Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside you, and sometimes they win.
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The feeling of my frozen body woke me up.
I was in my bed under my blanket, the sound of flowing air passed into my bedroom.
I Numbly got up to my feet and walked into the kitchen, where Mom stood with her back turned on me. She was cooking something which I wasn’t able to smell.
“Good morning Regis, it really is cold today, isn’t it?”
I tried to speak back, but even though my dry lips moved, no sound came out.
The house started to seem darker and unfamiliar.
I knew that everything was at the correct place, the table, the kitchen, the smiling man who stood right beside Mother.
I looked around the house again, only for my attention to land on the smiling man.
I stared at him numbly, not knowing why he was in our house or who he was.
The entire house vanished, replaced by a dark street corner, filled only with Mother, laying on the snowy floor, unmoving. Her glassy eyes staring directly at me.
Her arm moved towards me, she pointed at me and opened her mouth.
She had no teeth and blood came pouring out of her mouth.
“Your fault.” Her voice rang clear in my mind.
“Your fault.” Her eyes disappeared, instead of eyes, her eye sockets were replaced with dark holes.
Mother slowly started to crawl towards me and I found myself paralyzed. Only being able to hear my loud beating heart and feel my freezing body.
The moment she grabbed my ankle, the world Brightened into pure white.
My eyes opened wide and I yelped, feeling cold sweat run over my face and neck. I looked around me while breathing raggedly and saw a giant blanket covering me.
I was at a snowy street corner, gray light spilled through the clouds and a small amount of people walked through the streets.
Boy, you’re not cold? A familiar voice rang in my head and I ignored it as a shiver went through my entire body.
Wrapping the unfamiliar blanket around me, I rose to my feet and walked out of the street corner.
The streets were unfamiliar. Instead of the lavish houses that were made out of stone, the houses were made out of wood and the roads, covered by the snow, were uneven.
Cold and hungry, I numbly hobbled through the streets, trying to figure out where I was without bringing the ire of the adults.
But no matter how much I walked, the streets never seemed familiar.
At some point the cold subsided a bit as the sun came out of the clouds, but the intensifying hunger kept my mind blurry and my feet moving.
“Hey! Boy!” An old woman called out to me, she stood next to an open wooden house. “Come here! I have some food for you all!”
The moment she mentioned food, a pang of pain went through my stomach, making me wince.
I could see children inside the house, some were older and some were younger, they all wore rags.
Without even thinking, I shambled into the house and basked in its warmth.
I sat down on the floor as the old woman went and brought me a portion of soup from a cauldron.
As I devoured the bitter soup, the hunger slowly subsided and my numb mind slowly started to clear up. After finishing, I quietly burped and looked at the children and the old woman.
The children around didn’t talk that much, only a few of them even looked in my direction. I knew that unlike me, they were street orphans and from the many bed sheets on which some of the children slept, I understood that the old lady probably gave them shelter often.
Only after the stomach pain went away, my eyelids started to get heavier. Neither the heavy coughs, the sharp pain in my lungs or my stinging neck could keep me awake.
For what seemed like a couple of hours, I fell asleep and woke up a couple of times.
Sometimes it was a deep breath that made my lungs hurt to the point of not being able to breath. At others, the old lady started to cough at her hardest, all the while she made sure to stay away from the other kids.
I numbly kept trying to sleep, until a smile and a voice came to my mind.
Do you even have anywhere else to go?
My eyes snapped open as I remembered what happened to me the night before.
Mom.
I had forgotten about her. I rose to my feet, took my blanket with me and got out of the house, only to remember that I didn’t even know where I was.
The images of her laying on the cold ground, her glassy eyes staring into the air went through my head and my heart started to pound harder.
I knew that something was wrong with her, that she needed help, but at the same time I didn’t even know where to start.
Until my eyes landed on the old lady inside the house.
After asking about what section of the city we were in, and if she knew anything about my school or the street section in which I lived, I understood that I ran all the way to the far edges of the city.
The feeling in my legs almost went numb, but before I could fall on my ass, I gripped the blanket around myself tighter and looked at the door of the house.
“Wait, boy.” The old lady called out with her raspy voice. “You shouldn’t go there, people don’t like street orphans there.”
I ignored the fact that she called me an orphan and looked between the old lady and the door of the house, until an idea popped into my head.
