Page 113 of Amnesty

I felt like a chew toy.

I didn’t cry out again, even though inside I screamed. Eventually, he grew bored of the biting and moved on to new horrors.

My body shook violently as I waited for him to climb down. I knew Sadie was still pretty bad off, though I knew he went to her the day before.

I didn’t know who he was coming for this time, maybe me. Could be her. If he went toward her tonight, I would call out, draw him away, toward me.

I could take another night. I wasn’t sure if she could. The storm seemed to wring out everything she had left tonight.

A flashlight clicked on and swung down. I saw the feet of a woman and sighed audibly. It wasn’t him.

It was her.

I didn’t know anything about her, only that she came to see to Sadie. She’d never come near me, never even glanced my way.

I couldn’t help but wonder about her, who she was, why she was here. Why she didn’t live down here with us.

She walked quietly over to Sadie, dropped down beside her, and spoke softly. After tending to Sadie’s healing wounds and assuring her the storm was indeed done, she packed up her little sack of supplies and started to leave.

“Wait,” I called out, my voice meek but heard.

The woman’s footsteps stopped shuffling over the rock. The beam of the flashlight swung toward me.

I cringed away from it, not wanting to be seen, not wanting to see myself. “Do you have an extra Band-Aid?” I asked, timid. I knew I could get in trouble for this, but really… wasn’t I already being punished?

“For what?” she said, her voice low.

“I… I have a bite on my shoulder. It won’t stop bleeding.” I felt my lower lip wobble. I bit it to make it stop. “It hurts.”

She stood there for a long time, so long I thought maybe she didn’t believe me. Why would I lie? It wasn’t as if I had anything to gain.

When I thought she was turning to leave, she didn’t. Instead, she walked over, crouching in front of where I sat. “Where?” she asked.

With shaking hands, I leaned forward, showing her the side of my aching shoulder. “Here.”

The light spotlighted the injury, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the vision it made. I knew it was bad. I felt the warm trickle of blood around it, felt the way the skin throbbed and burned.

But oh…

It was worse than even I imagined.

It was as if he chewed on my flesh. Not just a clean bite, but as if he tried to make my shoulder a meal. He enjoyed it, though, gnawing on me as if I were rawhide, licking at my blood while I whimpered against the floor.

The woman made a sound, then dropped her sack on the floor and used the light to fish through its contents.

She ripped open a small wipe of some kind and, without warning, wiped it over the area. I cried out a little, then stiffened, worried my show of pain would get me beaten.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It looks painful.”

I merely nodded, afraid to say anything else.

She cleaned it up, made a few tsking sounds, then rubbed on some kind of cream before covering it completely with a large bandage.

The second she was done, I sighed in relief.

The woman began packing up her supplies, then tied the sack closed.

Before she stood, I grabbed her wrist. “Thank you,” I said.

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