Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

One-Shot, One Kill - Prompt Two

Prompt: Science Fiction; write a story that involves breaking through to another dimension.

Her name is Byrd and she sits alone in a room composed of stinking grey and desolation, letting the melancholic hues leech onto her own skin, eyes, hair, as she stares at a wall completely barren of door, or window, or image. It's just a wall. And she's just Byrd. And this is all that life will ever be, she's sure.

But what if it isn't?

She ponders for a moment, but quickly dashes the thought away, so quick that it seems to jolt her brain for a moment and she's left wondering where she left off. A train of thought, or rather, unthought, returns quickly, for she's been sitting in the same position, in the same room, for four hours now, maybe more. She's too nervous to leave this place, y'see, for the house is a new one, her family having moved in only two days prior. Nothing is familiar as of yet. Nothing but this room that she's acquainted herself with. Eventually, she knows she'll branch out, maybe undergo the same process for the room across the hall, and then the next one, and the next one, for she is slow in responding to change, but for now, she sits in this second-story bedroom in the back corner of the house. Her parents tried to nudge her out of there a few times, but have since given up the endeavor, and have resolved to let her move at her own pace. She can do that - she doesn't have to attend school with the other children. They teach her here. Or, they will.

It was her parents' idea. At first, she'd looked longingly out the windows at the kids in the street, throwing chunks of ice at one another as they waited for the bus, but mother was always quick to draw the curtains, and father would not-so-subtly peer through a slit in the blinds too high up for Byrd to see, and tsk away, speaking of the disadvantages and negatives of being one with society's youth, for the youth was corruptive, rebellious, destructive. Byrd wouldn't be like that, they promised, so long as she stayed inside and kept to her studies here, sharpening each lobe of her brain with various lessons and activities she wasn't quite sure other kids had to do. But what did she know? Nothing. Well, a lot, actually, but in regards to this? Nothing.

The result is this: at seventeen, in a room with two large windows pushed to the side, she ventures not to them, too afraid to yank the cord to lift the blinds and let the sunlight come in yellow and warm. It will always filter in grey, or white, and catch on the dust to accentuate the slow passing of time. This grey is safe, and sterile, and familiar. Even her own blonde waves falling forward every now and then work to startle her, so used to only seeing flyaway wisps that she feels compelled to obsessively push everything back behind her ears to keep the brighter colors out of her peripheral vision.

It happens just now, a lock falls forward and she blinks, wide-eyed. A pale hand lifts from her lap, from the pale yellow of the thin dress covering her knees, to push it back. Though she knows nothing's there, she can't help but scratch at her temple on the way up, irritated by some phantom pain there. When she does, an energy seems to fill her thoughts, and she breathes in deeply. Why haven't Ma and Pa come up, yet? Usually they do around this time - she's been keeping very good time, with the plain clock on the wall ticking away - to tell her of dinner. It's always tasteless, like this room, but a rumble is filling her gut, and the refreshed energy in her bones lets her feel her stomach the next time it groans for sustenance.

"Ma?" she whispers, and flinches at the loudness of her own voice, even though it's as soft as the flickering wings of a moth against a lightbulb. It strikes her then that in the several hours she's gone without seeing her mother, she can only pick out sparse details in her memory: brown hair, a broad chin, pointed nose and unimpressive height. Shouldn't she remember what her cheeks look like when she smiles, or the possibility of a curl in her hair?

"Pa?" she whispers, coming to the same line of thought. Shouldn't she know more than the coarse grey of his hair and stubble, than the stature bringing him closer to the ceiling than anyone she's ever met?