Black Dove (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter Nine

            The next morning, Trident comes to visit us in our imprisonment. The doors clicked open, and he stood there, in a crisp white shirt and black pants. He left door open as he walked in, wide open. A dare. A dare to try to escape. I glare at him. I am not foolish enough to try, surely any attempt would fail and surely end in torture.

            “Avalynne, dear, do you have an answer for me?”

            “I do: no.” I hear Kane take a sharp intake of breath beside me, and grab my arm, but I ignore him. He said I had a week to decide. I have made my choice for the time being.

            A smirk creeps onto his wide face. “I had a feeling you’d say that.” He nods to someone who was standing next to the door, a tall, thin-lipped man in a guard’s uniform. He walks in and sets up a screen in the corner of the cell. Trident flicks it on with a small black remote. It’s Essie’s mother…Alyssa, I remember Trident saying her name was. She’s sitting at a white table, staring blankly ahead.

            Suddenly she is knocked from her chair by a large man, holding chains. I wince as he kicks her, and yet she still ignores him, like he is below her notice. She scurries along the back wall until she is in the corner, and the man continues to kick her and whip her with the large, silver, clanking chains. I try to look away, queasy, furious, but Trident comes and holds my head pointed directly at the screen. After fifteen minutes of forced watching, Alyssa screams for the first time. I see blood spattering the walls, but Alyssa herself is hidden behind the bulk of the torturer.

            “Stop! Please!” I beg.

            “You’ll do it then?”

            “Just—“ I shudder as Alyssa screams again, “Just give me a little longer to decide. Please. Just one more day!” One more day to formulate some kind of escape.

            “Say you’ll do it, or the woman dies. We have three more hostages to use against you.” Another scream, this time more of a pain riddled screech, invades my head from the television and leaves me hyperventilating through my nose. I can’t let them torture her anymore.

            And I can’t kill Kane. You have to choose. But who? Another scream seems to decide for me. Kane is right. One person, even a person I love, is not worth three others.

            “Alright, alright, just…please…stop.” Trident smiles and says something into a radio, and the torture stops instantly. The man steps away from Alyssa, and for the first time, I see her. Her breathing is ragged, her body covered in blood, her eyes wide with pain and fear. The walls around her are spattered with red, dripping down the walls.

            I kneel over, and vomit into a grate in the floor. This is all because of me. It’s my fault Kane was captured, it’s my fault Alyssa was tortured, and that Essie and Darran may be to. And I don’t even know what happened to Zoe. Shame fills me like poison. My mother, Jace, Kane, how many deaths do I have to have on my conscience? What forces are decreeing this amount of pain for me, and those around me?

            The screen flickers off. Trident comes and whispers in my ear, “The word has gotten out faster than expected. People are already rejoicing that the Black Dove, you, is alive. You have one more day with your sweetheart. Make it count.” He laughs, a crazy laugh that echoes in the room and seems to echo in my mind as he shuts the door behind him.

            I slump against the floor, not able to hold the tears back any longer. They spill over my eyelashes, a hot rain. Kane. Jace. Alyssa. Darran. Zoe. Essie. Can I not have friends? Is my life just going to be death after death, mistake after mistake, loss after loss?