Page 114 of Locke 2

He was going to die.

But neither fate claimed him.

The cold stunned him. The shock of it made him almost lose consciousness, but he kicked to the surface, fighting for his life. That wasn’t unusual. He’d been fighting for his life his entirefucking life. Since he was a little boy. Since he was a grown man. It was all he knew. Surviving, even when nothing mattered.

His body crashed into a cavernous wall, and he clung desperately, clawing his way up. It took everything in him. He pulled himself up, frozen and broken, every inch of him trembling. He collapsed on the ground and shut his eyes.

???

Jem never dreamt.

He’d wondered about that. Obsessed about it. Thought perhaps he had no soul. Only soulless people didn’t dream. They just fed on misery, much like he must have done, though he had never feasted on it and enjoyed it. On the contrary, he would be happy never to inflict misery again, even to this fucking doctor that enjoyed watching him suffer.

Anyway, he never dreamt, but as he lay there, beside the mouth of a cave, he fell into a dream. In it he was a child, and he was trying to protect his sister. In it, he had to watch the horrors being done to her repeatedly, and there was nothing he could ever do. When he was young, he was too weak to fight against the monsters that played with him.

But in this dream, as he watched the horrors being done to her, Jem was not a little boy. He was a fully grown man, and he seemed all too aware of this.

I have superpowers, he thought in this dream because he was still a little boy but in a grown man’s body.I can stop them.

In this dream, the little boy in him who was in a very grown man’s body, lunged at the monsters and pulled them off his sister.

In this dream, he made them suffer and he feasted on their cries, for once enjoying the taste of misery.

???

The phone was broken.

What a fucking surprise.

He tossed it in the river and carried on. If he couldn’t call his way out of this, he’d fucking walk out of here.

Nothing would stop him.

After a dream like that, rage fuelled Jem’s soul, muting the agony he was in.

One fucking step at a time, he told himself.

???

He was aware of the blood he drenched the leaves in as he stumbled through the thick bush. He didn’t care. There would be no hiding his tracks. All he could hope for was outrunning this fucker and getting to a main road.

He sort of had an idea of where he was going. He recalled the map Kali had shown him. One thing Jem could do was commit shit to memory. It was sort of why he relived his horrors every fucking day. Because once he’d seen, it was there, in his brain, ina neat little photo album. Anyway, the map lived inside his brain, and he used it to navigate.

Hours slipped through his fingers.

Minutes were spent pausing to check on his wound. He’d had to cut his shirt and tie it around the wound. He wasn’t sure that was doing anything, but he’d seen it be done on Locke when that underworld doctor went around to fix him up.

At this point, Jem was aware he was going to bleed out. The sun was hidden behind clouds. He’d been on the run for a long fucking time. He was surprised he was still breathing.

He wasn’t trying to save himself.

He just needed to send word. To let Locke know of the hole. Locke was an impeccable hunter, but he hunted beings down and not holes in the ground.And even if he knew, what if he didn’t find Kali and the boy in time?

Jem couldn’t take the risk.

He moved, even when he didn’t think he could anymore. His lungs ached, and his body went cold. He wanted to stop a time or ten to sleep for a minute. Just one minute. A quick nap.

But then he thought of Kali, and the boy, and he couldn’t.

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