Running

Running, running, running. Faster, faster. Pushing forward, heart pounding. Thud, thud. Her feet whacked against the hard, compacted dirt, jolting her legs and propelling her body unwillingly forwards, urging it into action. One after the other. Push, push. Chest and shoulders seizing from the effort. Arms pumping their energy out. Hair flying wildly in front of widened eyes. The wind whipped against her face, and she let out a frantic whimper, face flying backwards and forwards, straining to see how close she was, and how far away they were. Things that should have been images and shapes morphed themselves into black blurs, merging with one another, impossible to grasp a picture out of. Her foot hooked under a tree root and she went flying through the biting cold night air, landing face first on the ground. No time to stop. She forced herself upwards, straining to push her arms upward, scrabbling at the dirt underneath her fingers. She crippled, and fell once more. A shoot of pain wound its way up her leg, crawling up with sharp thorns, trapping her,  climbing higher and higher, threatening to pull her under, reaching her head, sending hot flushes through her forehead and temples, causing her to see furry black dots in the sides of her vision.  It was no use. They were coming. Her eyes flicked back and forth frantically, vainly searching for some vision or sign to guide her out of this predicament. Some hope. But there was nothing. Only the faster-approaching doom that haunted her. Her harsh breaths drew in and out with an urgency reflecting pain and fear. She began to beg the dots to cloud her vision until she could see no more. She pleaded to pass out from it all. But the fear surpassed her prayers of sanctuary, and built itself steadily greater in her abdomen. All she could do was lie and panic. And wait.

A harsh sigh of discomfort, or possibly expectant regret, issued itself from in between her cracked lips. The chapped skin had been worn away, exposing the raw pink flesh underneath. This gave the appearance of a forfeit from an attempt to heal, as though they had been self-taught to conserve this  wasted energy otherwise used to seal up a hole which would eventually be weathered open again. Sarah found herself thinking that she should be flinching; that the sudden sting thrust upon her lips from the sudden exhalation of breath should provoke some sort of negative reaction; pain. There was, however, nothing. A gaping black nothingness. As she turned away from the obviously abandoned building in one of the more  now decrepit parts of town, she inwardly laughed. She had been hoping to find refuge with an old friend of hers in this area, but judging by the battered half-open wooden door, giving way to plunging darkness, and broken glass and windowpanes scattered about, it would be warranted to think that they had left long ago, before these other dirty, empty souls had filled the used space. She didn't know why she was surprised. Or slightly disappointed, for that matter. She supposed she had been expecting to come back and find everything as it was ten years earlier. She shut her eyes and tilted her head back briefly, letting the cold rush of wind have its way as she recalled her tightly kept memories. Anna's eyes flashing as she let out a squeal - the two of them running around and laughing hysterically. The hilarious family antics between Anna's parents at the dinner table, discussions of intelligence, and femininity fighting fierce against the patriarchal common beliefs. Ty. The confusion. She squinted her eyes open briefly. She'd thought about him too much. Her wonder at her confusion, let alone her confusion itself had rendered her tired of thinking thoughts about Ty. It was too tedious, the memories too well-used and mulled. She lowered her head to normal height and allowed her eyes to slide open. And Lea. Always Lea. Her bright eyes, beautiful smile, clever retorts and remarks. Her whole outlook on life. The way she smiled. Everything. God, how these memories hurt. It shocked her. She wasn't usually afflicted with emotion. It was amazing how sweet a thought could be, and strike you so bad at the same time. When she refused to think these thoughts, didn't let herself remember the hole ; the hole that was destined to be a part of her internal make-up from the first breath; the hole that was battered and abused and bruised with hatred and depression and rage; the hole that ceased to be a stage of her life which she would eventually overcome to consume her whole life; the pain receded and became a distant throb. Only sharp jabs surfaced now and again - the spikes of this pain. These came at times of crisis, or particular distress. And yet, as soon as she realised she had felt that spike, that terror, once more, it faded away. The aches of the past 24 hours were gone. But it was twice as scary. In place of the hole had crept a big, black, nothingness. No feeling. No care. No pain, but no happiness. Eventually, her body had recognised this bitter need for a lack of feeling. It knew that if the soul was bared again, the heart exposed once more, the hole surfaced and bruised and battered and abused again, it could not take it. The evolutionary survival instinct had kicked in, and it knew that this body had been strong enough for long enough. That the steps it needed to take to avoid severe stress resulting in all manner of potentially fatal things were to invoke the numbness. Permanently. And now that was all Sarah felt. Or rather, all Sarah didn't feel. Everything. Oh, of course, she felt like she should feel something. And of course there were the odd moments, mere nanoseconds, when the brain stopped being a mere biological organ, and allowed her to feel a small dose of happiness, and dare she think it, hope. But they were insignificant. Barely dreams which had hardly happened. And wishing for feeling, wishing even for the hurt, in some desperate knowing of the need to feel something, anything; the pain, in the vain search for the end of it, and the happiness, to aid in the searching for the end, only made it worse. The nothingness threatened to engulf her with a further lack of emotional response. And the most would-be scariest thought: it didn't hurt. It didn't hurt at all. That was why she was surprised she had felt something at the pictorial remembrances of previous happenings. She didn't pause to think about it, though. She had to keep moving. Besides, it had gotten to the point that she wasn't surprised when her body did something odd and unusual. It was unusual for it to act normally. She licked her lips, knowing she would regret her action as soon as the cold air thrust itself upon them again, re-adjusted her hold on the bag slung over her shoulder and trudged hurriedly on through the street, her boots hard-working on the compacted snow.
It hadn't always been like this. Admittedly, the short-lived euphoria of life was long ago, long forgotten by all but the most distant memories, but there was a time when life was relatively easy...