"Sin," I whisper, slowly lifting my hand to point at the toad. My stomach turns and screams and my mouth waters. "Sin." I try to get his attention again, but he isn't looking at the toad. His eyes are set beyond the creek, squinting into the distance. He stands up and pulls his gun out, hopping a few rocks to cross the water. I try to focus on what he's looking at it, but I don't see anything. I hear the blast from his gun and I scoot backwards toward my clothes, quickly dressing myself. I step into my boots and follow him. "Sin?"
After moving through the maze of trees, I find Sin crouched down on the ground, hovering over something. His hands are on his head and laughter begins. I slow my strides as I approach him, feeling a tad nervous about what he's covering. As I approach his back, I see a dead hawk lying in front of him. He drops his gun and scoops his hands under the bird, bringing it up to his face. "Hungry?" he asks me.
Does he need to ask? "Can we start a fire?"
"We don't need a fire." He leans forward and wraps his mouth around the hawk's body. My throat tightens and my stomach gurgles with pain. I shudder at the thought of eating this thing raw, but Sin doesn't think twice about it. He manages to take a decent bite out of it and then falls backward onto his butt with relief. "It's good."
"Sin," I whisper softly. "Starvation wouldn't entice humans to eat uncooked animals, right?"
He looks up at me with an unsettled look on his face. "I'm starving," he says.
So am I, but…I can't do that. He hands the bird over to me and the stench brings a wave of nausea with it. I shake my head. "I can't."
He looks back down at the hawk, thoughts running through his tired eyes. "Shit." Looking back up at me with concern. "What the hell is wrong with me?"
I don't want to answer him. I don't want to point out the truth faster than it takes him to comprehend that there is no difference between him and the other prisoners here. "It's okay. You're just hungry."
"No, I've hit the next phase," he says.
"Phase?"
"The food here is injected with a hormone that alters the chemical balance of our brains. When starvation ensues for too long, the part of our brain that tells us to cook our food and to dislike eating our own species no longer works properly. It happens in some faster than others. The food is all laced to maintain the population here. For those who continuously lose the food battle, they will eventually end up like this—me—or like those who attacked you earlier." His words are defining the fears I was considering. The thought of Sin attacking me, or me attacking him for survival has sickened me.
"Is there anything else you should tell me? These secrets and revelations keep popping up and taking the wind out of me, and I wish you would just share it all, Sin."
"What else is there to know? This is going to happen to you, too. Is that what you wanted to hear?" No. That isn't what I wanted to hear. I wanted to wish and hope I was strong enough not to conform to Neanderthal behaviors.
He looks at me for a long minute before standing up and grabbing some loose pieces of wood from the nearby trees. "Grab some dry leaves over there," he tells me. I do as he says and bring the little amount of brush I can find over to him, watching as he quickly starts a small fire.
"That was fast."
"Survival 101. Never took the class?"
"Afraid I missed that one," I tell him.
"Here." He tugs at my arm so I sit down beside him and he wraps one of his arms around me, shifting us so I'm in front of the fire. "Take these sticks." I place my hands around them as his hands cover mine. With a quick motion, we both continue rubbing the sticks against each other as small puffs of smoke billow off to the side. He removes one of his hands to add in some of the leaves I collected. He holds a couple of them up to the flame long enough to catch and burn along with the sticks. It only takes a few minutes before we have a decent size flame growing.
Sin grabs another stick and impales the hawk before holding it over the flame. My stomach is turning angrier the longer we have to wait and the thought of taking a quick bite as he just did minutes ago doesn't seem as revolting as it did. I close my eyes, inhaling the burning scent, trying to avoid looking at the bird. But my mouth continues to water, and my patience is gone. My starvation is more than prominent, the pains within me surging beyond the outer pains.
"This should be good enough that you won't get sick from eating this." Won't he get sick after eating it raw? He tears off one of the legs and hands to me. My mouth fills with water and I take a bite, quickly following it with several more, feeling the urging to fill my stomach at a rate that will surely make me sick. "Hey, slow down. You can't eat that much, you'll vomit it all up. You haven't eaten much in days and your stomach is not a normal size." I look at him, waiting for him to crack a smile and tell me he's joking. I want to eat as much as I can and I don't quite care about becoming sick after. Feeling full isn't something I've felt in longer than I can remember.
