The Hollows, page 14
The air around me grew suddenly grateful. Relieved, “Serenity?”
We both turned and saw the Shadow, Day, coming from the other side of the street. Sevens jumped up on two legs and back down again and trotted over to him before sitting down like a dog waiting to be pet.
“Serenity, what happened? That boy from the building told me you had fallen into the Collector’s door! I was worried,” He said.
I looked around his back, “You saw the boy again?”
He turned, “Yes, he is, wait. He was behind me a few moments ago, but I appear to have lost him by mistake.”
“Whatever. Look, Day, I saw myself. In the mirror, it was me, but,” I tried to get out, but something was caught in my throat. I shook my head and looked down.
Day grew concerned, “What happened once you left.”
“Serenity, don’t-”
“Shut the fuck up, Cassandra. It’s your fault I’m all messed up. After that weird room with the creepy dolls, you can just keep your damn mouth closed.”
Day wheeled around on her, “You put her in his room? What gives you the right? Never touch her again, because if you do, I’ll boil you from your insides and rip out that precious tongue of yours.”
I don’t think the look on her face could have been any more priceless. She cowered down to her knees, hiding her face in her hands and began to sob, “How else could we have known? Please, Day, what other choice did we have?”
“What is she talking about?” I asked. “And who was that girl I saw in the mirror?”
“What girl?”
“I saw my reflection in the mirror, but I looked different. I looked scared and I was being chased by something. What the hell is going on?”
Day was reluctant, “We need to get out of the open. The Gray are growing restless.”
“NO!” I shouted as he started to turn away, “You’ll explain it to me, right-fucking-now.”
“Just tell her, Day.”
“For once, I agree with witch-bitch.”
“Your language is growing tiresome, Serenity,” Day said calmly. “Haven’t I told you that you possess so much more inside your mind than to succumb to such profanity.”
I cocked an eyebrow and folded my arms, tapping my foot impatiently.
Day’s shadow grew hard, “The Gray are taking notice of you. There hasn’t been someone like you, at least not someone new, that has been in The Hollows for quite some time.”
“And that’s supposed to mean what to me, exactly?”
“You are not afraid, Serenity. Can you even remember a time when you were truly scared? I am going to bet that the simplest answer is ‘no’. By just being here, you are starving small parts of The Hollows, mainly The Gray. That is all they feed on is the fear, happiness, the hatred, the terror, and you are a black dot on their map where there is nothing to feed on. You are starting to scare them.”
“Who is the girl in the glass, Day?” I whispered.
“What have I told you about this place?”
“It’s a hellhole of forgotten misfit toys.”
“Asinine responses aside, yes. In essence, this is a place of the forgotten. And I’ve just told you that you are without fear. You don’t think, you barely feel, and you are here in The Hollows. Well, so is the part of you that’s alive. The fear, the hatred, but also the love, is all here.”
I took a moment to process. There wasn’t much that confused me, so when it finally clicked, my mouth dropped and my eyes just locked, “You’re saying she’s me?”
“She’s a part of you, yes.”
“We have to help her! She was being chased, Day. Something is trying to kill her somewhere.”
Cassandra started laughing, giggling nervously before trying to cover her mouth, “Not just somewhere, child. It’s not like she’s lost, is she day? Oh, no.”
“I am warning you, Cassandra,” Day made a threatening movement towards her, “Not another word.”
“Tell me.”
Day stood for a moment to think. The air around him grew smaller; he was growing smaller, finally succumbing to the truth, “She is not as lost as she seems, Serenity. She’s in the Labyrinth. A place where many go, those who are terrible, those who are hopeless, and those I choose to put there.”
Sevens started to tremble.
Chapter 8.5:
The Hunger
All sound was swallowed, leaving nothing but her own breathing. Her hands were still tightly clamped around her ears and her eyes pinched shut, cutting off the world, the horror, and her death from her senses.
