Imprisoned

by J D Jacobs

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Tuesday’s fine. Who’s going with me? Are you going?”

  “I can’t; the hospital has been too busy,” he says, calming down. “Harrison is going with you. He’s meeting Avvil’s leader–I think his name is Miguel–and they’re going to negotiate some future plans.”

  “Nobody else is going?” I ask, trying not to push the subject too much. Dad shakes his head and adds that the helicopter can’t fit too many people, but I know that’s a lie. The Scavs go in groups of four and five, so Cody or Grant could fit in there with us. I don’t want to just spend one-on-one time with Jenkins the whole trip. Now isn’t the time to argue with him, though. I’ve already pushed too many buttons today and it’s not even 7 AM.

  “Well when you know more details about the trip, let me know,” I tell him, trying to look at it in any positive way I can. “Maybe I’ll like the new city and want to stay.”

  “Who knows,” Dad says with a kidding shrug. “But I want you to be in your room today, really. The harassment and headache isn’t worth roaming the streets.”

  “Okay, that’s fine.” I then turn and walk out of his room. As I close the door behind me, I can hear Dad calling for Jenkins into his walkie-talkie, rather angrily. Even though I know Dad wants what’s best for me, that was still a very unsuccessful talk with him. I feel like there’s really only one person I can talk to about this that would truly understand.

  I immediately rush to the roof where Grant can always be found. I find him sitting on the vertical barrier on the edge of the roof, looking out into the city…

  “So let me get this straight,” he begins as he tries to shake his disbelief, “you let Jenkins convince you into jumping on a stage and asking a crowd of drunk people if any of them were immune to the virus?”

  “I didn’t say anything about being immune,” I defend myself. “I’m not that stupid. I just asked if anyone in the crowd had any purple to them. That’s all. If nobody in that bar has any purple, then they have no clue what I’m even talking about.”

  “If you want to go on your own little scavenger hunt to find this third person, be my guest,” Grant responds. “Keep in mind, though, that even if you are to find this third person, you can’t really trust if they are telling you the truth. I can guarantee you that mostly everybody in Tryton will know about what happened at the bar last night, so people are going to come up to you with purple spray-painted hair and lie to you. It’s going to be difficult to know if people are actually telling you the truth.”

  “Dad thinks the same thing,” I say. “He wants me to stay in the hospital and avoid other people until this dies down.”

  “It’s bound to happen,” Grant agrees. “Right now, people don’t know what the purple color means, they just know that you’re looking for it. If someone can tell you what it means, then they may actually be on to something.” Grant takes my silence as an objection. “No one knows what it means, right?”

  “Jenkins knows,” I ashamedly confess. Grant stands up from his chair and throws his fingers down his slicked hair in disapproval.

  “Jesus Christ, Jaden, you just blabbered your entire life story to him, didn’t you? One minute you hate the guy for all he’s worth, the next minute you’re having drinks and sharing stories with him.” His eyes suddenly grow big as a possibility enters his mind. “You didn’t… My name didn’t come up, did it?”

  “No. No, no, no, no. Absolutely not.”

  Grant sighs every bit of relief he can. “I know you’re very indiscreet when it comes to the things that involve yourself, and I don’t blame you. If I was alone for six months, I’d be ready to write my own autobiography. But please be cautious with my information. I’m trusting you that you will.”

  “I promise,” I tell him. “And it wasn’t like that at all with Jenkins. He manipulated me and lied straight to my face. I shouldn’t have ever agreed to go with him in the first place. I’ve just been so desperate into finding this third person. I’ve thought that finding this third person would maybe help everyone out, help me out. Take some of the pressure off of me. Ever since I’ve been rescued, I’ve been bombarded with constant pressure. Just because I’m immune, everyone in this city thinks I’m going to somehow make them immune, too. It’s a lot of stress to have a responsibility over my head that I don’t even plan on carrying out. I was hoping that finding the third person would make things a little easier for me.”

