jewelry box, opening it up she pulled out a small golden locket. Taking the hand she held, she turned my palm upwards and placed the locket there, closing my fingers around it. I tried to give it back to her, but she simply shook her head and refused to take it back. I had always planned on slipping it back into her jewelry box, but I never had the chance.

It was only days after that, that guards came rushing into her room, grabbing me by my hair and twisting my arms painfully behind my back. A young man, probably close to my age came in, a thundering look of rage on his face.

“That’s the Feral who doesn’t know her place! She’s been acting out of line with Lady Natalia!” He spat the words as aggressively as he could at me, hatred clear on his face.

From his appearance alone, I could tell this was one of her older brothers, but how had he found out that his young sister had been speaking so casually to me? Turning my widened eyes to Natalia, the young girl was sobbing, silently trying to plead the guards to release me. She hadn’t told anyone, I could only assume they had been watching us from afar.

Being turned abruptly, I was pushed from her room, and down flight after flight of stairs. Deep into the cold damp earth of what they called their ‘basement’. It was a dungeon to put it bluntly.

That’s right. I had been brought down here and beaten until I had fallen unconscious. I don’t know how long I have been out for, or if that was really Natalia’s voice I had heard, but I knew deep down, the girl did not want to see me suffer here anymore. Raising my head, I groaned as the muscles in my body ached and fought against my every command. Refusing to budge. Huffing heavily as pain raced through my body, I cried out as I managed to force my hands under me and slowly pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, feeling the trails of new and old blood move across my skin. I had to escape. If not for her, then for myself. There was a reason I was left down here. Apparently they didn’t see any use in me as I had now corrupted one of their own, though I never spoke a word.

Panting heavily from the strain my body was undergoing, I slowly crawled to the cell door and tested it weakly. Of course it was a large, heavy door, but as the old world cell doors had, it had a window just large enough for me to possibly fit my arm through. Using the door to pull myself up, my legs shook under my weight. Peeking out the window to make sure no one was around, it was indeed empty, with only that dim light filtering through. Slipping my hand and arm through the window, I found I had just enough reach to grab onto the handle. I guess they figured I wouldn’t be either smart enough or the strength to manage this.

Shaking away the thought, I tried to open the door, but it was locked and needed a key. Of course it did. Leaning against the wall and sliding back down to sit, conserving my energy, I pulled the locket out of my pocket. I hadn’t opened it yet, but she seemed so adamant about me taking it, I had to wonder if there was something special about it. As I opened it, a small laugh escaped my lips, weak and raspy sounding. Inside, the young girl had managed to fit something I could use to pick the lock. She knew this was going to happen, she knew that people had been watching and listening. She had been doing this the whole time to help me get home.

Standing slowly, I pulled out the small tool and slipped my arm back out, picking the lock and opening the door slowly, making my way out quietly and towards my freedom. I hoped silently to meet Natalia again one day.