*Quick heads up, I was in a rush to get this chapter up so I did not edit it thoroughly. If you see spelling errors or sentences that don't make sense, please leave me a heads up in the comments, thanks! Imogen and Blake pictured above btw*
I can feel myself running again. Running in my nightmare, the landscape still blank, the colors still dull. The fear tickles my spine and rakes its razor claws through my already broken mind. Taylor runs with me, her cheeks flushed with red and her eyes wild with terror. I know this scene well. I know there is no end, that I will never be free from my invisible enemy.
My breath comes out short and quick, stinging my lungs and pressuring my heart like you wouldn't believe. I feel the presence of the source of my fear closing. I know I will never outrun whatever it is. But I can't bring myself to stop even if there is no hope in escaping. I don't want to surrender even though I will loose anyway.
Then, the world of my nightmare crashes down around me, the scenery stretches and morphs itself in peculiar shapes, messing with my mind even further. Then the colors come. The black explodes into reds and golds and shining silvers, the white bursts into blues and greens and royal purples. It's a tie dye swirling mess that blinds me with its brightness and sudden beauty. I trip and fall on the colored ground, dragging Taylor down with me. The colors fade in and out of my spotted vision as my panic rises. I try to scramble to my feet. I can't lay here any longer or it will get me. But something holds me down, as though I am no longer strong enough to withstand gravity. Each time I get closer to standing, I am pushed back down onto the cold colors.
Taylor gets up with ease, she doesn't spare me a single glance before she takes off running again. I call after her with a violent scream but she seems deaf to my desperation. I'm crying, tears stream down my face and I try one final time to stand, only to be slammed down on my stomach yet again.
The thing that is chasing me, whatever it may be, is no longer closing in. It doesn't have to anymore because I can feel it's darkness standing over me. I cry out one last time for Taylor, but she is gone, dissolved in the colors. I lie on the ground, my fave flat against the floor. There's nothing I can do now but wait for the other shoe to drop. Nothing I can do but wait until it decides to end me.
Then, I wake. My eyes dart open and I can't see anything but black for the first minute of my true consciousness. My skin is slick with sweat, my heart thudding faster than I thought possible inside my chest. I heave the stale air around me, trying in vain to convince myself it was just a dream, that it wasn't real. I'm still trying to catch my breath when a hand comes down hard over my mouth and pinches my nose closed. I try to scream but I can't, I try to breathe but I can't, I try to thrash and swat at the hand but I can't. My wrists are bound behind my back and I'm sitting on my knees with my ankles also bound.
I can't think, there's no oxygen getting to my lungs. I try the only thing I can think to do, I bite down hard on the hand that found its way to my mouth. I taste blood and it's not my own. There is a low growl of pain from the person who tried to silence me as they retract their hand. I gasp for air and my body rocks back and fourth with the force of my breath.
"Freak!" The voice hisses with deadly venom. I cringe at the tone and I spit the blood out of my mouth.
"Taylor!" I call, my voice horse and cracking in my throat.
"Blake!" I hear faint muffled screams in the space but I don't know where it's coming from or who is responsible for making the noises.
"Shut up!" The one who's hand I bit howls. I'm not prepared for the slap that he gives me across the left side of my face with the back of his hand.
"Get them outta here!" He commands, grabbing me by my shirt and hoisting my up onto my tied ankles.
"Let's go!" He growls in my ear. I try to get my elbow out enough to catch him in the side but he stands too far away. I try to force my feet to stay in place but he is much stronger than me and drags me along as if I weigh nothing.
There is a bang and a crash as the man dragging me swings open a door and I realize that it's the door to the Ben & Jerry's. We're still here.
As I am pushed out of the building, the light and the cold air hits me like the coiled fist of a Monitor. I resist the shoving of the man as best as I can but he jabs me hard between my shoulder blades making me stagger forward.
I try to twist my neck to look behind me and I catch a glimpse of Blake and Taylor in the grasp of another black cloaked figure before my captor forces my gaze forward again. I want to yell out for Blake and Taylor but what good would that do? They can obviously see me already, there's no reason to risk myself just so I can say their names.
