The Trail

Chapter 14 | Hope

Hot, steamy air had me surrounded as the morning sun had risen over the horizon. It fried through the rusty bars of the cage, melting away at my skin. Slowly, I began to open my eyes. My eyelids, that was moist of sweat, felt as if they had been glued together. It was difficult to keep them open. My head was thick and body heavy, a feeling that I had been forced to become all too accustomed to in the last few days. As I regained my sight, I saw mirages dancing through the desert. They teased me with their freedom, joyfully billowing in the draught of the barren wastelands.

As if it were any news, I was trapped. I had lost my dog -

"Your precious Juniper..."

- and I was most likely about to lose myself.

To my reminiscence, I heard an ominous, yet familiar, tune being whistled behind me. As rough grit touched my cheek and dug into my side, I used the palms, which still stung from their cuts, of my hands to heave myself up into a seated position.

I turned around and looked at the young man, who pursed his dry lips in order to perform the sound. He was sitting with his back against the cage door, with arms crossed and his legs stretched out in front of him.

"Do you ever shut up?", I asked in annoyance.

He finished his tune before he grinned at me. Other than a missing tooth, he had a surprisingly straight and white smile. It hinted of a time when he hadn't looked like just a man built of nothing but flesh and bones, but of a time where he had been more than a ghost. Perhaps even human.

"Don't give me that look", he said, just as if we had known each other for years, "you kept me up all night with your screaming and delirious talk."

"My what now?", I asked and looked at him coarsely.

"You don't remember? Christ, whatever they gave you it must have been good...", he said with a humorless laugh.

"Remember what?", I said, still unknowing.

He gave me a strange look before he replied.

"They brought you back around midnight", he said, "and you were completely out of it. You sat in the corner over there, talking to yourself for hours. I tried to make you shut up, but you just stared into oblivion while going on about... Well, I don't really know what. Then, you fell asleep and kept waking from your own screams. Trust me, ol' Joe wasn't happy."

I thought that I could hear an angry grunt from one of the other cages. Then, I swallowed, terrified that I could not remember what he had just told me. Had he heard the voices, too?

"You don't remember what they did to you? At all?", he asked and pulled up a knee and wrapped his ghastly hands around it.

"No, I—"

Footsteps. Crunching footsteps. The british man was approaching. Quickly, I desperately crawled as close as I could to the side of the cage.

"Listen, I need to get out of here. Tonight. I think that you can help me", I whispered and gave him a begging glance. "Please."

The door to his cage was opened, and the big, bulky man pulled him up to his feet.

"Time to go, Owen", the broadnose spoke and had to help the young man stand as his legs were stiff as stone.

I never got a reply. Instead, I was left with hope. Because in the young man's eyes I had seen a spark. A spark of the determination, the fighting spirit, that told the world that he was unbreakable. Somehow, in some way, I was breaking out of this cage tonight.