The girl heard the vibrations of silence, but she kept saying, “Let me out” over and over until she convinced herself that she had died. She felt the pain in her feet from the razor thin cuts. But, if she was dead, she would not feel anything. There would be nothing; that is what she was taught. Nothing after death but emptiness. Yet at that moment as she knelt in the fetal position she thought to herself, at least there was pain.
Warily she swayed for a moment in one spot before lowering her hands from her eyes and pushing herself up, maintaining pinched eyes and quiet prayers. Her breathing was coming under control, and after a few deep breaths, she allowed herself to open her eyes. When they adjusted, she saw a thin hallway, like that of one of the abandoned buildings in the Hollows, short ceilings and long hallways covered by doors with broken and tarnished numbers and a shredded carpet floor. The walls were painted black as the night, but with little speckles of painted glass. Millions of them, falling around the hallway with every brush stroke. She reached up and touched the partition where a fleck of white glass seemingly hung. When her finger swept over the mark, she registered a sudden pinch of pain and pulled back a bloody index.
The girl looked down the length of the hallway. Seven doors lined the walls on both sides with one door facing her on opposite ends. Every door started with the number seven, like being on the seventh floor. The doors all contained knockers in the shape of spiders with seven legs, and the doorknobs were practically falling from the locks. Pride kept her from collapsing to a fit of anxiety and frailty on the floor, but it could not protect her from the tears that filled her eyes and then danced down her cheeks, leaving streaks in the dirt and grime. Her family could only be assumed dead. What little friends she had, dead. What little joy there was to be had in the Hollows, forgotten.
She looked at areas of the wall, painted with fine strokes by a very steady hand. Her head shook as she thought about the room, cracked and torn and full of insects, then of the concrete walls and trap doors. She thought of the dark oceans, the changing seasons, shrinking hallways, and rooms of solid mirrors. All childhood fears were coming to her, and the thought came with a flashing pain searing through her head, collapsing her to the floor.
The children called her ‘Your Highness’. She was not royalty. She was not in any place of ranking. No one was since the Gray came and caused the fall. It was nothing more than a childhood fantasy of hers, purposefully keeping those dreams of colored dresses lit up in the candlelight close to her heart, never being close enough to the Gray for them to taste it. It was a child’s fantasy, nothing more. Now all that was left was a child’s fear.
Pain throbbed in her temples when she pieced it together. The Labyrinth did not like its secrets riddled out.
The girl saw the moth flying peaceful above her, coasting on the light wind and maintaining its elevation. She reached up with her bloodied index finger towards it. Curiosity kept her wondering why it stayed with her all this time. Anxiety kept her asking how it was able to keep finding her so quickly, no matter here she ran or how far she fell.
The insect hesitated before settling down its legs on her fingernail. It kept its wings twitching in case there was a need for a quick flight. The patterns crisscrossed along its wings had changed. They were no longer the jagged chevron design. Instead, they were layered and sectioned like several templates of blueprints that had been flattened into a single image.
The seven doors on the right wall, along with the seven doors on the left, opened with a creak. The two other doors followed seconds behind. She could not see what lay behind any them, but they all beckoned.
Something high pitched in the distance thrummed against her eardrums, growing steadily louder as the doors widened. As the moth took flight, she tried standing and fell back against the wall, cutting the palm of her hand. Her stomach rumbled and clenched. There had not been anything to eat for, well, how long had she been there? A day? More?
Every door apart from one, slammed shut. The girl observed the door marked Seven-seventy-seven. The sound of an old hinge scraped metal against metal, growing steadily wider. A hand reached around the corner, grabbing the door by the frame. A grunt followed white knuckles, seemingly pulling with mustered strength.
It can’t be that heavy; it’s just an old door, she thought. After a second thought, she was not quite sure she wanted whatever was on the other side to open it.
Another grunt, lighter, followed the other.