As we cross the parking lot we come up next to a white van with tinted windows, the kind that kidnappers use in the movies. How lovely. I drag my heels and try to shake myself out of his grip. The man acts like I'm just dead weight.
He thrusts me up against the car door on the left side, pressing me against it with his burly figure. My head collides with the car and spots flash in my vision. I feel a warm liquid trickle down my forehead from my temple.
"Stop making this harder than it has to be." He has bent his head down next to my ear and I can feel his sickly breath tickle my neck. I grit my teeth through the pain in my skull and let out a dry, humorless laugh.
"I'm just getting started, sweetheart." I growl, working my jaw back and forth. The man shifts his weight against me and I feel a sharp jolt of pain in my side as his knee rises and jambs into my waist.
I have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming. I squeeze my eyes shut. It's about time I did something.
The static was already there, boiling in my gut. I wasn't strong enough to let out a bolt as violent as I would need but I was positive that it would be enough. I feel my hands from behind my back heat up and twitch against the mans body. But, that was all. The electricity never came. It never released itself, never blasted the man off of me and sent him sprawling across the pavement. There was no purple light that came from my hands.
I heard a cackle come from the lips of the man behind me.
"Looks like your not the only one with a variation here." He sneers, slamming me harder against the car. I wince and I feel a crack as my cheekbone crushes itself on the metal.
"Open the door!" He hollers to his other comrade.
"Get down and stay down!" The other one yells from behind me. I hear a thud and a cry follow. My guess is that the man just threw Blake and Taylor to the concrete. If they're smart, they'll run and forget about me. But of course, they both were either too stubborn or too stupid for their own good and they stay down like they were told.
The other man comes up beside me. The first one still holds me strong against the car, immobilizing me. He doesn't spare me a single glance, not that I could see what he's looking at, his face is concealed by a black ski mask. He reaches for the door handle and yanks it open.
"Move!" The one holding me shouts. I am forced away from the car and immediately thrown into the backseat. I land hard and flat on my face, making my bruised, or possibly broken, cheekbone throb and my head spin.
I scramble up from where I am sprawled along the seats so that I'm now sitting.
As soon as I get situated, Blake is thrust into the car on top of me and Taylor next to him. Blake's body has me pinned up against the inside of the door and his face is inches from mine. His arctic eyes look into mine, searching them for something but I'm not sure what.
"Alice, it's Alice." He breathes, his voice husky and low. It's Alice...
"She's dead, Blake, I killed her back at the motel." I whisper, squirming against the inside of the door.
"You attacked her with your variation. Alice had a variation too. She wasn't dead, Roach, she was faking." His voice is harsh, desperate. He was begging me to believe him and he wasn't going to back down.
Suddenly, the passenger door swings open and the man who had dragged me away climbs in and soon after the other one gets in the drivers seat. They pull out of the parking lot just as Blake straightens himself so he's sitting in the middle seat.
"Let us go!" Taylor yells, her voice is quite and quivering and pathetic, frankly. Why would she try? What good would it do? The men don't even respond as they continue driving.
We sit in silence, unable to discuss anything in confidence considering they could hear any noises we made. We sit and we think. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, focus on the steady rhythm of in and out, in and out.
I feel a hand come across my shoulders and when I open my eyes I see that it's Blake's. He looks at me with question in his eyes, is this ok? Any other day I would have shoved him off and told him that I can handle myself. But I was so scared, so weak that I didn't bother. In fact, I did the opposite, leaning into Blake's chest, nuzzling my face into his neck and craving his warmth.
That's when I notice for the first time that the ropes that were once binding his arms are gone.
"How did you...?" I start, but I let my voice trail off. If the men can hear us I don't want them to become aware that Blake broke his ties, however he did so.
"Shhh." He says, his eyes conveying the message loud and clear that he plans to tell me about his little Houdini act later.
I nod my head slightly and lean back into chest.
I can hear his breathing, soft and steady. His embrace is comforting and reassuring and for the moment I just want to lay in his arms forever, forget about the catastrophe unfolding in front of us.
"Normally I would tell you that everything is going to be ok." He whispers into my ear as I close my eyes. I am startled by his words that I angle my head so I can look up at him.