  “I know it sucks,” Grant says as he sits back down in the chair beside me. “Why do you think I don’t want anybody to know about my immunity? You got put into a situation that you couldn’t control. But look at it this way: yes, you’re immune and now looked at as a savior, but that’s better than the alternative, right? If you weren’t immune, you would have been dead months ago. That doesn’t sound like an appealing choice, in my opinion.”

  I give an agreeing shrug and look out into the city with him. The streets are slowly filling with people on bicycles as they ride to their job. Life in Tryton is waking up for the day. Somewhere down there is the third person I’m looking for, and I can’t help but think what it is that person is doing right now. I need to get my mind off of that subject. “So how are you holding up without Abbi? Miss her yet?”

  “Like crazy,” he says as he pulls a cigarette out and asks me if I mind before lighting it. “It’s almost been two weeks without her and I feel like it’s been a year already. I’ve been bored out of my mind; all I do anymore is smoke cigarettes and help unload whatever the other Scavs pick up. My next Scav mission isn’t for another three days, so it’ll be a boring three days until then.”

  “You need to chill with those things,” I say, pointing to his cigarette. “It’d be a shame to be immune to what’s killed billions of people, only to die from a stick of tobacco.” I snicker at him and he does the same.

  “My brother got me hooked on these things,” Grants says with a reflective puff. “That dude was nothing but trouble. In high school, he’d steal beer from the store and give me some when I was in the eighth grade. He even got caught smoking weed with the preacher’s daughter while school was still going on. Almost got expelled for it. Who even has the guts to ask the preacher’s daughter if she smokes weed?”

  “Sounds like quite the guy. What was his name?”

  “Alex. Man, I thought he was the coolest. Growing up, he and my mother were all I had. My pops bailed out on our family, so I idolized Alex. I wanted to be like Alex–in every good and bad way–but he was trouble, at times. I couldn’t convince myself to do some of the things he did.”

  “Like smoking weed with the preacher’s daughter during school?”

  “Exactly.”

  I smile. “I don’t guess you did anything like that when you were younger?”

  He thinks for a second, then laughs. “Worst I did was probably roll a couple of houses.”

  “Amateur hour. Who hadn’t done that?” Grant admits defeat and laughs with me. As our laughing dies down, I realize that I haven’t mentioned my new vacation to Grant. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Guess what Jenkins and I are doing on Tuesday.”

  “Going to Avvil,” he answers. I’m thoroughly shocked he knew, and he takes my confused look as a means to explain how he knows. “Jenkins asked me this morning if I wanted to fly the helicopter.”

  Of course, someone has to fly the helicopter. I’m so relieved that it won’t just be me and Jenkins now. “That’s great! Do you know how to get to this place?”

  “I told him I didn’t want to go.”

  Well, there goes that relief. “What? Why not?”

  “I told you my next Scav mission is in three days. I’d be pushing it to get back in time.”

  “So what? You can make it back. If not, your group can patrol on wheels without you.” I really hope I’m convincing him just the slightest.

  “I simply didn’t want to go, it’s nothing personal,” he says. “Besides, it’s not like you’re going to constantly be with Jenkins anyway. You’re g
oing to get to Avvil, you’re going to shake tons of hands and boost everyone’s spirits while Jenkins and Avvil’s leader have their little chat about saving the human population, then you’ll come home the next day. The trip is a big deal, but at the same time, it’s very low-key. I don’t even think the people here are going to know that you were even gone.”

  “I’m sure the Tevoc Shop will run out of purple nail polish while I’m–” I immediately pause when I notice a faceless Grim abruptly appear in front of Grant and I, sitting on the edge of the roof and facing us. This Grim is new to me: light brown hair falling to her shoulders, wearing a beautiful flared dress that’s been kissed with a faint sunset orange. The Grim looks stunning, and she reminds me a lot of the Grim I saw in Westwood while I was watching the burning car.

  “What?” Grant asks, wondering why I stopped talking. He can’t see the Grim, so he has no clue she’s even there.

  “One of them is here. The faceless Grims I keep telling you about? There’s one sitting directly in front of us.”

