My Peace (Beautifully Broken 5)

I focus on staying conscious, and it is actually difficult. My body is fighting back against all of the toxins in my system. It wants to sleep them off, to regain strength during slumber. I can’t do that.

I have to think.

Think, think, think.

I have to stay calm.

They come back.

One of them speaks.

“We were told you’d want to know what your mother said about you.”

I focus on that, on my mother. She was kind and warm. And Leroy said… that he had something to tell me. Something she’d said.

I remember now.

I wait.

The guy laughs, and his lips are dry. I can only see his eyes and lips through the holes in the mask. His eyes are brown. Dull brown. His lips are chapped, flaky in the corners.

“I’m not going to tell you. Not while you are resisting like this. You were told to behave. You aren’t.”

He places a lock of blond hair on my chest. The curl of it gleams in the sun from the windows. It’s Zuzu’s.

I struggle to turn, to see the monitor.

“Don’t you touch her,” I shout at him.

He laughs again.

“She’s fine,” he tells me finally. “For now.”

My head falls back against the bed. My wrists are bleeding from the binding.

“You can only behave if you do it on your own accord,” he continues. “It doesn’t count if we have to force you. Are you ready to behave?”

I nod.

“Are you sure?” he asks sternly.

I nod.

“Fine. We’re going to untie you. And you’re going to do as you’re told, or the next thing I bring you won’t be your daughter’s hair.”

I nod again, and when they untie me, the blood flows back into my limbs in a flood of pins and needles.

“Son of a bitch,” I mutter before I can stop myself, as I rub at my hands and feet.

The guy laughs. The other doesn’t say much.

I slump into the bed. They bring in fresh boxes, crisp white cardboard, filled with poisons. I flinch. The second guy thrusts one into my hands.

“It’s time,” he says, and it’s the first time I’ve heard his voice. I don’t recognize it.

They leave me unbound with the box in my lap.

I look inside.