Perised

Chapter 9

We enter a living room with a small open kitchen surrounded by grey concrete walls, it's a small space and it has a couple of old and simple furniture which are made up by two olive green chairs and a matching three-seated couch. A wooden table is cramped together in the small living room with a lamp and a landscape painting hanging on the wall above the couch. Mac place himself into one of the chairs and lights a cigarette. Joe walks next to him, nudge his shoulder and says 'give me the watches.' Mac grunts in return, reach into his pockets and turn in his loot. Luna place herself in the couch, and I join her. Joe mumbles 'I'll return these to their rightful owners later.' As he walks hastily into another room. After a while he returns with a semi-automatic gun, hands it to me and says, 'You'll have to keep this for now, do you know how it works?' Perplexed, I answer 'Uhm, I think so?' Joe mutters 'according to your American accent, you probably do.' A little offended by this British accented poof, I ignore him and turn my attention to the semi-automatic.

I try to study the gun, but honestly, I'm still shell-shocked by the trials and it's not easy to talk to strangers. At least I know Luna, but suddenly, she also feels a stranger to me. Why didn't she tell me about these people? Joe looks like he's deep in thought. He leans forward in his chair, dab his feet and with a concentrated frown, he says 'Ok, so, Luna and... Wait, Blonde girl, did I ever catch your name?' I answer, 'It's Hannah, Hannah Hagen.' He stares at me for a moment, his mind is wandering but suddenly he jots, shakes his head, and continues 'Ok, anyways, Luna, Hannah, Mac, we fucked up. We dragged the girls out in the middle of a trial and, you know, the guys at the top are not big fans of that.' I ask 'how is that a problem? Luna shouldn't even have been there.' Joe sits up and his eyes starts squinting suspiciously towards Luna 'Yeah, she has a point... Luna, why were you there?' Luna smiles nervously and explains, 'I was looking for something, but I bumped into Hannah by accident and decided to help her cause I liked her, and she seemed nice' Mac laughs and says, 'Do you like, like her?' Luna punch him in his side and he oofs in pain uttering a small 'totally worth it, urgh.' However, it still doesn't satisfy Joe's suspicion, but he continues talking with his serious face on 'Ok, Hannah... nobody is supposed to escape the trials. You must die to proceed further into hell and become a minion. And now, since you skipped out, they'll hunt you down.' 'But why do they have to get me? And what about Luna, she skipped as well?' Mac blows a perfect ring of smoke over the room, and says, 'Because nobody survives hell, sweetie.' Joe sigh and says 'Luna has done it before so they can't keep track of her, but we'll talk more about that some other time. It's been a crazy day, so we'll go to sleep and rest.'

Joe proceeds to show us where to sleep. He leads me and Luna into a small bedroom covered with gray concrete and no windows. There's one bunk bed and a wooden closet in the corner. Afterwards, Luna went to talk to Mac in the living room while Joe helps me make my bed. As he furiously fights a pillow into a sheet he says, 'You need to keep your blanket on during the whole night, it'll work as an invisibility cloak.' While covering my matters with a bed sheet, I answer, 'Luna spoke about that, you must be joking, right?' Joe victoriously shakes the sheeted pillow to make it fit better and says, seriously 'You don't mess around with Dark Beings...'

At night I can't sleep. My mind is racing with thoughts and anxieties. First, what the actual fuck are Dark Beings? I pull my blanket over my head, making sure that all of my body is covered by it. Whatever Dark Beings are, I won't mess with those after what I've seen in the trials. I turn a few times, try to count to keep my mind off other things but thoughts keep infiltrating like water from a faucet that never stops. Pictures, sounds, and voices from the trials roam past my eyes and I can't control it. Frustrated, I rise in my bed into a sitting position. Luna is snoring in the bunk above me. I wish I could sleep as well and her snore provokes me. I'm just so exhausted by everything. Who knew my after life would be like this. I feel alive, but also as if I'm placed into another universe. I let my body fall back into bed again. I exhale as I stare into the bed above me, fuck this shit.