The Nowhere

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The Writing Owl

Authoress
Original poster
LURKER MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
Posting Speed
  1. Speed of Light
  2. One post per day
  3. One post per week
  4. Slow As Molasses
Writing Levels
  1. Intermediate
  2. Adept
  3. Advanced
  4. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
  2. Female
  3. Transgender
  4. Primarily Prefer Female
Genres
Fantasy, Romance, A bit of horror, magical, and almost everything.
"Attention all citizens. Curfew is in ten minutes. All members must be inside their homes before the force fields go down. The protectors will keep you safe. Attention all citizens." The automated voice repeated itself as the citizens of Meraculus got settled down for the night. Every night the force field went down and every night the protectors came out to keep the impurities away. Sure, some people wished to be able to go out more, but it was for their safety after all. Who were they to question the hand that fed them?

Meraculus was one of the few surviving societies. It stood somewhere in what was known as Eastern Europe back in the past. They didn't know much of what had happened, only knowing that the impurities had caused mass destruction, forcing the normals to flee for safety. Or at least, that was what they were told. The teachers were really good at dismissing any and all questions. The impurities were poison to the world. What more was there to think about?

As night fell, a loud whirring stopped as the fences no one saw stopped flowing with electricity. An electric fence. Ingenious, yet it wasn't the force field everyone thought it was. Dead bodies were occasionally seen around some of these fences. People with burnt faces or broken bodies. The cleaners were in charge of taking these out and turning them into fertilizer for the farms.

The area around the marvelous utopia, the Nowhere, was feral. A jungle of trees and diseases in the normals minds. Just what the impurities would like. No one questioned their little world. No one thought it was wrong. No one knew the truth about the outside world.

But there were those who were curious.
 
Dazenia was going to find the edge tonight.

Sixteen years with her curious spirit living within the confines of Meraculus' force field was just as much as she could take without ever knowing where the utopia ended and where the "other" began. The dark haired teenager had never been fond of limits - not on actions, not on language, and certainly not on her bodily autonomy, which she felt included being able to move from one place to another. And what was the difference really, between moving from here to there, and moving from inside to outside, inside of the artificial wall where Meraculus lay and outside where the wilderness began, where the unknown was so big and so prominent in Dazenia's mind that she couldn't leave it alone?

Dazenia was going to break those limits tonight, no matter whether anyone else in Meraculus liked it or not. She was going to move beyond the blurred edge between the inside and the outside, or at least she was going to try, or else she would just spend another night laying flat in bed and staring up at the ceiling, mind swirling and churning with the sense of mystery that always kept her awake.

The light-skinned girl with light brown eyes and a sand-colored birthmark spread across her left cheek left her house with a backpack filled with helpful supplies, some food, and a camera, because an adventure like this was sure to be worth documenting. She wore her brother's black hoodie, a pair of black pants, black shorts and a black shirt underneath, all in an effort to conceal herself in the darkness, in case anyone saw her wandering outside past the strict, society-wide curfew. She didn't even know what would happen if she got caught, and she was scared, but not as scared as she was of living another day, another week, or the rest of her life wondering what was out there when she would never really have the chance to know.

This was her chance. The chance she had created for herself and that she took without hesitation.

After waiting for everyone else at home to fall asleep, she carefully creaked open the front door, slipped through the crack and closed it as gently as possible. Then she began walking, picking a direction and walking in a straight line so that eventually, she would end up somewhere she had never been before. She began to smile, just at the thought of pushing that limit, a little more with every step. Who knew how long it would take to get there, wherever there was? That was part of the mystery she couldn't wait to solve.
 
As the sixteen year old neared the fence, a thirteen year old was running from another of her kind. "Get back here! You little brat, give me back my food!" The woman yelled as she chased the younger girl. The small thing hadn't eaten in days, looking back constantly to see if the older woman was still running after her. When she got close to the fence, the woman stopped and ran away, not wanting the guards to see her. The small girl smiled as she held her treasures, a loaf of bread and a few groups of berries, close to her chest. She would have to put them in her bag soon. The girl took a berry and ate it quickly to try and satisfy her hunger before she was too tempted to eat the rest of it.

The girl's blonde hair was dirty and greasy, obviously showing that she hadn't had a proper bath in quite a while. When a protector got too close, the girl hid among the bushes. She nearly laughed at the difference between the land beyond the fence and the land incased in the fence. The grass inside the fence was freshly cut, or at least the fake grass looked freshly cut. Outside of the fence, plants dominated as the grass neared the young girl's knobby knees. Her dirty tan skin could easily hide within the confines of the grass, some of it dying because of the lack of water getting to it.

