When William opened his eyes he noticed the soft light from a lantern dancing across his body and onto his face.
"Ah, my head." He said, starting to feel an intense headache come over him.
As he lay there holding his head, a voice he had never heard before came from nearby. It was a sweet voice; soft, with a slight rasp to it. He never imagined how the sound of a voice that wasn't Father's could be so mesmerizing. It was the opposite of Father's old, worn vocality. It was indescribable to William.
"You fell on your head," said the stranger, "could have broken your neck."
"Yeah," said William as he propped himself up and looked at the person sitting in front of him.
It was a girl. Seemed about his age. He would ask but it seemed irrelevant. She probably had no idea. The light revealed her well enough to notice that her clothes were similar to his own. Her hair looked brown, but it could have been dark blonde. The darkness in the room helped little with the details.
Her eyes were enough in the light to reveal a hazel color. She was a small woman, perhaps just as malnourished as William. Her oval face ended with the point of her small, pronounced chin. It was like discovering a new, spectacular species for the first time. All the women, living ones at least, that may have been in his memory before had all but faded away. Silence sat between them for a brief moment before she spoke.
"You feel OK?"
"I think I'll be fine." He said.
"What's up there?" She asked.
"I didn't get a good look at what was chasing me. The rest is just a shitty hallway." He said.
He hadn't had an actual conversation in years. It was like the answers and questions were present in his mind but the mouth and the words couldn't connect.
"I hear them up there sometimes. Tapping and breathing." She said.
"They were tapping with broomsticks."
"Broomsticks?" She asked, surprised.
"Don't ask me." He said.
"Some kind of fucked up housekeeping service, huh?" She replied with a grin.
He countered her grin with one of his own, though it didn't strike him as funny at that moment nor did he fully understand what a housekeeper was.
"They were pulling on my legs. And the hallway got so small, I had to crawl on my stomach." He explained.
"I used to wonder if they were just others, like me. But after a while, I realized they aren't anything like me." She said.
"How do you figure that?"
"They don't talk. Sometimes I'll hear them up there just scratching. I think they take turns sniffing up there." She said.
"Sniffing?"
"I don't know. It used to creep me out. But they're just a bunch of crazy fucks and I've learned to tune them out. I assume it's Father's little helpers or something, coming to keep an eye - and nose - on me."
"So, you know Father," he asked before continuing, "he makes you call him that, too?"
"He used to keep me in a room with a window. Now, I get... this." She said, holding her palms out and presenting the room like a sad, last-place trophy.
"I had a window, too. More like a hole, really. But I guess that's what windows are when you think about it." He replied.
"Mine didn't even lead outside. It was just another room on the other side of it. Kind of like that hole you almost died in. Or would the culprit have been the ground?" She said sarcastically.
He wasn't used to sarcasm. He wasn't used to jokes at all. His responses were nervous grins instead of laughs, which he began to overthink as being weird. But what was weird in a place like where they were? How could an odd smirk be weird in a place where things crawled after you in a shrinking hallway? Yet, it felt odd all the same. It was another item to add to William's growing list of the inexplicable.
"Was someone in that other room?"
"Sure. She lived there for a long time. But she was a lot different from me... very big. Couldn't even fit through the hole after a while." She said.
"You were able to visit each other?"
"Well, we weren't allowed to. But we did."
William's interest was piqued. Having someone to visit at all was such a foreign concept. There's no way that Father would allow such a thing with him. Why would there be a window to each other's rooms if visiting was against the rules? Another thing bothered William the most, though. Why did Father allow the other girl to get so big? He would barely give enough rations to William to survive the day and, from the look of it, the girl he was talking to endured no different.
"Paris." She said.
"What's that?" William asked.
"My name. What's yours?"
"Oh. I'm William."
She was noticeably calm like someone had picked her up like a wet towel and wrung out her fear into a sink to drain away. For some reason, it made him uncomfortable. He stood up, still holding the top of his aching head. He walked over to the lantern and realized it was no use trying to get it down.
"You'll find everything to be just out of reach in here." She said.
"How does he light it?" He asked.
"I'm never in here when he does."
He turned around and leaned against the cold wall. "I stabbed him with a nail. Right in his neck." Said William, staring thoughtfully at the dimly lit ground. "I should have kept going until I was sure he was dead, but..."
"Wow. I doubt he had that in mind today. Where'd you get a nail from?" She said.
"Another girl lived under my room. Without her help, there would have been no nail at all."
Paris looked him over and could sense a sadness in him. She stood up and leaned against the wall as well, mimicking William, and searched for something to say.
"She must have had a lot of faith in you. Didn't even know you and she still helped, knowing the consequences." She said.
"That's the thing. After what she went through, the least I could have done was make damn sure he was dead. But of course, I ran."
"The least you could have done was make sure that you stayed alive. I'm sure she would've wanted that most of all." Said Paris.
William looked at Paris, fighting the terrible pain under his eyes and the trembling in his lips. He clenched his teeth and his body stiffened.
"Yeah." He managed to spit out under his breathe. She walked closer to him.
"Will. I haven't talked to someone in a long time. I mean, really talked with someone."
"I've never really talked to someone at all, besides Father." He said, his face feeling hot and beginning to hurt from holding in the tears.
"I know we don't know each other at all," she said, "but I think we know how the other feels. Probably a lot of what the other is thinking. There's not much to think about down here, you know. Yeah, how to escape and when's my next meal and all that, sure. But you did something. You may have just fallen into another pit, but you acted on those thoughts. I mean, I can't imagine how exhausted you must be. Or how completely terrified."
Her eyes swelled with tears. After so long alone in that room, another person had simply dropped from the ceiling and into her company. An actual person. A human being with whom she could talk to and see and not be afraid for her own life around. It was as if, for a moment in time, she was given a moment to escape from that place. She wanted to talk to him forever. To escape absolute hell, for her, was in a simple conversation. It was safe to say that William shared in that sentiment.
Paris took William's hand, his eyes glossed and guilt-ridden. "Have you ever had a hug before?"
"Yes." He said.
She walked close and put her arms around him and William did the same. It was a moment of warmth that cut into the cold, rough walls surrounding them. Not all of the tears they let out had found their way to the floor but instead, they seeped into their sleeves. The embrace was as unpracticed as it was needed. There was no sexuality or questions of deceit. There were no feelings of friendship or ownership. It was instinct. It was medicine.
"Have you ever been hugged?" He asked, feeling rib bones beneath his arms.
"No." She said, feeling the same beneath hers.