by S. R. Grey
Flynn knows this is what we need—a salve to lessen the pain. Nourishment, not for our empty stomachs, but for our souls.
When we reach the cliff’s edge, we duck under the pines. The sun is setting, and it’s already dark in the circle. We come together, urgent kisses, and hands roaming everywhere.
When we break apart, I stumble back. And then I unzip my dress.
Flynn breathes heavily, exertion taking its toll on his starved body. But neither of us can stop. This need transcends all others. Giving in to our urges promises to blunt our pain, and that is motivation enough to keep going.
Flynn lifts his shirt over his head, kicks off his jeans, and then his boxers. He’s as ready for this as I am.
With a smile, I shimmy my dress up over my hips and peel my panties down my legs.
“Kick those damn things off and c’mere,” Flynn says huskily.
I do as he asks, and when I step toward him, he wraps his arms around me and hoists me up. I tighten my legs around him as we become one. “Flynn,” I sigh.
It’s the first time we’ve had sex since the day our lives fell apart, and this experience is far different. This act of love is tinged with desperation, the sex quickly turning raw and rough.
We tumble to the ground, somehow never breaking apart. “Don’t leave me,” I cry out, meaning so much more than our bodies joined as one.
“Never,” he rasps as he rolls on top of me.
The grass is soft, but pine needles stick to my sweaty back as Flynn drives into me, again and again. Peeling down the front of my unzipped dress, he rips open my bra. His mouth descends to a breast, and I reach down and grab his ass.
His muscles flex beneath my hand, and I urge, “Go faster.”
He does. Flynn fucks me—and that’s what this has become—into blissful oblivion. I know he feels it, too, our escape from hell.
When he comes, he’s inside me. Neither of us cares. We remain connected, needing to experience each other’s bliss in our now-barren world. Our love is the only good thing left to cherish.
“I love you, I love you,” he says to me over and over again.
And me, I can do nothing but cry.
Flynn never leaves me, remaining inside me as he kisses away my tears. And when he’s hard again and starts to move, I beg him, “Fill me again. Come inside me, and make me forget the hunger.”
He does, and for the first time in weeks, I feel full.
Flynn
As we approach the house at an almost run, I know it’s late. The moon is high in the sky.
“It has to be after midnight,” I say.
“I never meant to fall asleep,” Jaynie replies, out of breath.
“Me neither.”
We slow up and breathe a collective sigh of relief when we see Allison’s car is not in the driveway.
“Thank God for small favors.” Jaynie bends at her waist and places her hands on her knees.
There’s no time for a break. I have to keep her going.
“Hurry,” I urge, hand on her elbow. “We still need to get Cody back in my room.”
“Damn, I forgot.”
The next ten minutes are a blur—Jaynie and I racing into the house, running up the stairs, easing Cody out of the bed so as not to wake Callie, and then cradling him in my arms.
“He’s gotten so light,” I lament.
Jaynie, by my side, whispers, “Just go, Flynn. Go.”
When I turn around, something seems off. “We left the door open, right?”
Jaynie turns to the now half-closed door. “Shit, Allison is home.”
“That’s right,” Allison’s voice rings out. The door flies open and Allison is standing in the shadows, arms crossed.
Suddenly, all the night’s exertion and underlying exhaustion catch up to me. I crumple to the floor with Cody in my arms. The kid’s so out of it, he just mumbles something and falls back asleep.
“Flynn!” I hear Jaynie cry out.
I can barely keep my eyes open, but Allison’s pink heels come into focus as she steps next to me. “What’s going on in here?” she asks.
“It’s my fault, Allison.” Jaynie slumps down next to me. “I asked Flynn to bring Cody to the room for a little while.”
I gaze up at an angry Allison. She’s cleaned up for her night out. Even has on a matching shorts and tank outfit. Guess she was looking to reel in a new guy, or she’s trying to lure back the old one. In any case, it’s clear she was out fishing. Though from her miserable demeanor, I assume no one was biting.
I chuckle at my food analogy. Fuck, the hunger is screaming, ripping my stomach open from the inside out, like I swallowed razor blades.
