by Shade Owens
I looked closer and saw a big brown eye pressed up against another hole a bit higher.
“Is what dey want, you know,” the woman said. “Don’t let ’em. Don’t let ’em ’ave it. Be strong.”
“Barbara!”
Her eye went even bigger and she pulled away.
“Don’t be stupid,” the other voice hissed. “If they see you…” Her voice trailed off, along with rapid footsteps.
“You okay, Brone?” Hammer asked, her puppylike eyes rolling up at me.
I waved a hand and shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened. I wanted to be left the hell alone.
“Sepsis,” Tegan muttered again, her body now rocking back and forth.
“What are they doing to us?” Johnson asked, from the corner of the cell, her arms wrapped around her knees. I’d never seen her so afraid before.
No one answered.
“Did they take any of you yet?” Coin asked, breaking the silence.
Arenas shook her head. “No… They’ve only been taking Tegan. She comes back more messed up every time.”
Coin ran both hands over her face and through her fuzzy hair over and over again, then let out a long sigh.
“Sepsis,” Tegan said again and this time, slapped herself across the face.
I observed her as she pulled her bottom lip, her wild eyes rolling around in every direction, and it seemed like I was sitting in a mental asylum. What on Earth had they done?
What were they going to do to us? To me?
Maybe this was it.
Maybe this time, we weren’t going to survive.
CHAPTER 6
Where was I?
I wiped the muck from the corner of my lips and inhaled a slow, painful breath. My muscles felt like they’d completely melted, leaving behind bones, tendons, and ligaments.
What was that smell?
“Snap out of it, Brone,” someone said.
Snap out of what?
How much time had passed since Franklin was dragged away?
Why wasn’t I hungry? When had I last eaten?
“Give her some water.”
“She doesn’t need any,” someone growled.
“Johnson, back off. If we don’t share, we won’t make it.”
“She’s already had a lot!”
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hands. Everyone was so blurry—a bunch of colorful pixelated figures sitting around the dark cell.
“What’s that smell?” I moaned.
What—what was going on? I couldn’t…
Something cool slipped over my cracked lips and into my mouth. I lunged forward, wanting to inhale it all at once, but all I felt was water splash on my face and down my neck.
“Goddamn it, Brone!”
“Our water!”
“She spilled our water!”
A round figure stomped its way over to me, and something hit me hard across the face. I raised a hand against my cheek, feeling the warmth of my skin underneath my fingertips. “What… what was that for?” I asked, gazing up at Hammer.
She stood stiffly with two hands on her waist, her nostrils flared and her shoulders drawn back. “A, to snap you the hell out of it. And B, because you wasted the bit of water we had.”
I sat upright and reality set back in. I was sitting in the middle of the cell, my legs straight out in front of me. My boots were missing. Where were my boots?
And what was that smell? It was like sour rot combined with a teaspoon of honey—a sickening smell I’d encountered before.
I looked around the room, trying to understand what was going on when I saw her lying there looking like a porcelain doll with both hands resting on her chest. Dirt had been pushed up around her, forming a small contour that enveloped part of her body up to the height of her elbows.
I jumped back, my palms sinking into the dirt underneath me.
“Wh-what happened?” I asked, staring at Alice’s ghostly face and blue lips.
“She died two days ago, Brone,” Coin said, staring at me like I’d lost my mind.
She looked like everyone else in the room—a lightened complexion, crisped lips, and dark bags underneath her eyes—yet paler.
Johnson was curled up beside Arenas, whose eyes were red and swollen—most likely a result of her friend’s death. Tegan was still in the same corner she’d been for as long as I could remember, and Hammer, having gained satisfaction from hitting me across the face, moved to the side of the cell and plopped herself down in the far corner. She looked smaller than usual, her pants sagging and her shirt looking too big for her.
I threw a hand over my nose. “W-why haven’t they taken her out?”
Coin shook her head and shrugged.
“Out of the way!” someone shouted from outside.
Heavy footsteps approached the bamboo cage. There was a soft click, and the door swung open. It was Rebel, looking like a Cabbage Patch Kid with her horrible haircut. She stood arrogantly with her fingers wrapped around Franklin’s tattooed arm, then smiled venomously and said, “Special delivery.”
She threw Franklin into the cell, but Franklin didn’t have the strength. She collapsed flat onto the dirt floor, crushing her bony arms underneath her. There were red gashes all over her shoulders—most likely a result of either being whipped or cut. But they weren’t infected. They were scabbing over, which meant whoever had done this to her hadn’t intended to kill her, only to make her suffer.
“Franklin!” Johnson said in a panic. She rushed to her side as though they’d been friends for years, even though several weeks ago, Johnson would have been more than happy to beat the living daylights out of her.
She pulled on her shoulders and rolled her onto her back. Rebel grinned a set of rotten teeth when Franklin rolled over, revealing a disfigured face. There were gashes across her cheeks—two on each side, to be precise—and they’d been cut deep enough to form permanent, unsightly scars.
“What did you do?” I shouted. I jumped to my feet but my knees gave out, and I landed in Coin’s arms. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.
