His Sour Lemon #2.1

Part 3: Lurking In The Shadows

CHAPTER 3: Lurking In The Shadows

December 18th, 2025.
11:58 am, Outskirts of New York City, America.
Fitzgerald Orphanage, Range Recruitment Centre.

I stopped shivering a long time ago, eyes crusting open as I'd my tears turned into shards of glass over night. I listened closely when I heard her scream, another female being brought in, being beaten or worse maybe, I didn't know. The steel door of mine was closed before, it's open now and I woke up to the chains locked against my ankles.

She's shoved inside, hair short and brown, I stare at her bloodied face as she slumps against the floor, right next to one of the rats. I freeze in my position. Why would they put a girl in my room, especially one younger than myself, she looked maybe five, or six years of age? Her goosebumps were clear against her tan skin, that's when she screams the second she accidentally brushes the side of her head against the dead rat.

I don't say anything as I catch her bloodied form flinching away from the dead creature, scrunching her nose. I sat silent in the darkness for one hour, not speaking, just listening to her wail and sob some more. It didn't stop and if she didn't stop, they would take her away to the pit outside, colder than even this place, it's where they put the weaker ones to kill them faster, "You have to be quiet." I told her, my voice was high pitched, scratchy and dislodged from the normality. I lurked in a set of darkness I was accustomed too, but they chose my cell to throw her in and watch her die after what they did to her.

From a healthy boy that grew up in a loving society.

That's where the word comes in once again...the foreigner known as 'love'.

I don't believe the girl in front of me knew the word either as she snaps her head in all directions, whimpering, "Who are you?" She screeches, clogging and choking on blood. I watch her limbs freeze over slowly when my heart races, unsure whether to answer when I hadn't spoken to another being in months.

"You die if you make noise. Don't make noise." I told her.

I shouldn't have.

But...they would open the door if she didn't stop.

"I'm already dying." She whispers slowly. The blood soaked tears running from her dulled blue eyes was any consolation of the fact she was losing her life and quickly. I think to apologise, she was too young to go like this, but speaking again felt almost too much like a struggle, I didn't have the energy, the nutrients to speak again and so I watched the girl die in front of me.

For two months, they left her corpse, her blood and her dying screams in front of me.

When she first went, I wasn't sure...having not known her name and not brave enough to stand from my bony position, I watched her lifeless eyes stare into a patch of darkness, where I sat under the snowy opening, not knowing how to stop the shivers, even after being here almost all my life.

The doors open and I feared it was for me, when a hooded figure leans down to grab the dead girl by her dark, unruly hair and drag her out. Two months of staring into the eyes of a corpse was another way of breaking me when the silver tears snakes from my left eye as I threaten the urge to scream, as if I always had the energy to do so and in my courage...I stand slowly.

One knee crunching against the infested concrete stone floor.

My bones frail.

My lips trembled.

My fingers did the same as I reach for the snow, I could touch it now and I froze.

I felt it before thinking it were possible.