“What are you laughing about?” Allison asks, her pointy pink shoe nudging me.
I can’t shake the whole fishing imagery, and in a hunger-induced delirium, I look up and say to the bitch, “You are one rank piece of bait. Do you want to know why the fish weren’t biting?”
Allison gapes at me, clearly confused by my outburst. Jaynie, meanwhile, shakes my shoulder. She’s trying to rouse me back to some semblance of sanity. “Flynn,” she hisses under her breath. “Stop it.”
But I can’t.
And suddenly, Allison gets it. “Do tell me, Flynn,” she grinds out between clenched teeth. “Why, as you put it, were the fish not biting?”
I sit up, chuckling. Cody is still sleeping in my arms.
“It’s simple, really,” I say. “Despite your okay outer appearance, you are rotten to the core inside. Those fish smell you a mile away”—I scrunch up my nose in disgust—“and they know you’re no good. They’d rather starve than take a bite of your rancid flesh.”
“That’s enough!”
I can’t tell whether it’s Allison speaking, or Jaynie. I’ve got nothing left in the tank and my body shuts down, leaving me no choice but to succumb to sleep.
As I fall to my side, Cody is wrenched from my arms.
And the last thing I hear is Jaynie and Callie screaming out, “No, no, no-o-o.”
Jaynie
After the heart-wrenching scene of Allison dragging Cody back to his own room, and then Flynn being made to wake up and follow, Callie begs me to sleep with her.
“I can’t stand to be alone, Jaynie,” Callie says, her tone and inflection far beyond her years. “That was too much.”
“I know, honey,” I tell her as we crawl into the same bed.
We’re too restless to sleep, so we end up talking for a while.
“Where do you think Mandy is right now?” Callie asks.
Leaning my head against hers, I say, “Probably in Morgantown.”
“With Josh, you think?”
“I hope so, sweetie.”
Callie sighs contemplatively, reminding me of how far advanced she is. “I hope so, too,” she says. “Mandy deserves to be happy.”
“She does,” I agree. “And so do you, sweetheart.”
“I will be happy, Jaynie. When Cody and I get to go to live with Mandy and Josh, I’ll be happy.”
Drowsiness suddenly hits me like a hammer, and I murmur, “You’ll all be a family soon enough.”
“I can’t wait.” Callie yawns and snuggles in close to me. “I’m so tired, Jaynie,” she whispers.
“Then go to sleep, baby girl. Tomorrow will be better.”
My sleep is fitful, dreams morphing to nightmares. When I wake in the morning, I immediately sense something is wrong.
My bed feels too empty.
Jumping up, feet tangling in the covers, I stumble to the floor. “Callie? Callie?” I call out. “Where are you?”
As I untangle myself, I scan the room for Callie. She’s not in our small bedroom, that’s for sure.
“Oh, God, please, no. No, no, no.” Callie is gone, and this is Allison’s doing, I know it.
As I race to the door, Flynn swings it open from the other side. “Is Cody in here?” he asks. He sounds as frantic as I feel.
“No, Flynn. And Callie’s gone, too.�
��
“Fuck.”
“This is not good.”
Downstairs, we find Allison in the kitchen, guarding the nutrition bar box like her life depends on it.
When she hands one bar to Flynn, her sugary-sweet grin hiding the acid in her soul, he smacks it out of her hand.
“Ooh, testy today, aren’t we?” she says.
“Knock off the shit,” Flynn replies. “Where are the twins?”
Allison’s expression turns cold, her true nature revealed. Fine, I’d rather see the real side of her than all her phony masks.
Slowly, enunciating each word for effect, she says, “The twins…Are…Gone.”
“What?” I rasp.
“You heard me. They’re gone, for good. I drove them to the group home in Clarksburg late last night. In fact, I just got back.”
“What have you done?” Flynn’s voice cracks.
Allison jumps up on the counter, swinging her sweat pant-covered legs, carefree as ever. “It was just too much,” she says breezily. “Small children like that in my care. Without Mandy around, I wasn’t even sure how to start their home-schooling.”