"But I can't do that. I can't make empty promises. Not when it's my fault your here in the first place." His eyes are pained when he speaks, so much hurt and regret that flashes through them. I want to protest, I want to tell him that he's wrong, that it isn't his fault that we will be ok, but I can't. Because he's right. It is his fault. We probably won't be ok. But that doesn't mean that I blame him. So instead I just keep quite and let myself lie buried in Blake's warmth, away from the cold of the car and the air outside.
"Time to go to sleep, we got a long ride." I hear the one in the passenger seat snarl. I move away from Blake, ready to see whatever is coming to me, what does he mean, 'time to go to sleep'?
I look up just in time to see the man turning around to face all three of us, three silver syringes being held in his meaty gloved hands.
I try to wiggle out of the way, to get as close to the window as possible, but I can't, he's too quick. In an instant he has jammed the silver needle into my thigh, injecting whatever liquid had been inside into my blood stream.
I swat at the needle, at his hand on my leg but I'm growing weaker by the second. Blake shouts something vile at the man but I can't hear it, my ears aren't working right. Then suddenly, everything is silent. I'm woozy and rocking back and forth trying to keep myself from slipping into a black abyss. Blake and Taylor aren't faring too well either, Taylor's head knocks against the glass window but makes no sound. Blake slumps forward like he might vomit but how could he? All we've had to eat were granola bars for the last three days, there's nothing left in our stomachs to heave out.
Slowly, almost without my awareness, I slip away. I go tumbling down into black, the black that claimed Ant's eyes back at the zone. The black that replaced the souls and hearts of the monitors and cursed people. The black that Taylor and Blake would join me in, if they weren't already there.
*******************************************************************************
I didn't dream and I didn't have any nightmares while I was out. The fluid must have permitted even my subconscious from working. When I did finally wake, I wasn't sure how long I had been under or where we were. Only, that feeling didn't last long.
"Good morning sunshines. Sleep well?" The driver asked, peering at us through the rearview mirror. I glared at his eyes so intensely, hoping to maybe let him know how much wrath was boiling under my skin and that he better not mess with me. But of course, I was powerless against them. They were cursed and like I've mentioned before, the cursed don't effect other cursed as they do ordinary people.
I look beside me and see that I am not the only one awakening. Taylor is stretching her arms and yawning silently while Blake is inspecting the place on his thigh where the man had stabbed us with the needles.
"Almost home, a couple more minutes and we'll be there!" The one on the passenger side said, arrogant sarcasm radiating off of him like heat waves.
"Where are you taking us?" Taylor asks, a threatening hint in her tone, one that wasn't there before but had some how found its way to her voice.
"Don't you listen, you little freak? Home. We're taking you home, back where you and all your kind belong." The man in the drivers seat barks. He waits a moment after speaking, expecting us to catch on, like we'd actually understand any of this which of course, we don't.
He sighs, clearly annoyed by our ignorance.
"The zone, we're taking you to the zone. In fact we're nearly there." I should have seen it coming. I should have known that we wouldn't be dropped off in some place in the clouds over the rainbow. Oh no, we were destined for misfortune. I was going back to the zone, that was inevitable. I was almost too distraught to be shocked or angry.
"Here we are, good old Montana base. It's about time." The car rolled to a stop and I could just barely, through the tinted glass, see the faint outlines of trees bordering the road.
I peered in between the two front seats to gaze through the windshield. My eyes swept across the wooded landscape until they found the familiar electric fence, which must now be in working order since I last was here when I blew out its power.
Only, it wasn't just an electric fence that guarded the zone now. It was also being patrolled by fifty or more monitors, in their camo green vests and thick army pants, black rifles slung over their shoulders. They marched in perfect order and rhythm in from of the gate. The gate was where the fence opened up to allow deliveries of food and clothes and other necessities into the zone.
The car was parked just in front of that gate. The monitors had stopped marching at the sight of us. One of them, a heavy set woman with fiery orange hair that was pulled back in a pristine bun on top of her head, approached us.
"Papers." She growled when the driver of our car had rolled down his window to greet her. It felt like I had shrunk even further into the backseat, if that was even possible.
