Burlap

36 - Here We Are Juggernaut

The door rattled against the frame, sending a violent metal grinding sound onto the entire floor that sliced into my eardrums like alarm bells, screaming at me to get moving, get going, get doing. Groaning with the combined weight of all my aching muscles and bones, I pushed myself away from the counter and stood, swaying in my dizziness for a moment. Gathering my bearings with a deep, trembling breath, I blinked hard a couple times, breathing out the pain of every bruise and sucking clean air back into my lungs to replace it.

Marcie.

Forcing air through pursed lips, I straightened my back and ignored the pain in order to walk away from the nurses’ station in search of my friend.

Where’s Shilling?

My feet padded against the tile floor at a quicker pace at Power’s very valid concern. I prayed I wouldn’t find them together, with Marcie in another horrible position because she martyred herself for me. Again. 

Adrenaline, in a strange twist of normalcy, built slowly in my veins as my legs pumped in time with my growing panic. What started as an uncertain stumbling walk transformed, in a dozen shifting steps, into a near hysterical sprint. My arms reached out in wild circles and I tripped several times, crashing into door frames to inspect every room for any sign of Marcie or Shilling. Each empty room weighted down the lead in my stomach more and more, until I came to the room the residents had dragged Paul.

His body laid in the middle of the crowd of inmates, crumpled and broken. His head faced the wrong way, the skin of his neck twisted in a macabre velvet curtain of wrung folds. And, as much as it sickened me to admit, I took great pleasure in the shocked and terrified expression on his post mortem face. His dead eyes stared out to nothing, while his mouth, where so many insults and cruel taunts had spewed from, remained jacked wide open in a silent scream. 

With a shudder that encompassed my whole body, I turned from the only occupied room, even though the occupants only stared blankly as they stood like demented mannequins all over the space, and continued my mission.

I found Marcie in the room we had slept in the past two days. The moment her platinum hair appeared as I rounded the corner to peer in, my panic dissolved into dust particles that drifted away in an explosion of relief. My shoulders sagged and I propelled myself into the room, reaching for her. 

She didn’t see me coming. Her left side faced me, showcasing the oozing gash in her cheek and the angry redness surrounding the stitches holding her eyelid to her bottom lash line. Her gnarled, twisted fingers shielded her face as she jumped backward with a whimper, stumbling back over her feet and landing hard on her bottom. Still ingrained with the posh decorum of a high society aristocrat, she rushed to pull and tug her skirt to cover any indecent bits that her position might have exposed. 

My gaze swung to the other side of the room to see what had her so afraid, though, in some way, I already knew. 

Shilling lunged at her, a rounded hook of wood with a glistening long blade connecting the two ends of the piece wielded in his grip, held high above her head. Marcie screamed, cowering into the corner in an upright fetal position. The blade in Shilling’s hand had the chance to slice a single lock of her hair from her head before my body collided with his, saving her the exact same way she’d rescued me only minutes before. 

***

I swung, bumblebees zinging through my veins, under the glory of the Big Top. Air collided with my body with more and more force the faster my trapeze sailed through the air. Without hesitation, my body dropped to hang upside down, eliciting a generously positive reaction from the audience. Hands clapped and voices cheered from the wooden stands. Awed gasps reverberated through the tent, bouncing off the walls to sneak into my ear like little secretive whispers. The scent of the chalk layered on my hands floated toward my nostrils, and I breathed it in deeply, savoring the familiar aroma.