“Ah, ah,” Rebel said, pointing an ivory shiv straight out at me. She winked, making me want to tear her eyes out with my fingernails. “You’ll get your turn, sweetheart.”
She threw a piece of crisp carcass into the cell and slammed the door shut. I didn’t have time to see what it was because everyone lunged on it like a pack of starving wolves.
“Back off!” I shouted, my voice hoarse, and everyone froze as if they’d made eye contact with Medusa.
I stood hunched forward, my arms dangling on either side of my body. I wanted to hurt someone—anyone. Never in my life had I experienced so much rage. Why was this happening? Why couldn’t they have killed us instead? They were torturing us. Making us lose all sense of reality.
But that was it, wasn’t it? I was feeling exactly how they wanted me to feel. I wouldn’t let them.
I stepped forward, and everyone stepped back.
Hammer stared at me the way a child does when they don’t get their way—full of hatred and resentment from behind big eyes. “Just ’cause you’re the leader, Brone, doesn’t mean you get to eat first.”
“Yeah!” someone else chimed in.
“It isn’t for me,” I said through clenched teeth. “And we’re not goddamn animals. Stop acting like it! All it’s going to do is get us killed. Is that what you want? To kill one of your own over a piece of”—I glanced down at the dirt floor, noting the bottom half of a burned rabbit—“rabbit? They’re trying to turn us against each other. Can’t you see it? They’re trying to break us, and it’s working. They won’t have to kill us because we’re going to do it to ourselves!”
Everyone stared at me, their eyes wild and nostrils flaring.
“I, for one, think Franklin needs this more than we do,” I said. “We can share what’s left.”
No one answered, but their eyes shifted from side to side, at the rabbit and at each other.
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“Brone’s right,” Coin said, her lips sticking together as she spoke. “We… we need to stick together.” She coughed into her elbow, and her eyes rolled back up at everyone. “We need to be a pack if we want to survive this.”
Tegan suddenly hovered over Franklin, brushing her fingertips over the wounds on her face.
“Clean,” she said, then stood up and returned to her corner. She looked like a bag of bones or a dinosaur. Her spine formed bumps along the back of her shirt, and her elbows looked bigger than her actual arms.
“You need to eat something, too, Tegan,” I said, but she didn’t respond.
Johnson dug her nose into her elbow. “How’s anyone supposed to eat with that smell?”
I followed her line of sight at Alice’s dead body. Flies hovered around her face now, and her skin looked like Play-Doh.
“I don’t know,” I said impatiently. “Plug your nose.”
I could hear my own irritated tone as I spoke, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was exhausted in every sense of the word. I reached down and tore the leg off the rabbit, a loud snap resonating off the walls, and handed it to Franklin.
She lay there, her swollen lips parted and eyes fixated on the ceiling above.
“What did they do to you?” I asked.
She didn’t speak.
“Franklin,” I said.
Nothing.
I rested a hand on her shoulder. “I can’t even imagine the things they did to you, but we need you. Please don’t disappear on us.”
Her red eyes slowly rolled toward me, and I couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh, cry, or scream. She stared at me like she’d never done before—a mindless gaze covering a deep, indescribable pain. It was as if the Franklin I’d known no longer existed.
All at once, her already disfigured face contorted so drastically she seemed unrecognizable. Her mouth hung upside down, her eyes disappeared behind two slits, and she let out a wail so intense it sounded like she was dying.
I reacted in a way I’d never thought myself capable of—empathetically. I wrapped my arms around her neck and pulled her head onto my chest. Where was this nurturing instinct coming from? I’d never had it before. All I knew was that one of our own was in pain and needed comfort.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, resting a firm hand on her head.
I could feel scabs all over her scalp, underneath my fingertips.
She cried and cried and cried, and everyone stared in absolute silence at the wreckage before them. No one attempted to take the rabbit meat, either. They bowed their heads as a way of showing respect for her suffering until finally, she stopped.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I said, staring her in the face.
She nodded briefly, then cleared her throat. “Don’t want to.”
I let her go when I sensed her pull away. She sat up, reached her stick arm beside me, and picked up the rabbit leg.
“At least you’re not dead,” Arenas said grudgingly.
Franklin’s eyes rolled up at her, and I thought for sure she’d slit Arenas’s throat with a piece of broken rabbit bone.
“Might as well be,” Franklin said, slowly taking a bite of meat. “I have lung cancer.”
CHAPTER 7
I played at the skin of my thigh by pinching it and letting go.
It barely moved.
I laughed, and everyone looked up at me.
“What’s so funny?” Coin asked.
I wondered if I looked like her—a skeleton figure they use in grade school with two dark holes for eyes in my face. She looked like a zombie, or even better, a vampire.
I laughed again and plopped my head back against the dirt wall.
“A few years ago, I’d have done about anything to be this skinny,” I said. It wasn’t all that funny, but all I could do was laugh. It was the closest thing to any emotion I’d felt in a long time.
Hammer scoffed. “You were one of those.”
“I think everyone was one of those,” Coin said, a subtle laugh under her labored breathing. “’Cept for me.” She gave us a crooked smirk. “Alls I wanted was muscle.”