Without another word, the man in the passenger seat handed the driver a packet of wrinkled, coffee stained papers. The woman took it in her hands and gave each page a quick once over before handing it back.
"It the cargo secure?" The woman asked. I gathered that the "cargo" in question was the three cursed kids in the backseat of the car, utterly scared to death.
"We have they're hands and ankles bound, do you want us to give 'em the pills too?" The man grumbled. The woman rolled her eyes at him as if she assumed the answer were obvious.
"Yes, give them the pills! It's protocol, isn't it?" She snarled, for a moment I thought she was going to reach through the window and strangle him.
"Yes ma'am." The man obliged and reached down by his feet where he pulled a silver brief case about the size of a dinner plate.
I again tried to squirm away, I pulled Blake back as far as we could go and yelled at Taylor to do the same.
"We are not swallowing any pills!" I shouted at him. The man didn't seem phased. He opened the brief case in his lap and there were four metallic colored pills all lined up in a row, embedded in a black foam.
"Who said you had to swallow it?" The man plucked a pill from the foam and turned around in his chair. I kicked my legs violently and squirmed around as much as I could but it was no use. The man reached back toward me with his gloved hand, clutching one of the silvery pills.
"Hold still!" He barked, reaching closer to me. My head was sounding its panic alarms and threatening to shut down if he didn't retract his hand immediately. I tried summoning my curse for the second time but I only produced a tiny little bolt from where my hands were bound behind me and it didn't even reach the man.
With a sudden thrust of his arm, the man crushed the pill onto my forehead, right above my nose. The pill collapsed into a powder that I tried to smear away once he had retracted his hand.
I rubbed the silvery substance for a continuous minuet using my shoulder to try and rub it off. It was coming off onto the fabric but I still felt a slight burning sensation where it had been originally. I looked to my left, trying to see if Blake could help me but the man had got him with the pill. He got Taylor too and they were both rubbing vigorously at their foreheads with their shoulders. It was almost humorous and I would have laughed had I not been utterly horrified.
"What did you do?!" I half shouted half cried at the man. But he didn't answer. He was too busy chatting with the woman who eventually let him pass and the car was soon rolling toward the open gate, back into the zone.
"Will you guys chill out? There's nothing you can do about it, it's already working its magic." The one in the passenger seat sneered.
"Roach, Taylor, are you guys ok?" Blake asked, gripping my arm as I tried to scrub even harder at my skin.
"Roach stop, your going to run your skin raw." He pleaded, trying to keep my shoulder away from my face.
"We have to get it off!" I screamed at him. Taylor was shouting similar excuses at Blake too.
"Look at me, Roach. Whatever this was, it's the least of our problems. We just need to... To behave." He was looking at me hard, his eyebrows raised and chin tilted down. He was trying to tell me something. Trying to communicate a phrase without words. I stared at him, his hand still on my arm, my face still smeared in silver powder, for a while longer.
"Ok." I said timidly. I didn't know what he wanted to get across to me, but I trusted him. I had to. He and Taylor was all I had left to hold on to.
The car rolled into the center of the zone along the familiar cement paths. It crossed through the middle and kept driving until it reached the monitors bunker and we pulled up right in front of it.
I pressed my face as close to the window glass as possible so I could see throughout the zone.
The girls and boys bunkers still remained in their orderly circle and the block building where I used to spend hours on end training and laboring still towered over the zone, casting its monstrous shadow over the car.
I had never been this close to the monitor house. We were never allowed to come along this particular path. I guess I was about to find out why.
The men in the front seats exited the vehicle, slamming their doors behind them with great defiance. They circled to either side and opened the back seat doors.
"Out." The one on my door side ordered. I followed, solemnly leaving the relative safety of the car. The man gripped my arm in his meaty hand unnecessarily hard and dragged Blake out of the car with his other, clearly unimpressed by his speed.
"Come on!" He growled, forcing us forward. Blake held his hands behind his back, even though they weren't bound. I could tell he was hoping that the man wouldn't notice he had mysteriously removed his ties.
When we came to the front of the car, we met up with Taylor and the other man who was holding her by her shirt neck. Her black hair was disheveled and wild, almost as wild as her eyes. She made eye contact with me for a split second before she was dragged away to the right side of the monitors building.
