10 years

10 years

That is a decade. A long one. No one knew that it would come so fast.

The world that twenty-three year young Sadie knew and loved so much wasn’t as lovely. The world she lives in is now based on survival. It’s cold, dreary. There isn’t much sun, no more of the warmth that Sadie used to bask in during the warm summer days.

The home she lives in isn't the typical house with a sturdy roof and structure to hold the house in place, it’s now a run down junkyard with tons of broken cars and debris all piled up. The place she calls home, with no one to rely on, except maybe for the few survivors with a couple of miles out; scattered and sheltered to fend for themselves. Hiding. But from what?

The Unknown.

We don’t exactly know who or what they are, but we do hear them during the nights, the sounds of winds when there is no wind blowing. The strange, but alerting sounds that carries throughout the dark and chilly nights. People went missing, never came back when they would go out into the night to find other sources for survival. People say that they are something from the outside world that no one knows about. That is how Sadie lost her parents, they went out to find a source for fire and never came back.

Sadie recalls the night that both her parents had left to go outside. She heard those screams; faint, blood-curdling screams. But she heard them, like an alarm going off in her ear. Sadie had always worn her necklace. A silver heart-shaped locket to be precise, a gift from both her parents when she turned thirteen. She held her silver heart-shaped locket, with a picture of the three of them inside, squeezing her eyes and hands shut. She shook her head, knowing that they would never return.

Sadie had gone outside, the sun almost beginning to set, she had maybe an hour to spare. Not knowing an exact way of knowing what time it was, only the old school way using the sun. She needed to get more wood for the fire to keep her warm at night. She needed to hurry, knowing that they would be out there somewhere. Lurking. Waiting. Hiding.

She headed towards the edge of the woods, wasting at least fifteen minutes.

“Shit.” Sadie mumbled under her breath. She had decided to just scavenge whatever she could find and head back home. Picking up her pace, she entered the woods, keeping an eye out just in case something had come into her peripheral vision. She found some mid-sized pieces of wood, opening her tattered sports bag, shoving them inside.

Rustle.

Sadie froze. She slowly looked around. She found...of course, nothing.

Rustle. Rustle.

The sounds of the dry leaves crunching, like footsteps, are coming closer and closer. Sadie had bolted. Her bag half-way opened as she ran. Ran, ran for her life. She didn’t know if she was even heading in the right direction of her home. But she didn’t care. Not knowing the chain of her locket broke, she kept running until she made it out of there.

Heavy breathing.

Sadie hadn’t run like that in years. Her breathing was heavy. She made it. Not home, but out of the woods. Her bag of woods dropped to the soiled ground, had her hands on her knees, slightly bent as she caught her breath. Slowly she stood straight up, her hand on her chest.

She froze, her eyes widened. It was missing. Her locket was gone.

She panicked.

“No, no, no! Where is it?!” Sadie was distraught, but she knew she had lost it back in the woods when she was running from them. The memory of her parents, gone just like that. Ten years she had kept it safe with her. Gone, within ten years. As tears shed, she looked back into the woods, she knew she couldn’t go back, her parents wouldn’t want her to with them waiting for her to come back.