Alchera collaboration January 2001
Write a piece including a subway station, addiction, something broken.
(Background: Most of the characters I write - including Hazel and Abigail - live in the Sanctuary, which is a place in my head. It has a lot of rules. This is about Lilith, elder sister of Hazel and Abigail, who left the Sanctuary (read: was thrown out, but Hazel, etc. think she left of her own free will) because she hated all the rules.)
Lilith sat, watching the world go by from the office window. It had been a long time since she'd left the Sanctuary, but it seemed as if she'd worked here forever.
Everyone locked into their office boxes which only opened when it was time to leave, and with no variation in the work.
She'd seen the world, all right - Star Island had once seemed impossibly distant, but now it was her home.
Everything that had once seemed so new - the tall buildings, the subway stations, the bright lights - was now ordinary. But the thing she'd hated most about the Sancturay, the ritual obsessiveness, was just as oppressive here as it was there. Every day of every year was identical. It was like she'd been brainwashed into the regulated mentality, it was like the rules had become an addiction.
The thing she'd tried to escape had only followed her.
She stood up, suddenly hating this. The door was still locked, but it took little time for her to break it open (its makers hadn't expected anyone to try and force it open), and then-
She was leaving again.
