Page 4 of Kings Fear No One
I’m ignoring how Wallace and Viveca seem to be everywhere in the background, still holding hands.
My heart aches inside my chest. I blink trying to fight the itchiness of oncoming tears. I just want to go somewhere… anywhere…
Any place that’s not here.
All I’ve wanted is to be noticed by the boy I like; all I’ve wished for is a love I’ve been told exists. The kind of love in the movies or books, where the couple gets married and grows old together.
The kind of love Mama says exists between husband and wife.
But then I realize I’m being silly again. I’m not sure if I’ll ever find that special person. Someone to fall in love with and spend the rest of my life with. A happily ever after doesn’t seem like it’s meant for me...
1
LOGAN
Ten years later…
Day nine hundred and sixty-one of captivity.
I etch a small line on the wooden panel with the dull blade of my knife. It joins the hundreds of other tick marks on the cabin wall.
The sun didn’t bother coming out today. Thick storm clouds hide it from view. More rain’ll be coming by tonight.
The pots placed around the room need to be emptied. They’re still full with the water that leaked in during last night’s downpour.
I roll over on the sunken bunkbed ’til I’m sitting up and my bare feet touch the puddles on the ground. We ran out of pots, causing water to pool around the room.
I barely notice the difference—my feet are pruned to the point of numbness.
Some of the others still cry about it.
I rise up off the bunk to the sounds. A skeleton of a woman sits in the corner opposite me, her bony knees drawn up to her chest, sniveling as she checks her toes. She’s one of the newer ones. Still naive. Still delusional with hope.
They’re my least favorite types. The ones who think there’s still some grand silver lining somewhere.
Relief will have to come eventually…
I make my way across the room and stop in the doorway long enough to take in our surroundings. It’s still early enough that the rest of the compound’s dead silent. The other cabins bear no sign of life despite the fact that each one has people packed in like sardines in a can.
No different from the cabin I’m in.
My gaze switches out from peering around the grounds to inside the cabin where there’s an empty bottom bunk.
Today’s the day she arrives. They’ll bring her in, and she’ll be initiated into the family.
Whoever she is, she probably doesn’t know what’s in store for her. They’re probably still transporting her. Meaning she’s probably still knocked out.
In dreamland, clueless to the hell she’s about to be put in.
The Leader and his saints have been searching far and wide. They’ve spoken about the new believer they needed to replace the last one. Not just anybody would do—she had to be of pure faith. She had to have a good heart.
Something the Leader claims is damn near impossible these days.
“Most women are deviants,” he’d explained during one of his sermons. “They’re dirty, filthy sinners that will burn in hell on judgment day. Our new believer must be worthy of our sacred home.”
Never mind that I’m as sinful as sinful gets.
Never mind that he and his saints are the rottenest, evilest people I’ve ever met.