"I'm still hungry," I tell him, shoving more food into my mouth.
He takes the bird from my hands and takes a bite for himself. "Take a break. Trust me." Sin's eyes close as he takes several small bites. I even think I hear a soft moan escape his lips, similar to the sounds he was making when we were satisfying a different hunger, and the sound makes me want to hear it more. "This is a damn good bird."
The hunger within my stomach turns to a dull pain, a manageable pain. A type of sensation I don't remember feeling before. Maybe it's fullness, or maybe it's my body going into shock after eating meat. I haven't eaten anything like this since the pot roast Mom made the night before I was taken. The first few months I was locked in the shed, I would try to imagine and remember what the savory taste was like, how it made my taste buds tingle. After a while, though, I forgot what it tasted like. I couldn't figure out how to imagine it anymore. I have forgotten what almost everything tastes like. Nothing sweet has touched my tongue in over three years. I imagine it would hurt my teeth if I were to taste it now. I imagine my tongue wouldn't know how to react to such an incredible sensation.
There were times when I would run my tongue down the length of my arm so I could remember what salt tasted like. After a while, I couldn't taste it anymore, though. I didn't taste salt until Sin kissed me, and it made the hunger grow in more ways than I thought possible. "Do you want more?" he asks.
I take what's left of the bird and nibble along the meaty area, feeling the warmth of each bite fill the ache within me. "If we continue in this direction, we may find more, but it's getting dark. Do you want to call it a night?"
I nod my head and place the bird down against the trees behind me. "How is your head?"
"It's fine." It's not fine, but unless he's bleeding, he won't say otherwise. He grabs his bag and places it down behind him, lying down and resting his head on it. He takes my arm and pulls me with him, my head falling heavily against his chest as his arm tightens around me. "I'm sorry I left you earlier."
"It was my fault." I wanted him to leave me behind. I wanted to die. I still might want to, but as long as I'm here within his embrace, I can tough it out a little longer.
"Reese," he whispers. "I really do love you. I love you for making loneliness a little less painful."
I close my eyes, feeling a tiny smile pinch at my lips. In a world outside of Chipley, Sin probably wouldn't look at me, but here, I'm the only thing he has. He's all I have. Maybe he was right about love and it's variable meanings, and I'll take whatever this is.
Falling asleep has come easily, but only until Sin jerked his body out from beneath mine. He's curled in a ball, vomiting against a tree. He doesn't say much in between the episodes, but I attempt to rub my hand over his back, which he allows. After emptying all of the food out of his body four more times, he falls backward, clutching his stomach.
I take a piece of the torn clothing from earlier and soak it in the creek. When I return, he's groaning. I wipe his face down and press the cloth over the back of his neck. "I'm going to die," he says.
"
You're going to be okay, Sin."
"No, you don't understand."
"You just need to get it out of your system," I insist.
"What if it was a trap, Reese? They can see us. They know we’re here. They know we're trying to cheat the system. They know we're trying to escape. And they're not going to let us."
22
Chapter Ten
SIN
I think there's a hole in my stomach and I feel like I'm burning from the inside out. Someone did this to me. Someone had to have done this to me. I try to force up more bile, but there's nothing left. My head is pounding again and I think I'm seeing double. Cool water is running over my forehead and Reese is repeating something over and over, but I can't make out what she's saying.
Another shooting pain writhes through me, forcing my body to contract into a tighter ball than I am already in. I have felt sorry for myself a number of times over the past several years. I've blamed everyone for the demise of my life and it has been those times where I have felt like giving up. Right now is one of those times. I think I'm finally losing this battle. I promised myself I would go out fighting, and God knows I have tried.
