The city was a jungle of metal and concrete. The smog that rose from the factories on the cracked concrete of the lower levels spawned suffocating clouds of black, traveling through the winding corridors of vast skyscrapers, towering dozens of stories into the sky. From out Abby’s window, being part of the poorer working class, she would've had the sight of these factories, but rather she and her family were lucky, purchasing an apartment in one of the innumerable towers of buildings that gave view of the richer district, full of sleek, shining glass and an architectural style unique to each building. The district which Abby lived in was industrial, as was her father and mother’s occupation. As such, the buildings were molded after this. Huge masses of bare steel cast shadows across the aforementioned factories, where hundreds of thousands of workers spilled in and out of every day.

The existence twelve year old Abbie lead, as one could assume, was one of routine. Completing the same tasks she did the previous day, every day. She was confined almost exclusively to their apartment, a small three-room house that was about the size of three cars lined up against each other. There was the kitchen, a living room which served as both a dining area and everyone's bedroom, and the bathroom, which was a glorified hole in the ground. The wood flooring of the kitchen transitioned to tiled flooring which looked as if a single piece of stone was laid into the floor, with the bedroom using a patchy and stained carpet for its floor. The whole interior was unpainted, as that cost money, an object her family had a sore lack of.

One day, while Abbie was being kissed goodbye by her mother and father, cleaning the dishes from the meager pieces of toast and eggs she had made for breakfast, a flurry of movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye. The door had swung open, exposing a dark door inset in a wall that looked as if it were to fall down at a moment's notice.

Startled, she dropped the plate with a clatter that she had been scrubbing and began shuffling towards the door, but recoiled as a torrent of bodies flashed across her crack in the door; a huffing man in a dusty suit and torn hat jogging down the hall that was now visible. After the stranger had passed, Abbie began to inch towards the door, carefully now as the commuters passed by with increasing occurrence. Waiting a few feet from the entrance, she watched as the flow of people began to ebb, until no more came through her field of vision.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Pushing lightly on the door creaking on its hinges, Abbie took a tentative step onto the rotten floorboards, the decaying wood slightly warping as her foot pressed down. Glancing down both directions of the hallway, which appeared to go on in either direction for miles, found every door to be opened. The small green sign on the ceiling indicating the stairwell pointed to her left, leading her down flights and flights of stairs; 57, 56, 55, 54... Abbie climbed down and down, her legs carrying her farther and farther. When the wall had said 45, Abbie's legs were aching.

However, when Abbie had hit the 40 mark, there was a horrible noise, as if two 40-foot chalkboards scraped against each other horribly. Not that Abbie would have had any idea what this meant, as she was eight. Clutching her ears, she felt the building shaking and rattling as if another Earth-tremor was happening. Sprinting out through the opened door and into the hall, she quickly found a window to see what was happening outside.

Peering through the glass window pane, Abbie couldn't describe what was happening in front of her. The glowing lights of every building were blinking out of existence. Huge portions at once, darkness caused by the clouds of smog enveloping the entire sprawling metropolis. Machinery used to purge the atmosphere of the smog began shutting down, the enormous pumps being the source of the horrid screeching. Confused as to why this was happening, Abbie scanned the ground for signs of any abnormalities that might have caused this. As her eyes followed the outline of a now-lightless building, she fell upon the sky. Huge pulses of energy were ripping their way through the clouds of pollution, creating bolts of lightning that struck down onto buildings, the subsequent thunder being drowned out by the incessant screaming of the powering down oxygen pumps.

Another shake of the building she occupied was followed by the building splitting apart in front of her, crumbling as the thunderous noise generated by it added to the deafening wall of sound that was caused by the pumps. Slipping into the ever-growing fissure in the hallway, Abbie clawed for a handhold to latch onto. She too, began screaming as the floor slanted more and more, the ever-growing fissure ready to swallow her into its maw.