"Roach!" She screamed, her voice dry and pained. I struggled against the mans iron grip but it was no use. He held me firm in place. Soon, without me being able to do anything, Taylor disappeared behind the other side of the monitor house.
"Where is he taking her!" I growled at the man, attempting, and failing, to keep myself under control.
"Same place you two are going. The back." That was all he said and I was lucky to get that much out of him.
"Come on." He prodded me along in front of him and dragged Blake from behind. He did his best to keep us moving at a steady pace but our progress was slow. We circled the dull metal building, our feet crunching on the left over snow.
We reached the back, about 20 feet or so from the fence. The back was identical to the front with metal panels of various shades of metal stitched together to form a somewhat uneven wall. There was a door on the back too. It blended in for the most part with the rest of the wall but the three pad locks that dangled from the handle was what stood out the most.
We were dragged up next to the door and the man let go of my arm. I wasn't expecting to be released this easily, I panicked a moment, looked at Blake for help and I saw the look in his eyes.
Run.
Apparently the man saw the look Blake gave me too. He spun around from where he was trying the jam a key into one of the locks.
"I wouldn't try to run if I were you." He hissed, stepping in closer to me.
"Why not?" I asked, hoping there was enough venom in my words so I sounded somewhat more powerful.
"Well, it's my understanding you've been running about for the past couple days and your escape kind of woke us up a little bit. Our security has been reenforced, our monitors are trained to shoot on sight and shoot to kill, the freaks here, they wear chains around their wrists that bind them together so they can't escape. You cost this zone many of its freedoms. Congratulations." He said bluntly. Then, without another word he refocused on the locks, trying different keys on each and yanking on them until they opened.
I didn't run. I couldn't. If what the man said was true, which I assumed it was considering the gate we had passed through earlier and it's elevated security measures, then I wouldn't get even close to the fence until the monitors patrolling it took me out. That and my ankles and wrist would make it child's play to catch up to me.
Blake grunted as the door finally swung open, the three locks unhooked and hanging limp from the handle of the door. He was thrust inside and the man stomped in after him, dragging me by my arm behind him.
I don't know if I've mentioned this but the Monitors house is huge. Like, half the size of the block huge. I used to think it was just because the monitors lived in luxury with lots of space and fancy cashmere blankets. This, as I discovered today, was not the case.
The room we were thrown into was dark, not pitch black, just dark. The light from outside still flooded in, illuminating the space that soon would be black once the door was shut for there were no windows.
The man started peeling off his ski mask, his gloves and the coat he had been wearing, tossing them onto the floor one bulky clothing item at a time.
I couldn't see at first, but I soon realized something Blake had mentioned earlier, back at the Ben & Jerry's. The scene played over and over again in my head as I watched the man remove his outer clothes.
"Alice," he had said, "it's Alice." I hadn't believed him then. I knew I had killed Alice, I had watched her crumple to the ground at the motel. She was dead, left as food for the hungry coyotes and vultures.
But I used my curse to do it. It hadn't even occurred to me until Blake had brought it up that she might still be alive, that she could have just been faking it.
"Alice?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper, strangled and choked. I backed up, getting as far away as I could from the traitor. I ran into Blake and he grabbed my shoulders, holding me close to him with his free hands.
It was Alice. The man wasn't a man at all. Her four or five outer layers of coats and gloves and two ski masks with her golden hair tucked underneath had concealed her identity.
She took the last ski mask off and shook her head so her curls spilled out free down her back.
"I must say Roach, I was a little disappointed in you." She said, pulling off another pair of gloves slowly and dropping them to the ground, not bothering to look up.
"I mean, you didn't even try to put up a fight once you found out your variation was useless against me. It was so easy to get you here, you too Blake, man it's good to see your adorable face again." She reached down to slip off the pair of black rain boots she had been wearing. Behind me, I felt Blake tense, heard his teeth grind and his shoulders square. This was not good for him, seeing Alice again.
"Why'd you do it Alice? Why did you betray Order? We were your friends!" I squeaked, trying to pry Blake's arms off of me but he was frozen solid, no way was he going to let me get any closer to her.