As the protectors finally stopped looking over the area, the girl relaxed against the fence, enjoying the cool metal. She listened in on the minds of the sleeping residents, flexing her powers. The people she was listening to never knew that she could hear how they wished for more money or how they wondered what to eat the next day. Such trivial thoughts nearly made the small girl want to vomit.

How could they think about liking different boys or wanting to hang out with friends tomorrow when people one by one died out in the wilderness they knew nothing about. A sudden thought of exploring the outside made the small girl jump. Her green eyes flew open as she looked out, wondering who was approaching her domain and why they would be so suicidal as to try and go outside of their perfect little societies.
 
As Dazenia crossed the line between the known and the unknown within the gates of Meraculus, her footsteps became slower, more cautious, and her heartbeat grew faster as each new step could bring her closer to the it, the answer that she was looking for. The what that had been lingering in her mind - what was out there? Where was the end of this utopia - what did it look like?

As she inched forward in anticipation, she started to notice something strange budge above the horizon - a strange pattern or texture that stretched horizontally for several yards at least and was obscured by the darkness before her eyes. By now the tall buildings and other larger structures of "civilization" had thinned out, and before her was more open space than she thought she had ever seen in her life, except maybe in her dreams.

But the closer she got, the more she realized that the obscured pattern of thin, interlocking lines was itself the largest structure that Meraculus contained, or rather, it contained the entirety of Meraculus, touching this edge of the society just as sure as it touched the opposite edge. It was the thing that held them together, it was what determined the inside from the outside, it was the one thing that connected them without them ever even realizing it.

It was a fence.

As Dazenia finally took enough slow, soft steps to be face-to-face, inches away from the tall, chain-like wall, she couldn't bring herself to understand. A fence? It stretched as far as her eyes could see - this had to be it. The edge. But it didn't make any sense. This isn't what they'd been told. There was supposed to be an end, but not a dead end. She'd been frustrated by the feeling of being trapped, but she never realized that she actually was trapped, contained by this metal fence.

She reaches her fingers out, passes them through the holes between the metal wire and grazes the air beyond her clean, sheltered utopia, running her eyes between the little hexagon windows to see all of the inaccessible "beyond" she had been dreaming about for years. Then suddenly she gasps harshly and instinctively stumbles backward when she realizes she's not alone - difficult to make out in the darkness is the figure of another person, just a couple feet away from her, on the other side of the fence. An outside person. An uncivilized person.

A person who isn't trapped.
 
The girl felt herself scoff at the girl's thoughts. "Go home. It's too dangerous for a little girl like you." She called, her voice hoarse as she kept to the shadows. The less the older girl saw, the better. If she was honest, she probably looked a lot younger than the girl in front of her. She wanted to be free huh? Idiot. The blonde girl glared at the thought. Who would want to be 'free' in a land where everything could kill you, and everyone hated you? People fought, killed for the tiniest of scraps. This girl had anything she could want, yet she wanted to sink down to the lowest of poverty?

The thought made the young girl feel sick.

"Hey! Who's out there?" The yell made the small girl stand straight, green eyes looking over at the protector. "You aren't suppose to be out here! It's curfew! Ah!" He aimed his gun at the green eyed girl, the light from his flashlight blinding her. "Get behind me!" The protector called to Dazenia, moving to stand in front of her. The man was shaking, afraid of this tiny, underfed girl. The big bad protectors were afraid of a tiny little girl.

After she recovered from the blinding light, her green eyes glowed, the terrain around them changing. Horror filled the man's eyes as he saw those dear to him, his family and fiancé, his small nephew, killed brutally. Blood spattered. Screams dissipated. Laughing filled the air. He had killed them. The bullets from his gun hit the small bodies. Everything dead. Everything was red. Sweat trickled. Drip... Drip... Drip...

With a scream, the man broke a hole in the fence, one that could let a person in or out, before passing out. The blonde fell to her knees. Retching filled the air as blood fell out of the poor girl's mouth. She shivered in the grass, looking scared and alone. This was the outside world. This was the freedom that Dazenia sought after.
 
Everything that happened between the moment she saw the girl and the moment the hole was ripped through the fence happened too quickly for Dazenia to respond. She panicked when she heard a second voice from her side of the fence, especially when she heard the word "curfew," but she didn't have time to run before the world around her changed. The fence was gone, the ground was gone, and screams filled the air. Dead bodies lay before her and the protector, soaked in blood, and she cried a shrill "No!" as tears filled her eyes.

What was happening? What was happening? What did she get herself into? It was a dream, it had to be a dream... By the time the world around her returned to its original form, Dazenia was left sobbing with her hands over her face, so she didn't have to see and so no one could see her. I shouldn't have gone I shouldn't have gone I shouldn't have gone she told herself as regrets flooded her and she was sure she should have stayed in her comfy old life, however restless, instead of diving into this madness.

