Tagged

She woke up freezing and pulled the industrial-sized paper closer to her chin. It had been so frequently used that it was no longer stiff like when she first formed a shelter. That was.. 12 days ago according to the bricks that were circled first clockwise, and then counterclockwise so as to not lose track of the number. The first block of time Crete could remember was only darkness and a level of silence that was not in fact silent at all. Trapped by a considerable pile of heavy objects, she spent what she might now consider a little under a week (are there days in the starving darkness? ) trying to strategically move the correct objects in the hopes of finding light. Because she could not see, she had to rely on her other senses. There was an instinctual understanding of what she was feeling, but she could not recall the name of each element-even her own name for that matter. Some surfaces were rough to the touch and others quite smooth, and still others very sharp. She had several close encounters with pain as she used her hands to feel her way around the space she was enclosed within. Eventually she found just the right object to maneuver- it was a flat surface, not too rough, and made of a material that would not bend when pushed. Though she was physically weak, she could tell there was a strength innately penetrating her will to live, to move, to continue the fight to stay alive.

When light finally hit her eyes a new level of fear overcame her. It seemed so long since she had experienced the sun’s brilliance. Once the fear wore off, and her eyes adjusted, she was able to work more diligently to form a space to crawl out of (isn’t it amazing what a little light into a dark space can do? It invades everything without resistance). There wasn’t another like her in sight, or in sound (that she knew of). She crawled amidst the rubble until finally stopping to survey herself and her surroundings.

The word garbage dump did not immediately come to mind when surveying the land, but that is what it looked like. Before moving further, and experiencing the cold of night as the sun set, she slowly formed a shelter of sorts using objects around her. By her luck, and possibly the luck of where she was when the event took place, she was able to find food and drink underneath the piles of brick and glass. There she slept (for what felt like years). Each day she would wake up and decide which direction to explore with the hopes of accomplishing at least one of several goals: to find life, to find necessities, and to jog her memory.

She found herself habitually moving the silver rectangle tags hanging from a chain around her neck while thinking through which direction she would cover today. Like a flash before her eyes, she thought she saw someone-a little girl running quickly. Crete immediately ran in the direction of what she thought she saw, jumping over piles and dodging the half-formed structures in ruin. She called out several times with the hopes that she wasn’t alone. Full of anticipation, she continued to walk for an hour or so when suddenly, the scenery shifted. She was standing at the top of a grassy slope. This hill was the first amount of green, in fact, the first sign of any considerable life other than her own that she had seen since she began counting the days. She felt the grass as if it were an animal’s soft fur, along with deep gratitude because of what she discovered. It was there, in the distance, that she saw something shining amidst a few fallen and a few standing trees. She set out to investigate further.

It was a dome shape made of pieces of metal that were cut and placed together clockwise, resembling the bud of an unopened flower. She walked all around the building uncertain as to how to enter it. Eventually she sat down, leaning against a nearby tree when the building shifted counterclockwise. A tall, thin, and dark opening appeared between the pieces of metal. At this point, she felt like she could do anything she put her mind to, and her mind was set on figuring out what had happened and why she was alive. She slid into the opening and fell to the ground as the metal unexpectedly shifted back into place. From the ground she looked up to see a small circular window at the top of the dome, letting in a peak of light. Gradually standing she looked around her only to find smooth concrete, metal walls, and a staircase in the center of the room exactly under the window in the ceiling. She descended the staircase and entered a hallway that was lit from the bottom. It was full of windows and doors-- it seemed to be an empty lab. Entering one of the rooms, and walking past a stale metal table she found a propped door with fluorescent light flooding out of it.

The horror found on the other side of the door was worse than being trapped, worse than the starvation she endured, worse than anything she could imagine. There were stacks of people on top of bunkbed structures inside of long plastic bags. They were laying flat, looking to the side, with eyes black as the darkness she was so familiar with. Each one was wearing a necklace just like hers. She was shaking in shock, feeling sick as she looked down to compare their necklace to hers. Upon lifting her tags, she noticed something else was attached- a small heart-shaped locket dangled from the chain. This was so curious to her- how had she not noticed this sooner? She opened it to see what was inside when the world turned black around her.

The little girl woke up freezing, surrounded by complete darkness, instinctively moving the silver rectangle tags wrapped on a chain around her neck. She blinked a few times and felt the space she was enclosed within with the hopes of finding light.