Revenge

Ok well i got this idea from watching Dark Angel, X-men and Serenity one too many times. lol : P
Hope it makes sense! Oh and another note this story is set in the future where TV shows and movies (like the ones above) have been seen by just about every child.... yes even 7 yr olds..... ok? if there are any other plots holes (which there most probably is!) let me know and i'll do my best to fix it up! : D

My parents are dead, pure and simple. What happened before and after their death is not so simple. They died years ago, when I was little, maybe 10 years ago now. I was seven. They had a choice to save me, and themselves but they didn’t. They left me and abandoned me to a fate much worse than death. They left me to suffer along with all the other children who are going through the same pain. But it’s still good I’m here I guess. I give them hope that they will be free and happy in the world outside. The other children who are here are like me, parentless, homeless and most lived on the street for a few years so no one would notice them missing. They are here because like me their parents abandoned them, left them to die on the streets. Most of us are normal, aren’t as…. human as we were before we came here, before the scientists and doctors started experimenting on us.

We know, we see and we understand what most of them only know in nightmares. Susan is 10 years old and can see what is coming for us she gives us hope as well that we can be free. She lies to the scientists when they ask her if she still sees the future that way they give up on her for a while and leave her alone and in peace. It’s horrible what they do to you when you’re taken into The Room. They tie you down to a table with straps so tight you can’t move and put electrodes on you. They ask you questions and fiddle with your mind, experimenting and changing us. Each time we come back from there we are different. But there is no one to care for us. We have no family, no home and no love or kindness except for what we give each other. We are the children society forgot, along with the rest of the world. Each of us has different stories about how we ended up on the streets, some of us were born there, and others ran away or were dumped. I’m different from them. My parents worked with the government on the very project that I’m now a part of. When they realised what they were doing to children they tried to leave and threatened to go to the press. They knew what would happen if they tried to go. They knew that I would be taken to the scientists. But they did it anyway and sealed their fates along with my own. Because of what they’ve done I am here to suffer along with the other children who technically don’t exist any more than a ghost does.

I suppose you’re wondering who I am by now. The name my parents gave me has faded from my memory, an effect I’m told of some of the experiments. So, like many of the others who barely survive here I gave myself another name, a name that would remind me constantly of all that has happened and all that will happen, so Susan says anyway. My name is Revenge. It reminds me also of my duty to free all of us who are now mere shadows of our former selves. It is my duty to finish what my parents started.

So many have fallen victim to the brutality and total indifference of the scientists and doctors who are here. I want them to pay for what they have done to us. I want them to bleed as we have bled and to feel what we have felt at their merciless hands. Revenge is who I am and what I will have in the end, but not at the expense of our freedom.

Few of the others still retain the hope they once had when they arrived here. For most if us the memory of the outside is like a dream that we aren’t sure really happened. Hope, who has been here almost as long as I have, never forgets her life Outside and that is what keeps her alive. The belief that one day she will be out there again. For others, the memory is bitter and eventually drives them insane. Each of us is different and our way to survive is also.

Can you begin to feel what it is like to be one of us here? Trapped in this prison of pain and hopelessness? Yes I think you can. The reason I tell you of this is not for you to neither weep nor pity at our plight but to warn you, to warn those on the outside.

People have begun to notice the street kids are missing. Apparently orphanages all over the city have closed. Soon the scientist will find a way to take the children of the town. Children who have families and loved ones. Children who have a future and a home.

They say that the scientists are coming close to perfecting us. But then you have no idea what goes on here, do you? Have you seen the movies of old like X-Men? The movie with teenagers with strange powers? We are like them, but our powers do not come naturally but rather through experimentations and operations that are as painful as they are heinous.

