Running and Recapture

Scarlet clung like algae against the jagged white coral of my teeth, my arms felt like they had been set alight beneath the surface of my skin, a slow, painful molten substance coursing through, bubbling against the skin, while the girl in my arms, dazed from anemia and hunger and probably some animalistic, deep urge to bite, dangled like a corpse.
At this point, I wasn't worried about people seeing us.
But that's not completely the truth.
I wasn't thinking straight, blood loss mixed with anxiety mixed with anger glued together by terror, so it was more by instinct, a subconscious, lesser version of my brain, the backup power, guiding me through empty backstreets cluttered with smoking metal pipes, our reflections passing by us from windows and puddles, seemingly running ahead of us, my expression more desperate, my footsteps becoming less stable.
Suddenly, almost losing balance curving into a quiet residential street, not a person in sight, backsides of storefronts and small apartments with clouded windows, I could only stagger a few more steps forward, before to my left, I was distracted by the image of a figure falling forwards to the concrete, a splatter against the tiny flowers growing at the edge of a building's front entrance from the puddle at his feet, and the small bundle in his arms rolling against the cold concrete.
When I looked back forward, towards the blazing sun, I realised it was much higher than before, and I could feel wounds beginning to burst into existence against my cheeks, my arms grow weightless, while murky rivers of water, constrained in square-shaped flows through the pavement stones, pricked against my torso.
For all that talk of saving a monster, I couldn't even save myself.
...
I wouldn't let something like this happen...
Putting aside embarrassment, no, using that embarrassment, that weakness and weariness push me forward like the igniting spark against the lanyard of a cannon, I struggled up to my knees, crawled over to the girl looking up at me with dirt puncturing her porcelain skin, and grabbed her thin arms, resting her against my back, clutching her feet and trudging along towards the end of the street.
Slowly, despite the pain, and for all the world feeling like all the world was against me in this moment, and forever, I quickened pace, those wounds no matter how deep already closing in on themselves, skin and muscle flicking into the exposed area like dancing bonito flakes, clinging to each other, reinvigorating, reattaching.
Soon the surroundings became more familiar, that blue in my eyes and haze in my head dissipating like morning mist, and without being able to pinpoint when it had started, my vision was swivelling cautiously back and forth, on high alert, not wanting to be spotted, worried over as much as a twig breaking at my feet.
Despite the quietness seemingly enveloping this city, it wasn't like it was almost uninhabited, or at least, inhabited by barely conscious, mindless zombies of a population, but rather, it was a workday, and most people commuted further in to get to their workplace. 
Rather, it was more that, recently, a mix of bureaucracy and worldly events have caused a spike in employment, and most of that is further in, concentrated in the centre, like all the blood flow needed to be rerouted into the heart momentarily to recover from some disastrous injury piercing the skin.
Or to prepare for one.
Whatever it was, most people had not much time to worry about what was happening outside of our little snow globe of a city. Especially us, working so hard to protect it and its outskirts.
But was such a state really ideal?
Employment meant more people with food, money, places to live, things to make their family and friends happy with, to give to the community and gain from it, but somehow, to somebody as relatively out of the loop as I was, it seemed close enough to Russian Tree Counters to be as comforting as people make it out to be.
But maybe, in as advanced a civilisation as we now have, even something that was unsavoury from back then, in that kind of country, would have the opposite status here.
...but, people don't change.
People still follow Aristotle and force themselves into learning virtue through habit.
People still follow Confucius, prioritising their family connections, grounding morality and society within them, over anything else.
People still burn witches, fear them and refuse to compromise with living, talking, breathing, crying, suffering beings, only now they call them monsters.
I looked down at the girl in my arms, whose wide eyes had slowly begun narrowing, her eyebrows clenched with a haughtiness that was steadily returning, and to placate any possible thrashing about on her part, I stopped at a corner, crouched behind a large fern, its draping leaves blocking the sunlight from cascading on to us, and clenching my eyes shut, brought a finger up to my teeth, ripping it clean off, and letting the crimson pour against the lips of the girl.
It's impolite to watch a woman eat.
More than that, it took everything I had, all that built up experience and tolerance of pain, which even then was barely enough, every pang of torn muscle bringing a fresh sensation of awfulness, to not scream out for the world to hear.
Actually, was this eating, or just drinking?
Surely it would be okay to take a peek, right?
That kind of excuse works for me, but would she buy it?
That was something I wondered as I peered down at her, happily licking the exposed bone, with a flushed, desperate expression on her face.
Between waterfalls of crimson, it seemed like she had caught my eye.
"Dopn't byu gnow iths frudfe uh!" came between gulps and slurps and whatever other sounds could possibly be made drinking from such a position.
"That only applies to eating, so in fact, you're the one that's rude for lapping up my blood so impolitely."
Her expression turned a little sour, and her forehead clenched together towards the bottom centre like it always did when she wanted to tell me off without words, but nevertheless, I was happy.
Well, not exactly.
I was sad, frustrated, scared, anxious, worried, unsettled, distressed, distraught, exasperated, vexed - I was almost anything but happy.
However, still joking like this, maybe recklessly, in such a situation, reminded me that I could keep going, no matter what.
After a while more of weaving, ducking, thanking the city infrastructure architect for having such a soft spot for an abundance of plants, trees, flowers, anything natural and colorful and leafy, I struggled up the hill towards the edges of the city, and slumped down against my apartment door, still worried about anybody traipsing along the hallways, but at this point too worn out to carry this girl a moment longer.
Reaching into my pocket then upwards, I unlocked the door with a muffled click, and dragged out two bloodied, wounded, tired bodies into the entryway, scattering shoes and umbrellas to the floor, and drawing the attention of the woman standing at the far end, where the damp hallway opened up into the living room.
Where she was standing tall, almost to the ceiling, her cuspid teeth, visible from here, glistening in their otherworldly sharpness and size from the sunbeams streaming through the windows.
In her tight grip, a man struggled on the verge of lifelessness, his curls bouncing with as much struggle as his fingers were putting up, scratching open the skin of the woman's wrists, his eyes wild and like a dying animal's, while his feet kicked at the air beneath him, helplessly flailing in any direction, hoping to catch a knee or shin or anything that would wound his aggressor.
"Sorrow!" I screamed, unable to help drawing attention to myself, not thinking clearly for... well, almost everything that's happened to me in the past couple of hours.
With a sparkling grin stretching the woman's bright cheeks, she turned my way, her long bangs and even longer tails of hair, dragging their weight against the floor, flicking to the side audibly from their thickness.
"He was posing some issues for the both of us, therefore I took it upon myself to not delay any kind of retaliation until your unpredictable arrival. Surely, you see the logic in that, do you not?"