Alice laughed, a sickening sound that sent waves rolling in my gut.
"I never worked for Order. I mean sure, I grew up in that facility but I had no ties with the organization itself. In fact I hated everyone there, except for Blake. We were the best of friends. Such a shame that couldn't last." She paused here, sparing a glance at Blake and stepping closer to us.
"Any way, I never liked the variations. I hated that I was a freak, that I wasn't normal.
The zone, the monitors here, they promised to cure me. To get rid of my variation on one condition. I had to expose Order. I complied in a heartbeat. Then I came here and now I work for the zone as one of their monitors." She explained as though it were the most normal back story.
"Did- Did they cure you?" I yanked myself free of Blake's grip finally, and stepped closer to Alice. Blake didn't try to stop me but instead he stepped next to me, backing me up in a sort of way.
"Yes, they cured me! I'm not a freak, I'm normal. And as soon as all the rest of you are taken care of then they will let me go home. My real home. Not Order, not a prison, my home."
Alice's tone softened as she spoke more and more as if a certain longing had found its way into her voice. I didn't believe her for a second when she claimed she was cured. Something in the way she said instantly hinted to me that it was a lie.
"What do you mean, take care of us?" Blake snarled. But his question was ignored. Alice smiled a rather ugly, untrusting smile. It made me cringe.
She stepped next to him, her body odor reeking from the sweat that must have accumulated underneath her layers of clothing. She reached out a hand to Blake, up near his face and gently, her fingers brushed down the side of his cheek.
He was stunned for a moment but quickly recovered and grabbed her wrist, watching her with hurt eyes. For a moment I thought he might cry, that's what the old Blake would have done. He would have burst into tears. But I think something inside his soft heart had hardened. He would not cry, because that was not who Blake is. He is not a wimp, not a brittle pansy.
Blake is a warrior. He's not the soldier that the zone wants us all to be. A warrior like Blake fights for himself and the people he loves. Soldiers like Alice fight for greedy power hungry tyrants and a cause that has no possible happy ending.
"You know, if you like, you could always get yourself cured. If you like, I can alert the rest of the monitors, tell them you've changed your ways-"
Alice didn't get to finish her thought. Blake threw her hand down, a disgusted look upon his face.
"No." Blake stated, his iron stare burrowing into Alice's distant eyes.
"Don't you get get it, Alice?" His voice was reaching the brink of its octave, getting prepared to escalate to the next.
"We were never freaks! Our variations made us special, we were important. We meant something." Blake was a seething a pot of water ready to boil over. I had to stop his rampage before things went to far.
"Blake you need to cool down!" I scolded, reaching for his shoulder. He shook me off immediately. Nothing would stop him now. He was to fed up with Alice, with our helplessness, and he was ready for it to end. And even if it didn't, at least he would have said something about it. At least he would be heard.
"They're using you! Your just a pawn to them, expendable, they'll throw you to the side of the road when your no longer of use to them!" Alice wasn't listening. She was done listening, done with us.
"Alright, well. Taylor should join you shortly. In the mean time, why don't you hang around?" Alice mused, laughing as if she knew something we didn't.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"You just wait!" She laughed that cringe worthy laugh before turning on her heel and escaping through the back door and slamming it shut behind her leaving Blake and I alone in the dark.
As soon as she disappeared from the room and the door had closed, Blake rushed behind me and began fiddling with the rope that bound my hands. He untied it and let it fall to the ground. I rubbed my wrist, feeling the indentations where the rope had dug into my skin as Blake moved down to my ankles and released them from their holds.
We didn't say anything. We couldn't, there was so much to say at the same time there was nothing to be said. We already knew what the other was thinking and there was no need repeating it.
I was about to break the silence when suddenly, a loud grinding sound, like metal sliding on metal screeched out from somewhere below us.
"Blake?" I squeaked, somewhat afraid of the answer to my next question.
"Wha-what was that?" I looked around at the space around my feet but there was nothing to see but black. I even tried brushing my brown hair out of my face as if that would help.
Blake didn't answer my question, instead he shuffled up next to me and entwined his fingers with mine.