“Help me,” asked the first grunt. Another set of hands grasped the door inches above and pulled. The door scraped the ground, unwillingly. Something in her blood froze.
“What’s in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Shut up!”
“You shut up!”
“Both of you shut up. Help me pull.”
They fought the door open. Demi’s face, red from the effort, came into view. Remi was pulling just behind him with a stack of a few other familiar faces.
The girl perked up. Relief outweighing the migraine, she smiled, “About time you boys showed up. What took you so long?”
“Your Highness?” Demi said, “Guys, it’s her! I told you we’d find her again!” The boys ran down the hallway, “Are you alright?”
Small, strong arms lifted her from underneath her shoulders and brought her to her feet, “I’m okay.”
“We got separated and we assumed you for dead!” They were exchanging a torrent of ‘hello’s and mixed rumbles of indiscernible conversation. Kostya stayed at the end of the hall with a foot propping open the furthest door to make sure it could not close. He waved to her with a smile on his face, but he could not hide the worry in his eyes.
“Don’t touch the walls. They’ll cut you. They have glass imbedded in them or something,” The girl said.
“Everything here cuts,” Demi turned and ran a hand through his hair, then carefully guided her and Remi back towards the door. Every step they took pounded in her skull and sent shooting pains from the top of her head down the back of her neck and to the front of her face, settling on either side of the bridge of her nose.
“We lost one of ours,” Remi said at her ear. His voice was cold, stating a fact that she already should know. “Have you seen him?”
The pain flared up under her eyes as she winced, “Was it Brendon?”
He nodded.
“Brendon is dead,” The girl said looking down at the ground. She wanted to avoid their eyes for the moment.
Remi nodded averting his gaze. The pain grew unbearable when they crossed the threshold and into a path of solid dark green, flourished with grass and vine. Remi sat her down on the soft vegetation next to the wall, “What did you see?”
Her eyes pinched shut, “The Iktomi was inside him. Literally in him! I saw it crawl out of his mouth,” she spat the last word out, disgusted. “It was in his mouth. It tore him apart getting out.”
“Fuck! We shouldn’t have let him out of our sight, Remi,” Demi flared. The other boys shrank to the back of the cross wall, sinking to the grass. Remi said nothing and began pulling leaves and dirt from the girl’s hair.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and rocked her head back to rest.
“Hey, your nose,” one of the boys said. The girl brought her finger to the holes at the same moment she felt the drop of blood fall to her lip.
“You haven’t slept, have you?” Remi asked. This was the first real concern she had ever heard in his voice when directed at her.
The girl shook her head slowly and her stomach rumbled. Flashes of morning meals with her family, full of meats and whatever vegetables and soups they could find. The smells were deep in her head, but her parents’ faces were still blank. She was frustrated, she could see every piece of bread or slabs and sandwich, but never the ones that made them. It made her stomach hurt with more than just hunger, but with irritating sadness.
The girl shook it off, “No, haven’t had time. I’m just hungry.”
Remi looked at his brother and then to the boys along the wall, “There isn’t food anywhere in the Labyrinth. You are getting the hunger.” The boys shifted restlessly, whispering alarm and moving away from her. Demi’s eyes twitched in worry.
“Yes, I know, I’m getting hungry. I just told you that,” She said.
Remi stepped forward, “Not hungry. The Hunger. Have you seen anything? Have you been noticing things that aren’t here?”
“No,” she lied. “Everything I’ve seen has looked pretty real.”
The shadows moving out of the corner of her eye looked real enough. Demi’s face contracted as she opened her eyes wider, looking down the alley. She did not want to scare them, so she kept the shadowed figures with their ripped shirts, bloody skin, and missing jaws to herself. The one with the large missing skull pieces was particularly unnerving, causing her stomach to bubble. Before the others knew what occurred, she turned her head and vomited violently on the dirt and brush beside her.
Demi turned to his twin, “She’s far along, Remi. She needs rest.”