“We could’ve done it,” I say.
“You can barely stand,” Allison snorts.
“Because you’re starving us,” I yell.
Allison ignores me. “Doesn’t matter. It’s too late now. I called my mom and told her she had a choice to make. Either the twins had to go…or I was going.” Her hateful eyes move from me, to Flynn. “I’m sure you can guess her answer. Mom needs someone to run this freak show, now doesn’t she?”
“You fucking cunt,” Flynn snarls, shaking with rage.
He knows as well as I do that this is our punishment. Allison has taken away food, she’s increased work quotas to unattainable goals, but none of those things diminish our love, or the bonds we’ve forged with each other. Her last weapon is to separate us, and then watch us break, one by one.
I place my hand on Flynn’s forearm to keep him calm. “Flynn,” I whisper. “Don’t let her get to you. That’s what she wants.”
Essentially the same wisdom Mandy was always imparting. And I need for Flynn to listen and back down. Allison wants him to flip so she can revel in his pain, or send him away, too.
I watch as he slowly pulls himself together. I breathe a sigh of relief. I can’t take losing him on top of the twins. I already feel numb and dead inside.
“Good,” Flynn snaps. “Cody and Callie deserve a better home. Maybe now they can get some proper nutrition.”
“I fed them,” Allison whines, defensive.
“Barely,” I interject.
“Go to the barn and get to work,” she snaps. “I don’t want to see either of you for the rest of the day.”
And with that she shoves the box of nutrition bars at us—the whole box—and stomps away.
Flynn and I eat a bunch, famished as we are. But then we decide it’d be wise to squirrel some away. “Who knows when that bitch will feed us again,” Flynn says.
“True.”
We find hidey-holes in each of our rooms, and also out in the craft barn. While there, we stumble across the going-away card the twins made for Mandy, the one they never had a chance to give her.
“Look at this.” Flynn says as he hands me an ivory sheet of folded cardstock.
With a heavy heart, I read the crooked messages scribed in pastel markers: We love you. See you soon. We promise to be on our best behavior so we can come live with you. Don’t forget us, Mandy. You’re our mommy now.
I start to fold the card so I can hide it in the pocket of my jeans. “What are you doing?” Flynn asks.
“Saving the card for when we see Mandy and the twins again.” I stop what I’m doing when he turns away. “Flynn, look at me.” He does. “We have to believe. It’s all we have left. To make sense of these horrors, we have to trust Mandy will end up with the twins. And we have to believe we’ll get out of here and our lives will go on, better than ever.”
He looks unconvinced. “Okay, Jaynie, whatever you say.”
“Flynn, you can’t lose hope.”
“Let’s just start on today’s projects, all right?”
I give up. There’s no convincing him of anything right now.
Materials for the day’s crafts are spread out on four work stations, saddening us further.
“She wasn’t planning on sending the twins away,” I say. “It was our punishment for sneaking out last night.”
“No, Jaynie,” Flynn corrects. “It was our punishment for falling in love.”
Flynn
With the twins gone and Mrs. Lowry still constantly away, Jaynie and I become Allison’s prisoners completely. She watches us like a hawk, monitoring our work in the craft barn like never before.
Quotas remain high. The numbers are set for the work of three adults and two kids, but there are only two of us. Believe it or not, there are days we still meet the numbers.
“Fine,” Allison says on those days. “I’ll give you dinner.”
Dinner, when doled out, consists of a single microwave meal each, the very small diet ones. Doesn’t matter. Jaynie and I devour those things like they are gourmet feasts.
Our lives continue, and on the rare evening Allison leaves the house, Jaynie and I head up to our secret place by the cliff’s edge, our only respite from hunger, sadness, and a gnawing sense of hopelessness.
The days grow shorter and cooler, but we welcome the night and the crispness in the air. Summer reminds us too much of the good times. Under the pines, we hold onto each other, our bodies pressed together, desperate in the darkness. When the losses we’ve endured get to be too much, we strip off our clothes, and all is forgotten. Losing ourselves with each other is all we have left. But our joining as one is not about sex. It’s about love, a love that keeps us warm on cool fall nights.
