But that feeling might have been engineered. Or it might have been hunger already distorting perception.
I close my eyes for a second, fighting the fog.
When I open them, the lights are the same. The room is the same. The men are the same.
Only my certainty is different.
I look at Bones and shake my head once. Not twelve. I don’t know. The admission tastes like blood.
That is the fracture. Cold never took my timekeeping. Hunger has.
Across the room, Hatchet’s restraint chain rattles again as he strains, shaking now, breath ragged. Honey flinches at the sound, then edges closer to Hatchet’s zone as if proximity might help, as if empathy is a resource you can spend instead of water. Ghost’s rocking stops abruptly and his head snaps up, eyes too bright, too focused.
The room seems to tighten, attention sharpening. They sense the shift. The beginning of chaos. And for the first time since waking, I feel something like fear – not of pain, not of cold, but of uncertainty.
I was counting on numbers. Now the numbers won’t hold.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, forcing moisture where there is none, and stare at the empty centre of the room where the tray had been.
Waiting for the next ration.
Waiting for the next rule.
Waiting, and realising I can no longer reliably measure how long I’ve been waiting at all.
SCREAMING HAS NEVER BEEN PROOF OF LIFE
Horns - Bryce Fox
Kookaburra
The soil is honest. It doesn’t lie, it doesn’t posture, it doesn’t pretend it’s neutral while it takes everything you are and decides whether to keep it. You give it something; it gives you something back. Bargain struck. No clipboard required.
I push my fingers into the raised bed and feel the crumble and cling, the damp cool of it sliding under my nails. Worms, grit, tiny white roots like threads of spit.
My lower back complains – maybe from the work, maybe from the parasite – but pain is familiar enough that I don’t pause.
The morning has that thin, watery sunlight that only shows up when it’s been raining for three days straight; the path isslick, the roses are sulking, the lavender looks like it tried to drown itself out of sheer boredom.You and me both, Lav.
The breeze brings the smell of salt if you stand very still. I don’t. I keep moving, kneeling, reaching, breaking the earth open in neat wounds and tucking things into them. It’s the closest thing to prayer I can stomach.
“Gentle hands,” Doctor Callaway says without looking up from her clipboard. “We’re not punishing the soil.”
I smirk into the bed and press harder, just to feel it push back. “Punishment implies guilt. Dirt is beyond such pedestrian morality.”
“Mmm,” she says, which is her version of a laugh, except it isn’t. Her hair is scraped into a severe knot today, the kind that broadcasts discipline and migraines. Pale blouse, dark slacks, clipboard like a shield. She’s standing at whatshewould call a ‘safe observational distance’ and whatIwould call ‘close enough to catch arterial spray’. The irony pleases me. I keep my head down and hum under my breath.
She recognises the tune. She always does. “Must we?”
“If I don’t sing to them, they sulk.” I pat the soil over a row of seedlings and flatten it with the heel of my hand. “Besides, they like the laughter.”
“Kookaburras don’t live here, Kayla.”
“Neither do I,” I say sweetly, and blow a speck of dirt off my knuckle.
We have a routine now. They love routines. It makes them feel like captors with stickers for effort. I show up when they unlock my door. I shower, because the room smells like bleach and impatience and I don’t see why I should add to that. I eat what they give me and I smile when it’s awful. I walk beside Doctor Callaway out to the garden with the second orderly trailing behind us and another by the gate. I breathe the air like I’m grateful for it. I kneel. I work. For an hour. Two, if I’m good.
I have been very, very good.