  Grant looks to the edge and back to me, lost. “Here you go again with these faceless people. There’s no one there, Jaden.” He’s never fully believed my story about the Grims and what they do, so his response is somewhat mocking.

  “Do you really trust me like you say you do, Grant?” I fire at him. “She’s here. She’s gorgeous.”

  “Describe her to me.”

  “Okay. She’s on the edge, facing you, right now. Young woman, probably in her 20s or 30s. Light brown hair; she’s twirling it in her fingers right now. Very pretty dress, light shade of sunset orange over it.”

  I look to Grant to see him facing directly ahead, his eyes locked with a person he can’t see. He’s intent, trying to feel the presence of the Grim. He reaches in his front pocket and pulls out his wallet, along with whatever else was in his pocket, all while keeping his focus on the air in front of him. He takes a small picture out of his wallet and extends his arm for me to take it from him.

  “Is this the faceless girl you’re talking about?” I grab the picture and look at it.

  In the picture are two people standing on a balcony with the lights of a busy city night descended behind them. One of the people is Grant, standing with a glass of champagne in one hand and winking at the camera, dressed in a casual business suit with the top two buttons of his shirt undone. His other hand is around a woman who stands on her tiptoes to kiss Grant’s cheek. The woman’s light brown hair dangles over Grant’s shoulder, and she’s wearing the same lightly-toned orange dress that the Grim in front of me is wearing.

  “This is her.”

  “Oh my God” suddenly escapes Grant’s mouth as he chokes up on every letter, his chest heaving with emotion. “How did you know about her? Did you find this picture before? Are you lying to me!?”

  “Grant, I swear I’m not lying to you. I don’t know who this woman is or what she even looked like until she popped up a few seconds ago. Who is she?”

  Grant blinks excessively, starting to lose hold on his emotions. “That’s my wife in the picture. Her name is Bridgette. Can she, can she hear me?”

  “Yes, she can.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Foxx. This isn’t the time to lie to me.”

  “Grant. I promise you.”

  Grant gives a few loud huffs as the realization hits him: he’s about to talk to his dead wife. Grant scrambles his brain for what to say while beads of sweat trickle down his face. “Bridge… I… I wish you were here with me. I wish you knew how much I miss you and how I much I love you. I still think of you every waking moment, just like I have ever since I first met you.” I look at the faceless Bridgette, sitting there with a hand to her nonexistent mouth like she’s trying to hold her emotions in, as well.

  Grant wipes his face with his hand as he continues on. “Just the other day, I was thinking back to our first anniversary, where we danced for hours in our empty home. God, that first year of our marriage was rough, but that night was spectacular. You were so… beautiful. I wish I could relive that moment. I wish I could tell you how much I loved you and still love you. I would give anything to see your face, to feel your touch, just one more time.” He reaches his hand out in front of him, blindingly hoping that she would grab it. However, she leans out of his way, knowing that if she touches him that he’ll instantly die.

  “Grant, you can’t touch her. I told you: one touch from a Grim is deadly.”

  He stops moving his hand and leaves it hovering. Bridgette moves out of range from Grant’s hand completely, but she turns her head and buries it in her hands as Grant remains still, wishing he were able to see his wife that he adores so much. Bridgette, who is clearly distressed from this encounter, disappears in thin air, avoiding anymore pain brought to the both of them.

  “Grant, she left. She’s not there anymore.”

  Grant looks as if his heart has been ripped clean from him. He lowers his hand and places it on his lap. “I miss her,” he tells me, heartbroken. “I would do anything in this world to talk to her again, to watch her dance, hear her sing, cook her dinner, anything to show her how much she means to me…” Tears silently exit his eyes as the memories flood in his mind. “Every night before I go to sleep, I think about her and how badly I wish she would’ve made it to Tryton with me.”

  I place the picture he gave me at his feet. “She’s with you, though. She only left right now because she was as distraught as you are. She will always be with you, Grant. I think she showed up right now just so I could tell you that she was here.”

