Page 2 of Cruel Riches

It took a minute to pull myself from that horrible place where memories and reality were twisted into nightmares. My face was coated with sweat, and my body was trembling. I felt a strange yet familiar sensation in my stomach: a toxic combination of guilt, remorse, and dread.

I sat up, still woozy with exhaustion, and I wondered why my mattress felt so hard and uncomfortable. That was when I realized I wasn’t in my dorm.

I was in a tiny room with a floor made of dirt and stone. It was quite dark, but I could tell that the walls were brick on three sides with a set of bars covering the other side. They were old and rusted. It was like a jail cell from the nineteenth century.

Slowly and painfully, I dragged myself over to the bars, wondering how I got here and why my limbs felt so heavy. It was a major effort to lift my fingers, let alone my legs. My head was filled with noise as well, like static from a radio tuned to the wrong station.

“What… what’s happening?” I muttered. When I heard my voice, I realized I was slurring. I was either trapped in another nightmare or drugged to the gills.

I rubbed my eyes and peered between the bars. There was a trace of ambient light coming from somewhere outside the cell, and when I squinted hard, I could see that I was in a tunnel.

I couldn’t remember how I got here. I couldn’t remember anything from the last few hours or days.

I turned my head to scan the little cell again. There was a flimsy mattress on one side of the space, barely big enough to fit a child, and a plastic bucket on the other side. Nothing else.

There was a faint saltiness lingering in the air. That made me sit up straighter, wondering if it was a clue that might help me figure out where I was, but then I remembered that I was on Avalon Island. It was a huge island compared to most on the planet—over five thousand square miles—but it was still small enough that the sea breeze and salty air permeated most spaces.

Frowning, I turned my nose up and sniffed the air again. There was another smell on top of the salty air. Something like sulfur, and maybe something rotting too. Death and decay.

There was another light now, and it was coming closer, bobbing up and down. A person was approaching from the right side of the tunnel. I wanted to call out for help, but something told me I should stay quiet.

As the light drew nearer, the cell became easier to see, and when I looked at the grayish brick walls and the stony floor on my left, every inch of my body began to tremble violently. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t keep myself still.

Blood.

Half the cell was coated in it; dried reddish-brown stains and smears.

Terror spread right to my bones, and then my gut, and I thought I might throw up. I leaned forward and retched into the bucket.

“That’s the drugs,” a deep male voice said from somewhere behind me. “They can cause nausea.”

I wiped my lips and turned around, mouth falling open at the sight of the man on the other side of the bars. He was tall and dressed in dark clothing, and a black plague mask covered his face. A small black bag hung from one arm.

“What’s happening to me?” I asked, voice cracking halfway through the sentence. “Who are you?”

He dropped the bag and crouched next to it. “I brought you some water,” he said, ignoring my questions. His voice was perfectly calm, as if everything that was happening was completely normal. “I came earlier, but you were still passed out. You know you talk in your sleep?”

I gulped and shook my head. “No.”

The terrifying plague mask tipped to the side as the man tilted his head. “You were crying. Then you were begging for forgiveness from someone named Claire.”

“She’s gone,” I whispered, slumping against the wall.

“I know. Everyone knows,” he replied, voice dripping with disdain. “It’s why you’re here.”

My eyes widened. “What?”

“It’s your fault, Alexis. You know that.”

“No.” I shook my head wildly. “No, I didn’t do anything.”

The man got off the ground and rose to his full height. Then he spoke to me for a long time.

He showed me things, too, and by the time he was done, the earlier nightmare images of blood, knives, and gutted hanging corpses were flashing all over the place in my mind, bringing up bile in my throat.

In the bleak, petrifying moments since I woke up in this place, I’d wondered how I ended up here and what was going to happen to me. Now every heartbeat pulsed a different question.

What did I do?

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