Page 41

I lie on the floor, huddled against the wall of the cell, trying to force myself back into a less painful unconscious state. Each day, a tenuous moment exists between sleep and wakefulness in which I’m invulnerable, untouchable—not yet aware of the reality that awaits, but just beyond the home of nightmares. That’s where I’d like to stay. But it never lasts.

I couldn’t handle Eli’s scent wrapped around me, so I left his blanket bunched up in the corner last night and opted for shivers. I refused a bar smelling of beans and curled myself into another lonely ball. I regret it now as my stomach growls with vengeance. Peeking at the dreadful light of day, I see a new pile waiting for me.

A traitorously curious part of me crawls toward it, wincing the whole way, and is rewarded when I find a tiny folded note between a fresh change of clothes and a cold bar—only blue lint this time. I clench my jaw, seething at my own foolishness, and unfold the note anyway. Dried flecks of blood from my fingers and rings flutter down, settling in the creases.

Never,

You fared better than the cage, which is beyond repair. Red is a good color on you, but use this on your cuts. They’ll hurt less and heal faster. I need you to be functional…We’re not done yet.

Eli

A thick green spike of oozing plant falls out of the note and onto the floor.

I breathe through the anger rising in my throat, but it spreads faster than I can reel it in. Every breath spears my fresh wounds. Is this some twisted attempt at kindness so I won’t knee him in the balls again, spoiled with a threat and a compliment on how I look when bloody? Or is he clueless to the point of infuriation? I gather the clean shirt and pants, also reeking of him, hold them to my stomach and return to that familiar ball, tucking knees to forehead, heels to bottom. As small as I can get. It’s never enough to disappear.

I force myself to face the pain—not just the physical torment of my body, but the pain of facing a reality that mocks myattempts to ignore and deny it—and blame my sanity, or lack thereof. How can I say the blitzer was in my head when its claw marks sting my back and my finger fits in the hole its beak left behind? How can I refute this?

I can’t. Not anymore.

Which leaves me lost.

I drag the bucket of soapy water closer and dip my hands into the cold liquid. The first layer of blood turns the water pink. I pull my shirt over my head, tugging hard to unstick it from the wounds on my back, and splash water up my arms, over the chain of my necklace and down my spine. I’m exposed, my skin raw and open, marked and foreign.

Shivering from the air roaming over my wet skin, I scrub away layers and layers of blood and lies I told myself, and underneath all those layers, I make sure to wash away any lingering hope.

I clean my full upper half, even dunking my head and rinsing away the blood holding my hair in clumps, then replace the embroidered bra. My back nearly rips in half as I fumble with the stained strings, tying them behind me. I tuck the blue stone back inside and move to my bottom half. The water is a dark red-brown by the time I’m done, and I’m so cold that I shiver on the inside too.

The cuts burn and throb to the beat of the blitzer’s wings sounding in my head, so I do what Eli says, begrudgingly, and smooth the gooey center of the plant over the punctures on my neck and the gashes and slashes on my back and arms, then I inch my way into the clean clothes. They cling to the cooling salve like a new layer of skin. Tougher skin.

The afternoon dawdles on, visions of violent deaths every hour or so. Maybe one will actually kill me someday, a single death to save me from all the rest.

Sypher arrives in the early evening with another bar. Oat and walnuts, I think. I can’t tell from the texture. They’re all the same—chalky and chewy with random bits that crunch and make me wonder what else is mixed in—but what was once an assault on my palate is now a pleasure to my senses, an escape from the stone walls and metal bars.

Like chasing a dream, Eli returns after I’m asleep and leaves in the morning before I wake up, the only trace of him a fleeting note in his overly tidy script. He disappears again the next day and the day after, for a week, only showing his face once, all broody and quiet, as if he still feels my knee smashing into his balls.

We haven’t talked—about the blitzer, about my blood on his hands, the look in his eyes. Nothing. Not that we would. That’s what life is like now. Dark walls, deep stares, blood and silence. I don’t doubt he’s avoiding me. Which is a problem. I need him to fulfill his end of the deal to rescue Kelter before it’s too late…if it’s not already. I haven’t heard a word about anything outside these walls. Sypher ignores my questions, and Milo only grants me guilty grimaces, making the unknown even less bearable.

No bar this morning, but a folded note taunts me, resting so innocently on today’s change of clothes with another oozing plant for my cuts. He’s trying to wear me down, pretending to be nice so I’ll give him what he wants. He can’t fool me. I ignore the note, willing it to disappear.

Fifteen minutes later, to my disappointment, it’s still there. I give in and unfold it.

Never,

Hope you’re healing faster than me.

Eli

Eight words.

That’s what it takes to send me into madness today.

I can’t decide if I want to bash his head in or strangle him slowly, making it nice and personal. As if I could. I don’t have it in me. I’m all rage and riot without fight or bite. I can’t believe I hurt Eli, but when I’m with him, that fire, that violence hidden deep down inside me from visions of death seeping into my soul, it tries to rise.

I fold the note and add it to the collection I’ve started, tucked between the stool and the wall. There’s nothing to do inside the cramped cell, and my racing thoughts take advantage of the quiet morning, thoughts of Kelt and why what we had in Caldera isn’t enough for him to return to.

The first day we met was utterly unspectacular. Me, my usual self, plagued with visions and on a solid path to total isolation, and him—I didn’t know who he was that first day. I passed him in the coffee shop where we exchanged nothing more than a hello from him and a fuck off from me. That was it, followed by weeks of me pushing him away and avoiding his curious questions, so unlike anyone else in Caldera. I sensed something in him, though, something broken like me, and I finally said hello back.

If it hadn’t been for every day after, in whichhellobecamehow are you?which turned into last night’s stories, then inside jokes and grew into perfectly comfortable silence, I’d never have remembered that first hello.