I looked up at the old lady and grabbed her rags, “I have to go there! My mother is there! S-she needs help! Please help me!” I shouted and a couple of the kids turned to look at my direction.
The old lady crouched a bit, and gently took my hands off her rags. “Does she have a fever? What happened to her?”
“S-she was laying on the snow! A-and she!” I stopped as the image of a snowflake landing on Mom’s eye flashed into my mind. My eyes started to warm up.
I could feel something blocking my throat as I started sobbing, “T-there was a man, s-she w-wasn’t moving but her e-eyes were open, a-and she needs help, p-please.” I kept on brokenly explaining everything I saw to the old lady and at one point she started to pat my back.
Through my teary eyes I could also see some of the children look directly at me, some tried to look away as I cried in their direction while others gave a stare that I couldn’t understand. As If I was some sort of a hurt dog.
The old lady put her hand on my shoulder and gestured to one of the chairs in the house, she too looked at me as if I was a hurt dog. “Child, sit down for a second, you need to know something.”
She led me to the chair, helped me get up and waited until I stopped sobbing. All the while she kept rubbing my back, muttering things like ‘you poor thing’ or ‘what a terrible thing’.
Only after I stopped crying, she held both my shoulders tightly and looked straight into my eyes, her tired eyes replaced with sharp ones, holding me in my place.
“Child, you need to listen to my next words very carefully.” Her tone was calm as she spoke. “If you go into the inner city like this, you will be stopped by one of the officers and get beaten to a bloody pulp. Or worse, a noble will find you and take you away.”
Some of the children that were closest to us flinched and seemed tense.
“Do you understand that?”
I quickly nodded in return, “so you will hel-”
“That’s why you can’t go to look after your dead mother.” She cut me off calmly.
I stared at her as if she was the only thing in the entire room. “What?”
“If you go looking for her, you will get beaten up to a pulp and then die from freezing.”
The sounds of the other kids, and even the sound of the crackling fire stopped reaching my ears. “But my mother ne-”
“She is dead.” The old lady calmly cut me off again.
I clenched my fists and tried to break free of the old hag’s grasp, screaming and struggling. After a moment I managed to shake one of her hands off my shoulder, but she immediately slapped me in the face and I stopped.
Her sharp eyes held me in my place as warmth spread through my cheek.
“Your mother. Is. Dead.” She huffed out as sweat rolled down her forehead. “And if you go into the center of the city like this, you will die too.”
I heard her voice, but my mind remained on the warmth spreading through my cheek and on Mother. I recalled how she looked into nothing, how her body didn’t move, how steam didn’t come out of her mouth because she wasn’t breathing.
No, no, no no no no no.
My eyes started to get blurry again, “you are lying!” I screamed and pushed her off me, making her trip and fall to the floor.
Several of the kids immediately came to help her, while the others frowned at me.
I quickly took my blanket, got out of the house without looking back, and started running towards the center of the city.
More people started to roam the streets as the sun got brighter in the sky. And as I got closer to the center of the city, they started to frown at me the moment they saw me. Vendors who opened their small wooden shops or those who started to organize their stuff even yelled at me with their fists raised high to not come closer.
By the time I reached a familiar house, my home. I was already covered in sweat, I was hungry and my feet hurt. But I didn’t care, my mind was clearer than the night before. The bright streets covered with snow and sunlight seemed much more familiar than the dark snowy streets in the middle of a snow storm.
I knew where I last saw Mother.
I hastily traced my steps, only to stop when I reached the street corner in which my Mother laid, unmoving.
My heart stopped as I looked at her pale blue tinted skin.
Just like the previous night she wasn’t moving.
And just like the previous night her eyes were still open and glassy.
I dashed towards her, kneeled and started shaking her, screaming for her to move, to wake up. But no matter how much I screamed, no matter how many warm tears fell on her skin, she remained unmoving, her skin remained cold as ice.
And I remained alone with my screams and tears.
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I didn’t know how much time passed Inside my new dark home.
I looked at Mother’s dark pale blue face.
I had closed her eyes, put my blanket over her and myself, and curled up inside my new, dark home.
There was nowhere else to go, the landlord, the one who called my Mother a whore, had said that we were ‘out’.
And the old hag, who slapped me in the face, would throw me into the pot and cook me up to eat.
I curled closer to Mother’s cold body and dreamt about Father, about the times in the late evenings, in which he had used to come home and eat with us before going to sleep.