  After digesting what I said, he reaches down to pick up the picture and other small things that fell out of his pocket, one of which happens to be the same wooden spear that I saw the man in Roaksville carve in the flashback I had a few weeks ago. Grant rotates the spear in between his fingers, studying every splinter on it.

  “I saw the man in Roaksville give you that. What did he say to you when he handed it to you?”

  Grant waits in silence, then answers. “He told me that if I was serious about wanting to die, this will do the trick. It’s sharp enough, smooth enough to slit my wrists with ease… He gave spears to people right before they egotoned, that way they could choose to bleed out before they lost control… I’ve held on to this spear ever since, in case I ever got too low.”

  Grant stands up out of his chair, still looking at the spear. “I’ve thought about using it. Even in Tryton, I thought about it. But I don’t think I need it anymore. I finally have a reason to live, and that’s knowing that Bridgette is with me.” He turns around to the back of the hospital, where the wall of the city is only a few dozen yards away. He walks to the opposite side of the roof and chucks the spear off the roof and toward the wall. The spear clanks once on top of the metal wall then bounces off and falls on the outside of it.

  Grant walk backs to me, a peace in his eyes that he had forgotten he was looking for. “I finally have something to live for again.”

  II. Verdict

  10.

  I’m kneeling in a dark room. It’s completely dark, and I have to rub my eyes to make sure I don’t involuntarily have them shut. I try to stand up, but there’s an overbearing weight on my shoulders pushing me down. I only feel the force when I try to move from my knelt position. It doesn’t take me long to realize that I’m having a nightmare. No matter how hard I try, I’m not budging from this spot.

  I hear the rolling of thunder and feel raindrops immediately after. The rain falls on me heavier with each passing second, and I’m soon drenched, immobile, and scared, all at once.

  Lightning cracks overhead and gives me a brief flash of light. The lightning reveals that my shirt isn’t soaked from just rain; my shirt is bloody and my stomach is bleeding profusely. The rain isn’t able to wash the blood off of my hands. For some reason, it seems permanent.

  A second lightning bolt streaks overhead and shows that the blood continues to pour. I pat my stomach softly to make sure I don’t have an injury that I’m not
aware of. I quickly slide my shirt off, running my hand over my body, searching for a wound. I don’t feel any pain, so I’m not sure where the blood is coming from.

  I hear a low grunt. Nobody is around me, so that sound must have escaped from me. I then hear a gurgling sound come from my throat, sounding clogged.

  “You’re fine!” I say aloud as a reminder to myself. Another gurgling sound, this one louder, follows the reminder. My throat is clear, so where is the sound coming from?

  Another crackle of lightning. This one is overly loud and bright, like the very last firework on the Fourth of July. I get another look at myself; the blood keeps getting worse as it streams down my arms. It doesn’t take me long to realize that the rain itself has now turned into blood. I lick my lips, tasting salt and iron.

  In the crack of another lightning bolt, I realize that this time I’m holding someone in my arms. A hooded figure, draped in an all-black cloak, lies in front of me. The person looks exactly like the cloaked woman I dreamt about in Westwood, but I can’t decide if this is her again. I can’t see a face; in fact, I don’t have time to notice any discernable quality before the lightning disappears again.

  “Wake up!” I hear being yelled in front of me. I know I didn’t say it, and I don’t know how the cloaked figure in my arms could’ve said it if he or she is choking on their own blood…

  I feel a hard slap come across my face, and my eyes shoot open.

  Cody stands directly above me as I’m sitting up in my bed. I’m drenched in sweat and shirtless. I see my shirt wadded in a ball on the other side of the room.

  “Chill out, man. You had another nightmare,” Cody tells me. My heart is bouncing through my chest as I struggle to grasp any breath I can.

  “Yeah, I’m uhh… I’m fine. Thanks for waking me up.”

  “I’m telling you, Jaden, this isn’t a good idea. You hadn’t had nightmares in weeks and now you’ve had them two nights in a row ever since they decided to ship you out to Avvil,” Cody tells me as he makes his way back to his couch.