Handsome & Egret

Chapter 4

Mama held a syringe of pail fluid as Handsome and Egret were shuffled out of the house. She'd stopped protesting her children's fates when Da handed it to her. Her face drawn, Handsome imagined she would have stopped this if things were different. She was sick but she still loved her children. The sickness just made her forget the order in which she loved things, made her think she loved something else more than them. Handsome knew the truth. He gave her a kiss goodbye, tasted the salty tears on her cheek.

She whispered in his ear. "Don't come back."

Down the road again they went, the dusty trash-strewn road.

Five minutes away and Da turned on Handsome. He flinched, expecting a third strike. Instead, Da reached into his pocket, brought out a thin piece of gum wrapped up in shiny silver paper. "You think I haven't figured out how you found your way home? Open up."

Handsome complied. Spearmint. Strong, not entirely natural, coated his tongue. The sting from where he'd bit his cheek woke up and screamed inside his mouth, cool and hot at the same time. The outside tastes died away—the day taste that he hadn't been able to decipher this morning, the dry grass taste of the abandoned field to their right. There was nothing but the gum, the power of it overwhelming everything else.

They walked and Handsome tried to keep track of where they were, but after a while, each dilapidated structure looked like the one before it. Da seemed to be taking extra turns just to confuse him further. With his sense of taste compromised, the Maze was unnavigable in his mind. It was like trying to memorize the path of every drop flowing from a bucket of water tossed into the street. They disappeared too quickly, absorbed into the backdrop of the city before he could account for them.

This time, his father brought them to a low brick building not much bigger or nicer than the one Handsome called home. The muscly man, Lev, met them at its threshold.

"Boss ain't happy." Lev pointed to Handsome and then to Da. "Not with either of you."

Da crossed his arms and knocked Handsome forward with his knee. "It won't happen again."

Lev placed a possessive hand on Egret's shoulder, drawing her to him. Da's lips curled back, like he wanted to snarl at Lev but Lev was the bigger dog, the dog closer to the alpha. He took a step back, away from his children. "Do what Boss says, Egret, and you'll always have what you need."

Handsome bit his tongue, still hot and cold from the spearmint gum. Egret didn't need what Boss was offering. Neither of them did. It was their parents whose needs had to be met. This was all happening because of them.

Da wandered off, leaving the children with a wolf as a babysitter.

"You," Lev pointed to Egret. "Day two, you're coming with me. And you," he sniffed Handsome's breath. "Spit it out."

Handsome gladly dropped the gum into Lev's open hand. Lev considered it for a moment and then stuck it to his wall, covering a tiny crack. "Boss says you're to stay here until he can figure out what to do with you. He'll be by later today so you can do your day tasting bullshirt. Sit tight." He motioned to a rickety chair.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Handsome realized this had been a command, not a suggestion. He sat and Lev took a pair of handcuffs from a box under his bed, securing Handsome's wrist to a pipe stretching up the length of the wall next to the chair. "What if I have to... you know."

Lev tossed an old tin bucket at Handsome's feet. Even with the remnants of the gum lingering over Handsome's taste buds, he could tell the bucket's taste was one of unimaginable foulness. He gagged and Lev laughed. Before he'd recovered, Lev had dragged his sister from the house, her feeble protests muffled by thick walls. Alone in the shadows of Lev's house, Handsome pondered his predicament. There wasn't much else he could do. He watched the light from the house's sole window shift as the sun rose farther into the air, the shadows from the window's bars shifting across the floor in slow motion.