Page 19 of Calico Descending

“Ouch! Bitch!”

I tumble backward, and an arm wraps around my neck, holding me against the fence, as Freckles slaps and scratches at my face. Screams bleat from my chest. Cruel laughter in my ear heightens my frustration, and I manage to draw back a fist. With every ounce of power left in me, I slam it into Freckles’s face, knocking her head to the side.

For a second, she looks stunned, but her eyes turn cold and murderous.

“C’mon, Lee. You gonna let her hit you like that?!” The boy grips tighter from behind, squeezing the air from my windpipe.

As Freckles lunges forward, the boy’s arm falls away, and I twist, dodging her punch, and see another boy has knocked my attacker to the ground, this one slightly bigger. Maybe slightly older. Certainly stronger. Punch after punch smashes the kid’s face on sprays of blood, and even Freckles has abandoned her wrath, looking on in shock as her friend is pummeled. The other boy manages to flip his attacker over, and the two of them roll on the dirt, drawing a crowd of boys around them.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” the boys chant.

The guards appear out of nowhere, black uniforms in a sea of blue, and I zero in on the boy who helped me. The one who didn’t hesitate to help me. One with silvery gray eyes and golden-bronze skin whom it takes two guards to drag away. A second boy jumps in his place, punching and kicking the one who attacked me. The one on the ground kicks the feet out from under the boy, and just like the first two, they’re rolling across the dirt.

Four more guards drag the two boys off, and Freckles shakes her head beside me.

“Oh, no, oh, God, no.”

Turning toward her and back to the boys, I look on in confusion. The dread in her voice rides thick on her words, as if she just witnessed something more horrible than watching her friend get roughed up by both boys. “What’s going to happen to them?”

“I don’t know.” A tear spills down her cheek, which she quickly wipes away like she doesn’t want me to see. “They never come back when they’re dragged away.”

Chapter 10

Present day

When chores were assigned a while back, I resigned myself to work in the kitchen, in hopes of seeing my sister. Everyone passes through at some point, but it’s been years since I last caught a glimpse of her here. Perhaps she comes in on a different shift. Maybe the girls in obstetrics eat together. I imagine that, sometimes: Bryani and the friends she’s made here, eating together. Laughing and telling stories, as carefree as any day out in the desert. Hard as I try, it’s becoming more difficult to imagine her face, the details I once committed to memory slowly dissolving into scraps of forgotten thoughts. If not for Medusa’s occasional updates, I’d never even know she was alive in this place.

I wipe down the stainless steel counters, preparing the kitchen for the next group. The perks of working back here are getting an extra piece of bread after shift, and water whenever I want. I’m not one to pass on the extras, because I’ve learned, after four years, that what I don’t take, someone else will, but today, I’m not in the mood. I’ve got another meeting with the Iron Giant, followed by a delightful wrap up with Doctor Ericsson that has officially soured my appetite.

I swipe the bread into the oversized stainless steel sink, still a quarter full of suds from washing dishes, and reach down to pull the plug. A sharp prick hits the tip of my finger, and I draw back on a curse, examining the slice up the side of it. Blood slides down wet skin, falling out of a sizable gash that, by the depth when I pull it apart, probably needs stitches.

Suction from the drain draws my attention toward a knife left behind by one of the Legion cooks. We’re not supposed to have access to such potential weapons. The cooks prepare the food, well before we come in to serve it, and never once have they been so careless as to leave a knife behind. The sight of it stirs flashes of memory, and I pause in hopes of immersing myself in these strange dream-like images.

“Cali! Cali!” Bryani calls out to me.

I turn to see her lying on a gurney beside me. The sterile scent of bleach and chemicals fills my lungs, but it fails to stamp out the pungent odor of death. I reach out a hand connected to tubes. The room spins too fast. A man looms over me. In his hand is a scalpel, one so shiny, I can see balls of light from the oversized lamp above me reflected in the steel. An exhausted cry bleeds out of my chest.

It almost seems like another person, but the details are so vivid. I look down at the cut on my finger, which has begun to drip blood that pools in the basin, staining the white frothy bubbles of dish water. I lift the knife and tuck it into my apron, glancing around to make sure none of the other two kitchen workers noticed, and I stick my finger beneath the running water to rinse the gash. From the shelf beside me, I grab a clean, dry rag and wrap it around the wound, squeezing hard to staunch the blood.

Should someone find the weapon, they’ll use it to remove something on me--something benign, like a finger. I’ve seen it happen once. A girl once swiped a scalpel from surgery, and Medusa ordered one of the soldiers to use that very knife to cut off her thumb. Still, the knife is a gift, and in a place like Calico, one doesn’t ignore such simple generosities of fate.

A deep burn penetrates my flesh where the wound has begun it’s healing process. Can’t see much of it in the darkness, but I’ve done a fine job of picking at it the last twenty minutes, while parked against the wall in Valdys’s cell.

Another day of silence.

I’ve grown used to it, though. He doesn’t bother me. I don’t bother him. No one gets knocked onto their back and viciously raped.

The wound is a distraction that I managed to hide from Medusa on the way down here, though the Alphas we passed along the way seemed more excitable than usual. As though they could smell the blood and open flesh.

The knife, I hid inside a hole in my mattress back at the room. Perhaps I’ll never use it.

It’s nice knowing it’s there, though.

The door clicks open, earlier than last time, unless the distraction of my wound is that effective in making me think it’s earlier.

Medusa’s hands are clasped, her chin high, eyes brimming with all kinds of frustration. “Come with me.” Behind her, Legion soldiers enter the room, passing me, as I push to my feet.

Growls and scuffling echo inside the cell, and I watch as they prod the shadow in the corner.

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