"Sin, we have to go," Reese shouts in my ear. How the hell am I supposed to move right now? My stomach is cramped into a tight knot and I think the rest of my senses are gone at this point too. It's the next phase. My body is shutting down. It's all part of the plan. "Sin." Reese's hands are around my wrists, pulling me up. I can hear the panic in her voice. There's going to come a time very soon where we both choose to give up at the same time. It feels inevitable.
A cold sting burns across my face and it helps me to focus on Reese and her hand winding up to hit me again. "Whoa," I groan.
"Let's go. Now." I watch her lift her arm and shoot her pistol a couple of times, and with the slow motion I feel like I'm moving in, I turn to see what she's shooting. It only takes a second for me to stand the hell up and grab her by the arm. With each step I take, I feel like I'm breaking through the earth's surface from my heavy weight. And then there are the trees that are swaying. Fuck. I don't know if I can do this. "Where are they coming from?"
"I don't know," I say, winded.
She stops behind a tree to catch her breath, and I stop beside her, holding myself up against the tree, breathing in and out at the same rate she is. We watch as the oversized hawks fly by, several at a time. "Was it because we killed one?"
"Again, I really don't know. I don't know much of anything. No more than you do, anyway." Things change here all of the time, or at least whenever fuckface Crownwell decides to do this. He doesn't want anyone getting too comfortable with their lives here.
"Well, what are we supposed to do? Just keep running? Because it seems like that's all we've been doing for days and I still don't have any clue what we're running from or what we're running to. Are we trying to find a way out?" She keeps asking me the same questions, like I'm going to give her different answers. Even when I was living here as the "caretaker's son", I knew next to nothing of my surroundings, the real reasons Mom was working here, as well as any reason why the other people were living here. Whenever I inquired, I was brushed off or ignored. It wasn't until I overheard Crownwell's phone call that I knew exactly what this place was. That man will do whatever it takes to keep this place a secret. For good reason. When anyone finds out about Chipley, he's done. Personally, I'd like to let every prisoner out of this place and let nature take its course, but I'm guessing that won't happen.
"Yes, we have to keep running. I want to get us out of here."
"Sin, how long are we going to keep running away from things? If it's not people trying to kill us for food, they're trying to kill us to become food, and now there are these hawks or whatever the hell they are, and they want us dead too. Neither of us is completely sure we even want to continue running, and yet, we're supposed to just keep going. We need a plan. We need to know what direction we're heading in. Don't you understand this? Don't you get it? We could be running toward our death!" she shouts with frustration. "Why are we going to keep running toward our death when it would be so easy to just give up and die? I need a reason, Sin. Give me a reason!"
"Me, Reese. Can I just be enough of a reason right now? I know I'm nothing, and I know I'm an asshole, but, Jesus, for me, will you just have a little hope?" I have no hope, and I'm asking her to have hope. "Why did you want to survive all of that time in the shed? Was it because you had hope that some day you would get out?"
"Yes," she says quietly, seeming a little out of it. I take her hand, ignoring the pain in my stomach, the need to vomit, and the throbbing on the back of my head.
"Look, I wanted to head in this direction for food, but also, I heard a rumor of a way out, but it was only a general direction. What other shot do we have right now?"
"Sin," she whispers. "The sky." She points off into the distance between the thickly covered branches, but all I see is the darkness of the night.
"What is it?" I ask her, settling back down into the ground. I can't keep walking right now.
"It's orange and yellow. Do you see the shapes? They're beautiful." I glance over at her, waiting for her to crack a smile or laugh. Not that I could figure out how to do either of those right now, but I don't know what the hell she's talking about.
"You being funny?" I ask her.
The confused and yet amazed expression covering her face doesn't change after my question. Her focus is locked on the small portion of the sky we can see. "No, don't you see it?" And there's the smile, but it's not a joking smile. It's a smile as if she just found her exit from hell. And it's worrying me.
She takes some steps back into the path we were just running down and continues forward as if she were in a trance. Dammit. I stand up and follow her, bouncing from tree to tree as support. We walk for what must be a mile before the trees fade into a large open field of grass. There's grass. I haven't seen this much grass in years. Reese slips her boots off and tucks them under her arm as she runs ahead. "Feathers!" she shouts. "Do you feel the feathers beneath your feet, Sin?" Feathers? "And the horses. Look at all of them. I used to ride, did I tell you that?"
