The wooden floors in the cabin creak behind you. You pull away from your thoughts and turn around to see your sister in a white, lace sleeping gown standing by the bed. The poufy sleeves hug her wrists as she clenches her fists. "What is wrong?" You ask her. She glares at you with eyes that can burn a hole in a glass window.I am just fine. Although I barely got away from him, I thought of you and I know you cannot survive without me.She spoke to you without moving her lips. Her voice was audible but her lips did not move. "How are you doing that?" You ask her. I do not need to release words from my mouth to talk to you. We are the same breed. If we spoke loudly all the time it would be unnecessary and most of the things we speak about would get us in trouble. "What do you mean?"He does not like it when we talk about our memories or lives but we should not harp on his rules. We are almost off of his property. I can feel it. We should just run until we stop feeling his presence around us. "Does his presence make me reminisce about the life I had? Do you have those too?" I see that you are comfortable speaking to me, but I will talk to you through the transferring of my thoughts. No, I do not dream about my life in his presence. Thinking is really hard to do when he is near, for me. Maybe you experience things differently from me but that is not what I meant when I spoke of his presence. This cabin and the woods outside are not real. They are illusions to make it hard for us to leave him."Technically, we may be stuck in his home but we thought we got away!"Actually, it can be worse than that. We may be trapped in his head but the upside is... I can't think of an upside."What do you think we should do? I think we should stop walking and get our thoughts organized or at least have a clearer goal."We do not have time to waste. It will take too long and before we finish...He will be here."Okay, just tell me what he did to the others."Now, it is always sunny here but we experienced sixteen nights after getting out of the pods. Every night a pod would go missing and I assumed the worst happened to them. I am a curious girl. I asked him about the matter and his answer was strange. "It is nothing that you need to worry about." That is exactly what he said to me. He did something to them and we can only imagine what they went through. Oh, it is sending shivers down my spine. Come now, we must find our way out of this maze.
She grabs your wrist and pulls you along. Both of you exit the cabin and walk on a gravel road. This is like that time your father got angry and slapped your mother across the face because she dared to disagree with him. Your mom took your hand and ran out of the house with you following closely behind her. The road rises and your mother pulls you forward. When you two reach the top of the slope, you see the guy that owns the cabin. He just stands there as still as a mannequin in a store. His eyes are looking in your direction. They do not blink. Your mother leads you past his frozen frame and he does not move. You point at him. "That guy spoke to me. He is the one that led me to the cabin!" He did? Are you sure? He looks like a dummy, to me. The overseer's presence is getting weaker. I think we are going to get out of here really soon. Both of you take five more steps and your mom hugs you. We are out! You see it, right? The woods, cabins, and the gravel are no longer here. We are free! You look behind you and you see a warning sign that tells visitors to not go any further because the land is not open to the public. The paved road you are standing on stops where the sign is placed. Your mother pulls your arm and takes you into a quiet village. All the homes are empty. As you walk, you see open doors moving in the still air. You two go to the only home with lights on and the door is closed. You feel a choking sensation as your mother knocks on the door gently.
An old man opens the door with furrowed, thick and grey eyebrows. "What do you wan- Come in! I have been waiting for visitors such as yourselves to grace me with your company." He says in an unexpectedly boyish voice. His salt and pepper hair is cut like a toadstool. The hair shields you from seeing his eyes. He fastens the door after you two enter. "Is there anything you want before we begin?" He asks. "What exactly are we beginning, sir?" Your mother asks.
"You know what you are here for. I am surprised he is giving me both of you. After all, he already sent me one before and I got carried away and messed it up. I'll be better this time and try not being rough with the handling, okay?"
"What are you talking about? Are you senile?"
"No, but you will see. You will see."
He snatches your mother's hand and you unlock the door. You pull it and it will not open. You push it and it does not avail. The windows are just within reach but he has already gotten a metal chain around your neck. He proceeds to drag you with the chain choking you along the way to the room he threw your mother in. He releases you on the floor and picks up a wooden bat as you sit up. He swings and your vision blurs as the impact sends your head straight to the wall behind you. Smack!