Each of us is different, with different skills that we have been given. Susan as I have already told you can see the future, Wraith can fly and turn invisible, Faith is more or less a water nymph. The list of our skills goes on and on despite the fact the scientists have declared most of us ‘rejects’ and ‘failures’. But then even they do not know all of our potential. Hope is one of the most gifted of us that has not been discovered by them. If they do our plan for escape maybe foiled. Hope can control and manipulate electronics, lights, scanners, cameras, robots you name it she can control it. She is the proof most of us here need to realise that no matter what happens, we are the future of humanity that you, that the people on the outside helped in one way or another to create. One day we will triumph over the scientists and escape into the world. All of us only hope that we can successfully integrate with the rest of humanity and be accepted. Not like the ‘mutants’ on X-men and Dark Angel who were feared by and did fear the rest of the world. But then this is life and is not T.V or a movie. This is life, this is what is real and I dream that one day we will be free to see the sky, feel the sun on our cheeks and the raindrops on our skin. One day we will be free of the chains that bind us to the operating table and we will dance in exultation, but most importantly we will sing, laugh and smile. There hasn’t been enough of that in here for there is nothing to smile about unless of course you have gone insane. But no matter for soon our time will come, Susan has seen it and we wait here in our dark cement rooms until that time comes.

Child of the Night

The stars glittered in the blue velvet night. The moon glowed large and round, spilling its light over the town, watching silently as it lit the way in the darkness for those who chose to walk night’s path. There was a house that it watched closely. The house was a small 3 bedroom home with a white picket fence and pink roses in the front gardens. A perfectly normal home where a mother, father and daughter lived together but then again appearances can be deceiving…
The figure lay sprawled face down on the floor. Nail marks dragged across the carpet where the person had tried in vain to escape their fate. The body of the figure’s wife lay alone and cold in the next room, what little blood that was left in the body had seeped out onto the fluffy white carpet staining it crimson red.
In the lounge room sat a third figure, curled up in the shadows of the corner away from all light as if its slight touch would burn. Tears mingled with the blood on her cheeks and dripped from her jaws. Fear and terror were bright in her eyes and had taken over from the hunger, lust and exaltation that had consumed her earlier. She was alone in the house now, the bodies that had been her parents laid on the floor their presence had left this world forever.
Winter didn’t know how it had happened. She’d been feeling odd for the past few days, getting migraines during the day that were so bad that she was forced to close the curtains and stay in her room, only to have the migraines disappear when darkness fell across the land.
Struggling to remember what happened to her and her family, Winter tried to calm down and replay in her mind all that happened. Breathing slowly and looking away from the blood that splattered the floor and the body of her father she began to remember…
… Winter was walked down the stairs just after sunset because her migraine had vanished only moments before. She walked into the kitchen where her mother was smiling as she prepared dinner, steak and potatoes. The smell of blood was in the air wafting its way over to her, and the need to go to it and lick the spilling blood was almost irresistible. Shuddering with the grossness of the thought, Winter had forced to move herself away from the steak and the blood that was pooling around the chopping board. Winter had though that it was nothing more than the after effects of migraine. But before she could leave the room her mother had cried out in pain, turning Winter saw her mother’s knife had slipped and the blood welled up from her hand. The need grew so strong that Winter let herself go and released herself to tide of hunger that washed over and took her over. Even though Winter struggled to remember nothing came to her mind until she was standing over the battered and broken body of her father in the lounge room. The call of the blood no longer abused her senses, nor made her teeth ache but lay sated, ready to rise by the smallest of provocations like a sleepy dog lies guarding its master.
Winter shrank against the wall trying to hide in the shadows and disappear from what she had done. An hour or more passed and yet Winter never moved but she had calmed and was no longer hysterical. She struggled to her feet and hobbled up the stairs the feeling slowly returning to her numb legs. Rooms passed to her left and right until she came to the bathroom. The blood of her family had caked on her clothes stiffening it making it hard to take off. The dried blood flaked away in the pounding heat of the shower as her tired muscles relaxed; the bloody clothes lay scattered on the blue tiled floor.
Winter stepped out of the shower her skin pale despite the heat of the water and steam, her red hair lay in lank red curls against her back. An eerie calm had settled over her. Her hysterics had ceased and quietness settled over her, the events of the night had soaked into her mind to stay there forever. She confidently walked naked through the house to her bedroom. She walked to her closet and began choosing clothes to wear. Thinking calmly to herself she realised that she needed to blend into the night so she chose tight black leather pants and a black sleeveless top with a hood. Hurrying slightly she put on her black Nikes, the police would be on their way soon thanks to her nosy neighbours. As she walked down the stairs she could smell the blood of her family smeared around the house. It would smell even worse in the morning when the sun came up and warmed the house through. The police would definitely be on their way then. Walking out the door and down the pathway she realised that she had Changed. She was no longer the sweet innocent girl but rather a creature that lived only in the darkest of nights, in the nightmares of children. Winter smiled at the thought. The migraines during the day had only been the beginnings of the Change and nothing more. ‘Mother won’t be very happy,’ She thought smugly, ‘all those trips to the doctor were for nothing.’ Winter smiled at the thought, her newly found fangs glistening in the darkness as she walked down the lonely road that led her away from home. Startled she whirled around as a twig snapped and a loud scrapping of shoes sounded behind her. It was a man stumbling home in light of the moon. He had clearly had one too many beers as he celebrated in the local pub with his mates. She could feel the blood pumping drunkenly through his veins, it called to her just as her mother’s and father’s had called to her. Winter’s smile widened. She was a Child of the Night and all who walked through her domain, along her dimly lit paths were hers to take as she wished.

