No Time To Bleed

The rest of the day went by painfully with games of cards, flickering TV channels, and Richard constantly farting.

I knew my best chance at sneaking up for the ladder was at night so, I had to wait until everyone took their showers(and by showers I meant everyone taking turns standing by a bucket filled with water and wiping themselves with rags).

This night, Cece had stayed up like before so I knew I was safe after an hour of waiting in the darkness. I ducked over the bodies on the floor and picked up my bat in the corner.

“Huh? Jasmine?”

My heart froze dead in my chest. “Eli, go back to sleep. Sleep.”

He rose up, black hair all ruffled in bed head.

I tried to use a sing song voice, but that only seemed to wake him up even further. “Are you leaving? Are you going to find Ryant?”

His voice seemed magnified in all the quiet, even for a five year old.

“No. I’m gonna be right back. I need some air.”

He yawned again, too smart for a five year old. “Why do you have a bat?”

I groaned. I didn’t have time for these questions. “Just go back to sleep. I’ll be right back.”

His eyes watched me leave before I gave him anymore opportunity to reject. Outside the fabric of the bridge’s undercarriage the night was its slow and usual dark. I swallowed and puckered all of my measly courage. The flashlight flickered on under my index finger and gave little way to quiet that met me. Eventually I found the ladder and climbed a good twenty feet until I reached the top.

“God, this is creepy.” I felt like the lone wolf whose pack had just been killed by a mob of hunters.

The beam of the flashlight scattered along the untended asphalt. I made sure to keep my steps as inaudible as possible. The beam searched and searched until it reached the curled end of a burlap fabric. My eyes wandered up and down the thing.

“Another tent…” I muttered. And the tent was huge, had to be at least 20 feet wide.
I stepped in further before my logic was able to tell me otherwise.

The fabric felt grainy and coarse against my palm. It took me a bit to lift the thing until it was over my head. The interior was a front facing hallway that lead out to a sturdy back room. Candles illuminated the entire face, but nothing could take away from that horrible smell. Wax dripped down and collected in little bowls. Shiny things stacked up in baskets, sharp shiny things.

I was suddenly feeling that being in here was a horrible mistake, a terrible one. That was until my beam reached a body strapped to a table.

“Oh my God.” The streak of light wobbled as I jogged forward. “Aliah, wake up!”

I was careful to keep my words to nothing, but a hiss. The backroom had all sorts of grotesque things and knives. Blood in buckets. Fingers and strange liquids. Nassau was dripping into me. She was bolted to a table, sweat sticking hair to skin.

My finger checked her neck for a pulse. She was alive at least. My hands roamed the table with chunks of different matter, making my stomach move in a more unsafe fashion. I felt under table and found bolts to the metal clamps over her wrists.

I needed keys to get her out.

“What are you doing in here?” The voice was unstable and a velvet murmur.

Louis was in the corner, a knife cradled in his fingers while he was huddled to the corner.

“Don’t make me start screaming because they’ll hear me.”

I’d thought Louis had been crazy mentally, but maybe he was intentionally insane.

“What are you doing this to her? She’s pregnant.” I didn’t care for Aliah, actually I hated her, but this family was crazy.

“You’re one of them.”

That’s what he’d said to me the day I’d come here.

“Why do you keep saying that?” I pressed the back of my body against the high table Aliah was on.

Louis stood. “Because it’s true. I can see things and you’re going to be one of them. I don’t know when, but you will be.”

“A zombie?” I’d never seen a crazy person talk so civilized before.

“You ever wonder how I bashed my teeth and got all these scars?”

Actually I hadn’t wondered.

The knife glistened in the candlelight and his nose pressed into my hair, inhaling. “I get
these strokes that knock the air out of me, make my muscles go crazy. One time my head bashed into a granite counter and I swallowed three teeth.”

I was breathing heavy. His smell was overpowering, thick like smog in its lack of hygiene.

“I used to be a normal boy. But things changed. The doctors told my mom I was crazy.”

The knife reached for my neck, cold against my skin.

“I never murdered someone not on the table before.” His words sent shivers down my spine.

His dry lips pressed against my forehead. “Go back to bed before I do something I’ll regret. Have your family leave by noon or all of you will be dead.”

The knife left my neck and his breath left my face. I didn’t even have any more words to say as I walked out.