Stage One: Hope in Darkness

Defending Home (Annabelle)

Safe in my house I could finally relax. Slowly my hyperawareness started to fade. Shaking it off, a snake shedding its skin. With vivid light I could feel my heart rate. I had to force my heart to calm, to stop the pace that made it feel as if it was a bomb about to go off. The beeping and flashing light getting faster and faster until it detonated. Cooling down, sweat dripping off me not from exertion but from fear. Terror of seeing those things out there, knowing just how cuel those creatures really were.

Calling things like that human was a deception. A lie. Ripper walkers had given up their humanity. In its place was nothing but a cruel monster. Cruelty is defined as intentional emotional indifference. They somehow went past even that. They had no need for guilt or any other emotions. Minds that have developmental damage, that failed to develop adequate empathy to protect the self and others from horrifying actions.

Staying inside would be hard. After too long I would feel as a caged animal in the zoo. Trapped and ready to come out of my skin just for some relief to the tension coiling inside me. Hannibal and I sit knee deep in silence. Every titter of the birds outside reverberates around the room like a cymbal. I do not even blink as my heart finally starts to settle to a normal rhythm. Each moment that passes only leads to the next, waiting the allotted time before it will be safe to go out again. The air inside our home feels brittle enough to snap. Drawing a deep breath into my lungs I break the tension. Needing to end it before it drives me insane.

Poor Hannibal will be far more tightly wound than me. No going out meant no hunting. No fresh meat for him. Oh he would eat the dried jerky, but it would not truly satisfy him. That deep need inside him. The predator that savored the hunt. moved silently through the undergrowth before putting on a burst of speed to catch his prey unaware. He was a wolf, staying cooped up in here would be hell. You and me both buddy. Sometimes I wonder if I was becoming more wolf than human. I caught myself often mirroring his actions. We had that pack mentality of us against the world, literally. Everything out there was dangerous to the two of us. We were alone all we had.

I moved about our space, clearing up the small space. Tidying up the nearly nonexistent mess. Straightening things on the shelves that were already straight. Perhaps this is what OCD felt like. There is no need to worry. The rippers will keep to the city, they preferred them. More fresh meat, and not so fresh meat, for them to play with. It would be a deviation from their habitual behavior for them to come to this part of the woods.

Fear no longer flooding my veins allowed me to think more clearly. I would not have to stay inside for all that time, just close to home. Staying inside would just exhaust all of the supplies I had managed to gather. That was not a smart decision. They would not come to my neck of the woods, no need to cower inside. I was not that scared girl anymore. Lost in the dark, broken and bleeding. Trying to find my way back to the light, back to something resembling normal. I had gotten stronger. Learned how to take care of myself, how to protect myself. Hardened my body like a warrior for battle. Shivers of memory shot up my spine, lodging themselves in my mind. Dark, cold tables of stainless steel. He had certainly tried to stain them without success. Shaking hands moved towards my throat, they always did it instinctively when my thoughts drifted to that place, to him.

A cold brush across my fingers nearly makes me jump out of my skin. That damaged throat of mine letting out a strangled and broken gasp of a scream. It barely makes a sound, quieter than the tweet of the birds outside. My body moved with a mind of its own, away from that touch. I look down to find warm amber eyes, a golden yellow tint encasing the pupil in a hauntingly beautiful light. Hannibal. My mind sighs. Letting those eyes take away my fear. He must have heard my heart rate pick back up, smelled the fear coming off of me in waves. Animals were sensitive to those kinds of things. Deep calming breaths force the bad away. That was the past. That is not the now. I live in the now.