“I can’t sleep. We need to keep moving,” She slurred.
Remi put a hand on top of her head, moving her hair away from her mouth as another wave of hot liquid poured out, leaving her with nothing left but intense dry heaves.
Remi squatted next to her as she heaved, “you aren’t getting it. There is no food in the Labyrinth. Only fear. Your hunger can be taken care of with sleep, but with so many things scaring you, no one thinks to take the time, so the hunger drives them mad. It makes them see things that aren’t there. Makes them insane. Eventually, turns them worse. We’ve seen one or two before, eating each other in hopes that the hunger stops, but it never does. Their stomachs burst from gorging themselves when all they really needed was a little sleep.”
Kostya was at her side, his little grey shirt and matching shorts collided with the side of her vision. He put a hand on her shoulder, “Just get some rest.”
The world spun. The creatures danced. The stars in her eyes grew brighter with the pain.
Remi rested his hand on her head, “just sleep. I promise we’ll be here when you wake up.”
The moth had returned, floating aimlessly around the man with the missing jaw as he stepped closer. Her eyes grew heavy. The last thing she swore she saw was the figure smiling with its eyes.
Chapter Nine:
Continuance
The next few hours were in a particular silence, not one surrounded by fear or hatred or bliss, but a silence that follows a particular regret, a shrewd or clever question that upon the answer removes all continuing thought and forces all senses to focus acutely on the new, and possibly unwanted, truths. Day was behind something, if not everything, that much was certain. The drug he gave me to pass me through the veil into this world was his concoction. Everything from the start could have been hidden up a sleeve, inputting the thought of tracking down the man who could only tell truths, playing the strings of my curiosity, strumming the lute in intricate cords to force me to give up the notes. The more answers I tried to find, the more that grew. From him. From this world. Cassandra was less difficult to figure out. My question about her mainly rested on why she bothered to accompany us, never asking questions but looking at me from the corners of her eyes, trying to read my riddles and decode some unseen secret. And then there was Sevens, tagging along at my side on all seven limbs, rubbing my hip affectionately as the four of us traveled in the regretful silence.
“Are you hungry, child?” Cassandra asked.
“My name is Serenity. Not ‘child’. And yes, as a matter of fact, I’m famished. Lost most of what was in my stomach at Mordecai’s.”
Day did not face us as he spoke, but kept several paces ahead and moving placidly, “Yes, he was not particularly happy about that. He was cleaning it when I left.”
“He’ll be fine. It’ll just be another fun truth to tell people later on that he causes nausea and sometimes vomitus information. He’ll enjoy the pun.”
“Day,” Cassandra stopped walking. “She needs to eat.”
“And what do you expect to find here, Cassandra? A Burger House?”
“What is a Burger? And what do living situations have to do with her needing to be fed?” Her eyebrows showed annoyance. Confusion was not something she dealt with often, apparently.
I felt Day’s exasperation, “She does not eat most of what we can find here.”
“Do you like lizards, child?” Her eyes brightened hopefully.
I tried to keep my face solid, “They are not necessarily a favorite of mine, no.”
She put her fingers to her lips and scrunched her eyebrows thoughtfully.
“Well, what does Sevens eat? Or Day? Or you?”
Cassandra shrugged, “Sevens absorbs his food, mostly through the last two of his appendages, but it’s mainly bugs and other, less appetizing, creatures. Day, well he-”
“Doesn’t eat,” Day cut her off. “And haven’t had a satisfied appetite in a very long time. Cassandra, we should be getting close to where you live, am I correct?”
Her eyes looked around and then narrowed on his shadow, “How did you know to get here?”
“Are we close, or not?”
“Yes,” She nodded. But she kept her eyes thin and judgmental. “We are about five buildings down and one street over. I’ll ask again, how did you know?”
“We all have our talents,” he said and continued walking.
I looked at the awkward exchange. Day nudged me to follow and we fell back in stride, “you never answered what it is that you eat.”