One of those chilly nights, after sex that turned from hurried to sweet, Jaynie falls back on pine needles that have dried up and grass that has turned brown. I curl up next to her, the only good thing left in my life.
“Do you still want us to be together, Flynn?” Jaynie asks, her face buried in my chest. “Like, for sure, forever?”
I lean back so I can see her more clearly. She looks up, her face illuminated by the full moon in the sky.
“For sure, forever,” I say, echoing her words back to her and smiling. When Jaynie still seems troubled, I add, “I love you, Jaynie. You believe me, right?”
“I do,” she says. “And I love you, too. But things change. What if you get out in the world and meet other people—”
“Hey, stop right there. There’s only you, Jaynie. You are who I want.”
She bites her lower lip. “Okay, Flynn.”
“That doesn’t sound convincing,” I say lightly. And then, more seriously, “What’s bringing all this on, anyway?”
“I was just thinking.” She sighs. “You turn eighteen next month. You can go if you want, be free of this place.”
I’m aghast. “Are you serious? Even if Allison lets me go, which I kind of doubt at this point, I’d never leave you alone with her.”
“I turn eighteen in November. I’d only be a month behind you.”
“I’d never take a chance like that, Jaynie. Not with the way things have been lately.”
Breathing what sounds like a sigh of relief, she says, “Good. I don’t think I could stand it here without you, especially…well, now.”
Something is up.
Placing my hands on either side of Jaynie’s face, I ask, “What’s really going on here, babe?”
Swallowing hard, she tells me, “I’m late, Flynn.”
The earth stops spinning. Or maybe I start spinning. In any case, it sure feels like the world has tilted sideways. “Shit,” I mutter.
Jaynie immediately begins to apologize, but I put a stop to that nonsense. “Hey, hey, don’t say you’re sorry. This is more my fault than yours. I haven’t been pulling out—”
“I
haven’t wanted you to, Flynn.”
There’s a long pause. This is both our doing.
I flop down on my back, scrub my hand over my face. “Jesus, Jaynie, what are we going to do with a baby?”
She wraps her arms around me. “We’ll figure it out. If Allison tries to keep us here, even after we turn eighteen”—she glances over at the cliff’s edge, the sound of the water racing below us like a foreboding soundtrack in some movie—“we can always jump.”
“Yeah, there is that.”
Our long-ago devised plan is still an option, but then again, maybe not. Everything has changed. A dozen things could go wrong. Starting with Jaynie shouldn’t make a jump like that in her condition. Though it will only become more dangerous if we wait. Would it be better to leave now? Having a baby wasn’t part of the original plan, and I don’t know what to do anymore.
Shit. Maybe we should wait till we’re both eighteen. Two more months till November, I don’t know if that’s too far away. I do know Jaynie needs better nutrition. She’s eating for two now. Unfortunately, she barely gets enough food for one in this hell hole.
Damn, I feel lost and uncertain, my thinking clouded by hunger. But in my foggy thoughts I know there is one thing I need to ensure—I want Jaynie to promise me just one thing.
“If it comes down to a choice, Jaynie,” I say, rousing her from the sleep she was falling into. “If it comes down to choosing between me and you, I want you to be the one to get away from this place.”
“Okay,” she mumbles, eyes barely opening.
“Promise,” I press.
“I promise,” she whispers. And then she is out.
God, please don’t let her promise end up becoming another one of tomorrow’s lies.
Jaynie
October arrives, and still no period. I don’t need a pregnancy test to confirm what Flynn and I both know. I am definitely with child.
There are days it seems surreal, actually feeling pregnant. Knowing there’s a life growing inside of me fills me with renewed hope. My pregnancy wasn’t planned, but it feels right. Maybe this is how all this was meant to play out. I think Flynn feels the same way. One indication is how he becomes fiercely protective of me. We have something to protect other than ourselves now, and we don’t plan on failing like we did with the twins.
