Runner

Chapter Ten

In my dreams her hair is long. Her skin is young; a flawless shade of almond. She’s tall and wears pale lipstick. I see her dancing in the grass at summer. I watch her wander. I listen to her bicker, and to her giggle, and to her read.

She’s funny, people laugh when she jokes.

 We’re walking together on a sheet of glass. The walls, the floor, the ceiling - it’s all glass. In front of us the glass is cracking. We are going to fall, and there is nothing beneath us. We are going to die.

I turn and run. I slam into Reaves.

He blocks me. His face isn’t what I remember it to be. It’s swollen and bruised. Fresh blood is dripping down his forehead. I turn back to the women, I don’t know what to do.

“Don’t let them find out,” she whispers.

Her eyes are startling. The blue is now a silver, and the silver is now transparent – her eyes are empty.

I see her eyes every time I close my own. She won’t let me sleep.

***

I was drowning in my own thoughts, trying to push to the surface, suffocating on heavy unconsciousness. My eyes were closed, but I was awake, barley.

I had lived this moment in my nightmares, more times than I could count. What it would be like to wake up here – The Confederation – had tortured me. The cells would surely be rotted and tiny, the moans of prisoners would echo is the walls. It would reek of death.

I broke through the final wave of my slumber.

I gagged and gasped, my back arched, and then I opened my eyes. Reaves lingered on my lips. I wanted to call for him. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive, I couldn’t shake him from my dreams, and I couldn’t shake the memory of him being slammed against the wall. Life wavering as his fragile human skull rebounded from the bricks.

I was caged in a glass cube. It was silent, it smelt of disinfectant and order. I sat up from the bed. My skin was clean, my nails were short and the beds were dirt free, my hair was washed, my face was smooth, uncut, and unbruised. My clothes -- were not my clothes.

The glass enclosure was in the centre of an enormous warehouse, the floors made of polished cement. A bed, a table, a single chair, a toilet, and a sink – that was it. Everything is in the same sanitized shade of grey.

So this is what hell looks like.

I knew immediately that I was being watched, I could feel it. 

And then I could hear it. Footsteps approached, light and tempered against the dense floors. Each step rung through the empty face. I stood and wandered in circles, waiting to see which side the devil would enter from. Panic rose as I started to question whether I was alone here. I hoped my brother escaped. I hold onto the thought that Cole never knew they were there, and that he couldn’t have called them in.

The devil was a women. I saw her silhouette break through the shadows.

It had been a long time since I had seen someone so …. clean. Her high-heeled suede boots were unscuffed, her black satin pants were perfectly straight, crease free, her face was highlighted in timid makeup, her ashy-brown hair fell at her shoulders, styled and shiny. I’d forgotten that this kind of refined perfection existed.

She was meters from the glass, “Hello, my name is Cora,” she introduced, “welcome to the Confederation.”

This women was foreign to me: her dress, her poise, and her morality – how could she justify working for the people that attempt to institutionalize our kind? Her welcome ran down my spine like ice.