The construction site lay like a defeated beast, its lifeless body caught between decay and defiance. Buildings leaned precariously, their frames broken, the jagged remains of something which once stood proud, while mounds of rubble were heaped high-a graveyard of sorts to a forgotten era. Scattered among the ruins, weathered signs clung to bent poles, their faded warnings-no entry or danger ahead-hauntingly futile against the encroaching desolation.
The girl's steps were light, yet deliberate, as she crossed the threshold into the zone. Her movements carried an air of cautious precision, whetted on the whetstone of solitude and ever-present possibility of unseen perils. Every one of her steps stirred faint whispers of dust; her keen gaze swept the ruins as if expecting even the shadows themselves to lash out.
She proceeded deeper into the construction site, dodged through the skeletal scaffolding, and passed by the fractured concrete pillars; the air was heavy with damp earth and rust, the heavy reminders of time that had laid its claim upon the space. Her journey brought her onto a spot of uneven land; something there had been the catch of her eye: some sharp pale protrusion jutted from the dirt, like some sort of splinter in the flesh of the earth.
She sank slowly to her knees and stretched out a hand. Fingers trembling faintly with the touch of bone, she stilled, jerked her breath, clutched on to her arm as though anchoring herself. She tugged at the exposed bone a moment later, and the strength was pitted against stubborn earth resistance. One final pull, dirt loosed its hold and revealed a very long fractured chunk of human remains.
Faint at first, an ember fighting for life, as the rest of the skeleton came into view, this eerie luminescence grew: a sickly unnatural light welling from deep gashes and fractures in the bones. The dim glow cut sharply through the somber dimness of the ruins, casting ghostly shadows that danced and wavered.
Whereas once her eyes had been cold and calculating, now they shone with something unreadable-a flicker of curiosity, perhaps, or something darker. She pulled the skeleton closer, the fragile form scraping across the ground without any show of hesitation. Each movement was clinical, without a shred of fear or revulsion, as one might handle a simple tool rather than the remnants of a human being.
A mound in the distance caught her eye. She watched it for a few more moments, then hauled the skeleton up, her pace slow and cumbersome across the uneven surface. At the top, she released it, and the skeleton rattled down, and again her eyes followed, fascinated yet somehow dispassionate. Then, systematically, she climbed down and repeated this action over and over again until the fragile skeleton had cracks spider-webbing through its surfaces. When the bones finally gave way, she knelt beside the remains and turned her attention to the present.
She placed a foot on the skeleton's torso and, grasping an arm bone in her hand, twisted and pulled until it cracked with a sickly crack. Alternatively, resistant sections could be smashed by stomping on weak joints or using a rusty rod found nearby. The prize of two arm bones, two leg bones, intact despite their abuse, was her reward for her slow and relentless efforts. She sat for a moment beside the now-mutilated skeleton, its hollow torso and shattered skull the only remaining vestiges of what once had been human. She sat in the silence, sweat running down her face and mixing with dirt as she drank from a battered water bottle. Where was the will to do something lighting in her eyes, held there steady against those bones she had claimed for hers before she rose upwards once more. She took the bones up and made them her tool for digging into the earth-hard ground-steady, futile blows. The ground wouldn't yield, and it was scornful against her mockingly. With a soft sigh, she stopped and, smearing dirt off her hands, took a final look around the building site. She pulled out a worn map from her pocket to place upon it one word in ink:
Turning, she thought the sky was heavy-laden with clouds across its expanse at an unnatural quick pace. A peal of thunder exploded out of the sudden stillness, making her jerk tightly into her body before turning on a heel and running.
Rain lashed her skin in a cold, tormented downpour of needles, one unending patter that outshouted everything except her heart hammering. Her unease continued to spiral upward. Amid the screeching, high and shrill, a whine she knew all too well cut through the storm.
The hurrying footsteps continued the pace, with her clamping her ears to shut out the piercing noise, urgent at every step a lunge away from the place of construction. At no moment in time had she ever turned back to catch a glimpse of what went on.
When the sound finally ceased, she slowed, her breaths ragged, as she found herself near an abandoned highway. Corpses littered the roadside, their twisted forms telling of a desperate attempt to flee. In the center of their circle stood a crude cross, the mutilated body of a man nailed to it.
His flesh bruised, pierced, abdomen cut in some sort of voyeuristic representation of violence. Lying a little distance from them was a woman with an infant, entangled and showing the same gruesome mark of suffering. Disheveled garments, shattered bones, tell of a grim tale of bestiality; faces freeze with terror, now dead.
She stooped beside them, her fingers brushing against the bloodied remnants of a knife that lay beside them. A weathered sign drew her eye. Its message in bloodstains was hardly readable through the growing darkness
The sun was setting, casting long macabre shadows over it all. And she sat for a time longer, her eyes heavy in their sorrow and their emptiness, before standing to face the night once again.