Page 97 of Two Chambered Heart

“And I’m 22.”

“Okay,” the new boy conceded, his mouth setting grimly. “What card game are you guys playing?”

“Cribbage. Do you want to play? We can modify the rules for three people.” It was a mouthful of a sentence. He wasn’t used to saying more than a few words, and they tangled on his tongue, clumsy off his lips.

With tanned hands, the boy reached for the deck. He was searching for specific cards before spreading them in front of him – an Ace, 1, 8, 3, 8, 5, then another 1 and 8.

“Did you know you can assign numerical values to letters?” His voice was pitched low.

He and his brother stared at the cards spelling out his name, though they’d already heard it.Archer.His brother pulled the deck to himself, doling out a King, an Ace, then 2, 5, 4, 5, 1, and 4.Kayden.

Then it was Jason’s turn. He arranged the cards to spell out his name, placing the Jack of Hearts down first. When Archer nodded, he folded them back into the deck quickly.

“Where are we?” Archer asked them.

Jason and Kayden just shrugged.

“Are you twins?”

They nodded in unison.

“Why are we here?”

Kayden shrugged again.

“We’re gifted,” Jason huffed. “But I actually think they mean cursed.”

It was louder than he’d meant to be, the familiar anger pebbling his cold flesh. He could see heads turning to their tables, Number 18 barely able to contain the fire inside her, her skin lighting up like an ember.

Before she could ignite further, four lab techs burst in through the door. Jason tried to shut out their internal dialogue, didn’t want to know.

“Community time is over. Line up for escort back to your cells.” The tech already had a syringe in 18’s neck, and she fell limp where she’d been sitting on the floor. The puzzle piece she’d been holding smoked as it dropped, singed.

“Welcome to hell on earth,” Jason said to Archer, getting up from the table and letting the chair topple behind him. “I hope you have a high pain threshold.”

Then it was just the noxious smell of bleach and pain. Needles, metal trays, white hospital gowns, IVs, screams, hands all over his body and utter hopelessness.

The images flashed through Jason’s mind like he had an old-school View-Master pressed to his face. The only difference was that he had no control over the speed at which the images changed, and each one was more haunting than the last.

Corey must have recognized Jason’s panic, because she took his sweaty face in her hands and stared down his blown-out pupils. “You’re okay. Jase. You’re right here. You’re safe. Kayden’s safe.”

He was shaking, he could feel that much, his body vibrating against the vinyl of the café booth. But her presence did little to sooth his spiralling mind, even as she held him.

Jason stared at the crib board that Kayden had thrown down onto their table. “Is thisa joke?” he choked out.

The grimace on Kayden’s face told him it was not, in fact, a joke. Jason was on the brink of getting up from the booth and bolting, when Kayden’s jaw hardened with determination. Through hyperventilating breaths, Jason realized that his demons weren’t only his own. They were his brother’s too, and Kayden looked like he needed this, needed to take back what had been taken from him.

Crib had been their game. Their parents had taught them how to play. When they had been in the facility, locked in their own individual, white-walled rooms, they’d had free time for exactly one hour a day in the common space. Most of them were too dead inside to do anything other than sit and stare at the wall. For ten years, an hour of crib was the only thing they had. The only thing keeping them from the brink of absolute insanity.

“Can you play cribbage?” Kayden asked Corey.

“I can only play Go Fish or Poker.”

“It’s usually a two-player game, but we can modify it to the three-person version. Jason will teach you.”

Jason swallowed past the hard lump clogging his throat. He so rarely had flashbacks while awake that when he did, it left him ragged and torn. It felt impossible to break out of the trap in his mind—cold, clinical and empty, just like his childhood. But he leaned back, and with trembling hands, he dealt the deck and explained the rules to Corey, his voice becoming steadier as he went.

Unlike with everything else she’d learned quickly, Corey seemed to have a difficult time remembering the scoring, fumbling her hand each round. Jason was only half paying attention anyway, still halfway trapped in his mind, the thick smell of butter and coffee doing little to neutralize the Proustian moment.

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