"How's your pasta?" I asked, looking up from my own plate to look at James. He sat across from me, looking at his fork in distaste.
"You made it better last time," he said annoyed.
"Do you want me to make you somethin-"
"No," he interrupted, shoving the fork back into his mouth. I ate more of my food, but when I looked up he had stopped eating and simply stared at me.
He took his glass of water, held it over the floor for a second before dropping it to the ground, shattering it into pieces. I winced at the harsh noise.
"I heard you didn't go to work the other day," he accused, venom dripping off every word like a snake.
"I had to go to the doctors... I phoned Tony," I squeaked.
"You don't understand that Tony needs you in order for him to be on my side."
"I was scared I got that virus going around."
"Why didn't you come to me if you was so scared?"
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I was getting more scared by the minute.
"You're not a doctor," I finally confessed.
"You still didn't come to me," He raised his voice, gripping the table cloth in his fists.
"You're not a doctor though," I unintentionally raised my own voice.
He yanked the table cloth, and I ducked to the wall behind me. Plates shattered to the floor as he screamed, "Don't raise your voice at me Ariel!"
He picked up another glass and threw it at the wall beside me. One of the broken pieces nicked my cheek, and I turned my head away.Tears rolled down my cheeks as I clutched them in pain. He could have blinded me.
I heard my living room door shut loudly, and I finally let out loud sobs. Filling the room with the sound of my cries.
+
"How'd you get that scar on your cheek?" Carl asked as we hung up clothes.
"Fell off my horse when I was a kid," I lied quickly, "You're very observant, not many people notice it."
"You had a horse?" Carl smiled as we hung up the last pair of socks. I ducked under the washing line and put and arm around his shoulders. I lead him to my tent.
"Wait out here," I whispered to him.I ducked into my tent for a second, and grabbed the small black notebook that was beside my purple backpack. I came out and said a small, "come on," to Carl and lead him back to the centre of the camp.
We both sat on the logs near the fire. I opened up my notebook and flipped through the pages until I found what I needed. It was a picture of my horse when I was younger - it showed my sandy coloured horse with a much younger me atop its saddle. The younger me had short hair to the chin and a cheesy grin on my face.
"What was its name?" Carl asked, taking the picture from my hands to closer inspect it.
"Peggy."
"Peggy?"
"After Peggy Carter," I said, and he looked at me like he didn't know what I was talking about. I laughed at his confused face.
"Any more pictures?" He asked, handing the picture back to me. I nodded and handed the black book to him.
I watched as he flipped through the pages, holding drawings and pictures stuck in with glue.
"Who's this?" he asked, pointing to a picture of me and Jimmy sitting on a beach. Of all the pictures, he had to choose that one. The people in the picture were smiling at the camera, arms around each others waist.
"He was my boyfriend," I cringed, and took the book slowly from his hands and closed it.
"What happened to him?" he asked innocently, not aware of who James used to be.
"What happens to everyone," I said curtly, closing the book in his hands and taking it away from him. I looked at his face, and saw hurt in his eyes. I ruffled his hair.
"You okay?" I asked worriedly.
"I just hope that doesn't happen to my dad," he said in a small voice.
I didn't know what to say to him. I could tell him the lie to him, or let him worry. Surely this was a subject for his mother to discuss with him.
"It's okay if you don't wanna say anything," he smiled at me, and I was astonished at how grown-up he was in that moment. I smiled back at him in appreciation.
I saw Lori in the corner of my eye, and I turned to her nodding at her son.
"You're mom wants you young sir," I said to Carl, standing up and wiping my hands on the back of my jeggings.
He ventured off towards her, and they headed off in the direction of where he usually did most of his school work. It was also the direction in which Jim had been tied to a tree.
Jim had started digging holes, but I knew that he was digging graves out there. We eventually convinced him to come back to camp and rest - by convince I mean Shane had to pin him down, all whilst he reminisced about his family dying in front of him.
I didn't know Jim's backstory till then. He was just the bearded man with a cap that was good at mechanics. I always found him slightly creepy, so maybe that's why I didn't get to know him.
"Marley?"
I turned around at the voice, and find it is Andrea with a desperate look in her eyes.
"Look, Marl', I need you to distract Amy away from the RV so I can find some wrapping paper for her birthday present. Can you do that?" she whispers to me quickly.
I quirk an eyebrow at her request, but nod anyway.
I look around and find Amy is actually walking towards us.
"Hey Amy, can you help me with something?" I say unsuspiciously to her.
"What with?" she says back.
Oh God, I don't know! I rack my brain for ideas, and come up with a slightly stupid one, but it has to do.
"With a drawing." I put out a hand for her to grab, and look at Andrea, who is watching the scene unfold in suspense.
"Sorry, Marley, but I really can't draw."
I roll my eyes and snatch up her hand and drag her towards my tent. "You don't need to draw honey."
