Page 80 of Two for Joy

He knew what happened next.

The magpie flew away from him, and then he heard them. The angry machine guns in the trees. He ran around his house and headed towards the sound. He saw them swooping, clawing, pecking, and he yelled at them to stop, he yelled at them to go away, and they did, but not because of him.

They flew away because there was someone else.

Romeo couldn’t see his face, the figure walked up to the broken magpie on the ground, then lifted it up.

He held the magpie so Romeo could see it, then snapped its wing. The crunch spiked nausea in Romeo’s gut. He staggered, bracing himself. The figure snapped the other wing, then the magpie’s legs. Each crunch weakened Romeo, slowed him, prevented him from getting closer, until the magpie was dropped, discarded on the ground with a gushing wound to its neck.

When Romeo finally got close enough to reach for the magpie, it turned into Chad. Chad with his eyes open, but lost forever. Chad with his skin pale, his body broken, and neck gushing blood.

When the blood stopped flowing, Romeo screamed.

****

Romeo flung himself forward when he woke. He immediately regretted it when his head pounded. A bucket was swiftly put in front of his face, and he retched up nothing. The pain in his head didn’t lessen after the dream, it grew, and as he looked around the room, he realized he was having trouble seeing. He touched his face, testing the mass of swollen flesh that was his cheek.

Justin had punched him in the face, that had been part of his plan, but he wasn’t in the city hospital like he wanted. There were bars and gates—he was in the prison hospital. When he tried to move his other hand, it clunked, and he glared at the cuff attaching him to the bed.

The man that gave him the bucket pushed him back down on the bed. “Easy, Romeo.”

“Why am I here?”

“Justin Steel punched you in the face.”

He knew that, but he’d hoped if it wasn’t hard enough to kill him, it would’ve been enough to get him to the city hospital.

“I’m Doctor Zander.”

“My vision’s blurry, I’ve got a pounding headache, I think I need to be in hospital.”

“You are in a hospital.”

Romeo didn’t comment. He needed to play this game carefully. Even though Zander worked in the prison hospital with the most despicable people on earth, he still had kind eyes, and he studied Romeo with them. He needed to keep it that way.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“We X-rayed your face. You’ve got a fractured cheekbone, lucky really, we all know what Justin’s capable of.”

“A fractured cheek bone?”

“And a mild concussion. According to Paul and Fred you were out cold.”

Romeo was going to have to do some work to upgrade his mild concussion, to a severe one, curtesy of the medical A-Z dictionary.

“Who?”

“Paul and Fred…”

“I don’t remember what happened. Where—where am I?”

“You’re on the hospital wing.”

“Wing?”

Zander frowned. “Yeah, of the prison.”

Romeo scrunched up his face, the pain made him wince, and Zander steadied him.

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