We both turned and saw the Shadow, Day, coming from the other side of the street. Sevens jumped up on two legs and back down again and trotted over to him before sitting down like a dog waiting to be pet.
“Serenity, what happened? That boy from the building told me you had fallen into the Collector’s door! I was worried,” He said.
I looked around his back, “You saw the boy again?”
He turned, “Yes, he is, wait. He was behind me a few moments ago, but I appear to have lost him by mistake.”
“Whatever. Look, Day, I saw myself. In the mirror, it was me, but,” I tried to get out, but something was caught in my throat. I shook my head and looked down.
Day grew concerned, “What happened once you left.”
“Serenity, don’t-”
“Shut the fuck up, Cassandra. It’s your fault I’m all messed up. After that weird room with the creepy dolls, you can just keep your damn mouth closed.”
Day wheeled around on her, “You put her in his room? What gives you the right? Never touch her again, because if you do, I’ll boil you from your insides and rip out that precious tongue of yours.”
I don’t think the look on her face could have been any more priceless. She cowered down to her knees, hiding her face in her hands and began to sob, “How else could we have known? Please, Day, what other choice did we have?”
“What is she talking about?” I asked. “And who was that girl I saw in the mirror?”
“What girl?”
“I saw my reflection in the mirror, but I looked different. I looked scared and I was being chased by something. What the hell is going on?”
Day was reluctant, “We need to get out of the open. The Gray are growing restless.”
“NO!” I shouted as he started to turn away, “You’ll explain it to me, right-fucking-now.”
“Just tell her, Day.”
“For once, I agree with witch-bitch.”
“Your language is growing tiresome, Serenity,” Day said calmly. “Haven’t I told you that you possess so much more inside your mind than to succumb to such profanity.”
I cocked an eyebrow and folded my arms, tapping my foot impatiently.
Day’s shadow grew hard, “The Gray are taking notice of you. There hasn’t been someone like you, at least not someone new, that has been in The Hollows for quite some time.”
“And that’s supposed to mean what to me, exactly?”
“You are not afraid, Serenity. Can you even remember a time when you were truly scared? I am going to bet that the simplest answer is ‘no’. By just being here, you are starving small parts of The Hollows, mainly The Gray. That is all they feed on is the fear, happiness, the hatred, the terror, and you are a black dot on their map where there is nothing to feed on. You are starting to scare them.”
“Who is the girl in the glass, Day?” I whispered.
“What have I told you about this place?”
“It’s a hellhole of forgotten misfit toys.”
“Asinine responses aside, yes. In essence, this is a place of the forgotten. And I’ve just told you that you are without fear. You don’t think, you barely feel, and you are here in The Hollows. Well, so is the part of you that’s alive. The fear, the hatred, but also the love, is all here.”
I took a moment to process. There wasn’t much that confused me, so when it finally clicked, my mouth dropped and my eyes just locked, “You’re saying she’s me?”
“She’s a part of you, yes.”
“We have to help her! She was being chased, Day. Something is trying to kill her somewhere.”
Cassandra started laughing, giggling nervously before trying to cover her mouth, “Not just somewhere, child. It’s not like she’s lost, is she day? Oh, no.”
“I am warning you, Cassandra,” Day made a threatening movement towards her, “Not another word.”
“Tell me.”
Day stood for a moment to think. The air around him grew smaller; he was growing smaller, finally succumbing to the truth, “She is not as lost as she seems, Serenity. She’s in the Labyrinth. A place where many go, those who are terrible, those who are hopeless, and those I choose to put there.”
Sevens started to tremble.
Chapter 8.5:
The Hunger
All sound was swallowed, leaving nothing but her own breathing. Her hands were still tightly clamped around her ears and her eyes pinched shut, cutting off the world, the horror, and her death from her senses.