I dreamt about Mother when she cooked warm meals and gave me kisses on my forehead.
I dreamt and dreamt until a noise shook me out of my thoughts, the sound of crunching snow.
My home was torn away from me again, as someone took the large blanket that laid above us. Light reached my eyes and made me blink until I saw a figure standing above me.
I felt my heart and my entire body freeze as I looked up to the figure.
For a moment, the only sound that traveled through the corner was the sound of the merchants and people walking and shouting about their wares.
Right in front of the street corner.
Right in front of us.
“By Ashur.” The figure, a man, said as he took several careful steps backwards into the stream of people going from place to place.
Several people turned to look in his direction, only to stare at me and Mother.
“By the divine, is she dead?”
“Mommy, why is her skin blue?”
“Someone call for an officer!”
A loud crowd started to gather and stare at us.
The man who took my blanket, took small steps towards me, with his hand stretched out. “Come here boy, everything will be alright.” He said softly.
With an entire crowd looking at me, I tried to move back, but I couldn’t. My entire body remained frozen as the man reached me and embraced me in his warmed arms. “Everything will be alright.” He whispered.
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I stood still in his warm embrace until he started to pull me towards the crowd. Away from Mother.
No.
I started to pull against him, and tried to go back to Mother.
But he was too strong.
Before I knew it, we already entered the crowd, and stepped out of the corner. I couldn’t see Mother, no matter how much I tried to look past the obscuring crowd.
“Make way for the officer!” Someone shouted, and the crowd started to make way for a uniformed man.
The officer looked around until his eyes landed on me. He looked at me right as I was pulling against the man who took my home. He looked at my ragged clothes.
With a deep frown, he marched towards me, and grabbed my hand forcefully, making me yelp. “Stop resisting.” He ordered with a heavy voice.
you will be stopped by one of the officers and get beaten to a bloody pulp. The words of the old hag passed through my mind. I started to feel a stinging pain around my neck and tried to pull myself from the officer to no avail.
The officer roughly grabbed me by the back of my neck with his other hand, and squeezed so hard that I couldn’t even turn to see anything besides the gawking crowd. “I said. Stop, resisting.”
I tried to struggle, but when I noticed his grip getting tighter and more painful, I stopped and breathed heavily.
“Thank you citizen, I will take him from here.” The officer said to the man who took me away from Mother.
“Officer?”
“Don’t worry I will take care of this thief. Please disperse! There is nothing else to see here!” The officer’s voice boomed through the loud crowd and they slowly started to disperse.
Merchants returned to shouting.
People continued to hurry from place to place.
As if nothing ever happened.
“Wait, officer, he is-”
“He will be taken care of, you don’t need to worry.”
“Officer, you misunderstand, he is no thief!” I could hear the man who first found me argue with the officer, explaining to him about what happened.
The officer’s stopped gripping my neck and I managed to breathe better. My neck felt stiff, and the simple movement of looking behind me at the two men, made my entire neck hurt.
“Can I count on you to go to the police station and tell them about the mother? While I will take him to the church?” The officer asked the man.
The three of us looked at the street corner. Mother laid there, unmoving. her clothes half ripped, her skin turned blue.
I felt something large wrap around me, my blanket, and heard the man say that he will go there quickly.
The sounds of the merchants yelling and people walking around us sounded even louder in my ears. I looked around at the walking people, at the several kids who walked along with their parents, then I looked back at Mother’s unmoving body, feeling as if something was twisting inside my heart.
No one cares. I realized.
The officer, without any words, slowly started to pull me away from her, and I followed him, sending one last look at where Mother remained lifeless.
Why? I tried to understand why nobody helped, why they simply kept going on their way. But nothing made sense to me.
By the time I stopped thinking, the officer had taken me to a narrow street corner. Besides us, there was another uniformed officer, smoking a cigarette.
When he saw us, he approached his fellow officer and started to talk with him quietly, and for a moment I saw the smoking officer give away some money.
“Alright, kid, before we take you to the church, we’ll just need to know a couple of things about yourself.” The officer gestured to his smoking companion. “Just follow him and he will make sure to take care of you, everything will be alright.” He finished, giving me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and left in a hurry.
I looked towards where the officer left and turned to look at the smoking officer.
He took one final puff out of his cigarette with closed eyes and threw it away on the ground. When he looked at me, I felt my body shiver, his eyes weren’t like that of the old hag, nor the landlord, nor the annoyed officer.