She raised her arm and attempted to flex her bicep, but nothing happened. Her body had already started eating away at her muscle.
Maybe they were trying to kill us—slowly and painfully.
The sun had gone down, and the only light within our cell came from two torches fastened on sconces outside the gate. It supplied a tiny bit of heat, which Franklin seemed to appreciate. She was pressed up against the bamboo gate, her fingers dangling through the holes and her scarred face pressed flat against her hand.
The sun had come and gone a dozen times, and she hadn’t spoken a word about what had happened. And as the days went on and we decayed from the inside out, I wondered when they would come for me. I thought about my death and wondered if the afterlife existed. If I died, would my soul float up into the air? Would I be able to levitate myself to the Cove to check up on Ellie? Or would I find myself colliding with her soul somewhere atop Kormace Island? Maybe she’d died a long time ago.
* * *
I remembered thinking he didn’t look real. He looked like a doll made of rubber or silicone.
I hadn’t wanted to go to my grandfather’s funeral, but my mom insisted. She said if I didn’t go to say goodbye, I’d regret it. But the one thing I regretted was going to the funeral.
Before that day, the last memory I had of my grandfather was of him sitting in a nursing home with a toothless grin on his face and an oxygen tube inserted into his nostrils. I’d gone to visit him with my mom on his birthday and offered to play a game of chess with him.
The nurses had been wonderful. They’d baked him a batch of his favorite cupcakes—rainbow cake with vanilla frosting—and even sang a little birthday song for him.
That was the memory I wanted to hold on to.
Not this one.
Not his lifeless body lying in a wooden box for everyone to stare at.
That night, after we went home, I snuck into my bedroom and cried the night away. I hadn’t cried when I found out about his death—only after.
It must have been the middle of the night when my mom came in to check on me. My bedroom door creaked open, and she slipped in past the sliver of yellow light. Her footsteps approached my bed, and I kept my eyes sealed shut. I didn’t want her to know I’d been crying for hours.
I hated crying around anyone, and I cried a lot, which meant I spent a great deal of my time in bathroom stalls at school or under my blankets at home.
But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she raised the corner of my blanket and slipped in beside me, the warmth of her body giving me all the comfort I needed.
She wrapped an arm around me, snuggled closer, and said, “It’s not over for him, sweetheart. His soul is still with us, and one day, we’ll all be together again.”
I didn’t answer.
I squeezed her arm tighter and started crying again until I fell asleep.
* * *
Now I was stuck with Ellie’s last moment in my head—her panicked face when she realized I’d thrown her into the river. She’d looked so confused and betrayed all at the same time.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t.
I couldn’t feel anything.
Maybe this is what it was like to die of starvation and dehydration. Maybe my body was eating away at my emotions, too.
A soft plop sound caught my attention, but it was Franklin’s jagged movement that told me someone had just dropped food into our cell. She scrambled onto her hands and knees until she found it and shoved it into her mouth.
“Hey!” Hammer growled, but another piece was pushed through the same hole in the bamboo gate.
This time, Hammer lunged forward with her elbows out. She stomped on it before Franklin had the chance to grab it, then reached down, picked it up, and shoved it into her mouth without even wiping it off.
I dashed into the growing crowd of prisoners, sque
ezing my way past Coin and Johnson, and pressed myself flat against the gate.
“Who’s there?” I asked. “Can you let us out?”
“Sorry,” the voice whispered. “If I do, they’ll kill me.”
The voice was soft and timid—almost familiar. I pictured a petite middle-aged woman with thin hair, sun spots, and a hunched back. I wasn’t sure why; that was the face I’d associated with the voice.
“Who will?” I asked.
She shoved another piece of bread into the prison, and this time, Coin pushed Johnson out of the way and picked it up.
“Back off!” Johnson shouted.
“You back off!”
“Get out of the way!”
“Shut up!” I yelled, and the argument stopped.
I returned my attention to this mysterious woman by sticking my eye against the hole. She was wearing a hood over her head, masking her face from the torches’ orange glow. She held a small basket filled with what appeared to be pieces of bread and mushy fruit.
“What’s your name?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. “Please,” I continued, wrapping my fingers through the bamboo links. “Who’s going to kill you? Who are they?”
She slowly raised her head, revealing a partially burned face that resembled melted plastic. The skin was pink and drooping underneath her dark eye, and her lips were missing entirely. I couldn’t see her full head, but the part that I could see was bald, with a patch of black hair hanging over her missing eyebrow. What had happened to her?
“Northers,” she growled.
I tightened my fingers on the gate and pulled myself closer. Was she one of ours? One of Murk’s people? Why else refer to these monsters as Northers? It was our terminology for them—not theirs.
Coin pushed her way to the front of the crowd, throwing her elbows out to make space. She must have overheard the woman talking to me because her eyes were bulging out and she pressed her dark face against the gate.
“Who’s there?” she asked. “Who are you? You one of us?”
But the woman didn’t answer Coin, either. Instead, she shoved another small piece of bread through one of the holes followed by several pieces of fruit.