We make it to my tent, and I explain to her that I want to draw her. This should keep her away for more than enough time. She sits on my cot, and I sit on the floor. I take out my notebook, and an extremely short and worn out pencil that is seeing the last of its days.It's silent while I draw her face. She's looking off into the distance, showing off her profile.
"Marley?" she asks, and I nod in response, not looking at her face.
"Tell me about yourself." This statement seems to come out of the blue, and I pause my drawing for a moment.
"What do you want to know?" I ask nervously.
"Well, your life seems to pause when you turn sixteen." she confesses, "You don't seem to say what happened after that."
"Because it was a shitty life, after my sixteenth birthday." I confessed myself, not wanting to get into it.
"What happened?" Amy furthered on, clearly not knowing that I didn't want to talk about it. I knew that people would see me in a different light if I told them about my job. Whenever people knew before, they just asked whether I was just a stripper, and nothing more. People could be ass-holes.
"Nothing good... that seemed good at the time." I said, drawing a last wipe of my pencil, and finishing up my drawing.It seemed Amy gave up on her quest for knowledge, but when I looked up to her, she seemed annoyed at my lack of giving in.
"I'm done."
She quickly got up from her seat, muttering a snide, "you're welcome," as she ducked through the door.
I looked down to my drawing of her face. I was happy and upset. No One knew about me, yet I wanted that to happen.There was only one person who knew. And he didn't know the whole of it.
+
Amy and Andrea had been fishing earlier. The fishing resulted in a large catch of food for us all. It certainly put a smile on everyone's faces. So as we sat around the fire, a delicious meal slowly filling our stomachs, we all laughed and smiled.
I was sat beside Shane on our own log, sitting my tray on my thighs as I shovelled the delicious fish into my mouth. We paired it with rice, that we usually paired things with. But with this particular meal, it made my mouth water.
Shane let put sentences of appreciation from beside me, and it made me smile. Everyone was happy. Carl was on the other side, nibbling at his food. Some people had beer, but I refused to have one and stuck with water.
I wasn't paying attention to anyone or anything but the beauty that was on my plate, until Dale busts out in full monologue.
"I like what, um, a father said to son when he gave him a watch that had been handed down through generations. He said, "I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire, which will fit your individual needs no better than it did mine or my father's before me; I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you may forget it for a moment now and then and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it."
I had obviously listened in at the right time, because he had said something very profound and beautiful. The end of is small speech came with silence from everyone, small smiles evident on their faces.
"You're so weird," Amy comments, making everyone laugh.
"That's William Faulkner, isn't it?" I ask Dale, and makes an impressed face at me.
"Ah very good, Marley. Excuse my bad paraphrasing," he said to me. I shrugged in understanding.
Amy got up from her seat and said she needed to go pee.
We all carried on eating as she walked to the RV.
I was thinking back to what Dale had said about time. How we could forget about time. I was thinking about how I didn't even know what day it was, or I never worried in the morning about whether I would get to work on time or not. We could finally forget about something that destroys all things. And yet we worry about how much of it we have left.
Amy said something about toilet paper from the RV, then she screamed. Not normally something you couple together.
I looked up from my plate as others did, seeing a walker biting their way into her forearm. My breath hitched at the sight, and I was reminded about how much of a wimp I was.
Amy was gone in that moment, I knew that there was no going back.
Someone... I think it was Shane, accidentally pushed me forwards as they bolted up from theirs. The next thing I knew, I was spreading my hands out to stop myself from falling to the ground, but my hands found fire.
The rocks around the burning wood wasn't tall enough to stop me from going over them and sticking my hands in the red and orange mess.
I let out a painful scream as I scrambled to get away from the searing in my hands. It hurt more than anything I had been inflicted with before. And I had been inflicted with a lot.
Surely, I managed to get away from the fire, shifting backwards. My screams stopped and were replaced with shock. Then I could hear everyone else's screams.
Walkers were slowly filling the camp and attaching our members.I got up from the ground, slightly in a daze. I headed somewhere I wouldn't go before without a certain someone. I headed to the woods, dodging walkers left and right, scared out of my mind.
The most surprising thing was that I was not crying, but simply had my hands up to my chest.
I was soon in the maze of trees, running like a maniac, the sounds of cries and screams getting more distant the more I ran. My breathing was heavy, and I was quickly running out of energy I didn't know I had.
Gun shots. Gun shots silencing their violent sound. That's what made me stop.
I didn't know where I was, and I realised that I was lost. I spun in circles, looking for anywhere I could go, but I only lost the direction I came in.
How could Daryl track through forests? It all looked the same to me.
I walked further on, hoping I was going the right way.
Wanting to just go to bed.
+
I'm sorry if you wanted to read more about the action at the end of the chapter, and more of a reuniting of Daryl and Marley. But Marley was like "bish I'm outeez".