Sentenced to Hell

“Jess, he’s staring me down; we need to leave now.”

“No, all he’ll do it take and make a scene out of it; we’ll leave when everyone else does, and hopefully he won’t go after us.”

“How do you know all of this?” As soon as I said that I regretted it; Jess looked away, ashamed.

“Sorry, forget it.”

“You didn’t mean it, its fine.” We kept talking; ignoring the fact Christopher was watching us. We were reminiscing about life before Desert State, even though it was just a few days ago when I was out in the ‘real world’. We were almost enjoying ourselves for a bit, until he got up.

“Jess… what should we do?” Her face quickly drained of all color and her eyes went wide.

“I…I don’t know; just stay put.” Christopher sauntered over to our table, his face was completely blank. He sat down next to Jess and folded his hands on top of the table. Jess went rigid with fear.

“Hello Jessica, it’s nice to see you again. You have a new friend I see; you’re Finley, correct?” All I could do was nod; his presence was eerie, but not frightening.

“I’ve heard a lot about you from Eric, he talked about you quite a bit last night.” Hearing his name made my heart race. My expression must’ve changed, because Jess reached a hand over the table to me. Chris looked at her, and she quickly took back her hand. I haven’t known Jess for very long, but just backing down wasn’t like her.

“You don’t like Eric too much, do you?”

“No.” My voice trembled and my hands were shaking.

“Well I couldn’t blame you, he was rather violent for being with a newcomer.” He looked me over, staring at my eyes. I could tell he was thinking hard about something, staying focused.

“You weren’t the rebellious type, were you? When you were at school, you were more of the preppy type right?”

“Um… yea, I-I guess so.”

“Were you one of those girls who were in the epi-center of the gossip and the cliques? Those cliques that are completely oblivious to anything other than themselves?” All I could think was how the hell he knew all of this about me. None of this could’ve been in my file; no one ever asked about it or needed to know. The worst part is he was right; I was one of those ‘preps’ in school. The friends I had were mean, I mean really cruel. I never realized it but at school I was just like them.

“How do you know all of this about me?”

“I can tell; as Jessica said I am a trained psychiatrist. I used to be a criminal profiler, so I made my life finding these things out by just looking. It’s really quite obvious. Your perfect hair, manicured nails, and remnants of too much makeup easily give it away.” He looked at me and then at Jessica, we were both deathly white.

“You shouldn’t be afraid; there is nothing to be afraid of. I’m just having a very calm, orderly conversation. I’m not going to hurt you here, that’s something that requires much more private and personal accommodations."

“Leave her alone Christopher; she doesn’t need anyone else doing anything to her.”

“You and I both know that’s not your decision, but you trying to defend her is quite noble.” He rose from the table and started to walk off. Before we could take a stress-free breath he turned back around and faced us; his hands crossed behind his back.

“It was a pleasure to meet you Finley, and it was great seeing you again Jessica. We’ll defiantly be seeing each other soon. Until we meet again, I bid you adieu.”

He turned on his heel and walked off, heading to one of the buildings in the distance. Jess looked at me, her eyes wide with fear; we both knew how bad the next few nights would be.