Page 259 of Coal Hearts

I choked.

The strangeness of an arm missing a hand or a hand lacking a finger or two. The sickening realisation that one girl was missing an ear, and another had a puckered scar running from her temple to her chin.

The longer I stared, the more maiming and torture appeared. Red scars and silver scars, raised ones and neat ones, almost every jewel had some imperfection, granted by a Master who ought to be dead.

Swallowing down a gush of venomous empathy, I rubbed my face and stopped looking.

It’s the drugs.

You’re still under the influence.

That’s why you’re in the middle of mostly nude strangers.

I braced myself and tried to see past the history of abuse and focus on why they were all curled around me, tighter and tighter, forming a spiral of body parts with me in the centre.

What happened?

Are they okay?

My breath came shallow, my throat stinging from all the salt I’d cried last night.

Last night?

More like only an hour or so ago.

Sunshine poured through the high barred windows and the door to the cavernous bathroom glowed with burning sunlight.

Too bright.

Far, far too bright for my sorrow-stinging eyes.

My bladder pressed uncomfortably, and my hip ached from sleeping on the stone floor.

But I wasn’t cold.

If anything, a sheen of sweat covered my chest thanks to the body heat of so many.

I-Is this real?

And if it is...how had they survived such torture and unhappiness?

I’d only spent one evening being molested, and I’d shattered.

It made me feel stupidly weak compared to the Chinese girl missing two fingers and the black woman with only one ear.

A dark-haired head closest to me suddenly rose.

I stilled as Peter opened blurry, bruised eyes and pushed himself upright with a groan. Kirk’s arm fell off his bare waist, and Rebecca mumbled in her sleep, cuddling closer to Citra, who rested her head on Nancy’s thigh. Dane, with his mohawk, snuggled into Corine, and she burrowed closer to a boy I didn’t know.

I was literally in the middle of warm skin and brave hearts.

“Hey,” Peter croaked.

I swallowed, coughed, and swallowed again. “I-I’m not imagining this?”

Gently extracting one of his legs from beneath a sleeping girl I hadn’t spoken to, he eased his knees up and hugged them. “Your crying woke them. They came to see if you were okay.”

I flinched.