Page 139 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

Groggy and confused, Riley looks around.

The room with no windows.

His prison.

Troy is sitting on a stool, watching him.

‘How you feeling?’ he asks quietly, hand over his mouth.

Thoughtlessly, Riley answers, ‘Cold.’

Troy nods. ‘I knew you were lying about the hearing thing.’

A small part of Riley recoils, but the rest of him genuinely doesn’t care.

He’s too tired in every way.

‘What… happened?’

Troy takes a breath, hands clasped together as he leans on his knees, hunched over. ‘I had them analyse what you… passed,’ he says for lack of a better word, and Riley blushes violently. ‘Part of it was your appendix. Now listen to me.’ Troy walks over to the bed and sits on the side. ‘I can’t keep force-feeding you. It’s killing you, and if I want someone dead, you know I don’t kill slow.’

‘What’s wrong with me?’

‘I always knew that you weren’t gonna be like other kids. Ever since you were little. She wrote that you’d…’ Troy shakes his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. The point is that you’ve always been different, and I knew that from the start. You were up and about way too young. Crawling on everything. I had to put a dog leash around your middle. You ran every chance you got. Yeah, I got ideas about what you might be, but that don’t matter as much as who you might be, do you understand, Riley?’

He’s never understood anything less. ‘No.’

‘This is gonna be hard to hear, but we don’t dance around reality. When I pulled you out the tub… I haven’t seen you bare since you were big enough to dress yourself, but there’s been some changes.’

Riley still doesn’t understand. ‘What changes?’

‘You’ve got new parts. Maybe you always had ‘em, I don’t know. There’s.’ Troy clears his throat. ‘Boy and girl parts.’ He stares at Riley in the hope that he’ll understand, but Riley is wholly confused. ‘Are you hearing me?’ Troy scowls. ‘I know you are. You could hear this whole time.’

Riley turns sullen. ‘You never asked.’

‘Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

‘No, and I don’t care.’

It’s just some new hell. Some new hideous thing his body has decided he needs to endure in this grey hell of imprisonment.

‘You don’t care that you’ve got a bit of both going on down there?’

‘Am I dying?’

Troy scrubs a hand through his hair.

‘Doc says you’re stable. No more fever, no more bleeding. I didn’t let him see… y’know. But no, I don’t think so.’

‘Then I don’t care.’

‘Are you gonna start eating again?’

Riley considers. ‘If I do, will you let me see the sky?’

‘I don’t want to keep you inside. It’s just because you run.’

‘What does it matter if I run?’ he rasps bitterly. ‘Why do you stop me? You’d b-be happier without me.’