Our Darkest Memories

~ Lost Memory

I squirmed away from him. "Wait, what?" My thoughts were a mess. "No," I stammered while putting a step backward. The confusion made me unaware of what Clancy was doing. "I don't... That's not..." I stuttered even more.

I stumbled backward even further until I reached the door. "I'm sorry, but no. This is not... I don't like you." And with that, I rushed out of the space toward the exit of the cabin.

Nadia was leaning against it but stood up when she saw me walking out of the cabin. She immediately saw my confusion and my stress and stopped me.

"Nadia, we need to leave faster. We need to leave now. Right now." I grabbed her arm and almost started to drag her with me, but was interrupted.

"Leave?"

I tensed at the voice of Clancy coming from right behind me. It was a cold voice filled with only anger and rage. The betrayal was visible in his eyes and I felt like he was going to do something to us any moment. So instead of waiting for that to happen, I pulled up my knee to his sensitive area. He bent down and let out a curse, but I already turned around to run away and saw that Nadia did the same.

We didn't even have to communicate with each other to know we weren't going to get the food that we had collected over the last week. We didn't have time for that. We were just gonna have to do it without any rations.

So instead of running towards the cabins, we ran as fast as we could towards the trees and in the direction of the path I had decided would be the best to escape.

Sadly, we heard people approaching from our right. Probably some guards that had spotted us. We quickly turned to our left, which made us slightly bend back to the camp.

And that was what was gonna cost us.

Because quickly after we turned to the left, we saw a lot of other people running towards us from the camp. And because we slightly bent back to the camp, we also came in the borders from where they could see us.

The moment that that happened, Nadia froze in her tracks, her eyes focused on something far away that probably only she could see. "Nadia?" I asked while tugging her sleeve. "Nadia, come on, we have to run."

But she turned around to face me and instead of coming with me, she shook her arm loose from my grip and used that arm to punch me. I only managed to dodge it at the last second, but I lost my balance and fell to the ground.

"Nadia?" I screamed, but her eyes were still focused on something else while looking at me. It was as if she didn't see me at all.

I pushed myself up from the ground, but this time, Nadia kicked me back on the ground again.

It became even more chaotic when the sound of a lot of footsteps got closer and closer. They surrounded us quickly and when I looked up, I noticed I was in the middle of a big circle of guards. A few of them had a weapon aimed at me, but the thing that could only hurt me was Nadia fighting me. And that is exactly what she was doing. She kept kicking me in my stomach, making me gasp for air every time. I yelled at her to stop and to fight whatever had gotten into her.

She stopped for a second, which gave me hope. But that hope faded when Clancy stepped forward from the circle of people. He ordered Nadia to stop and then turned to watch me while I started to sit up, coughing from the pain.

Clancy slowly approached me with the anger clearly visible on his face. His hands were formed into fists that hung next to his body. I saw his fingers twitch and looked up to meet his eyes.

"I thought you understood me, Morgan. You and I are the only ones who know what it feels like to be hurt by the people that are supposed to love you." He sounded genuinely hurt, but still furious.