All of them.
“We can’t stay here,” Tyler grumbled. “Pick up the bitch and let’s get to the van.”
As I was hoisted up, head bouncing off Vince’s back, I replayed that word over and over. A word that held the tiniest sliver of hope. Vanished. Vanished. Vanished.
Like Ollie said I had into the journal.
“You’ve been crying.”
I opened my eyes to see Marcy- therealMarcy. She reached across the table, stealing my cards to shuffle the deck.
Marcy was the only person I befriended in the years spent in this hellhole. They’d loaded my paralyzed body into a black armored van and shipped me to a long-term facility for the mentally ill, where I was admitted as a patient with, “grand delusions.” My mother, selfish bitch that she was, took the massive check Merit cut her in exchange for keeping me captive. If they couldn’t have the others, at least they’d have one failed weapon to study.
The first week, I was kept in a padded cell, fed through a slot in the door. I ripped out my hair, screamed until I lost my voice, and cried until I vomited or passed out. I fought them, clawed them, bit them- successfully ripping the ear off one of the fuckers. I was labeled:Dangerous and Unstable. But as the weeks dragged into months then into years, exhaustion and drugs took their toll on my fighting spirit. It got me nowhere. I changed my behavior on the outside, kept silent as much as I could and donned a meek disposition. Eventually, I was given supervised visits to the common room where I met Marcy, Billy, Becky and Delilah.
“And your alters have been surfacing at an alarming rate.”
She sighed, rubbing the bald patch on her eyebrow that Delilah liked to pick. “Sorry, they’re trying to calm me down after Johnny stopped by this morning.”
Marcy’s brother was the only family member who still visited her. The last time Marcy’s alters went haywire was after her mother passed away five years ago. If only my mother would do me the favor.
“You had another one, didn’t you?” Marcy asked. My deadpan glare had her sighing. “Listen, darlin, you can’t keep hoping. He’s gone. Gone, gone.”
Not gone. Vanished.
UFWC downplayed the fire, claiming that the missing students, “ran away,” after vandalizing the dorm, effectively blaming it on those that couldn’t defend themselves. It was disgusting what a fuckload of money and a promise to preserve the school’s reputation could cover up. None of the Merit asshats questioned where the others had gone. Maybe they really believed they escaped, but I knew better. The threads in my chest stayed partially frayed like they were hanging on by a sliver of spider silk.
Even with the tiniest speck of hope, my heart wouldn’t stop bleeding. The cavity in my chest was a festering wound that never healed, no matter how much time passed.
“I’m sorry, darlin, I know you loved him.”
Loved. Past tense. Because it was unacceptable to be in love with someone who was gone.
Not gone. I repeated to myself.None of them are really gone.
It was a fact I knew in my bones. Last night, I’d been yanked from sleep in a way I hadn’t been in fifteen long years.
“I know what I felt,” I said. “I swear it was him.”
Marcy set the deck down, fanning it out in a perfect semi-circle.
“Soldiers who lose an arm in war can still feel their hand sometimes.”
I glared at her.
She shrugged and reassembled the deck, shuffling for the hundredth time. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were all in order again. Leaning back in the plastic chair, I almost wished Delilah or Becky were sitting across from me. I’d even take Billy and his foul mouth. Anyone but Marcy. She was too realistic, never closely examining the impossible being sitting across from her: an ageless woman with psychic visions.
“I'll never give up on him.”
Marcy paused her shuffling and raised her brown eyes to mine. Sorrow. Pity. Concern. Seeing it all reflected back at me made my molars grind.
“I know, darlin.”
“He’s not dead,” I insisted. How many times had I repeated that sentence? Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of times. But I said it anyway, stubborn as ever.
Marcy carefully set down the deck. “Not every love story ends happily ever after, darlin.”
But the tiny ember of hope wouldn't blow out. I cupped my hands around it, shielding it from the storm, because that tiny ember was actually a bond anchored in the center of my chest. A bond that had tugged me awake last night. A bond connected to the other half of my soul.
