Sarah's Escape

Blood obscured Sarah’s vision as she ran through the forest, she tried to wipe it away, to see where she was running, but it just kept flowing from the gash across her forehead. She ran, and ran, and ran, the tree limbs she pushed through only caused more bleeding on her arms and her cheeks. She could feel her fist, clenched around her mother’s heart-shaped locket, filling with blood. She could barely breathe, barely run anymore, but she had to.

The taunting crash of mechanical beasts reverberated through the forest and sounded so close to Sarah that she started to believe she failed. Her parents had sacrificed themselves to give her a chance at escape from the Architects and she had failed. The thundering cracks as nature gave way to machine behind her revealed to her the single, inescapable truth that everyone else had already accepted…there is no escape from them.

As the truth set in Sarah forgot about the blinding blood and the forest around her seemed to wash away in a haze of blurry colors and shapes, she could feel her legs moving but she wasn’t the one telling them to. The only sensation she found herself aware of was a warmth from the locket. A warmth that commanded her to move forward, to run and ignore every drop of pain and fear that had overwhelmed her for so long. It was as if her parent's very will for her to survive had been placed within the locket and in her hopelessness the locket, the only thing she had of theirs, sprung to life and demanded for her to keep running.

She was numb, numb of all but one sensation, numb to the world around her and all she could do was watch as if she were a spectator within her own body.

How long could this last though?

The sudden sharp, cold thought penetrated the dense fog within her mind.

She escaped the prison, and she might make it past the boundary of the forest, but what could she do then?

The questions screeched as if someone or something else were etching them within her head.

She had been just a little girl when they were forced from their homes and she didn’t know how to survive, what to eat, where to sleep, or where it would be safe. She might escape their pursuit for now, but what would she do the next time one of them came for her?

The intrusion grew stronger, she felt like something else was now trying to aid her escape as if a hand was outstretched and all she had to do was reach for it. To accept it. To let it in.

It felt like an old friend, like something that could be trusted; or rather it needed to be trusted. After all, how could a silly locket protect her with those unnatural fiends chasing her? They wouldn’t give up searching for her, they don’t give up searching for anyone. She needed this friend to protect her, to help her, maybe even to help her fight back. All she had to do was reach out, to take its hand and she would be safe.

She wanted to, and she was reaching out but as if her parents had anticipated this old friend as well, their will within the locket burst shining radiantly comforting light within her. The light pushed away the old friend and kept it at bay, forcing her to deny the opportunity it was offering to her. Just as she felt the fog in her head begin to dissipate from the light she was acutely and roughly brought back to her own body as it slammed against the ground. Her breath was ripped from her body by the impact, her eyes darted from one shape to another as she scrambled to make sense of her surroundings. The moon’s light barely penetrated the canopy, illuminating only faint outlines of the surrounding trees. The only noise she could hear was her wheezing and as she tried to breathe as she rolled over onto her back. She couldn’t move, her body had reached its limit and on the damp, cold forest floor she closed her eyes and without any control over herself, she slipped away; entrusting the darkness to her safety as she slept with her mother’s locket clenched tightly in her fist.