Gabriel's Story

Gabrielle sat on the tall wall of the ancient graveyard, her feet hanging down the side of the weathered stone and iron fence, toes skimming the unkempt and overgrown grass. Her sleeveless, knee length white dress stood out in the darkness, the patches of blood that belonged to her and her family splattered the front right down the tattered edges of the lace trim. The moonlight filtered through the clouds and through her own body and on to the mossy gravestones that belonged to those who had long since passed.

She had died many centuries ago when the majority of people in England still lived in scattered farming towns. Raiders had come to Gabrielle’s house demanding payment for keeping them safe. Her family had refused, there was nothing they could pay off the raiders with for it had been a very hard winter. Her mother knew what the raiders would do when they found out that they had no money to pay them with so she forced Gabrielle into the small crawl space underneath the floor in the store room next to the kitchen. The tracks from the tears she had shed that night could still be seen running down her face, but no one had seen her face since the night she had died.

Closing her eyes she forced herself to replay the events that had led to her current position. The raiders had come and demanded their payment. They had shouted and broken things that Gabrielle remembered. She also remembered the dieing screams of her mother. She remembered sitting quietly in her hidey-hole waiting for the sounds of the raiders to disappear into the night to tend to her family. Eventually, Gabrielle didn’t know how long, she crept over to the broken and bloody bodies of her family. She had lain down with her family, weeping as the warmth seeped from their corpses and the blood ran across the flagstones of the kitchen floor.

It was then she screamed. She screamed and cursed the raiders for all they had done that night. She swore vengeance for her family and for all those who had gone before who could not protect themselves. She swore to protect those who did not have the power to protect themselves.

A hoarse voice had emanated from the dark shadows of the kitchen. It was a raider who had remained behind to forage and pillage clothes and food from her dead family. He rushed forward and grabbed her and slammed her skull against the rough stonewalls. Her scalp split open spilling her own blood down the tattered and dirty remains of her dress. She had scratched and tore at her captor as he drew the silver blade that would slice through her stomach and spill it to the floor. Her life had ended then as she slid into the dark abyss of death.

Shuddering with the memory of her awakening she resumed watching the empty graveyard. Something would be happening here soon. Gabrielle felt it; she felt the call of the innocent. Suddenly a raven-haired boy emerged from behind a cracked tombstone. A man in shadow followed him intently, but quietly. If the boy did not hurry he would suffer by the silent man as she had suffered. But she would save him, as she had saved so many others since her return.
She concentrated and focused her power on creating the distraction necessary to save the life of the boy. When she was ready she rose and stood proud on the top of the stone fence the moonlight filtering through and highlighting her in the gloom. The opened her wraith-like mouth and screamed, pouring in to it all the defiance, fierceness, agony, despair and horror that she could. The boy and his pursuer froze in place before running off in different directions as her scream echoed out into the night. Gabrielle turned, her job here was done for now. The boy had heard her plea, her cry. The cry of a banshee.