Persephone’s Curse

by Sandra Bats

  Very carefully, I motioned for Elin to stay where she was, then inched forward. I crawled on my hands and knees. Peered around the container door, hoping to find some warehouse worker. Instead, multiple flashlight beams poured in from the front of the warehouse. They moved in formation, positively making them military.

  My mind raced as I estimated our chances. How far away were they? Would they see us if we left the container? How far were we from the back door? How many of them were there? What were our odds for fight and flight?

  A mind running on adrenaline is a strange combination of synapses firing and decision-making within milliseconds. Ultimately, it was mostly instinct that decided and I rushed to Elin’s side to whisper: “Let’s try for the back door.”

  She followed me to the container’s opening without objection. From there, I knew any sound could be our downfall, so I gestured that I’d go first, then she’d hand me the rifles and follow me. I was sure Elin understood the severity of the situation, because for once she didn’t argue.

  The drop wasn’t too far. I easily hung on to the container then silently plummeted the last few feet. The light cones indicated the MP’s were still searching the shipping containers by the front entrance. I reached up for the rifles, then Elin jumped, landing next to me with a quiet thud.

  To our advantage, the light was awfully dim between the containers. One hand on her shoulder, I urged Elin towards the shadows. We snuck through the labyrinth of stacked boxes and containers until we could see the back door thirty feet from us. Thirty empty feet we had to cross, hope the door was unlocked and that we could slip through without anyone noticing.

  I glanced at Elin. The beam of a streetlight fell through the windows high up on the wall and tinted her face eerily white.

  I stepped forward, almost out of the shadows, to check on the MPs. My foot caught on something and before I had a chance to react, I heard the scraping of metal dragged over the ground. I froze. I’d overlooked a stupid metal pipe. This one second of carelessness had made enough noise to alert them to us.

  I saw flashlights move around. Heard men talking. One of them headed our way. Elin and I pressed to the wall of containers behind us, holding our breath. The beam of his flashlight grew awfully close. He’d have us in a few moments. If he managed to tell his squad, we’d stand no chance. We’d die because I stumbled over a stupid piece of metal.

  I focused on the light moving, counting the steps he’d need. The moment I saw him round the corner, my mind was quiet. The first thing inching around was the barrel of his gun. Before I could even think, I grabbed it, pulling him forward. The gun slipped from his grasp in surprise and I hoped Elin would grab it. I was preoccupied wrapping my hand over his mouth. I put him in a chokehold, squeezing ruthlessly. He fought back but I was no stranger to it. I kept squeezing until he fell unconscious and I carefully lowered him to the ground.

  I indicated for Elin to run for the door. We took off. I grabbed the handle; pulled. The bulky door slid open with the bloodcurdling squeak of metal against metal. Someone shouted nearby. As soon as we darted through the tiny opening and pushed the door closed, we heard bullets ricochet off it.

  Elin shoved the pipe under the door, effectively blocking it. I hadn’t even seen her pick it up. We turned and ran.

  We rushed down a few streets and alleys, finally escaping that sector. Never before had I wished to know how to hotwire a car. It had always been Josh’s field of expertise. I’d considered it unnecessary myself. But then, it would’ve come in handy, both of us were tiring quickly.

  Eventually, we covered enough distance to slow down. I panted heavily, and Elin bent over for a moment, bracing herself on her knees.

  “You ok?” I asked between pants.

  “Yeah.” She inhaled deeply, then resumed walking. “Told you, it was a stupid idea!”

  “Didn’t hear you come up with a better one,” I mumbled. I was still coming down from that adrenaline high and it made me feel all sorts of messed up. That’s what I blamed not thinking about what I said to Elin next on. “I wish you’d stay back at the school where you’re safe.”

  “Oh, just stop it!” When I asked what on earth I was supposed to stop, she huffed and stomped on through the snow. “Stop pretending you need to protect me. I can take perfectly good care of myself. Stop looking at me like it’s your job to take care of me.”

  I hadn’t known it was that obvious. That I carried my need to keep Elin safe so visibly on my face.

