Level Up

Chapter two

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Chapter two

Collette's POV

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I sit in my hospital bed, the light flowing blindly into the room, the woman who rushed in with the vial the day before sitting before me. Her feet are bent toward each other and her perfectly sculptured legs lead up to a basic gray pencil skirt. A top that, stuffed perfectly into the waist band, is a ruffled tan blouse, one such as the glass encasing me.

She sits bent over her folder, a pile of papers, some used some fresh, on one side, a collection of notecards wedged into the bottom pocket on the opposing side.

"Your name?"

On the woman's right breast was a metallic and eye luring badge that reads out her name, Eloise, and assumably her rank, though it makes no sense to me. I stare as the sun reflects off its smooth golden face with each of Eloise's little movements.

"Collette Gardener," I say with little effort. My mind plays around with me and I can remember little things, such as playing on a play ground or crafting things, though I can't seem to form any recognizable faces, as they're all blurred and the memories cut off before I can manage anything. Emotions I can remember but everything up until my accident is crazily blurred and the images are demented to no use.

"Your age?" I think for a moment before responding. She mentioned something about me being bedridden for five months and I can't remember my last birthday so I just guess. "17." She nods in approval and glides her silk pen along the next line of paper, perfectly manicured words being fabricated at her very touch.

"Eloise," I interrupt. Her head pops up from her hunched over position yet she is still penning nonsense on her notepad. I almost smile humourously though given the situation, I keep the corners of my lips securely lowered on my face.

The loose hairs from her bun spring free and bob shortly when they fall. "Who was that man from earlier?" Curiosity strings me like a fine tuned guitar and I can't help but figuring out the feeling I have toward him. I can't help but believe he's familiar, though I can't tell.

She offers me a contained smile, one that someone would practice over and over again in a mirror to get just right. I can tell she's had it for ages, as when she isn't smiling, the wrinkles in her face crease awkwardly in a shape that tells me she's smiled more than she has frowned.

"We call him the Extractor."

My stomach clenches into a knot only a trained scout could knot and I have no hopes of untying it. My skin tenses and I don't know if it's the man or the name they gave him that upsets me so. Or why. It just seems so wrong, almost as if it were a punishment to be called the Extractor. Why on earth would someone call him the Extractor? None of it makes sense.

"You used to call him by his birth name but he never told anyone but you," Eloise leads off as if she's over stepped a boundary. My thoughts reach out at that moment as if it remembered me but I didn't remember it, causing it to scram. "You two used to be close," she finishes.

It was obvious the amount of authority that rest on his poise as he glided along the glass paneled flooring just belwo my bed, but it couldn't have been enough if I got to use formalities with him. Something feels wrong with the situation but I set it aside for contemplation at a later time.

"When you get to be a man as powerful and successful as he, Extractor is default," Eloise explains and gathers her things just as she stands up. "It's better for him, he believes, than 'sir', or 'mr'.

"How much? How much power and sucess does he have? It would seem like a lot if he didn't waste his time with little formalities such as 'sir', but if he spent his free time letting me call him by his first name," I lead off, the sentence completing itself in Eloise's head.

I urge on anyway, not too entirely sure I want an answer. "Enough," Elouise responds nonchalantly, her eyes glinting with a momentary humor. Her answer unsettles me.

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"Time to go," Eloise announces. I pry my eyes open from the wonderful slumber and clamber off the cream beadspread, my shape permanently inscribed into the bed. A glass of water and tray of emptied vials sits next to me on the bedstand and I have to blink a few times before my vision clears.

We exit into the hallway and it's fairly calm, save for the few nurses in their tan scrubs who walk into different rooms, warm, welcoming smiles attached to every one of their faces. "This way dear," Eloise chirps and motion for two armed men whom are failing at squeezing their way through the elevator doors, their broad shoulders an unecesary necesity at the moment. Eloise leaks a smallgrin at their behavior and pulls me down the hall by my wrist.

The sky is pale blue with a small wisp of a cloud scurrying through the sky like a splash of white paint on a blue canvas. There's a slight breeze frolicking through my ebony locks and I itch to fall back into the wind and let it carry me for miles.

The three of us, not including Eloise, ungracefully trip out of the elevator as Eloise strides off, almost as if she's walking on air. I continue behind them and allow a good distance between us and peer around their shoulders.

It was as if the entire village was thrown through a grater. There wasn't a building in sight that didn't have a gruesome crack along the side. It was as if the houses are held together by rusted staples and are ready to get out. The plaster in between broken stones look like dried mud and I cringe at every little movement thinking that it's a house falling, giving out and eradicating its misery.

There arent many kids and the ones that are here seem to have made it only by luck. Just a few meters away is a woman carrying a bucket of water with a dead gash along her cheek that looks as if it'll never heal. Her hair is in mats and is falling loose every step that she takes. Her clothes are completely torn and, like the house, are ready to be taken out of their misery. She momentarily looks up and drops the bucket of water.

It looks as if the woman has traveled the entire earth with the iron bucket. It bends at the bottom just like the hunch in the lady's back. I quickly scramble to the woman and pick up the bucket before all of the water spills out, hoping to salvage as much as I can in attempts to save the woman's efforts.

I haul myself to my feet along with the deadweight, only half of the water still contained. I assume the woman is planning to thank me but instead she hastily depresses her grody fingernails through my frail flesh.

I can feel my heated blood rush out from me and spread over the wrinkles in her knuckles, the dirt and blood combining to make a soupy, dark concoction. Out of pure shock, more than pain, I yelp and my arm jumps in surprise, spilling even more water onto the bottom hem of my baggy hospital pants and seeps into the soles of my sneakers.

The lady presses her face to the side of my face and flushes me to her.

"You fool," she breathes into my ear, the scent of muddy urine drenches her and my breath gets caught in my throat at the putrid smell. Her voice is as if someone was constricting her lungs and a puff of smoke was trapped in her throat for far too long.

"Go back to sleep," she tries to yell though her voice prevents it. A wheeze is laced with every syllable and her body quakes with nervousness. "You shouldn't have woken up," she urges with intensity. "You should've died when," her voice cuts off when one of the men club her on the side of her face and she falls limp.

Her body looks almost peaceful. Everything relaxed the second she went out and the creases in her forehead didn't seem to be so taught. I almost feel happy for her when I realize she doesn't have to be tied to this trashhole anymore, but my stomach knots when I wonder if she has kids or family. Who will tell them about her?

I stand dumbfounded as the man walks out of view with the woman sloan across his shoulder. "We must keep moving to make it in time," Eloise ushers nervously and doesn't dare step off of the paved path and into the mud to come get me. She just reaches out, her body slightly bent and her arm at its full length, and twiddles her fingers for me.

I nod once and bite the inside of my cheek. "Let's go," I agree.

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