You groan and hold your head with your right hand. He shuts the door and the ceiling light illuminates the sweat gathering on your forehead. You inspect the blood on your hand only to find a neon blue liquid covering your hand. He comes back into the room with blue, glowing spheres in a bowl. He feeds it to your mother and she eats every bit of it. "Why are you eating that? What is that?" You should ask him for some of this. You are not in a good position to refuse nourishment. He is a crazy guy but he knows what we eat, souls. "Are you hurt? Why are you eating these things from him? We cannot trust him!" She finishes the bowl and he slits her arm with a knife. The blue blood turns purple as it touches his mouth. He squeezes her arm and gulps down the blood sloppily. Drool and wasted purple blood mixes and then drops to the floor.
She shrinks and shrivels until she becomes nothing but flat, wrinkled flesh. "Not again! I fed her before I drank from her. She must have not been the original. I have to find the source of this sweet elixir. If they are the fruit, I can only imagine the sap from the tree... I cannot afford to lose any more fruit until I find the tree. Hey, we are going out!" He says to you. You are pushed outside of the home and it is dark outside. A tall shadow appears before you. "Where is the tree?" The old man asks. "You have stolen fruit from my land and killed one of them. You know what that means." The shadow says in a low tone. "I do not care about giving up territory or power, but I find it odd that you have an Elixir Tree on your territory. I don't allow most overseers to have one of those, but I let you have one because my father favored you. I would rebuke this privilege but my wife has taken a liking to you. All you do is-is- tease us with its fruits when it should be in the Garden of Elixirs so that every overseer from every place can enjoy its flavor."
"Give me my property. I do not owe you an explanation."
"You win this time. This is not over! That tree of yours will be in the Garden of Elixirs soon."
The old man shoves you into the shadow figure. You and the shadow walk back to the woods. When you pass a few rows of trees, the shadow kicks you down. It picks a big branch off of the ground and stomps toward you. As he slams it against your ankles, you move your hands in its path as if they will be enough to thwart or stop the assault. Now, you have bruised and swollen ankles that appear similarly as damaged as your hands. He drags you all the way back to the manor. A transparent lady stands on the stairwell as he releases your feet and they flop to the floor. Pain echoes through your body until it goes numb. Soreness sits on you and makes it hard to move your heavy limbs. He disappears in an open, dark space down the hall. The porch light bends through her form and it is like a miniature Aurora Borealis. She closes the door and its darkness that takes you in. It forgives your previous departure with its warm silence.
"Hey sweetheart, it is best if you do not try to run off again. I left the door open but...I regret it. I promise you that I do. I did not think you were going to actually leave. How come you did not meet me after you saw- Do not punish me with your silence. I don't deserve this! I showed you what you wanted to see because you begged me and then you traded me in for the company of one from your kind." She says with her immature, calm and sweet voice. "What?" You ask. "You may not remember everything because of what I have shown and shared with you, but you are my friend. No matter what, I will not let you perish. In time, you will remember me and everything you want to know about me." She says. The room grows cold and you watch the morning light peer through the little window above the door. The porch light goes off and the black space becomes a grey tint on the objects' colors around you. You are alone where you are, for now. You hear her flirty laugh from the other room and look at the ceiling feeling exasperated only to find another shadow on the stairwell and its leaning on the banister. His head was facing the direction of the laugh. You clear your throat and it looks down at you abruptly. He stomps the down the stairs and past you. A door slams not too far from your location. "What the hell is going on here?" You say out loud to no one.
A door slams again and the shadow comes back toward you. It stops by you without moving an inch. The stillness seems eerily conversant. "Who are you?" You ask it. It becomes animated again but he does not answer your question. He grasps your hands with black gloves. You squelch a yell to release a whimper. It sounds like a wounded dog's whimper. You rest your arm on him and your weight borrows his strength as you two hobble up the stairs. You notice something, as you are assisted onto a naked mattress in a bare room; this shadow is not overly tall. How many of them are there?