The Camp (Chateau 2)

She sat up in bed, that pained look on her face, as if she were picturing those dark nights, the street fights, the tears Fender and I both shed when we were scared. “I don’t judge you…at all. I think it’s inhumane to judge someone for what they do to survive. The people who do have no idea what it’s like to be hungry, to be scared.”

I knew she’d lost her mother when she was a teenager, and then she had to take care of her younger sister when she probably didn’t know how to take care of herself. So, she understood my story. Maybe she had never experienced it as intensely as I did, but she understood.

She patted the mattress beside her, telling me to join her in bed.

I still had a lot of shit to do, but work meant nothing to me when I had something more valuable just a few feet away. I shut the laptop then stripped out my clothes so I could join her. I slid into the sheets beside her and pulled her close, our faces almost touching.

She rubbed my chest with callused fingertips, looking at me with a mixture of sympathy and pity. But there was also something else there…admiration. “You’re right.”

My eyes shifted back and forth as I looked into hers, questioning the words she’d just spoken.

“We are the same person.”

I stepped out of the communal cabin and noticed the torches. They were lit up around the perimeter of the clearing, less bright because it was still light out. In the summer, the light wasn’t really gone until at least eight in the evening. But the symbolism of the torches was enough to instill fear in every woman sitting at one of the tables.

I never took part in the ceremony. I was either in my cabin or elsewhere. I was in charge of this camp when Fender was away, so I rarely busied myself with tasks that involved the prisoners. The only reason I had been Raven’s guard in the first place was because we had lost a guard recently and we were shorthanded.

It was crazy how life worked out sometimes.

I stopped on the porch and looked at the torches. Alix wore the garb of the executioner, a mask covering the bottom part of his face while his hood was pushed down. He lit the final torch near the noose then began to stride down the aisles between the tables, looking for the victim they had already chosen.

It was cruel.

Alix kept moving and walked right past Raven. Whether I was around or not, he was smart and didn’t look at her. He was afraid of me—always.

He should be.

He moved down a different aisle and stopped behind a woman who was probably approaching fifty years of age. I recognized her face because she was one of the first women to have come here, and when Raven liberated the camp, she was one of the few who didn’t make it out. She started to tremble and shake, like she knew Alix was right behind her. Her eyes immediately moistened with tears.

Alix grabbed her by the back of the shirt and yanked her off the bench.

The sobs came next. “Please! Please don’t do this to me!”

Alix dragged her across the ground to where the wooden pole stood, the ground still stained with the last victim’s blood.

The woman didn’t rise to her feet and, instead, dug her fingertips into the ground, clinging to life for just a few seconds longer.

I couldn’t watch this.

I walked down the steps and turned my back to the clearing, heading to my cabin so I could close the door and shut out the sound of her screams.

“No! Please!”

I stopped walking.

My cabin was in front of me, just twenty feet away.

Why was I walking away?

“I work! I work hard every day!”

Why was I allowing this to happen?

Why was I trying to convince Fender to do things differently when I could just do things differently myself?

I turned around and walked back to the clearing.

The noose was tight around her neck, and she stood on the small box that would be kicked from under her at any moment.

When I moved past the line of torches, I saw Raven at the table, her head down, her eyes closed.

Alix pulled out his knife and prepared to kick the box from underneath her feet.

I walked past the tables and pulled out my own knife. “Stop.”

Alix turned to me, his eyes narrowed.

“Cut her down.”

A gust of wind blew through the clearing, making the lit torches flicker and almost go out. The energy was totally different now, even tenser than it had been a few seconds before I’d halted the slaughter.

Alix wasn’t tentative with me like he’d been before. Now he was angry, unsure what act I was trying to pull.