AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The kind of punishment that digs its claws into your bones and rots like a piece of meat.
The mattress above me creaked as she moved. Her sobs became more frantic as the days passed. I couldn’t. I couldn’t allow myself to feel or I’d feel too much. I waited for—I didn’t know how long. Hours didn’t exist here. Locked in a time warp that seems to loop.
Morning, we wake. Night, we sleep. That was all.
I rolled onto my side, tucking my hand beneath my pillow. My body vibrated with unease. I needed to get out. To run. Holding my breath, I pulled back the covers and tiptoed across the floor, leaning down to shake him awake.
“Get up!”
He jolted, spinning around to face me. “Now? Again? We tried. They caught us, Halen. Go to sleep. I don’t much feel like getting punished tonight.” He dragged his blanket back over his body but I grabbed his shoulder, forcing him onto his back and glaring down at him.
“Get. Up. Now.”
His eyes turned to slits from below. “No! My back is still sore from the last time. Fuck. I won’t survive it again.”
I wanted to tell him that was the point. To not survive. Maybe it was the selfish part of me, not wanting to leave him behind.
“What’s going on?” a sleepy voice mused from behind me. “Halen! Again?”
I turned over my shoulder slightly, not enough to see her. “I’ll—I don’t know!”
He breathed out a sigh, pushing the blanket off his body. “Fuck.”
Leaving him to get out of bed, I’d crossed to the other side of the room like a thief in the night. “Are you coming?”
Two lines formed between her brows as she searched my eyes. “I don’t know, Halen, I think they’ll really kill us this time.”
“And if we stay here—” I made sure to pointedly glare at both of them. One on the top bunk of my bed, the other on the top of his. “—we will for sure die.”
“I thought you didn’t care about that,” he snapped from behind me, and God I wanted to fucking kill him myself.
My jaw clenched. “I will not leave you behind because you are so fucking stubborn. Get up.”
“And the others?” a soft voice drifted from above my bed.
I closed the distance, my hands resting on her cheeks. “Not right now.”
Not right now was the kind thing to say. It just wasn’t the truth.
War
“Halen,you can’t fucking do that…” I reach for her hand as she zaps forward and disappears into the forest behind the cathedral of town square.
She spins around, her eyes meeting mine. She doesn’t bother to stop walking back as she makes her way between the clearing of two overgrown onyx maple trees. “But I want to…”
Halen is a fucking tornado that rips through your life. We used to joke and say that the reason why Priest had no emotions is because she sucked it all out of him in the womb. It wasn’t so funny when we realized we were right.
Rain begins to fall from the sky, a pebble hitting the tip of my nose.
“Hale—” The spot she was just standing in is empty. My stomach rolls as I look side to side, unease pricking over my skin. “Halen, this isn’t funny!”
I turn to find Priest, but he’s still chatting behind me with the girl he was with, his eyes meeting mine mid-sentence.
He nods his head for me to find her.
My feet couldn’t move fast enough and before I know it, I am shoving through rogue branches. Where the fuck could she just disappear to so quickly?
I push through two larger trees that open onto a leveled meadow.