He simply looked at me, but I felt as if he wasn’t truly looking at me.
“How old are you?” His voice was calm.
I couldn’t help but blink at his question.
“E-elven, a-and a half?” My neck ached with every word, and my voice sounded tight and broken.
The officer looked at me from top to bottom and gave a grunt. “And what happened to your neck?” He kneeled to my height, and looked at my neck.
The pain at my neck spiked for a moment, and I remembered getting strangled because of my scarf.
After telling him about what happened, he hummed.
“Good enough.” He took a small flask out of his uniform, filled with a murky liquid, and gave it to me. “Take this, it will help your throat feel better.”
I held the flask in my hand and looked between him and the flask. After a moment of feeling the tight pain in my neck, I drank the flask.
Though I didn’t feel it immediately, the pain slowly lessened, but with the disappearance of the pain, my legs started to feel numb, as if they didn’t exist at all.
When my sight started to spin, I could feel my blanket fall off me and I could tell that the officer took me in his hand, and took me somewhere, somewhere dark.
It got darker and darker, and my body felt lighter and lighter.
Mom.
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When I woke up again, I found myself lying in a dark and small space surrounded by other kids.
Some looked younger than me and some looked older. They all avoided staring at each other. Instead, they focused on the floor, on the ceiling, or on the candlelight beyond the bars.
The bars of a cell.
I stared numbly at the bars until my neck started to sting. It started as a small pain which slowly got more painful. The increasing pain made me focus on my numb body
Everything felt so distant, so far away.
But as time passed, everything started to feel closer.
I could feel the coldness of the hard stone floor. Smell the foul, thick choking smell. Sense the darkness that enveloped all of us.
Creeping. Growing. Ever present.
Everything in the cell made me tense up.
I stayed quiet like all of the kids, and tried my best to remember what happened after I fell asleep.
Until the creak of a door and the sound of footsteps drew my attention to the bar.
All of the kids, except for me, curled into themselves and turned away from the bars.
A rough looking man stood at the other side of the bars, together with two big men at his side, who had batons on their waist. After a moment of looking at everyone, he pointed at a couple of kids including me.
The two big men at his side, quickly got into the cell and gathered us telling us to follow them and to not cause any trouble.
When I stood at their command but felt my legs freeze, one of them pushed me hard out of the cell making me fall head first into the ground. For the first time since I woke up in the cell, I felt my mind get clearer, at the same time I felt it also snap into attention.
The cell wasn’t the free streets in which I could run away. The men weren’t angry over a stolen scarf.
I felt a shiver run down my spine.
In a cold demeanor, I got up and like the other kids I kept my head down, Ignoring the painful new bump on my forehead. Without saying a word I followed the group up the stairs of the gloomy cell into a lavish corridor, and from there to the front of a rather large wooden door.
The rough looking man who led us, knocked on the door twice. “Sir, I’ve brought them, I hope that they will be to your satisfaction.” He stepped aside and waited with hands behind his back, until the door opened.
Revealing a man, clothed with only a towel at his waist.
He eyed every single one of the kids, until his eyes landed on me. He grabbed my chin and lifted it up, until my eyes met his. For a brief moment I saw him smile slightly as he looked at my neck, but After a moment of his further inspection, his eyes narrowed on my forehead, where my small bump throbbed.
He let me go, and instead turned to look at the rough looking man. “Why is his face bruised?” He hissed out.
The rough looking man, also stared at my forehead with an almost trembling frown. “I can bring a ne-”
The half naked man slapped him, Before he could finish his sentence. “You useless piece of garbage! I asked for one thing!” He raised his hand and slapped him again. “Take him back and don’t damage him again! As for the rest of them, prepare them, I don’t want them to dirty the sheets.” He ranted and got back into the room without waiting for an answer.
“Yes sir.” The rough looking man replied in all seriousness, giving me and the man who pushed me a brief look. He ordered the two big men to take the children to take a shower, while he himself took me back into the dark cell.
The moment he put me back in the cell with the rest of the kids, they all turned to look at me, but I didn’t care. I walked further into the cell, sat with my back against the wall and looked at the bars. Feeling my mind slowly relax and step out of its cold and emotionless state, until the voice of the old hag came into my mind.
If you go into the inner city like this, you will be stopped by one of the officers and get beaten to a bloody pulp. Or worse, a noble will find you and take you away.
