Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25394259-20140908012436

New Generation

She clutched the bars, shaking them with whatever energy she could still summon. It had been months, maybe years, and still the creature circled her; an action the creature seemed to force itself to do. If it remained still, it knew she could see it.

She wished it would reveal itself. The only companion she had, and it wouldn't even look at her. Perhaps it couldn't, considering what it had done to her. She deemed it unlikely that it could feel at all, however. What other kind of animal could continue living in the pit, alone and ceaselessly gliding across the rough soil. The days passed quickly, she slept to ignore the searing pain of a long dead planet’s sun. It only delayed when she felt the burns, but the creature could not be allowed to see her suffer any more than was necessary. The nights marked the beginning of closed, faster pacing, free from fear of the sun.

Occasionally the moonlight would reveal a fleeting detail of the being that had ingrained its footprints in the area around her cage. A hunched back, tattered skin, concealing a crimson carapace, a sagging face with eyes that seemed almost hollow. Perhaps she was the last human for thousands of miles, but she was not the last creature. Its movement never ended, but her anxiety had long since given to dread and that to despair. Hopes that it wouldn't kill her surrendered to the opposite, and death beckoned from beyond the cage, beyond the cold, unfeeling pit.

It gave her small, white, maggot shaped globs of something resembling weak muscular tissue.

After the first week she was doubled over, and gave in to hunger. After a few days, she was writhing on the ground again. An infant, its skin like tissue paper and its head caved like a half inflated sack, would struggle out of her not long after every meal. The smell of her blood made the bouts of hunger even less bearable, but she couldn't bring herself to starve. With every birthing, any remnants of will and humanity faded more.

The smaller ones would be left with her, the larger ones swept through the bars and carried away.

On the opposite side of her phone booth size area, they would crawl towards her. They never made it more than a few inches before their bodies caved in on themselves. The creature never collected them while she was awake, but they never remained with her long. She recoiled at the sight of them, but it brought her comfort knowing that her next birth was far from her. When the cage was clean, it was time.

The creature knew that she was desperate to be free. It remembered similar feelings from before the light. The creature did not like to remember the searing light. It thought of nothing but caring for the larger ones. Occasionally, the being removed a larger one’s limb and gifted it to another. The larger ones had to be taught to cooperate, or the orb would blind them. The creature was confused as to how she endured the blinding rays from above, but it remained uncaring.

As long as she continued to make smaller ones, then new eggs could be made and escape would be one step closer.

But that would be a long time from then. 