  “I can’t,” I muttered under my breath. Felt like I was admitting to something I didn’t want to see myself. I ran my hand through my hair. Hurrying to keep up with Elin’s angry stride.

  “Why not? Just stop pretending you care.”

  “I can’t. I do care about protecting you. I care about you.”

  She gasped as the words left my mouth. I think I did, too. I surely hadn’t meant to say that. Nor how harsh it had come out. She made me nervous. The way she stared at me made me insecure. She took all the thoughts I had meticulously pulled together and scattered them. Scattered them enough for me to do stupid things.

  Like staring at her mouth when she stopped and turned towards me. She was seething, ready to bite my head off.

  “You can’t just say things like that,” Elin sputtered.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  Elin seemed to freeze for a second. Her breathing heavy, lips just slightly parted. Her eyes were fixed on me like she was solving a riddle. She inhaled once, shaking her head just the tiniest bit then took another deep breath before she spoke again.

  “Because you don’t mean it. It’s just stuff you say. Stuff you’d say to other girls just to get them in your bed, without a second thought to the consequences. And that might work for you but I can’t afford to not care about consequences.”

  “What? You think I don’t …” I grabbed her wrist and spun her towards me. “You really think I’m just playing when I say I want to keep you safe? How can you not notice that … How can you not believe I care about you when all I’m thinking about is kissing you senseless?”

  I knew how stupid those words were the moment they left my mouth. Elin scoffed and took another step back, eyeing me warily.

  “Just stop,” she whispered. “You really don’t get it, do you? This might seem convenient for you. You think you like me and all that jazz, you think we’ll have fun, but what then Jayden? I need that home. I can’t do this thing with you, flirt with you, joke around and then when you grow tired and annoyed of me, I’ll lose everything. Have you even thought about that? What happens when you move on to the next girl? I live in your room. Do you even understand how that feels? To know that I had to take your charity? To know that I owe you my life?”

  She sounded scared. Like she actually thought that if we ever had a fallout I’d chase her out of the school. I didn’t know she believed she owed me for offering to help her.

  “I never expected anything in return,” I uttered. “Please, believe me. I absolutely don’t think you owe me anything. And I’d never expect anything in return for caring about you. I just do. I like you, there are no conditions attached.”

  Elin scoffed, shaking her head slowly. “There are always conditions attached. You might think there aren’t but … you wanted to be my friend, and now you think you care about me. But there are things in my past that I can’t talk about. Parts of me that I’ll never be able to give. I need you to stop wanting to protect me, wanting to fix me because you don’t understand what you’re getting into.”

  “What if I don’t?” I asked. Not because I wanted to anger her, but because I truly wasn’t sure that I could. I could likely count the number of times I’d spoken to a woman without flirting on one hand.

  “You’ll have to. I can’t be your friend if you don’t. Actually, I think until then I might be better off not talking to you at all.”

  I stared after her as she walked ahead towards home.

  ◆◆◆

 
Elin’s name was no longer on the blackboard in the office when I went to wipe mine off. Cam lounged behind the desk. He looked up at me. Maybe he waited for me to say something but I remained silent. Eventually he spoke first.

  “What did you do?” he asked. “And don’t tell me it was nothing, cause Elin just asked if she could go on patrol with me from now on.”

  I hadn’t expected that. I groaned and pressed my head to the table. I summarized what our fight was about. When Cam didn’t understand my mumbling, I looked up. “I told her I care about her. And that I’m thinking about kissing her senseless.”

  “Man, that’s … trashy,” Cam gave me a mock disgusted look. I didn’t respond. He sat down across from me. “Really, what’s going on? That can’t be the full reason she doesn’t want to be around you right now.”

  I explained how we’d almost gotten shot and how I’d told Elin that I wanted her safe. How she thought it was something I just said, without meaning it. Cam grinned when I mentioned the stupid stuff I told Elin about wanting to keep her safe.

  “She really doesn’t care that you like her, does she? And don’t even try denying that you do.”

