Sapphire Bones

Morose

Updated: March 18, 2019

L

L wake up!

A voice filled my mind yet the little strength I mustered didn't scratch the surface of what I needed to peel open my eyes. Survival hurt and each day I decided to keep waking up was just another day the mercenaries had their way with my head. Thoughts of the attack flashed in my mind, the violence scarring my memory with tainted blood and death. The mercenaries stopped using physical violence weeks ago – it didn't have the same looming effect that the mental games did. The physical injuries healed but the mental ones? Open wounds with edges that couldn't stretch and mend back together. They couldn't truly get me to bow down with a whip to the back or a boot to the side of my head – my brain needed to really believe I deserved the punishment I received. Without it, those lash marks came and went. They healed in days without communication with the outside. If the mercenary's words pounded through my skull like a horrendous migraine every time I had a moment to myself, I had no choice but to succumb. It took the mercenaries long enough to figure that out. And for a while it worked. But as my trial date approached, the less inclined I was to drop to my knees at each inkling of mental abuse they threw at me. Now, only a month away from my inevitable demise, I couldn't be bothered. Their words were sewing needles added to the endless supply I already had sticking out of my flesh. There was nothing left to prod; all the nerves underneath my skin were too far gone to care about anymore lash marks. And I'd survived all of them. Anything else they threw at me rebounded off the walls of skull around my brain without absorption.

Please wake up. You need to fight them, Margette yelled again, but her voice didn't hold the same determination as it did the past several hours. With each call her faith that I'd respond gradually died away until there was nothing left. Maybe then I'd get some quiet. At least then I'd know she'd given up on my survival. We went through the same routine every day. Margette poked and prodded at my brain until I gave in and answered. But the more days I responded, the weaker I felt. If we continued with our current schedule I'd be a walking corpse by the time my trial arrived. Nothing left to kill in front of hundreds – thousands. A body of flesh with nothing underneath except a skeletal system barely held together by malnourished joints and muscles like gelatin.

There was a continuous ringing at the base of my ears. I couldn't pinpoint when it started but there was no end in sight. No in-between and no change. Days slipped by since I heard another voice besides Margette's. Weeks edged along since breathed a word; the mercenaries came and went without much conversation, and even when they did their words were rhetorical. I was never meant to answer them, only listen. One, however, had a softer voice. She spoke tranquilly and her feet didn't dent the ground when she walked. She never revealed her name to me but I knew she wasn't like Peter. This woman never struck me with the back of her hand, or fought for my trust only to rip it to shreds in front of me. I hadn't a clue what she looked like but I knew she was different.

L please, Margette whimpered this time around. Hearing her so close to accepting failure. I know you're in there; we share the same head.

I just had to go a little longer and she'd understand I had no intention of waking up. With my eyes closed, I pretended to be a corpse. The mercenaries left me alone knowing I had zero intention. That one mercenary saw around the ploy. She saw through the covered eyeballs and motionless breaths I took while curled up on the ground. I never faced the wall, only the door. With my back to the wall I felt vibrations through the stones. The thundering footsteps above me, several floors most likely, that protruded heavy stones with ease. I listened, and felt, while I was alone. A lullaby in an otherwise noiseless world I was captured within.

My finger twitched on the cool floor. A stray stone or other debris caught the sensitive flesh at the tip of my finger but I held back the wince I wanted to yell out. Noises upset the mercenaries. Sounds itched at the part of their brain thirsty for blood. I couldn't give them that kind of satisfaction. With a little more energy I dragged my arm upward above my head and lifted, elbows bent just slightly as my chest lifted off the ground like peeling skin. Soft moans lurched at the back of my throat until I rolled onto my side, my spine pressed onto the far wall. My back arched from the damp wall but I held there, certain and determined to cool my body temperature slightly. Heavy breaths filled my chest and escaped through my nose and mouth. In and out. In and out.