Sienna just looks broken. She’s given up.
She lets out a shuttering sigh, “That’s not the first time it’s happened. Normally after he throws it at me…I sleep on your cot.”
I shift uncomfortable on my bed. Is there vomit staining the sheets?
Sienna shakes her head, “Don’t worry, they always change the sheets. I think it’s hygienic reasons. It must be a difficult job. Torturing me while still keeping me healthy. I don’t know why they don’t just finish the job already. Just kill me, please.”
I don’t say anything and Sienna continues, “Ellen must not be able to deal with the fact that something has been able to beat her. Killing me would be…cowardly or something for her. She must also have to be sure that I don’t die from the torturing. I have to die because her poisons finally won. She hates it that someone is stronger than her…”
Sienna begins to ramble. How can she deal with it? She’s acting as though most of this is entirely normal. She’s behaving as though sitting in her own vomit is on her cot is ordinary.
Maybe now, for her, it is.
I shiver. How long before that kind of thing happens to me? How long before Derek realizes that I don’t trust him? What if he moves on to different tactics, Jonathan’s tactics?
Sienna slides off her cot and stands. She carefully pulls the sheet off her cot, gathering the vomit in the middle. She delicately lays the sheet on the ground in front of the door. I smile at the thought of Jonathan walking through the door and stepping right in the vomit.
She takes a side of the sheet that isn’t splattered in vomit and rubs her face off in it. Then, she moves to another clean section of the sheet and dries off her hair the best she can. She continues doing this until she has gotten most of the vomit off her.
Her clothes are still streaked in vomit and some of it is still smeared into her hair, but it looks much better.
She lies down on the bare, mattress and sighs.
She calls out, “Dana?”
“Yes?”
“I know I don’t know you very well and you don’t really know me but…Piper misses me, right?”
I think of what Miranda told me. Miranda said that Piper had wept and even lashed out at Miranda when Sienna got taken away.
“Of course, she would be so happy to know that you’re alive.”
Sienna sighs, “That’s the thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…sometimes I wish I weren’t alive anymore. I wish I could just…get out of this horrid place of suffering.”
“Even if it meant dying?”
“I think dying would be less painful than what I’ve gone through already.”
“Do you wish you could go back to just peacefully living in the Complex? Do you wish you had never met Piper and Brinn?”
I met in silence as Sienna thinks.
The silence stretches on for minutes.
Eventually I glance over at Sienna and see that she’s fallen asleep.
I lie down on my cot.
The smell of vomit burns my nostrils. I lie on my stomach, burying my nose in the pillow in attempts of blocking out the smell.
I try to ignore all the questions swirling around in my head and just relax. It doesn’t work very well. My throat burns with the slightly subdued panic of endless what if’s.
YOU ARE READING
987 (Complex Series, #3)
Science Fiction-third book in the Complex series- Dana has been captured by Officials. She doesn't know who to trust and who to avoid. Anything she says or does could quickly cause her death. How long can she protect the secret of her and her friends' past? How lo...
