Page 36 of Juniper Unraveling

It’s not overtly sexual, but the sensations that rush through me have me feeling a bit drunk. Like the times I’ve sipped Papa’s liquor and that warm feeling hit my belly at the same time my head felt light.

Something like butterflies explode inside my stomach, and I have to look toward the ceiling, as he washes the inner part of my thigh with his gaze glued to my sex.

I slide my hand down to cup myself in the same manner that he held himself from me, and he glances up at me, slowly rising up to stand.

Handing me the washcloth, he seems to pick up on the fact that I’m as equally uncomfortable as when I washed him there the night before.

Still, the gesture is sweet, and I muster a smile. “Thank you, Six.”

Head bowed, he closes the shower door, and through the distorted frosted glass, I watch him exit the bathroom. Once my hair is washed and twisted up into a towel, I dress in clean clothes and enter my bedroom to find it empty.

After a peek into Papa’s room, making sure he didn’t venture inside there, I head down to the kitchen.

For the second time today, my heart catches in my throat. My muscles stiffen and paralysis settles over me.

Papa stands just inside the kitchen with a shotgun propped high, and at the business end of it, Six stands waiting for the imminent shot.

Chapter 11

Dani

The man screams, with his limbs stretched in four directions by the restraints. His ribcage is hardly contained by the translucent skin pulled taut over his bones, covered in the telling sores that I’ve already recorded. It’s amazing what two months in this place does to the mind. I no longer see them as human anymore. I don’t attempt to memorize their numbers. Everyday new ones are brought in, requiring measurements, photographs, and finally, surgery. I snap a picture of the inside of his mouth, propped open by the metal mouth gag that keeps them from biting.

His throat twitches with a scream and a growl, but I continue to snap away. The faster we finish this, the faster I can see my brother.

In the last month, Abel’s improved some. Not enough to rouse suspicion, but enough that I don’t worry as much as before. He’s even begun to play with some of the other children in the yard during our visits. I met his best friend Sammy, a boy slightly younger than Abel who likes to crash into things, headfirst. Abel still carries the bruises of what I assume are beatings, but he hasn’t ended up here, and that’s what I focus on, for now.

Always the good, never the bad.

Garbed in full gear, Doctor Falkenrath enters the surgical suite, and I set down the camera, preparing to take measurements and samples.

“All documentation complete?” he asks, smoothing his hands over the gloves.

“Yes, sir.”

“Stop with this sir shit. Josef is fine.” He’s told me this a number of times, but I can’t bring myself to call him this. Occasionally, I’ll call him Doctor F, but never Josef. It’s too friendly, and I have no friends here.

The man has kept me alive, when most of the boys from my hive have passed through with late stages of the disease. I’m thankful that these are the only cases I see here. It’s easier for me to watch them die, knowing there’s no hope for them.

Not yet, anyway.

Doctor F believes he’s close to replicating the antibodies against the Dredge, but the proteins keep changing. This is the only part of this hell that pushes away the guilt that I wear like a second skin. The light at the end of a very dark and frightening tunnel. He says, someday, these boys will be cured, instead of cut apart.

So I keep on.

He goes to work on the subject, as usual, cutting and pausing to quietly observe, or collect a sample that I’m to label and jot notes on. In between, I doodle diamond shapes on the notebook to pass the time.

“Doctor, why don’t they eat the infected?” It’s a question I’ve tried to tease out in the notes and brief conversations with him, but still can’t figure out the answer.

Bent forward, he drags the scalpel in short, meticulous lines over an existing scar at the subject’s armpit. I’ve learned this is where they harvest the lymph nodes. “They do. You, as all second generation, carry the disease, and they’d surely eat you, if given the chance. But you’re not third stage, and that’s when something truly remarkable happens.”

“What?”

“Perhaps the only known source of immunity at this point.”

Words that were once a whole other language have become a permanent part of my vocabulary, and his response sparks more questions. “How?”

He snorts his amusement, but doesn’t bother to turn. “You’ve grown to be quite the curious little cat. Well, in Stage One, you experience nothing more than a common cold. Coughing. Sneezing. Fever. You could essentially function and even not gain much attention. Second Stage is when the organism overwhelms your body. You’re weak. Confused. Fever is climbing to dangerous levels. It’s at the latter part of this stage that it infects the brain. Once that happens, there’s really no hope, at all. However, the organism induces a pheromone that is excreted from the sweat glands into the air around you. It tells the others you’re one of them, and to stay away.”