Set us Free [open]

[Natalie Makena]

NATALIE MAKENA

when everything's turned to black
you don't know where to go
you need something to justify your soul[/right][/size]

Someone was following her.

Natalie buried her hands into her brown jacket’s pockets, ducking her head beneath her hat, carefully keeping her strides the same length. It was late evening, nine or ten o’clock, and the streets that weren’t leading to and from the bar were mostly deserted (such as this one), and the streets with parked cars on each side were lit by a soft yellow glow from the streetlamps above. The apartments above her head, safety tucked out of reach of the shadows of the night, added to the eerie atmosphere—some lit and others dark. There was the dim roar of cars going by each other in the square up ahead, and it was the perfect atmosphere, just dark enough, just loud enough, just deserted enough, to shadow someone. In fact, if Natalie hadn’t accidently dropped her phone two blocks back and turned around to pick it up, she wouldn’t have noticed the follower at all.

But now that she knew, now that she had picked up her phone with slowly clenching teeth and stiffening limbs, Natalie could just make out the sounding of feet clacking softly on the sidewalk behind her just a half a beat after hers; just catch the shadowy flicker behind her as tossed her hair behind her neck. They were good, she had to give them that—just the perfect distance away without the threat of potentially losing her. Natalie could feel herself slowly tensing up, fist forming around her phone so hard until it hurt, shoulders tensing and quivering, heart beat rising to a quicker and louder tempo until she could hear it throbbing in her ears. Then came the icy fear prickling along her skin. The slowly simmering adrenaline through her blood. Her thoughts rising to a dull roar in her head, calculating, planning, moving too fast for her to catch most of them.

The shadow was getting closer. Natalie perused her lips, making a casual left across the street, quickening as if she was afraid of oncoming cars. Not that there were any. The shadow quickened too, lingering at the stop sign as if making his or her own stop, before crossing the street too as soon as Natalie had her back turned. Flawlessly executed. Perfectly done. Natalie wouldn’t have noticed before—but now, now she did and that changed everything.

Closer. She could feel eyes on her and Natalie turned right towards the center of town where the people were, only to feel dismay as the shadow didn’t even hesitate. She could see lights now, people. Closer. She had to get away—they were so close. Just a dozen feet away—she wouldn’t make it in time at this walk. Time to act.

Natalie abruptly turned into the alleyway to her left. Less than a second had passed and the tip of her coat had disappeared from view before she was bolting. She sprinted down the alley, arms pumping, feet slamming rhythmically into the alley’s cobblestone road. She maybe got halfway down before her pursuer obviously turned as well and there was the sound of feet following her own quickly with loud thumps across the ground. The redhead spun around the corner, lashing out with a half-a-second’s wasted for a well-aimed kick for a group of trashcans just on the edge of the corner. She spun, foot planting firmly on the ground and propelling her forward again as the trashcans spilled onto the alleyway behind her. She sprinted down the rest of the alleyway and made another turn, shoulders brushing against the narrow alleyway’s brick walls as she did and catching the follower make a flying leap over the trashcans without a second’s hesitation.

…shit.

Natalie’s feet skidded on the slick grounds over some broken glass as she made the next turn past the alleyway and into its extension, and she nearly had to throw herself off the wall to make the turn she was carrying so much momentum she was unwilling to lose. The chase continued for another minute, before Natalie panicked at an intersection between several of the maze-like alleyways and a hand hooked around her jacket’s collar.

She swung around viciously, choking at the sudden pressure around her neck and spinning with the force, bracing her shoulder and ramming straight into her pursuer, ducking under an extended arm and driving her booted foot hard into their kneecap. The man howled in pain, something giving under her boot, and the grip was loosened just enough so that Natalie could wiggle free and fall forward onto the road. She scrambled, palms scraped red against the black road, before righting herself while still pushing forward to catch her balance and push on.

Natalie had just made it down the next alley—getting closer to the edge of the central-square, lungs burning, eyes wide and wild—when her next turn sent her slamming into another warm body. She fell back, throwing a sharp punch out with a snarl on her face, but the person merely sidestepped, giving her a disapproving look at the uncoordinated attack as they threw up an arm, catching her punch before it even neared their face, rolling it off their arm with a roll of their shoulder. Natalie stumbled back, hands scraping along the road, clenching her hands into fists, falling back against her new attacker—before she suddenly remembered her attacker behind her. The twenty-two year old whirled around, just in time to avoid the jab of a fist at her head, hair flying as she sidestepped and desperately wishing she had braided it this morning or something.

She pressed her back to the wall, a body on either side, head rolling between them with equally parts fear and defiance. She knew better than to try and push past either of them, their large bodies blocking the narrow ally easily, and knew that trying and take them down on herself would end badly.

But.

The ally was quite narrow.

Natalie lunged forward, leaping up at a height quite impressive for a girl of her side, legs coiling and releasing as they slammed into the brick on the other side—boosting her high, higher, scraping against the brittle brick and—

--the girl’s hand snaked around the bottom of the metal firescape ten feet above and she swung, arms straining, trying to wrap her other hand around the pole, already pulling herself up when—

—a hand closed around her boot and pulled viciously, and Natalie hissed, actually freaking hissed at the man below, refusing to let go even as her bloodied hands slipped around the pole and—

—she hit the ground hard, lashed out blindly as one of the men wrestled her down, and something collided with the back of her—

—black.

IIIIIII

There was a bite of metal on her wrist when Natalie’s eyes first blearily blinked open. She closed her eyes again, a soft huff leaving her lips as she laid still on her back with her head lolled to the side, head throbbing from whatever the man had hit her with. She sighed again, barely audible, squeezing her eyes shut. She always knew, someday, this would happen. Someday she’d wake up in a cell with her hands cuffed together and—

—wait. Natalie’s eyes flew open and she sat up abruptly, shoulder nearly wrenched out of her socket by the force. Her head flew to the right—why would she be lying on concrete floor if she had been caught, why would the cell be completely pitch black, so dark she couldn’t see her own free hand in front of her face, why would one of her hands be handcuffed to something, someone she couldn’t make out in the dark but could feel her handcuffed hand brushing against their fingers in the dark, why—

Natalie peered about the room, desperately trying to make something out in the pitch black, hand scraping against the concrete floor and searching for a wall, a door, something, willing her eyes to adjust. Where the hell was she, and why was she handcuffed to a stranger in the middle of the dark?

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heheh. got a little carried away for my first thread, sorry. don't feel obliged to write that much in response, and I'm cool with taking this thing anywhere, even if I have a few ideas of my own. :3