For days she had been scavenging in the bleak, uncomfortable alleyway of an alien city. She picked and ate every rotten morsel she could find within the steel trash bins, no matter how much the vile taste scorched her tongue. The pain of hunger seared through her stomach and the sharp, cold air bit at her ferociously, as if it were also hungry. With each gust of wind that nipped at her skin, she shivered ever so violently, clutching herself with her bony arms to keep what little warmth she had. The only thing that concealed her from the harsh cold of the city was her tattered, pale gown that she had worn like a terrible dress a mother would force upon their daughter. Flimsy, it was; nonetheless, it was better than merely her skin against the bitter winds.
Her auburn hair, streaked with honey blonde, hung in greasy curtains over agonizingly thin and pale face, that was dotted with freckles upon the nose and cheekbones. Her light blue eyes were keen with the instinct for survival; and her ears perked high in alertness. The fear of being dragged back to the pale hell by the faceless pale men weighed heavily in her mind and blazed within her heart. Each night she would descend into a world of dreams that were amalgamated with blurs of colours and terrible, terrible cries - no shapes formed from the clouds of the dreamscape, only the colours and cries incomprehensible to the sane. She was not sane - madness would be a label to easily describe said woman, and a label she was accustomed to.
For years within the pale hell crimson would seep from her and haunting cries would echo through her mind. Streams of a watery blue would rip down her face and screams would vacate her mouth. It drove her mad and it left her with scars - both of the visible and invisible variety. When she was young she would hold a friendly yellow to her breast that smelt of musk as if it were kept within an ancient attic. For the longest time, the yellow was her only source of companionship, until the pale men stole it away from her, and exchanged it for pale and crimson, and countless tears. Too many tears for a child to bear.
She was not the only one in the pale hell. There were many others. Others who suffered from claws of crimson. Some she knew, and some she did not. She remembered the slender, milk white one topped with a short black and blessed with sparkling orbs of green and a fantismal ability to make her feel happy and warm, no matter terrible the pale world would seem. There was also the dark chocolate one who had orbs of a childish grey and a silent manner about him, as if he could not speak, as if he was broken; but his orbs told worlds and the curvature of contentment told everything. There was also the one with a lanky gold and gleeful orbs of violet, whose energy seemed boundless and whispers were like stepping into an otherly world.
She cherished each of the three, especially the one who held green orbs and the power of delight. She would always cherish each time they sat together in laughter, each time the four of them would lay back in the otherworldly whispers of the one of gold, each time she would cry into her breast. She cherished them like they were a treasure from an ancient land that proved to be unique beyond measure. Solemnly, the treasured memories did not last for long enough. The were all taken one by one, shadowed into pale and never to be heard from again. How the streams of blue came down when she could not seem them again. How crimson seeped from her paleness, regardless of the pale men.
This transcended for years. Countless weeks of imprisonment in oneself, numberless days of crimson, incalculable moments of a pain that burrowed through her like a bullet of silver through a grotesque beast of the inky night. That is what they treated her as: a monster - and they drove silver into her to dig crimson like a hunter would with its captured beast.
After cycles and sequences of crimson and silver, she was visited by one of the pale men prior to sleep. A pale man who had a clear air of hunger about him, regardless being void from any facial expression. He looked down upon her and he slummed closer and closer to her. She tried to scurry from him like a little rat being chased by a carnivorous cat; but like most rats, she was cornered and the cat pounced upon her. The air of hungry began to choke her and the pale man seized her by the wrists, and he deflowered her rose of innocence, and upon that day the pain flared up inside of her and it began to fester within her from thereon, like an infected wound. Then the streams of blue arrested and a silence shrouded her. Each strike of silver that tore through her from that point on felt like nothing in contrast to what the pale man had done to her. She was broken like an unfaithful mirror and tarnished like a rusted clock.
Then, beyond all hope, flickering orange and bursting red ate through the pale hell, and the pale men perished, including the deflowerer. Especially him. You see, she saw him, with her light blue orbs, wither and wail in the tongues of orange and red, and a weight seemed to be lifted from her chest. Nevertheless, the pale hell was fall all around her as if the world was ending, and she thought death would take her by the hand and lead her astray; instead she was taken by a figure of darkness and shadows and she was taken to the place of dark looming towers and biting cold, a place that seemed empty to most, but to her it was freedom to her, an otherly world the one of gold would whisper within her ear.
For the past few days she strode, and she saw tall figures of black, who seemed absorbed within themselves, paying little attention to the girl. She did not know whether she should attempt to converse with them, for they could possibly be shrouded pale men. Pale men disguised in darkness. So she scurried to the alleyway where she scavenged on the rotten scraps like a vulture in search for food, and she ran like a fox escaping the hunt. A hunt she thought had existed.
She gazed and peered out of the alleyway to see the figures of black walk across the streets, to and fro, seemingly busy with themselves, unaware of the pale woman.
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