With clenched teeth, I curled into myself, holding my knees tight to my chest, and started to wonder what was going to happen to the kids who were taken.
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As time passed inside the cell, the rough looking man alongside his two giant bullies, came and went, bringing food, taking buckets of excrement, and taking kids with them and returning a portion of them back.
Everytime the kids returned, I couldn’t help but look away from them, for their eyes were the same as Mother’s, glassy and void of emotion.
They didn’t speak of what happened, but from the bruises on their faces and necks, and from the way their silence laid heavy upon the cell. I understood that it wasn’t something I wanted to go through myself.
Right after a batch of kids returned, bruised and broken, One of the taller boys stood up in the cell. “Are you all ready?” He whispered to everyone in the cell, and most of us, including me, nodded.
We had decided that we weren’t going to stay.
The tall boy took two small thin metal lockpicks, and put them inside the cell’s lock. With pressed lips and a tight grip, he slowly played with the lock while the rest of us watched and listened to any sort of footsteps.
After a while, the lock opened. Most of us got up and followed the tall kid, while some of us, especially the ones who were taken and returned, simply stayed in the cell, staring at us with their empty eyes.
As we made our way out, I avoided looking back at them.
We passed through the lavish corridor, and made our way to some new doors that we didn’t pass before. We listened quietly for footsteps or voices before entering, and we entered them all. From a small bathroom to a lavish dressing room filled to the brim with extravagant clothing for children. All the rooms were dead ends, they had no windows
Only after we found another large wooden door leading up, we managed to move forward from the lavish corridor into what seemed to be the ground level of the luxurious house.
We heard voices from the only other way left to go, and so after a moment of looking at each other, we all slowly creeped towards a half open door.
Only the tall kid and two other kids dared to go next to the door and listen, but after a few moments of tension I decided to be next to the door with them.
“-A deal!” I heard the voice of the half naked man and I gulped.
“And now that the crusade is marching to take Dresa, and they will be passing through here, they will make sure that everything is up to standards. The deal is no more.” A calm and heavy voice spoke.
The sound of glass shattering sounded out and I flinched.
“You think that I care?! Do you think that the rest of us will care?! We control the city! Not the fucking church! The only reason you got paid was because we wanted to have a good relationship, but do you really think you can just drop it all and act like you didn’t do anything?!”
“Was that a threat?” The heavy voice replied calmly, and the room turned dead silent.
“You're damn right. If you don’t want the rest of the church to know what you have done, you’d bette-”
Something blew the door open with force and flew right past us, throwing us onto the floor. The entire space started to fill with screams and yells around us.
I shook my head and looked at what passed us, only to see a mangled body, stuck to the floor, one of its arm’s was torn away and was bleeding on the floor, the jaw was dislocated and the neck twisted so much that dangled lightly from the body.
As the screams got stronger and stronger around me, I snapped my head toward the room only to see a masked inquisitor. Around him were several dozen men at the giant room, but he didn’t acknowledge them as they all pointed guns and knives at him.
He stared directly at me.
A loud bang sounded out, the inquisitor bent and jumped at the men, his figure blurry from the speed.
He jammed his arm through the first man’s chest, and threw him at people who had guns. When another loud bang sounded out, his figure blurred again.
Before I even understood what was going on, I saw the inquisitor knock a person’s skull off his shoulder only to grab the dead man’s knives and start slashing.
As people kept shouting, yelling, and shooting. They also kept dying.
Only when I saw one of the corpse’s eyes, I noticed that I was breathing heavily, still on the ground. I got up and started to run away, back towards the dark cell, but then I remembered.
The only way out is from there.
I looked at the ensuing battle, and I noticed several kids coming back as well, together with the tall kid, me and several other kids dashed between couches, thrown tables, and ruined furniture.
Corpses were thrown at our path, as the inquisitor kept his rampage, jumping from one side of the giant room to another, slashing and tearing everything in his path.
I saw some people also move faster, faster than any human should be able to. But even as they charged him, he kept slashing, slitting throats, using his hands to tear limbs, and dodging valleys of bullets
When we finally reached the door out from the room, it was only me and the tall kid. We opened the door quickly only to see another dozen people ignore us completely and dash into the room.
And so we ran, until something was thrown into the tall kid’s head and he fell to the ground, like a rag doll.
I stopped to see if he was okay, only to understand that he had a knife stuck to the back of his head. Right as realization set in something else flew past me.