The girl heard the vibrations of silence, but she kept saying, “Let me out” over and over until she convinced herself that she had died. She felt the pain in her feet from the razor thin cuts. But, if she was dead, she would not feel anything. There would be nothing; that is what she was taught. Nothing after death but emptiness. Yet at that moment as she knelt in the fetal position she thought to herself, at least there was pain.
Warily she swayed for a moment in one spot before lowering her hands from her eyes and pushing herself up, maintaining pinched eyes and quiet prayers. Her breathing was coming under control, and after a few deep breaths, she allowed herself to open her eyes. When they adjusted, she saw a thin hallway, like that of one of the abandoned buildings in the Hollows, short ceilings and long hallways covered by doors with broken and tarnished numbers and a shredded carpet floor. The walls were painted black as the night, but with little speckles of painted glass. Millions of them, falling around the hallway with every brush stroke. She reached up and touched the partition where a fleck of white glass seemingly hung. When her finger swept over the mark, she registered a sudden pinch of pain and pulled back a bloody index.
The girl looked down the length of the hallway. Seven doors lined the walls on both sides with one door facing her on opposite ends. Every door started with the number seven, like being on the seventh floor. The doors all contained knockers in the shape of spiders with seven legs, and the doorknobs were practically falling from the locks. Pride kept her from collapsing to a fit of anxiety and frailty on the floor, but it could not protect her from the tears that filled her eyes and then danced down her cheeks, leaving streaks in the dirt and grime. Her family could only be assumed dead. What little friends she had, dead. What little joy there was to be had in the Hollows, forgotten.
She looked at areas of the wall, painted with fine strokes by a very steady hand. Her head shook as she thought about the room, cracked and torn and full of insects, then of the concrete walls and trap doors. She thought of the dark oceans, the changing seasons, shrinking hallways, and rooms of solid mirrors. All childhood fears were coming to her, and the thought came with a flashing pain searing through her head, collapsing her to the floor.
The children called her ‘Your Highness’. She was not royalty. She was not in any place of ranking. No one was since the Gray came and caused the fall. It was nothing more than a childhood fantasy of hers, purposefully keeping those dreams of colored dresses lit up in the candlelight close to her heart, never being close enough to the Gray for them to taste it. It was a child’s fantasy, nothing more. Now all that was left was a child’s fear.
Pain throbbed in her temples when she pieced it together. The Labyrinth did not like its secrets riddled out.
The girl saw the moth flying peaceful above her, coasting on the light wind and maintaining its elevation. She reached up with her bloodied index finger towards it. Curiosity kept her wondering why it stayed with her all this time. Anxiety kept her asking how it was able to keep finding her so quickly, no matter here she ran or how far she fell.
The insect hesitated before settling down its legs on her fingernail. It kept its wings twitching in case there was a need for a quick flight. The patterns crisscrossed along its wings had changed. They were no longer the jagged chevron design. Instead, they were layered and sectioned like several templates of blueprints that had been flattened into a single image.
The seven doors on the right wall, along with the seven doors on the left, opened with a creak. The two other doors followed seconds behind. She could not see what lay behind any them, but they all beckoned.
Something high pitched in the distance thrummed against her eardrums, growing steadily louder as the doors widened. As the moth took flight, she tried standing and fell back against the wall, cutting the palm of her hand. Her stomach rumbled and clenched. There had not been anything to eat for, well, how long had she been there? A day? More?
Every door apart from one, slammed shut. The girl observed the door marked Seven-seventy-seven. The sound of an old hinge scraped metal against metal, growing steadily wider. A hand reached around the corner, grabbing the door by the frame. A grunt followed white knuckles, seemingly pulling with mustered strength.
It can’t be that heavy; it’s just an old door, she thought. After a second thought, she was not quite sure she wanted whatever was on the other side to open it.
Another grunt, lighter, followed the other.
“Help me,” asked the first grunt. Another set of hands grasped the door inches above and pulled. The door scraped the ground, unwillingly. Something in her blood froze.