After being frozen for a minute or so, the young woman finally peeked through her shaking fingers when she heard retching, and suddenly she was snapped out of her fearful state, approaching the break in the fence and cautiously slipping through before kneeling at the side of the small figure who had fallen to the ground.

"What's wrong? Wh-what's wrong?" she asked, placing her hand on the girl's back and noticing the bloody vomit coming from the girl's mouth. Had the protector hurt her? What had just happened - was it some kind of hallucination? It seemed surreal...

Dazenia was focused on the hurt little girl, searching for a wound or something, but at the same time she realized - she was on the other side. She had passed the threshold, even if it wasn't joyful, even if it was painful and scary, she'd done what she'd always wanted to do and something so few others in the world had done. And for that, she was satisfied.
 
The older girl must have been stupid, the little girl thought. She hadn't meant to include Dazenia in the vision. "Go... away..." The girl rasped before puking again. She felt dizzy, sick, and just plain horrible. No wonder the others didn't like using their powers. She started to shake as she sobbed, dry heaving a bit. "I'm... I'm a monster... stay away from me... go back..." She said in between retches. It was like she had a really bad stomach flu, something normals rarely ever got. It was only when they were really young that they had a bad flu.

Normals were so crazy. The girl coughed as she swayed, trying to get back upright. She ended up falling onto Dazenia, turning and sobbing into the girl's shirt. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean it... He was going to kill me... I'm sorry..." The young girl was a wreck, a fever starting to form. She shouldn't have gone to that extent. If she only showed one dead body she would have been fine. The more elaborate the vision, the harder on her body it was. The glow from her eyes was gone, replaced with the dull of sickness.

The night was strangely quiet, though the flashlight was still running. The solar power would last for at least until dawn. It showed just what this girl looked like. Her tangled, thick blonde hair, her ratty brown clothes that looked like they were made from potato sack cloth, her bare feet, did this girl even own any shoes? She was something that people living inside the fence would ever see.

Yet Dazenia was seeing the scars on the little girl's arms, hands, and feet. Some deliberate, some not. She was an animal, something that needed to be tamed.
 
Dazenia had been frozen with her lips agape until the girl collapsed into her arms, and then she felt her whole body warm, flooded with a feeling of compassion that she flowed with, stroking the child's dirtied face with one hand while her other arm supported her thin shoulders. "Shh... it's okay..." she cooed, her voice not completely relaxed, but strained, upset that the girl would even think to call herself a monster. A poor, tiny thing like her - what could she have ever done to deserve such a harsh label? To be considered less than human? It felt natural for Dazenia to cradle and protect her, unnatural to spurn her and fear her.

But then she thought about that vision. About the bodies, the blood, the screams so terrible that the adult protector had some kind of mental breakdown and collapsed, completely incapacitated. And Dazenia had been caught in it too. And only one other person was there. The girl who was calling herself a monster.

It was dawning upon Dazenia rather quickly that the girl had caused the hideous illusion, that she had some kind of power that the sheltered Meraculus citizen could not begin to understand. But at the same time, it didn't change the fact that in front of her, in her arms, was a little girl - innocent looking, innocent feeling, nearly weightless, hollow against the older girl's chest. The teenager's brain couldn't connect the evil of the vision with the fragility of the girl in her arms, especially when it was focused on the child's pitiful state - filthy, retching, burning up under Dazenia's motherly caress.

She didn't know how to help, physically, but she tried to soothe the girl's emotional pain with her words and her affection, her "it's alright's" and "it's gonna be okay's" disappearing into thin air as bloody vomit and the unconscious protector lay feet away from her on the grass.
 
The girl looked up at Dazenia. "You need to either go home or hide with me. I would go home if I were you." She said, tears still running down her face. She tried to push away and walk n, only to fall on her knees. She sobbed a bit as she felt her stomach start to revolt again. The bag she had was still on her back, only containing a few apples. That was all the girl could take from the poor person.

Yelling was soon heard. "Man down! I repeat, man down!" More protectors were coming. They were going to find the young girl and kill her. The flashlight still sat near the two, which would probably help Dazenia in finding the sick girl's hideout. The outing started growing louder. Feet stomped. If the girl didn't leave, she was dead. The girl couldn't move, shaking and sobbing.

What could Dazenia do? What would she do? This was nothing like the calm of the city. There was nothing, anything, like this taught in schools. Only if one became a protector would anything like this happen. Everyone was suppose to be kind, gentle, and respectful to one another. There wasn't conflict, and if there was, no one knew anything about it.
 
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