◘ Hannah. A Contest Entry. ◘

ooc. so, this is a contest entry to a Halloween short story writing contest. It had to start with the following sentence, and the word limit is 600 words (it's 597).

And in an instant, everything went black. I couldn’t help but to think of what my once alive mother used to always say. “A man that’s blind has the senses of a dog.” Not only was I reminded of it during this time, but it was just about all I could think about. I couldn’t see a thing, not one, but the senses I had left were heightened times 20. With sight, I would never be able to realize just how musty and mildew-like the room I stood in smelt, or just how moist the moss covered ground on my leathery soles of my feet was.

I shouldn’t have been traveling the once ever-so-green woods at this time of night, for the risk of looters, cannibals, mutated animals that once were known as something as simple as a butterfly were heightened, to the point of no escape. However, the time at hand called for something essential for my survival during this God forsaken time; food. There would be no ways to gather this without consuming one of the many body piles that are dispersed throughout these woods, and now that it was night, and my last fish was consumed, I was left with nothing but a backpack filled with a blade, a very-near-empty canteen, and a space blanket.

The sound of wood burning quickly was the only thing that I could hear once my breathing slowed from the initial darkness that had entered my body once the door was shut. It was an unusual occurrence for a home that wasn’t destroyed or only in ashes to be found, let alone one in this condition. Even with a missing floor, the home had to have been well kept. By who? I did not know. For what time did the housekeepers leave? Again, the answer was yet to be found. A spin on my heel, a raise of my blade, and a sight that left confused as to get closer, or further away; a very faint, orange and yellow glow, dancing back and forth from beneath a rotted door.

The expression of ‘curiosity killed the cat’ might as well be the perfect headline for a newspaper article about this situation, if there ever was to be a newspaper. I only, faintly, lightly, pushed open the forever unlocked door and peered into a small, pre-teen girl. Brown curls fell over her eyes, and a small, stained yellow blanket made its way up to her shoulders and wrapped around her. The girl’s head lay on her hands, and all it did was remind myself of me. A young girl trapped in a dangerous world, nowhere to go, no one to talk to, no other faces to be friends with.

A tap on her shoulder, and the girl’s eyes opened as quickly as blink, the pupils jerking from side to side, up and down, before laying themselves on me. She scrambled to find something, and gently, I pushed her back down, shushing her all the way. “Sh, sh, everything’s alright. I won’t hurt you.” She cooperated; still the fear in her eyes no where close to fading away.

After a long conversation, she told me she was named Hannah, and that the nuclear war had killed both of her parents, leaving only herself to survive. She spoke of being taken up by an old couple, them passing away by the time she was ten. She also told me that she had never killed a soul, even through all the temptation. My story followed, and still today, my sister Hannah and I survive.