  I didn’t. There was no point in it. “Doesn’t matter. She won’t talk to me until I stop flirting, so I guess I’ll stop. Just wish I could understand it.” I rubbed a hand over my face, yawning. “Anyway, why are you still up?”

  “Nigel’s been having night terrors again. And once I finally managed to get him to fall back asleep, I couldn’t sleep.”

  “I thought he was getting better,” I questioned.

  “He did before he got the flu. Since then, it’s been back to square one. He wakes up screaming and all. Doesn’t want to fall back asleep cause he’s so scared. Diane told me he fell asleep during lessons the other day, that’s how tired he gets.”

  “Can’t Jane help?”

  “She’s not a therapist. She could give him meds to sleep but … I mean I’m not even surprised. Look around us, constantly on the verge of starving. Josh is always out on patrol or hanging with girls in town and Nigel notices. I try to keep it from him, but the kid is smart. He always knows when I worry or when Josh and I are fighting.”

  Really, there wasn’t much I could tell him. I knew nothing about kids. Cam was around my age when he became the parent figure for Josh and Nigel. It was a responsibility I wasn’t keen on having. I never even wanted the responsibility for the many lives I’d been given, but it was still nothing like raising a child.

  ◆◆◆

  The next day went by awfully slow. Elin ignored me. Well, more like she evaded me. It sucked. She’d convinced Cam to go check out the black market with her that night. It only made sense that she went. She was the one able to judge whether the chickens she wanted to trade for were a good deal. Same went for crops, if they came across any. I just really wished it didn’t mean I’d be cooped up at the school. I had to be, though, I promised Cam I’d watch Nigel.

  Since Josh was out on patrol and Cam in town, he told Nigel to come find me if he had any nightmares. I wasn’t surprised when I heard tiny footsteps pattering down the quiet hallway towards my office just after eleven that night.

  Nigel turned the corner a moment later. His brown hair stood in tufts and he rubbed his eyes with one hand, the other holding tightly onto his teddy bear. The poor bear was about to come apart at the seams, but Nigel never slept without it, far as I knew.

  “Hey buddy. You can’t sleep?” I asked.

  Nigel shook his head and I motioned him closer, lifting him so he could sit on my desk. He was skinnier than he should’ve been. Weight he hadn’t gained back after the flu. The little guy had already seen too much in his short life.

  “Want to tell me why you can’t sleep? Did you have a nightmare?”

  He shook his head.

  “No nightmare?” I asked. “Anything else on your mind?”

  He shrugged.

  “Mhm, sometimes I can’t sleep when there are things worrying me. I lay awake then, thinking and thinking. Is it something like that?”

  He didn’t exactly respond. Instead, he cradled his teddy. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but curious, something that always seemed to best describe this shy little boy.

  “I heard Cam talk to Josh. He didn’t know I heard. He said there was a boy in town yesterday and they wanted to kill him because he stole some bread, but he was just hungry!”

  The frown Nigel wore on his face now was enough to break hearts.

  “You’re right. He probably was hungry. In winter, people get very hungry in town, because there’s so little food. But they shouldn’t have tried hurting the boy. You heard he’s safe too, right? He got away.”

  I tried to point out how we’d almost run out of food a few weeks earlier. How people felt tenser then. I was surprised to spot tears rising in his hazel eyes.

  “Hey, Nigel, what’s wrong?”

  “Don’t be angry! I was just so hungry I couldn’t sleep. I just took a tiny plate the other day!”

  Big tears ran down his cheeks. I needed a second to comprehend that he’d been carrying the guilt over that for days, maybe even weeks.

  I kept my voice soft. Ducking my head, I looked into his big eyes, trying to explain that this was no problem. Wide-eyed he asked whether he’d be punished for stealing.

  “Nige, nobody will hurt you. It’s absolutely no problem that you got food when you were hungry. There’s nobody here who’d ever hurt you. If anybody ever tries, you tell Cam or Josh or even me, ok?”

