This is a scene from a story I wrote with a friend a while ago. This scene is it’s own standalone, completely in medias res.
Tanya sat cross legged on the bed, her head bowed. Her bangs hung in front of her face. The purple streak was long gone, and had been replaced by red only on the tips of her hair. She couldn’t remember if she had dyed it or if that had been the work of the Program. She had never wanted red before, it reminded her too much of blood, but now….well, now, she figured, that association was fitting.
Her fingers traced the cold metal that lie on the bed in front of her. It’s shape was familiar now, and no longer sent the same shudder of revulsion through her that it once had. She closed her eyes as her fingers brushed the trigger.
Images invaded her mind. Her father, cuffed to the metal chair, gagged, glaring. A boy, scared but deadly, young but hardened. Faces she hadn’t had time to study, faces she had chosen not to study. Blood. Death. All faces of her victims. People she had killed for the Program.
She opened her eyes with a gasp, tears threatening to emerge from her eyes. She blinked to fight them off, but that brought on a fresh round of memories. Tidas, telling her not to kill him. The emptiness and apathy that had consumed her when she saw his face. She had almost pulled the trigger then.
“Tanya?” His voice accompanied a soft knock on the doorframe. Tanya did not look up. Read the rest of this entry »