A Spark of Hope

Sydney’s eyes drifted open wearily. The dreams always felt so real to her, real enough to easily blur the lines between dream and reality. The ones with memories were always the worst for her. She was sweating profusely, a condition exacerbated when she remembered the situation her and Evan were still in. Her thick clothing was stifling her inside the pitch black room. She realized she was still laying on her back, and immediately got back on her feet to assess her surroundings.
Feeling around the tiny room she figured to be some kind of closet, she touched an unusable light switch to her immediate right. The walls were made of the same damaged, rough wood as the rest of the cabin. The floor under her boots felt filthy and sparse. In front of her was the door, wedged shut from the outside. Her nostrils were filled with the strong scent of rotting wood and copper. She ran her fingers through her matted hair, feeling over the bruised area where she had been struck earlier.
Kneeling down to the floor, she laid her head against the wooden door, trying to listen for any noise outside the room. She heard the sound of loud snoring, presumably from one of the captors. She had no idea how long she’d been out. For all she knew, it could have been nearly dawn.
“You fucked up, Lake,” she thought to herself, “you shouldn’t have fired that gun.”
Contemplating the situation, she backed up against the wall next to her, and shut her eyes. Images of Evan flashed through her mind. She shuddered at the thought of what they might’ve done to her blind companion. She tried to think of a possible weapon she could use, but remembered that the two men had stripped her of her guns and knives back when they’d been caught. However, she suddenly recollected of something else.
She sat down, and pulled up her right foot, taking the boot off. She held it upside down, and held her left hand under it. A concealed pocket knife fell out, and into her hand. She unfolded the knife to see that the blade was incredibly rusted, and probably dull, but it was still a knife. She always hid it inside there, between her foot and the floor of the boot. It wasn’t fun to walk on, but it was a good way to keep a concealed weapon, just in case.
Putting the boot back on, she got back on her feet and walked over to the door. She felt for the knob, which was on the left side of the door, so she stood there, and began her wait.

Evan opened his eyes. His consciousness took a moment to fade back in, delayed by the throbbing pain of the blow he had suffered to his head earlier. He immediately realized that his mouth had been covered with duct tape, and his wrists were handcuffed together behind him. He heard only the snoring of one of his captors. His tongue tasted the copper flavor of his warm blood. He could smell the dank environment of the cabin, along with what he only assumed to be a dead animal.
The boy remained silent, to avoid awaking the man. He twitched his wrists, surveying how tight the handcuffs were. Realizing that he couldn’t wrangle his hands free, he held his breath, and listened around him. The man was snoring loudly, somewhere ahead and to the left of Evan. He also heard the occasional creaking of a chair, hinting that the man was asleep in the chair. Behind him, he could hear the faint sound of the breeze. He had no idea where the other man was. He leaned back against the wall he was sitting against, and stretched his legs out.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a heavy wooden door flying open. Loud footsteps clomped in, echoing throughout the room. There was the sound of a rifle being placed on a table by the door, then more footsteps. The snoring stopped. Evan listened to the two converse, one with a heavy, hoarse Southern sounding accent, and the other with a thick Bostonian accent.
“The girl still knocked out?”
“Hell if I know, she hasn’t made no noise,”
“What about the other kid?”
There was a brief pause. Evan kept his eyes shut, pretending to still be knocked out.
“Hasn’t moved a muscle,”
“Boy’s gonna make some fine meat,”
“You see the way he was looking at me earlier? Damn kid looked like he was blind,”
“Well then, I guess we could take his eyes first. He won’t be needing them, anyhow,”
There was the sound of one of the men getting up out of the chair, as both of them were chuckling.
“When’re we taking the girl out?”
“Tonight after supper, and I get the first turn,”
“What the hell ever, just don’t get her too loose before I get my turn,”
“Don’t count on it,”
There were several more loud footsteps on the wooden floor, with no commentary. Then, there was the sound of a large, wooden object scraping against a door.
“Whoa, what’re you doing?”
“I wanna take a look at her,”
“You’ll get a good look at her tonight,”
“I just wanna get a little peak at her titties or something,”
There was another pause, as Evan balled his dirty fists in anger, listening in on every word the two men exchanged about the only friend he had in this pitiful world. He felt completely helpless, unable to do anything to defend Sydney from anything that might come her way. That’s what he always was to her; nothing but a burden, and it infuriated him to know how much harder her life must’ve been with him. This was where he drew the line. He wasn’t going to just sit there while his friend, his family, the only thing he cared about in the world, was tortured like this. He heard another set of footsteps, as the man approached the closet Sydney had been locked inside.
“Don’t even think about touching her, you worthless piece of fucking shit,”
The footsteps stopped, and the Bostonian man answered.
“Looks like our friend’s woken up,”
“The hell are you gonna do about it, kid?”