“What’s in there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Shut up!”
“You shut up!”
“Both of you shut up. Help me pull.”
They fought the door open. Demi’s face, red from the effort, came into view. Remi was pulling just behind him with a stack of a few other familiar faces.
The girl perked up. Relief outweighing the migraine, she smiled, “About time you boys showed up. What took you so long?”
“Your Highness?” Demi said, “Guys, it’s her! I told you we’d find her again!” The boys ran down the hallway, “Are you alright?”
Small, strong arms lifted her from underneath her shoulders and brought her to her feet, “I’m okay.”
“We got separated and we assumed you for dead!” They were exchanging a torrent of ‘hello’s and mixed rumbles of indiscernible conversation. Kostya stayed at the end of the hall with a foot propping open the furthest door to make sure it could not close. He waved to her with a smile on his face, but he could not hide the worry in his eyes.
“Don’t touch the walls. They’ll cut you. They have glass imbedded in them or something,” The girl said.
“Everything here cuts,” Demi turned and ran a hand through his hair, then carefully guided her and Remi back towards the door. Every step they took pounded in her skull and sent shooting pains from the top of her head down the back of her neck and to the front of her face, settling on either side of the bridge of her nose.
“We lost one of ours,” Remi said at her ear. His voice was cold, stating a fact that she already should know. “Have you seen him?”
The pain flared up under her eyes as she winced, “Was it Brendon?”
He nodded.
“Brendon is dead,” The girl said looking down at the ground. She wanted to avoid their eyes for the moment.
Remi nodded averting his gaze. The pain grew unbearable when they crossed the threshold and into a path of solid dark green, flourished with grass and vine. Remi sat her down on the soft vegetation next to the wall, “What did you see?”
Her eyes pinched shut, “The Iktomi was inside him. Literally in him! I saw it crawl out of his mouth,” she spat the last word out, disgusted. “It was in his mouth. It tore him apart getting out.”
“Fuck! We shouldn’t have let him out of our sight, Remi,” Demi flared. The other boys shrank to the back of the cross wall, sinking to the grass. Remi said nothing and began pulling leaves and dirt from the girl’s hair.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and rocked her head back to rest.
“Hey, your nose,” one of the boys said. The girl brought her finger to the holes at the same moment she felt the drop of blood fall to her lip.
“You haven’t slept, have you?” Remi asked. This was the first real concern she had ever heard in his voice when directed at her.
The girl shook her head slowly and her stomach rumbled. Flashes of morning meals with her family, full of meats and whatever vegetables and soups they could find. The smells were deep in her head, but her parents’ faces were still blank. She was frustrated, she could see every piece of bread or slabs and sandwich, but never the ones that made them. It made her stomach hurt with more than just hunger, but with irritating sadness.
The girl shook it off, “No, haven’t had time. I’m just hungry.”
Remi looked at his brother and then to the boys along the wall, “There isn’t food anywhere in the Labyrinth. You are getting the hunger.” The boys shifted restlessly, whispering alarm and moving away from her. Demi’s eyes twitched in worry.
“Yes, I know, I’m getting hungry. I just told you that,” She said.
Remi stepped forward, “Not hungry. The Hunger. Have you seen anything? Have you been noticing things that aren’t here?”
“No,” she lied. “Everything I’ve seen has looked pretty real.”
The shadows moving out of the corner of her eye looked real enough. Demi’s face contracted as she opened her eyes wider, looking down the alley. She did not want to scare them, so she kept the shadowed figures with their ripped shirts, bloody skin, and missing jaws to herself. The one with the large missing skull pieces was particularly unnerving, causing her stomach to bubble. Before the others knew what occurred, she turned her head and vomited violently on the dirt and brush beside her.
Demi turned to his twin, “She’s far along, Remi. She needs rest.”
“I can’t sleep. We need to keep moving,” She slurred.
