Night Owl

Four of us were being contained in a dark room with no windows. We couldn’t tell who anyone else was, but we knew there were four of us. There was a metallic smell, and a faint light coming from under what we presumed to be a door. As we tried to get up to approach the door, we found ourselves to be strapped down on separate beds, wrists and ankles restrained by cold leather straps, as if we were in a lab or a psych ward. Somewhere in another room, there was a faint whirring sound, like that of a fan, but it was otherwise silent.

As two of the people in our “group” began to struggle to get out of the restraints, a cracking sound came from one of them. At first, we thought it was just the bed they were on, as we were all on some sort of paper that resembled the kind they put on the beds at the doctor’s office. It even had the same papery feel to it. However, we realized that it was the leather straps, as they became encased in ice and shattered when he touched them. The other person, who seemed to be trying to do what the first person had done, created a dull orange light as her leather straps caught fire and continued to burn until they gave out, and she was able to break free.

It was then that we realized that we must have been experimented on, and each of us had some sort of ability that we didn’t come in with. There was another girl on the bed a few feet away from me, and she tried everything she could, but she couldn’t get the leather to break or burn, no matter what she tried. She must have had her eyes closed, because she didn’t yet realize that the leather straps that had once contained her were nowhere near her, and she had teleported herself onto one of the vacated beds from the first person. Of course, I was the last to get out. At first, nothing happened. Then I felt a sharp pain behind my shoulder blades, as if someone was slicing through my skin with a red hot blade. I could feel the blood trickling down my back and seeping into my shirt as the jet black wings sprung from behind my shoulder blades, the blood making the metallic smell stronger.

The feathers felt coarse against my back, and the blood beaded off of them like droplets of water on a hot piece of metal. The blood caused the paper and leather to become slick, and, with a little bit of effort, my wrists slid out of the straps. The three of us took off the leather straps around our ankles and tried to figure out who everyone was. We could only see silhouettes, as our eyes hadn’t fully adjusted to the darkness. Our voices were the only thing to give any hint of who we were. Even then, we didn’t dare speak above a whisper, just in case there were people in the other room. None of us knew why we had been taken, or where we had been taken to, but we decided to go towards the dull light emanating from the solid metal door.

Just as I felt the cold, heavy handle of the door, the light underneath grew brighter and brighter, until there was a blinding white light, as if we were staring straight into the sun. Light spilled out into the room, and the whirring sound became a droning one, as if the blades from the fan were now the blades for a jet engine somewhere overhead. The droning became louder and louder, threatening to make us all deaf. We all backed away from the door, and both the light and the noise dissipated. Instead, there was a new noise; the sound of heels clicking on linoleum tiles. Someone was coming, but we didn’t know who.

As the door opened, we all hid behind the door, hoping that whoever it was would miss us. If they headed straight for the beds, then we could escape into the other room, and lock them in. Luckily, she headed for the beds, and we could hear the clicking becoming more distant. As we escaped into the adjoining room, we heard a crinkling of the paper, the rapid beat of heels against the floor, and the thud of the door as it slammed shut. There was rapid pounding on the door, and we wasted no time getting out.

When we made it outside, there was nothing but sand. No matter where we looked, there was only sand. I flew at least a hundred feet up, but there was no sign of life or water anywhere. The air was dry and heavy, and the wind whipped sand against our faces. We didn’t know where to go, but as we continued towards nowhere, we eventually reached a dilapidated town, that had most likely been deserted for years. The paint was peeling off the sides of the buildings, and the windows were shattered and jagged. Tattered red flags hung on the sides of houses, symbolizing a region that was forgotten. We had no idea where we were going, but we knew anything was better than the cold and dark lab that we had just escaped from.