Page 5 of Fleeing from the Monster

She gives a jerky nod and begins to stand. I make sure my hair is hiding my face as I join her. We walk outside and I pretend the amount of security cars driving up and down the streets aren't making me want to bolt each time I see one. I'm sure they're all looking for me. Leah links her hand with mine, comforting me now.

“We're okay,” she says. It sounds like she's trying to convince the both of us.

I wait in an alley while Leah goes into a diner and grabs us some burgers and fries. Then we go to a walking path to eat the food. I figure the one place they'll probably be looking for me the least is right out in the open, and since they haven’t announced that I’ve run yet, they won’t be swarming a public place.

“Why do you think they haven’t released that I’ve run yet?” I ask, puzzled by it.

“I've been wondering the same. Usually, they would make it known immediately. Shame the woman so then the people are more likely to turn her in, but it's been hours, and still nothing. It's strange. Good, but strange.”

“They'll have to release the information eventually, draw another name so someone can replace me.”

That's the only part I feel guilty about. That some other poor woman will be given barely a few hours’ notice and then sent down to what should have been my fate.

“What do you think he'll look like?” Leah inquires. When I look at her with confusion, she clarifies, saying, “The monster this time?”

A few months ago, the press released leaked information. From whom, no one would tell, but multiple news outlets reported that they'd learned there was not just the four monsters we'd always known about. One monster in each quadrant. Instead, we learned there were villages in each one, many monsters, that it was a different one that a woman was sacrificed to each year. The reporters discussed the different descriptions of them, their varied horn sizes and heights, fangs, even claws, and their different colored eyes. They even had hand-sketched drawings of different ones. It made people question if it wasn’t a monster himself who’d disclosed the information, because who else could have seen them to make the drawings? And people wondered further, if it was from a monster, then why? To intimidate us for another war, perhaps? Because they felt it was time to come above ground?

It was all anyone could talk about for weeks. There was talk of a hierarchy, children, questions of whether there were female monsters, other than the only ones known about in the Summer quadrant, where men were sacrificed instead. Then that talk had turned to the government. How they had to have known about all of it, and that they lied to us. Not to mention, the consideration many vocalized about what else they’d lied about. And, in whispers, people had begun to speculate if the draft was all a lie, too, if daughters and sisters had truly been sacrificed for peace or simply because the government had some other deal with the monsters.

But thinking about all of it now, I find myself thankful that if I had stayed, if I'd been sacrificed, it wouldn't be to the same monster who'd killed my sister. There's some sick sort of relief in knowing that he doesn't get to kill both Grace and I. But I guess, he won't be killing me at all now. Prison will, however, if we're caught. Most people don't last more than five years in prison here. It's prison time you're given, but it's truly a death sentence.

Five o'clock. We just have to make it until five o'clock. Then, Edwin will give us the papers we need and hand us over to people who will get us out of here.

“Well?” Leah presses, making me realize I never answered her.

I shrug as we throw our trash out. “How am I supposed to know? We know he'll have horns, be so tall that he towers over whoever goes down there and be able to tear a woman apart with his bare hands. I don't think I need to know much more than that.”

She swallows and looks off in the distance.

My gaze is on the leaves covering the grounds of the trail. Maybe I should appreciate the last time I'll ever see the beauty of my quadrant, but instead, pictures flash through my mind of the drawings released on the news. It's only because I can convince myself that none of those drawings were of the monster who killed Grace that I allowed the lust that rushed through me when I looked at them to go unchecked. The drawings of tall grey-skinned monsters with long claws and intense eyes. Some with short hair, others with hair that flowed past their shoulders, every drawing though showing ripped muscles all over their bodies. Nothing but a loincloth covered their cocks. I had spent more than one night with my hand between my thighs with a drawing in my mind. I was usually able to hold off the shame until at least the morning after.

“Come on,” I say. “We should go somewhere else. You never know when they'll release that I ran. Can you think of anywhere we could hide until five?”

She looks down, thinking for a moment. “How about the park?”

“Like when we were younger?”

She nods, and gives me a small smile. “We definitely won't fit in the tunnels the same, but I doubt anyone would look there for us. And it's close enough to Murphy's.”

I nod. “That's a good idea. Let's hurry up.”

“Do you know what time it is?” she asks in a murmur as we begin walking.

“We'll see the time when we pass the clock in the square on the way there.”

When we reach the square, where weddings are held and births get announced, the center of our town, a huge clock above the government building hangs high. The clock says it's one o'clock. Four hours seems too far away.

“Not long now,” Leah says, as if the four hours isn’t plenty of time to get caught and whisked away to prison.

But I nod anyway, continuing our walk to the park. When we get there, we find it empty. Kids are still in school, so it's easy to slip into the tunnels at the bottom of the jungle gym. It's definitely a much tighter squeeze then when we were younger and would hide here when my father came home even drunker than usual. Sometimes, in the summer, we would stay here overnight after our mother died.

“My legs are already killing me.” Leah chuckles.

“Yeah, I don't know if we're gonna make it four hours scrunched up like this.”

But we do. Kids trickle into the park, letting us know it must be after three when schools are out, but none of them try to come into the tunnel. It's only when we hear adults passing the park, on their way home from work, that we know it must be closer to five. The kids are startled when we emerge from the tunnel, hurrying out of the park towards Murphy's, but we never make it there.

A security car cuts in front of us two blocks from Murphy's. A man hops out as we cry out in surprise. I grab Leah’s hand and yank her in the opposite direction, but another car comes in fast behind us.

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