The Sun Leaves Traces

[stefficus]

this week, what with me and various of my coworkers spending far too much time either covering for each other or stuck in our own driveways because of the snow, this is your official "story every day or so, and mostly at night, but thanks for playing" group

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[stefficus]

Georgie looked weird. We tried not to stare at her, tried not to draw their attention and earn beatings for her or for ourselves. But it was difficult.

She was the wrong color.

Many of us were the wrong color, I suppose, but mostly we'd been grabbed so young we didn't notice. Everybody just had different skin, and so what? Georgie was the wrong color for her, that was the problem.

I cornered her as soon as the bunkroom door had shut for the last time. "Are you sick? What's wrong with you?"

She seemed startled. "What do you mean?" she asked, quiet and guarded.

"You're... darker? Orange. Like... more like Dan's skin. But not..." I struggled. How to explain to her the way her face looked? "How do you feel?"

Georgie looked away. "I feel fine. In fact, I feel better than fine." She stared at me again. "Can you keep a secret?"

It was a ridiculous question, a formality. Of course I could keep a secret. Everything around here was a secret. I was pretty sure we, ourselves, were secrets, though I had no idea from who. We never spoke to anyone except, rarely, each other. I nodded.

"I've been going out."

"Out? Out where?"

"Outside?" She hesitated over the unfamiliar term. "Like the pictures, a whole big... outside. The sun's out there."

"It is NOT! Stop playing Georgie, what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing! This has nothing to do with that! I just feel... it's so much... it's better out there. I can breathe out there."

"You can breathe in here."

"Not like this! Everything is more real out. Like a dream, but more real. And there IS sun out there, I don't care what they told us. It shines. It hurt my eyes to look at it, but I did anyway."

I believed her then, torn between fascination and dread. "Georgie. They'll beat you. They'll do worse than that. They might even..."

"I don't care! I don't care if they take me away or whatever it is they do. I hate it even more in here now that I've been out. It's like dying to come back. It's wrong, Nan, they can't do this to us. I'll show you how to sneak out, and then you'll know."

I never found out where she got out or what was out there. The next morning they took her, and they never told us about her skin, if she was sick or what they did with her. They never do. When we asked why they took her they said it was because she'd been out and it was bad. I didn't tell. No one else knew. How could they have known? I can't figure it out, but I'm still looking for the way to get out. When I find it, I won't come back.

[oberon_the_fool]

What They didn't tell Nan or any of the others is that Georgie had developed skin cancer from spending so much time outside; what with the ozone layer so depleted and the distance between the Earth and Sun having shortened by a quarter million miles in the past thousand years; and that they were all here underground for a REASON; and children should really mind their elders if they know what's good for them.

They never told Nan, and so she found the way out, and never did come back, because she was eaten by a three hundred pound mutant ursaur.

[stefficus]

hee.

it's better than being eaten by a grue. eaten by a grue is SO pedestrian.

[oberon_the_fool]

An ursaur is more commonly known as a beargator. Which is exactly what it looks like.