More grinding noises and clanking and clicking of metal and more metal. We stood like that, dreading what the sounds might lead to for a full minute. Until Blake finally said,
"Use your curse." I was so alarmed that I pulled my hand away from his and looked up in the general vicinity where I assumed his head would be.
"What?" I asked.
"Just get a tiny spark going so we can see through the dark. Figure out what's making that noise." Blake had to yell the last part of his sentence to keep his voice from being drown out by yet another long screech.
"Ok." I breathed, already with my head singing with a pounding electric pulse. I brought up my left hand and held my fingers up in a way that people sometimes do when they mimic Italian accents.
I squeezed my eyes shut and somehow it was brighter with them closed. Like the purple light that comes into my eyes when I summon my curse was bouncing around inside my eyelids.
When I opened them and focused just enough power onto my fingers, there was nothing. Not a tiny little spark, not a pint sized fizzle of electricity. It was still black. Still dark.
"What...?" I mumbled in a barely audible whisper, trying again to summon my curse. Still, nothing.
"Roach you ok?" Blake asked, rubbing my shoulder. I dropped my hand and inspected both of them. Well I inspected the oblivion around them. I was not ok. I was most definitely not ok. What was wrong with me? I knew that Alice had been able to snuff my curse out earlier when she was in the car and back at the Ben & Jerry's.
I had come to the conclusion that because Alice was able to prevent me and Taylor from using our curses that she had lied about her variation. I don't know how she had kept the hoax up for so long or why it was worth it but it was the only explanation that I could come up with. She must have a curse that can block other's curses, sort of like how lead blocks gamma rays.
But Alice wasn't here now. There must be something else keeping me from summoning the static in my blood.
Then it hit me. I almost felt embarrassed that I hadn't assumed the answer earlier.
"The pills." I said, still whispering. In situations where a I felt utterly hopeless it felt right to whisper when I spoke. A message that I really wasn't in any position to be strong when so much was going wrong.
"What about them?" Blake asked, running his hand up and down my back. I hadn't noticed until now, but I was shaking, similar to the way Taylor sometimes did when she had her panic attacks. He was trying to comfort me but my mind was racing so fast that it would much rather focus on its own thoughts instead of Blake's touch.
"They're blocking our curses. I can't get any electric currents going. I feel it inside of me so I know the pills didn't take it away completely but I just can't let it out." I was falling apart.
Suck it up.
I thought about everything that was wrong, all the weight of infinite problems pressing down on me and threatening to squash me if I didn't somehow wiggle free.
Just like a Roach.
That did it. That infernal thought made me snap. Not in a bad way, I didn't have some freak out moment, no, it woke me up in a sort of sense. It opened my eyes just a little wider but enough to let light through. I would not let the monitors control me, I would not let them brand me. I had been telling Blake and Taylor that I would stick with the name Roach. I never told them why, I had kept that thought to myself.
What I used to think was that I wasn't who I was all those years ago. I didn't want to be called a name that would connect me to a past that I was no longer a part of. But the truth is, the truth I had been to stubborn to realize before, was that being called a bug was so so much worse.
It did to me exactly what they wanted it to do. It made me feel weak, scared, and futile. I am not a Roach, I am stronger than that. I am braver than that. I am smarter than that.
"Roach? Are you ok? Can you here me?" Blake was shaking me gently, trying to snap me out of my thoughts that I had buried myself in. He was also yelling over the endless screeching of metal.
I lifted my chin up slightly higher in a way I had seen Ant do in the days before her mind was shattered.
I narrowed my features into a set look of fierce determination in a way I had seen Taylor do on countless occasions.
I let some place in my soft heart harden like I had witnessed Blake do just moments ago.
"Call me Imogen."
ALRIGHT! CHAPTER SEVEN IS COMPLETED! IT WAS ONE OF MY LONGER CHAPTERS BUT I HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT SND CONTINUE TO STICK WITH STATIC. ALSO, IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY, I RECOMMEND CHECKING OUT MY OTHER BOOKS, TO ALL MY FAKE AND PHONY FRIENDS, A BOOK OF POINTLESS RANDOM NONSENSE, AND SHATTERED HEARTS! THANKS AGAIN FOR READING!