Remi put a hand on top of her head, moving her hair away from her mouth as another wave of hot liquid poured out, leaving her with nothing left but intense dry heaves.
Remi squatted next to her as she heaved, “you aren’t getting it. There is no food in the Labyrinth. Only fear. Your hunger can be taken care of with sleep, but with so many things scaring you, no one thinks to take the time, so the hunger drives them mad. It makes them see things that aren’t there. Makes them insane. Eventually, turns them worse. We’ve seen one or two before, eating each other in hopes that the hunger stops, but it never does. Their stomachs burst from gorging themselves when all they really needed was a little sleep.”
Kostya was at her side, his little grey shirt and matching shorts collided with the side of her vision. He put a hand on her shoulder, “Just get some rest.”
The world spun. The creatures danced. The stars in her eyes grew brighter with the pain.
Remi rested his hand on her head, “just sleep. I promise we’ll be here when you wake up.”
The moth had returned, floating aimlessly around the man with the missing jaw as he stepped closer. Her eyes grew heavy. The last thing she swore she saw was the figure smiling with its eyes.
Chapter Nine:
Continuance
The next few hours were in a particular silence, not one surrounded by fear or hatred or bliss, but a silence that follows a particular regret, a shrewd or clever question that upon the answer removes all continuing thought and forces all senses to focus acutely on the new, and possibly unwanted, truths. Day was behind something, if not everything, that much was certain. The drug he gave me to pass me through the veil into this world was his concoction. Everything from the start could have been hidden up a sleeve, inputting the thought of tracking down the man who could only tell truths, playing the strings of my curiosity, strumming the lute in intricate cords to force me to give up the notes. The more answers I tried to find, the more that grew. From him. From this world. Cassandra was less difficult to figure out. My question about her mainly rested on why she bothered to accompany us, never asking questions but looking at me from the corners of her eyes, trying to read my riddles and decode some unseen secret. And then there was Sevens, tagging along at my side on all seven limbs, rubbing my hip affectionately as the four of us traveled in the regretful silence.
“Are you hungry, child?” Cassandra asked.
“My name is Serenity. Not ‘child’. And yes, as a matter of fact, I’m famished. Lost most of what was in my stomach at Mordecai’s.”
Day did not face us as he spoke, but kept several paces ahead and moving placidly, “Yes, he was not particularly happy about that. He was cleaning it when I left.”
“He’ll be fine. It’ll just be another fun truth to tell people later on that he causes nausea and sometimes vomitus information. He’ll enjoy the pun.”
“Day,” Cassandra stopped walking. “She needs to eat.”
“And what do you expect to find here, Cassandra? A Burger House?”
“What is a Burger? And what do living situations have to do with her needing to be fed?” Her eyebrows showed annoyance. Confusion was not something she dealt with often, apparently.
I felt Day’s exasperation, “She does not eat most of what we can find here.”
“Do you like lizards, child?” Her eyes brightened hopefully.
I tried to keep my face solid, “They are not necessarily a favorite of mine, no.”
She put her fingers to her lips and scrunched her eyebrows thoughtfully.
“Well, what does Sevens eat? Or Day? Or you?”
Cassandra shrugged, “Sevens absorbs his food, mostly through the last two of his appendages, but it’s mainly bugs and other, less appetizing, creatures. Day, well he-”
“Doesn’t eat,” Day cut her off. “And haven’t had a satisfied appetite in a very long time. Cassandra, we should be getting close to where you live, am I correct?”
Her eyes looked around and then narrowed on his shadow, “How did you know to get here?”
“Are we close, or not?”
“Yes,” She nodded. But she kept her eyes thin and judgmental. “We are about five buildings down and one street over. I’ll ask again, how did you know?”
“We all have our talents,” he said and continued walking.
I looked at the awkward exchange. Day nudged me to follow and we fell back in stride, “you never answered what it is that you eat.”
