Page 48 of Intrepid

Suddenly everything was clear. Why we were there. Why we’d been picked up like rats in the street, and placed in cages.

His grunts heightened, the hard slaps beating down my spine.

I didn’t scream, or say a word, for fear he’d find me next, but I wept. I wept for my best friend, and for the helplessness that I felt in that moment.

Vomit carried up my throat, and I curled into a ball, praying, in spite of the barrier at my mouth. The act took me back seven years into my past, and not even the tight clasp of my eyelids could shield out the memories trickling in from the fringes of my conscience.

Momma sits me down in front of the TV. She tells me that she’s going to do some cleaning, and I need to stay occupied. I’m seven years old, and I know what that word means. It means I don’t make a move until she tells me that I can get up. It’s okay, though, because she makes popcorn and chocolate milk during the times she wants me to be occupied. I’m not supposed to move one single little muscle.

I love Pinocchio. It’s my favorite. I’m pretty sure I’ve saw it like one, no, two hundred times now. Even more. I used to be afraid of Monstro. Kinda. Not really, but he was a little bit scary.

But now I can watch it with no problem. Even when he eats Pinocchio. It’s only a little scary.

I scoop up a handful of popcorn and bite down. A loud crack sounds like it’s in my ears, but it isn’t. It’s in my mouth. I spit out all the chewed up popcorn into my palm and little bits of red, I don’t know where from. I think its blood. Oh, no. Did I bite my tongue? I roll it around in my mouth, and even when it hits my tooth, it doesn’t hurt. I’m scared to see blood, but then I notice something next to a broken kernel.

Small, white, and it’s not squishy like the chewy popcorn. My tooth. It’s my third tooth!

“Momma!” I jump to my feet to show her, but stop in my tracks. I’m not supposed to move a muscle.

Shoot.

But momma would wanna know about my tooth. We have to put it under my pillow for the tooth fairy. I know she got mad when I needed to ask her a question last time I was staying occupied, but this is different. This is my tooth! She told me to pull it this morning, because it was gross, but I didn’t have to. The popcorn pulled it for me!

I run down the hall to where I hear her.

“Momma!” I shout, but she doesn’t hear me.

She’s screaming. Why is she screaming? Is she hurt?

I take another step, clutching my tooth in my hand with all the popcorn so I don’t drop it.

I put my ear to the door and listen. There’s a banging sound, and I hear a growly noise like something a monster would make.

“Momma?”

What if there’s a monster in there with her? What if he’s eating her, just like Monstro ate Pinocchio and his dad? And Jiminy?

My chest hurts like my heart is beating really fast. The growly voice says a bad word, like it’s mad. I turn the knob and push the door open. It’s not a monster. It’s the man who came to fix our TV so I could watch cartoons. He fixes our cable a lot.

He’s naked and pulling my momma’s hair, and she’s naked, too, and screaming like it hurts.

“Stop it! Get away from my momma! Get away, or I’ll kill you!”

The two of them stop, and he lets go of my momma’s hair, grabbing his pants and covering his privates.

“Jamie, get the fuck out of here! I thought I told you to watch your cartoons! Get out of here now!”

“I know you! I’m telling the police who you are! I know you!”

Shouting ripped me out of the memory, throwing me into my present nightmare. Chaos that I’d missed in all my ruminating.

Light hemorrhaged into the room, and I caught the drops of blood just outside the box.

Eli screamed from his cage. “I know you! I know who you are! I know you!”

Over top of that, the stranger from before shouted at the men, where they stood in the hallway. I could see their shadows bickering away at one another. Gideon, whose shoulders slumped, Fox, wearing his ball cap and beer belly, and a third man with his hands fumbling at his pants and a strap, like a belt, hanging off him.

“You said he couldn’t hear me! You told me he wouldn’t hear a thing!”