[PM] Give me an image, a name, and an issue. I'll put this character there, with a story and ideology.

Blank pulled her cap over to shield his eyes as the silently stomping mass of people marched to their respective stations. She hoped there were no mothers. She didn't like the mothers. They were those most likely to stop and ask if she needed help, which she didn't. To ask if she had any parents, which she hadn't. To try and take her somewhere. Cart her off. She hoped instead they were alone too, bachelors and bachelorettes, naive and single and beginning.

Blank was an orphan. Only one she knew, actually. She had never thought too hard about what that meant, beyond imagining what other ones would be like. She did wonder about her parents, true, but always with a detached cynicism. She knew they weren't superheroes. She knew they most likely hadn't died in some catastrophe, saving anyone or killed by anyone else.

They were just people who hadn't wanted kids. And her foster parents were.

She didn't want to think about all the homes though. You'd think the one advantage of not being in those places any more would be the absence of them, but she still heard their voices if she lost focus on hating them long enough.

No, Blank wanted right now more than anything to forget, and experience what was in front of her. She stared at the walls and stairs, yellow-white and decrepit and bland. She liked that they didn't try and talk to her, the way billboards did, or signs or storefronts or posters. All trying to cater to anyone with a wallet or purse. She wanted to scream at them Go away, I don't have any goddamn money!. But she knew they wouldn't listen. She liked the right now. She lay against the walls the color of teeth and wanted then to sink into them. To be just one more brick in the peaceful multitude.

Of course, naturally, Blank couldn't get what she wanted. She was bombarded. Her real name sprang out at her like a bloody fist from memory, her eyes assaulted by the mind desperately trying to make sense of things that didn't need more thinking. The way the pattern in the scratched off paint looked like a chicken, or how the graffiti here shared the initials of 'gangs' from back West, why would she ever think of that? Just association. She couldn't get away from it. If she closed her eyes she still saw. If she stopped thinking she began thinking about thinking, and then she truly couldn't stop. Trying to back out of her head only served to give her a better vantage point.

She gave up. She got up and went to get her meal of the day. She resigned herself to wondering what a dollar twelve would get her this time.

/r/WritingPrompts Thread