  I lifted him off the desk and onto my lap, cradling him close as he sobbed. Eventually he wiped his face on my shirt and looked up with a timid smile.

  “Hey, for the future: If you’re still hungry after dinner you can always tell Cam or Josh. I’m sure they won’t let you go to sleep with your stomach growling. If they’re not around, tell Kathy or me. We don’t want you starving, ok? Tell someone next time.”

  “I don’t want to be the baby,” Nigel admitted quietly. “Cam was scared when I was sick. I heard him say to Jane that he couldn’t sleep because of it. I want to be a grown-up like Josh.”

  He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, sheepishly cleaning the snot off on his pants. Sometimes I underestimated how much he picked up. Cam always tried to seem self-assured in front of Nigel, so I had assumed he didn’t know about Cam’s worries.

  “Cam worrying about you has nothing to do with him thinking that you’re a baby. He takes care of you and worries because he loves you. So does Josh. When we love people, we worry about whether they’re all right or not. We take care of them. Doesn’t matter how old they are.”

  Nigel thought about that for a moment. “Cam said you worry about Elin. Does that mean you love her?”

  “Uhm … I …” I blew out a heavy breath. “That’s different. It’s not as easy, you know. Cam and Josh are your family, but I’ve just met Elin. Can you keep a secret?”

  Nigel smiled widely.

  “I really like her, but Elin’s very angry at me right now, so she doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  “You need to do something nice for her, then. When we fight in class, Diane makes us hug and apologize. Then she asks us to do something nice for the other kid.”

  I couldn’t explain to him that being nice was exactly what had brought on Elin’s anger. Besides, he yawned and rubbed his eyes. I asked if he wanted to go back to bed but he complained that it was so far away. I offered him to sleep in my bed, where he was closer to the office, until Cam returned.

  As we walked over to my room Nigel looked up at me. “Can we have a party again? Like last year?”

  “You mean for New Years?” We’d made it through another difficult year — maybe a small celebration was in order. After the troubles we’d overcome last year, celebrating seemed adequate.

  Nigel climbed into my bed and when I tucked him in I made sure he knew he could come to the office if he woke again.

  “When we have a party, you can dance with Elin.
That would be nice, and she’d forgive you.”

  I chuckled, surprised by his suggestion. “I’ll think about it. Now go to sleep.”

  I was already at the door, about to close it when he called me back to quietly ask me to tell Cam he was sorry for stealing.

  “I will. I promise he won’t be angry, though. Now sleep tight.”

  I leaned back against the wall in the hallway for a moment and took a deep breath. I knew Cam would have given up his ration of food had he known Nigel was hungry. Taking care of a child wasn’t something I was used to. I couldn’t comprehend the kind of worries Cam had, but that night gave me the tiniest glimpse at it. It also made me think that maybe Elin was right. Maybe I didn’t know too much about taking responsibility for my actions and their consequences.

  A party, like Nigel suggested, seemed a good idea. Nothing big, just some music while everybody gathered together. I yawned as I pushed away from the door, returning to my office.

  I must’ve fallen asleep with my head on the table. I jolted awake when Cam knocked on the desk, laughing at my disheveled state.

  “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “Nigel’s crashing there. He didn’t want to go back upstairs until you came back. How’d it go?”

  “Good, actually. Elin really knows her way around trades. She got us a bunch of flour. Eleven one-hundred-pound bags. Some yeast, too. Not sure about the chickens, though. A rooster and a hen, but the hen looks a bit sickish. She said it’s normal and to trust her. She has them in the gym for now. She wanted me to let you know that she’d be ready for some help with building the chicken den.”

  “Tell her I’ll call out an assembly tomorrow. She can tell them about the project and see who wants to join in.”

  Cam rolled his eyes. “I’m not your private messenger. You tell her yourself. You share a room.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to me. I’m just honoring her wishes. Please, just let her know.”

  Cam and I walked over to my room so he could pick up Nigel. I used the moment to give him a run-down of what Nigel confessed to me. As expected it hit Cam hard to not have noticed Nigel’s worries.