SWNOVELS Chapter 1: The Escape
Her POV
The tears had finally stopped, replaced with blistering bare feet along the railway wood and hunger growls she was sure someone would hear reverberating off the tunnel walls. How long had it been now? 3 days? 4? She shook her head to herself and ran a hand through her long black hair. It was perpetual night down here, so it was anyone’s guess.
She was thankful though… She was alive, and she was free. Free to never see Master again. Free to never endure the torture of the decrepit clients who delighted in her differences, like her soft black tail with only the white tip flicking in the tunnel darkness. She was free to maybe find friends, something she learned to never do when every girl was disposable. She couldn’t count how many had died over her whole life years as a slave.
She hugged herself as her mind again replayed the day she entered the abandoned railway tunnel.
It had been a normal morning, albeit a rather quiet one for clients. She stood with other girls in their chains in the meeting room, all dressed in only bras and underwear with downcast eyes on the floor. They were all pretty humans, but she had been told she was something different. Bizarre. A ‘shame you have a tail and those furry cat ears as you’d be a stunner otherwise’… A neko. Part cat and part human. She knew nothing of how she came to be, or why the trainers had kept her when she was abandoned to them as an infant, or mostly why her Master bothered to buy her and keep her amongst the options for his clients. He was an incredibly cruel man with numerous businesses that catered to the depraved lusts of humanity. Maybe he liked the notoriety of having unique service girls for sale or rent?
Rarely wanted when there were more acceptable options in the room though, she dared lift her bright brown eyes to watch the new group as they entered the room. Only a couple appeared to be sober, the rest sloppy and loud. They roughly handled the other girls, gripping arms or handfuls of hair to ‘test the merchandise’. Master appeared and approved with the males, occasionally barking an order at a chosen girl while unlocking their ankle chains. She lifted a hand to pull at her heavy metal neck chain. It was a ‘gift’ Master thought better suited his neko pet, and unlike ankle chains was never removed. The room quickly emptied, save for a dark haired, quarterback-bodied male that strode towards her. His red blazer looked to be a velvet material, and suited his overall goth persona. Forgetting her place, her eyes made contact with his fully black irises, and she quickly squinted hers shut and hoped Master hadn’t seen.
Suddenly, sounds from the surrounding rooms exploded around them. Were those guns!? Oh God! Screams from the girls shrilled out, and some sort of smoke started pouring down the main hallway toward the meeting room they stood in. She instinctively dropped to her knees and covered her ears and head, fully expecting the ceiling to cave in or for someone to shoot her where she stood.
When Master suddenly dropped inches from her with a heavy thud and a blood gurgling sound, she frantically looked up and saw the man-mountain silently point with a bloody knife to a door opposite them. His silky voice spoke between explosions and unlocking her heavy neck chain with Master’s keys. “Listen kitten, this is not your fate. You will run free. Go through there and find the railway tunnels. Follow it until your feet won’t go a step further. Never. Look. Back. You have 1 minute, now GO!”
There was no time for answers or thank you. There was no time to ask about the other girls or to mourn about losing the only life she had known. She wasn’t even sure if there was time for a breath the whole time she ran from the room with her muscled angel of death to the dark tunnel.
As she padded through the tunnel now, her ears relaxed slightly from where they had been pinned back at the memory. The sounds of the raid and the sounds of death had faded many days ago, and she was left with just the sounds of dripping water and her hungry stomach again. There were rarely lights still working in the darkness, one every few hours may illuminate the mould she had almost gone nose-blind to. Ahead she could see another light, but her steps stilled as she saw a form against the wall. She must have stood unseen in the darkness for an hour waiting for the form to move, but when it didn’t, she inched closer.
It was a woman with long blonde hair stained red down one side, and milky grey eyes staring unmoving at the floor. Swallowing the bile in her throat, she covered her mouth with her hands and looked away. The poor woman was long dead. Rubbing her bare arms and biting her lower lip, she took in the corpse dressed in a fire red maxi dress, and knew she would benefit from the clothing more than the grim reaper would. Summoning courage, and before she thought too much about it, she closed her eyes and pulled the garment off the dead woman to don the dress herself. The spaghetti straps left her top half still cold with just the strapless bra underneath, but the loose dress hid her tail beneath and warmed the rest of her.
Trying to put distance between herself and the corpse, and perhaps whatever had killed the girl, she continued on and on. Passing another light, it shadowed purple and teal grafitti on the stone walls. Ahead she could see the remains of doorway, light shining through the crumbling brick and arched shape to hint at the first bit of the outside world she’d seen since entering the perpetual underground tracks.
With a flight instinct screaming to keep going, she gave in instead to the curiosity and peeked through the doorway. She saw a set of stone stairs up to a broken door, light streaming in. The damp service room burned her sensitive nose with smells of mould, piss and feces, and the stone walls themselves seemed permanently stained with wet spots. Tiptoeing as much as possible through the puddles and debris, she made her way up the stairs and cautiously towards the door.