Page 18 of Fractured Fates
“Sounds very democratic,” I mutter.
“It’s the way things have been done for the last fifty years, and it’s brought stability and peace to our country. Before this system, the world was chaotic.”
My aunt taught me to never buy bullshit like that. If something sounds too good to be true, she said, it usually is.
I don’t voice my opinion but Stone scowls at me nonetheless.
I watch the men finish their sandwiches and open a second each. Despite the mega meal I ate back at the diner, I’m still starving, and Stone seems to take great delight in eating his sandwich especially slowly, with exaggerated bites. I peer down at my untouched ham sandwich and call the man every imaginable name I can think of in my head.
It makes me feel a little better.
“Time for bed,” the man in black announces, watching me. “You have a preference which bed you want?” I shake my head. “Okay, we’ll take the one nearest the door. You sleep first,” he tells Stone.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
We all remain where we are sitting as if none of us knows what to do next. Pip snores from somewhere hidden in the room and I smother a yawn.
“Bed, Blackwaters,” the man in black snaps, balling his empty sandwich packets in his hand and slamming them in the wastepaper basket.
Although there’s nothing I’d like more than to crawl under the covers and lie on a soft mattress – well it doesn’t look that soft but it’s better than the hard forest floor – I don’t like being ordered about. I, therefore, take an exaggerated amount of time to roll out of the chair, stretching as I go, and padding across to the bed. There I fiddle with the bedsheets until I run out of ways to procrastinate and slide between the covers. The bed is lumpy and I can feel just about every spring in the mattress, but it feels divine. I can’t help a little moan of satisfaction that has two pairs of eyes shooting my way.
The moan morphs to a yelp as I feel the cold sting of two metal chains wrap around my ankles.
“What the hell?” I say snapping up to sit. “You’re chaining me to the bed? You’re sick, you know that?”
“We’re cautious,” Stone says. “And you’re a brat. I’m making this job as easy for us as possible. Go to sleep.”
“Not until you’ve unchained me.” I peer over to the man in black, appealing to him, but he isn’t even paying attention, too busy with his phone.
“Suit yourself. Stay awake all night for all I care. I’m not unchaining you. You’re a prisoner. You’ve broken authority laws.”
“You said they’d go easy on me,” I say to the man in black. He raises his eyes, nonplussed.
“Probably.”
“You fuckers!”
The man in black snaps his fingers and the lights go out.
I spend the next ten minutes tussling on the bed, trying to unbind my ankles with my magic. Nothing works and both men ignore my little temper tantrum.
Finally, I give up, flopping down onto my back and rolling over, my back to them. I try not to imagine what’s happening as I hear Stone unbuckle his belt and drag his jeans down his thighs.
He has a bed of his own. But I’m chained to mine. There’s nothing stopping him from climbing into mine.
I screw up my eyes.
I try not to imagine what the man stripping behind me must look like without his clothes. I try not to admit to myself that I’m curious to know.
Eventually I hear him climb into the bed beside mine, the springs creaking. I listen to his breath, to the man in black’s too, both loud in the silence.
I try my best to stay awake, not trusting either of these men to behave in the way they should. But I’m tired from nights forced awake, listening for every sound, scanning the forest for those trying to capture me. My eyes are heavy, my body too. Eventually I fall asleep.
I don’t rouse again until much later. The room is still dark and I wake to the sound of whispered voices. It takes me a moment to remember where I am – not home in my own bed, not out in the forest – and why I’m here. Then I tune in to what those two voices are saying.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”