Evan bent his knees, and stood up on his own, looking blindly in the direction of the two men.
“I’ll gut you like a fucking fish,” Evan growled back.
The Bostonian man laughed out loudly.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me. A blind kid with his hands behind his back thinks he can take us out? Fuck that. Maybe we should just take turns on her right now and see how you like that?”
“Try it, dickhead,” Evan spouted.
“Well,” the Southern man uttered, “if you insist, I think I’ll go right ahead. Maybe I’ll push her against a wall and cut her down there, just to listen to her scream,”
Evan’s heart nearly pounded out of his chest. He had no idea what he was supposed to do, other than shout out empty threats that he knew he couldn’t back up. He listened to the man swing the closet door open.
Sydney leapt out from inside the closet, and rammed the rusted blade directly into the man’s throat, letting out a brief scream of rage. Blood shot out in a short spurt from his neck just as she jammed the knife in him. She pulled it out, and shoved it in the same spot again, then pulled it out once more, all inside a few seconds. Blood sprayed on her face and on the wall behind her as the man crumpled to the floor, clutching his punctured neck as blood gushed out from beneath his hairy hands.
She gazed down at his terrified face, which was shaggy to say the least, with an untrimmed black beard and long, unkempt hair hanging down to his shoulders. She looked over at the Bostonian man, who had backed up to the table next to the door. His chocolate eyes were filled with shock, and his equally grizzly looking, chubby, bearded face was glistening with sweat.
The man pulled a gray revolver out of the leather holster on his left hip, and pointed it at Evan, who was standing several feet to his left. Sydney stood still, holding the crimson knife with her right hand, staring at the fat man. The door behind him, leading outside, was still cracked open, letting a beam of blue shoot into the room, lighting it enough so that she could see the man’s face clearly. It was dawn.
“Take one step and I’ll fucking shoot him,”
Sid looked over at Evan, who was to her right. His goggles had been removed, and his face was even dirtier than it had been before. There was a bruise on his left cheek, and some blood on his lower lip.
“Why,” Sid asked, “I know you’re just gonna kill us anyway,”
She saw the man’s hands, and realized something. They were shaking, not just from adrenaline, but from something else as well.
“I know what you are,” she uttered out loudly, gripping the knife tight, “cannibal.”
The man’s face contorted in anger, and he swayed his arm to his right, pointing the revolver at Sid.
“See you in hell, kid.”
Sid couldn’t move from fear. There was no way she could charge at him and take him down before he shot her. Her eyes were shining with tears of dread, and her jaw began to quiver. She waited for the gunshot.
Evan never seemed like a fast person, but today was a day full of unusual circumstances. In the span of a second, her blind companion smashed into the man with his own body, sending them both reeling to the cold wooden floor.
He squirmed on top of the man, unable to do anything else because of his cuffed wrists. Sid snapped out of her state of terror, and took the opportunity. She jumped on top of her foe, and plunged the knife into his chest, making a bone crunching sound as she penetrated him. She pulled the knife out, and shoved it into another spot on his chest, closer to his heart. She tried to pull it out, but the blade suddenly snapped off, sending her tumbling backwards.
As she landed on her back, there was a loud crack, loud enough to startle her into a brief scream. Evan grunted noisily, and fell off the man and onto his right side, clutching his left shoulder with his right hand. The revolver fell out of the man’s trembling left hand, landing between himself and Evan. Sid lunged forward, and plucked the revolver off the floor. She pointed it at the man’s sweating forehead, and saw him look into her eyes. He finger grabbed the trigger as she prepared to blast his skull open at point blank range.
“Go ahead, bitch,” he whispered faintly, “finish it.”
She looked deep into his eyes, and clutched the revolver tightly. Then, after letting out an angry sigh, she pulled it away from his head.
“You’re already dead. I’m not gonna waste a good bullet to end your pain.”
She stripped the holster from him, and grabbed Evan, sitting him against the wall. He was still grabbing his shoulder, and squinting in pain.
“Let me see it,” she ordered.
He grunted again in response, not moving his hand.
“Let me SEE it, Evan!”
He took his hand off his shoulder, revealing a blood soaked palm. He’d been shot in the shoulder clearly, with a hole torn where the bullet had entered. Blood was leaking profusely from the wound. He groaned again.
“It hurts, Sid,” he mumbled dimly, with a hoarse voice.
“You’re gonna be fine, Evan,” she responded, holding his cheeks with her hands and looking into his squinting eyes.
“I know it hurts,” she continued, “I promise I’ll fix it, but you have to work with me, okay?”
He nodded in response. Sid turned away from him, and glanced back at the man she’d mortally wounded a moment earlier. He was still alive, and smirking at her.
“The hell are you looking at?”
The man kept on smirking, and gasped out a response.
“Don’t tell him it’ll be alright,” he panted, “because we all know it won’t be.”