Another mangled body, only this time alive.
For out moment our eyes looked, and I saw tears stream down his half face, as his sliced neck and his torn off legs bled on the floor. His eyes turned distant and glassy.
And I kept running and running, passing through more groups of men who only gave me a single glance, before running towards the fight.
until I reached the exit to the house. I could see windows, the light coming through them. And beyond the windows I could see giant snowy gardens. Running, I reached the exit and ran outside all the while the muffled sounds of screams and shoots could be heard.
I ran through the giant snowy garden, trying to find my way out.
I heard a large boom behind me. I turned and saw the house, a giant mansion, on fire. From one of the windows, a burning man was flailing around until he crashed into the window and fell out.
The mansion kept burning, and I was about to keep running, even though I could barely breathe, but the sight of the inquisitor coming out of the burning mansion, through its doors, and facing in my direction, made me freeze.
He started running in my direction.
I squeaked and ran through the large gardens, until I saw buildings in the far distance. Between them and me, a maze made from tall bushes, and a brick wall, separating between the maze and the buildings.
I entered the maze, turning corner after corner.
Reaching a dead end and hearing my loud breathing, I went back and took another path.
“I know you’re there.” A heavy and calm voice came out, somewhere around me.
I stopped and put a hand over my mouth, hearing the sound of my loud heart, and the sound of footsteps hitting snow.
“I promise I will make it quick.”
Slowly, I picked up one foot, placed it ever so gently on the thin layer of snow, making sure that it made barely any sound, and continued forward.
“There were families who deserved that money, families who lost good men and women. I couldn’t stay by the side and watch it all happen.”
I turned another corner, and saw the bush wall in front of me.
And right behind the bush wall, laid the brick wall that was separating the mansion’s grounds from the outside. I could already hear shouts from beyond the wall.
People calling for officers or other inquisitors to come and investigate the fire.
All I needed to do was to climb the bush wall.
“By Ashur, I know his angels won’t accept me, I know I won’t be reborn into the world anew.” His tone turned quiet and quivering.
I ignored what the man said and reached the wall. I was about to touch it, only to understand that it would probably make more noise that would lead him right back to me.
So for just a moment I stood there in the snow and looked at the bush wall, I could feel my mouth slowly turn into a frown, and my neck slowly tighten.
“I can’t let anyone know what happened here - unless the families will understand, that is why you…” The voice continued to talk quickly only to stop.
“That's why... That’s why I need you to die. A street orphan like you doesn’t even have anywhere else to go anyway.” The almost trembling voice slowly returned to its calm tone.
The image of Mother laying on the ground lifeless flashed to my mind, making it slow down and grow cold. I stopped myself from crying and looked at the wall.
The voice stopped talking, but the footsteps kept on getting closer. I needed something to distract him, or to make some distance from him.
I looked all around me. Something cold touched my cheek and I saw snow flakes falling from the sky unto the snow covered ground beneath my feet. I slowly gathered it all to one spot making a small snowball.
The footsteps were getting closer.
I looked at the poor excuse of a distraction, and threw it high up, away from the sound of the footsteps, I saw it rise up in the air, and fall down behind another wall of bushes, with a loud crunch.
The footsteps became faster but went away from me, and I hurried to the bush wall and started climbing, the wall rustled loudly as I climbed the thick bush. My foot tried to latch on to anything inside it, including the small branches that snapped loudly.
I heard footsteps approaching towards me, and I started to latch on to anything I could grasp. And before I knew it I was atop the bush wall. With a second step I was atop the brick wall surrounding the mansion, looking at the buildings and streets that were filled with people looking at the smoke coming from the burning mansion.
And as a result, seeing me.
I looked back down and saw the inquisitor standing and staring at me, his white robe, stained entirely red. And behind him, a trail of blood.
The sight made me flinch, and in the hurry to get away, I forgot that I was atop a tall, brick wall.
And so I fell down to the street, onto a layer of snow that was much thinner than the snowy streets of the slums. I heard people scream as I landed on the floor, but I didn’t care.
Luckily the fall only made my hands and feet hurt slightly, so I got up, looked briefly at the gathering crowd, who were purely composed of people dressed in well looking clothes, and started to run away.
Not even daring to look back.
I ran.
And ran.
Every moment expecting to get torn apart.
But the inquisitor never came.
And I was left with nowhere to go.