The Escapees

L.C. Schäfer proposed a challenge to write a microfiction every day for a year and I am still here, writing away, trying to come up with new ideas and actually having a blast. You can read about her here:

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Prompt number eighteen:

The picture is the prompt.

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The going was hard. It had been days since they had escaped. Days of trembling limbs and hearts; days of hesitancy and weariness; days of panic and diving into ditches.

The nights were hard too. But they were more restful, despite the cold and the hard ground. The night noises were different in the wild. In the wild, they were rustlings and calls. They were snufflings and roamings. They were organic and they felt part of it, sharing their own night noises of snores and the occasional muffled murmur.

There were no clear cries out. They had no tongues.

In their confinement, the night noises had been wild. The whoop of the hunt. The shrillness of pain. Noises to haunt and carve fear.

They were living on their wits, barefoot and shabby, shuffling their way to somewhere other. They did not know who they were or why they were. They did not know their origin. They had lived merely as fodder for someone's whim; a disposable being supplied for the sport of others, born to be killed. They had no life skills and were surviving on instinct, an innate sense of what they needed to get through: eating berries dried on twigs, funghi, sometimes falling ill, drinking from streams. They had no hunting skills; they were usually the hunted, the prey.

Their journey was punctuated by stops - were there steps behind them? - like rabbits, grazing until they hear your footfall; that split second of recognition where stillness rules, before they bolt away. This is how it was: moments where they had to cock their head to one side and listen sharp.

They'd always been treated like animals and knew no other way to act.

And then the snow came. They did not know what it was. They'd never seen it, never heard of it. It fell lightly and the wonder of it overwhelmed. First, fear. It's coldness on their skin! But then it melted away, leaving no mark and they felt firmer and confident that it would not harm.

But they were wrong. It would cause them harm as it would preserve the traces of their journey and show them to those who wished them captured.

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366 words

Again, another picture prompt. I will mix it up, I promise!

This one is a little dark. My inspiration for it was "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy which is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. I have taken the premise of that, people on the road, trying to survive and made it into something arguably more sinister as the people in this tale seem to have been imprisoned from birth and are having to live on instinct alone. Although McCarthy's book as it stands is pretty grim.

The picture is quite beautiful and I am not sure why this story was prompted by it. Perhaps the monochrome? Who knows how this writer's mind works?

Thanks for stopping by! If you do read it, please do drop a comment as I love it when people drop by and it's always good to interact.

18/366

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