SHORT STORY: Track 11 – Just Like Anyone

Track 11 – Just Like Anyone

She looked out of her makeshift home into the blackness of night. She knew the way and could easily get there with her eyes closed, but that was not what was freezing her there; it was fear. She had been living there with her tribe for what felt like three years now ever since the catastrophe which left them stranded and cut off from the world. She often wondered why no one looked for them, but only in the first few months; after that survival trumped all other thoughts. Survival, she ran through her head again and again.

Just twenty short feet into the woods was all she needed to go. To compound the issue, the stress she was currently undergoing was negatively impacting her stomach, which meant that she had little time left to convince her legs to walk before she would be soiled. Why didn’t she just take the safe route and claim it was an accident? She knew why, she could not handle that sort of torment, not anymore. You would think that a small group forced into a society through hardships and tragedy would not have the time to find and ridicule an outcast; she would forever think, but she was always wrong.

Just then the gloomy clouds parted and the pale moonlight lit the way momentarily; this was her chance, she sprang from the door and ran barefoot into the unknown. She reached the plank door of the outhouse, pulled it opened as quickly as physics would allow and she slammed it behind her; she cared not if she woke anyone with her antics. She took in deep calming breaths, dismissing the aroma, and allowed her heart rate to settle.

She went about her business and reflected on the one friend she had when it all began. Tom was about her age, give or take a year or so, and he was kind to her. Whenever the others would gang up and find it their duties to explain how useless she was, Tom would appear and put an end to it. That was over two years ago, because he was the second to go missing.

They had set up their little village, the twenty three of them, and went about living. There were three to a room at first until time allowed them to build more homes; which consequently became a moot point. After a year full of constant failed attempts to discover where they were, and how to return, they began to grow disheartened and drop their guards. One night, after hearing a savage rustling of the trees and bushes about the village the strange things began to happen. In the morning, the exteriors of the houses were severely damaged with what could only have been claw marks. None of them knew what to do and after a distressed meeting, it was decided to fortify the windows and see what the night brought again. That was the night Tom went missing.

He was never found, but after him, once a month or so, another would go missing, some of which turned up weeks later; or at least parts of them turned up. Two years living in fear, and now she sat in the darkness amid the woods as one of the only four remaining survivors.

Why? She thought. Why me? Why not me? My own kind will not accept me, and whatever it is out there does not want me either? Must I be picked last for everything? Torture upon torture. Wait, she screamed in her own mind, can’t I make my own fate? Can’t I choose to be chosen? Why couldn’t I be like the other nineteen before me? Why couldn’t I be more like Tom? I can, I can be what I want.

On that she stood and pushed the plank opened to reveal that the moon had once again retreated behind the clouds for complete shade. She stepped out with pride in her step and conviction in her marrow. One step led to another, but she was not going in the direction of her straw bed, in fact she was heading in the opposite direction; into the unknown.

Unknown, she chuckled to herself, was it really the great unknown? She knew where she was headed and she knew what to expect. She was going to be one of them, one of the majority. She took each step eagerly and no longer cared to mask her sounds. Although she was not tracking the time she was walking, she was sure that she had not been traveling long before the air became frigid and so did her muscles. She stopped in place and heard the muted hiss of breathing; she was no longer afraid.

She felt something dig into her shoulder and the pain was welcomed as her world spun around her like a top. She was no longer going to be just the awkward her; she was going to be someone else, just like anyone.