I finally catch up with her and stop her. "Reese, the sky is dark, the feathers are grass, and there are no horses or animals anywhere." She tugs her arm out of my hand and continues running forward.
"You don't know what you're talking about," she shouts back to me. "It's so beautiful out here."
"Reese," I call calmly. I don't want to get into a scuffle with her, but I'm pretty sure she's hallucinating. Another phase.
"Look, Sin!" It takes me some time to catch up to her again, and when I do, she points off into the distance. "Do you see that?"
"No, Reese. There's nothing but grass." She reaches out and claws her hand around the air, twisting her wrist as if she were opening a door. A door that isn't there.
"Are you coming?" she asks. I'm left scratching my head as she ducks her head down a couple of inches and walks in through the empty air as if she were trying not to hit her head on something. "Come on!" I follow her, though, without concern of hitting my head or a door closing in my face. She spins around, her eyes wide with excitement. "Do you see the door?"
"The one you just walked through?" I ask, trying my hardest to hide the sarcasm. If she is in fact hallucinating, there's not much I can do to convince her of anything other than what she's seeing.
"No, that one," she points to more open space. She places her boots down into the grass and reaches inside; retrieving the key I gave her while she was in the shed. She kneels down and extends her neck, squinting her eyes at something as if it were right in front of her nose. She places the key carefully into what I only see as air, and twists it. Her other hand mimics the action of opening another door and her head jerks backward. "Oh my God. We're saved," she cries. "Sin, it's the way out. We're saved. We're saved." She falls onto her hands and pulls herself forward. "I see my house. My mom must be inside. I'm going to see my mom. I'm goi
ng to show her I'm still alive. She's going to be so happy, Sin. Do you have any idea?" My heart crumbles into a million pieces at the hope she's going to lose. I don't know whether to stop her or let her figure it out. Regardless, she stands back up and continues forward, the smile on her face only growing larger. I can't break this to her.
"Reese," I call over. "Can you wait?" I feel so damn dizzy and weak. I need to close my eyes just to settle myself down.
"I know it isn't much, just a little farmhouse for the two of us. But we painted it blue and added the white shutters ourselves. I helped mom plant those rose bushes in front and we lined the little dirt path with plants just so it would feel more like home. It still looks exactly the same. She didn't leave and she didn't give up hope. I have to believe that." Her words stir in my head as I do my best to refocus my attention on where she's going. I can't lose her again, and with her lucid visions right now, it would only take a few minutes to get lost. Lost. We are lost in the middle of fucking nowhere. We've been walking in so many different directions that I don't know which way we came from. Not to mention, the horizon only reveals more grass on every side.
Where did she go? I turn around, finding her—finding her...walking toward a blue house with white shutters. "What the hell is going on?"
"Come on," she says, smiling, waving me forward.
Every step I take is hesitant. A house like this would not be in Chipley. A house like this isn't in Chipley. She opens the front door and continues waving me toward her. This is insane. I'm most likely insane. I am.
I enter into the small house that smells of flowers and…just…clean air. And something is cooking, something that's making my taste buds burn and my cheeks clench. "Mom?" Reese calls out, turning a corner. "Mom!" Before I follow her into the next room, I hear cries—loud, cheerful cries filled with elation. I turn the corner into a small kitchen, seeing Reese squeeze her arms around her mother. Her mother's face is red, with tears barreling over her cheeks and her hands are wrapped so tightly around Reese that her skin is white. They both fall to the ground, locked within each other's embrace, crying harder and louder as the seconds pass. "Mom, I missed you so much." Her mother—the nurse I remember—doesn't respond. However, as her eyes open and she finds me, fear illuminates her face and she pulls Reese with her as she backs away across the floor, as if I were standing here with a gun pointed at both of them.
Locked In: No Way Out Series - Book One Page 13