The child was awake whilst the rest of their family slept soundly in the rickety caravan they'd been renting for the past three weeks. This would be their final week of sofabeds and walking the toilet waste to the central disposing unit and packing it all away so they could continue to outrun the hollow-eyed servants of the great maw that came from the mines.
This would be their final week of running because there was simply nowhere else to run. The parents knew this and, though they tried to hide it from the children, they knew it too. They didn't know what it meant to have nowhere to go but back but they knew that going back was a bad thing.
They'd been fortunate enough to only catch glimpses of their left-behind loved ones, now hollow-eyed and chanting hymns to something that had no concept of verbal language yet demanded to be praised. Its thoughts were theirs and one-by-one they'd gouged out their eyes to join it in blissful eternal night.
The child peered out from stained blinds and saw their grandparents, hand-in-hand and walking around the caravan park. They were testing every door they came across and entering wherever they could. Their hands shone as wet as the knives they clutched in the poor light of the mostly-functional lampposts dotted about the site.
The child both wanted to be found and wanted to warn their parents, not knowing quite what the danger was but knowing that something was wrong with their grandparents. They gently lowered the blind and tried not to cry as they heard familiar footsteps coming up the loose gravel walkway.
This would be their final week of running because there was simply nowhere else to run. The parents knew this and, though they tried to hide it from the children, they knew it too. They didn't know what it meant to have nowhere to go but back but they knew that going back was a bad thing.
They'd been fortunate enough to only catch glimpses of their left-behind loved ones, now hollow-eyed and chanting hymns to something that had no concept of verbal language yet demanded to be praised. Its thoughts were theirs and one-by-one they'd gouged out their eyes to join it in blissful eternal night.
The child peered out from stained blinds and saw their grandparents, hand-in-hand and walking around the caravan park. They were testing every door they came across and entering wherever they could. Their hands shone as wet as the knives they clutched in the poor light of the mostly-functional lampposts dotted about the site.
The child both wanted to be found and wanted to warn their parents, not knowing quite what the danger was but knowing that something was wrong with their grandparents. They gently lowered the blind and tried not to cry as they heard familiar footsteps coming up the loose gravel walkway.
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