Saturday Disk Purging

I was going through some old files I had on a flash drive from forever ago (something I hate doing because most of my files are mediocre at best) and I happened upon this short story thingy I never finished. I'm posting all I wrote on here. Let me know what you think of it (I plan to keep writing it now that I found it).

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It was a sunny day; nothing more remarkable could be said of that Wednesday for is was average and dull in every other way. There was no particular zest to it—after all, it was a Wednesday. There was no wind to speak of or clouds to streak the sky; there was just the unbearable pounding of the sun upon the already parched earth.

It was on this day that Haven ventured out of her house for the first time in nearly two years. She hesitated at the threshold of the door to her single wide trailer. She placed one ashen white foot on the sandy ground. A shriek stuck in her throat with a profound “Uheau!” It had been so long since she felt the unsettling sensation of sand between her toes that she didn’t know if she could continue forward.

She drew in a deep breath; all of the muscles in her body tensed up as she planted her second foot firmly on the shale. It took all of her power to keep from jumping back inside, but she was determined to conquer her long standing fear. With an olympian sigh, she propelled her whole body forward; for the first time in nearly twenty-four months she was exposed to the sun.

Her body seemed alien to her in this light; indoors she saw herself as healthy, with rosy skin and vibrant blue eyes. Now she saw herself as others did—drained, almost cyanotic, with brittle skin; her eyes were watery and washed out, no longer even a shade of blue; they were instead a disconcerting and stark grey. All that remained the same was her hair; even in this harsh light it was the same unmistakable raven tone.

As she stood in the sun, she wondered how she had let things get so far out of her control.

She was twenty-five when she had moved into darkness (the day after the incident). She had forgotten how bright the sun could truly shine, how her body could glisten like it was faceted with a thousand precious gems. The only dark spots on her were the sickly purple scars on the palms of her hands.

It was the day of the winter solstice; the air was still and heavy with the scent of fresh rain on city pavement. Haven sat in her usual table at El Teatro, her favorite bistro. For her table she could see all the people passing on the sidewalk huddle together, hoping to escape the biting chill of the atmosphere. She cast a tentative glance at her wrist watch and realized that she was running late.

She gathered up her equipment--her purse, her laptop, and a tattered brown leather brief case--and dashed out to hail a taxi. Everything had come down to this one day, this final testing. Could the cure really be so close? She shook her head in disbelief as she slid into the damp and putrid smelling back seat of the cab.

"J and S Pharmaceuticals," she commanded.

As they pulled away from the curb, it began raining again. She watched, with a high degree of amusement, as people scurried and squealed as they became saturated with big drops of water. The ride seemed to take less time than usual today, which she found odd for time always seemed to snail buy on Wednesdays.

She ran into the large entrance hall of her company. She flashed her security pass to the receptionist and, practically sliding on the marble floor, hit the stairs. She couldn't stand the cramped feeling of the elevator. The stairs were much better decorated anyway; she delighted in the carved sickle moons on the steps. They seemed so odd to be found in a drug company.

She reached the fifth basement floor--the main laboratory--before anyone else had arrived. Carefully and methodically, she set up the experiment; first, she picked out three infected mice and put them inside a new cage. They scampered around blindly, bumping into each other and sometimes the cage itself. One had resigned itself to the lying in its food tray. She withdrew on of seven sterile large bore needles and began to hang the IV bag she had stashed in the cooler the night before. There was no indicative markings on the bag other than a single word--"White."