Famished

The next question was stuck in my throat. I almost didn’t want to ask it at all, then, suddenly, I blurted out, “Did they kill Monica? Did Mr. Baker make them kill Monica?” I flinched, expecting him to say yes quickly.

“No. They didn’t.”

“But she is dead, right? And she was killed.”

Owen nodded. “Yes to both. She is dead and she was killed, but not by the cannibals.”

“Then by who?”

“One of the decayed ones.”

“No…..” I cupped my hands over my mouth when I thought of Monica enduring hours of torture, her limbs being hacked away, before she was finally eaten alive. “That can’t be.” I almost wanted him to say that a cannibal consumed her. At least then I knew she would have been given a merciful death. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“How can you be sure?”

Owen looked away from me and didn’t meet my gaze. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do, though.”

“No you don’t.”

Part of me wanted to know and part of me didn’t. What if it was too gruesome for me to handle? What would I say to her family? I already had to tell them that their daughter didn’t just disappear, I had to tell them that she had been murdered. “Just tell me, Owen.” Better that I found out sooner rather than later.

Owen opened his mouth to answer me and a light started flickering behind us. I looked at him, puzzled. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“I have to go.”

“No,” I pleaded. “Please don’t go.”

“I’m sorry.” He started the lift and it began going down.

“Owen, please,” I begged. “You don’t have to go with him. You can stay here with me.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t.”

The lift came to a halt, looming right above the floor in the mess hall. “Can you at least tell me what happened to Monica? How do you know that she was killed by a decayed one?” Owen set me down on the floor and the lift started going back in to the ceiling. “Owen, tell me!” I shouted, not caring if I woke up the entire colony.

Just before the lift went up and cut off Owen’s head from my view he said, “I know that Monica was killed by a decayed one. And I know it for sure because I found her head.”

Chapter 21: All Good Things Eventually Come To An End

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. ~ Revelation 21:1

Hours after Owen dropped me off, I lied awake, disturbing images passing in and out of my subconscious mind. First, images of Monica, her brown hair spread out along the loose ashes of the earth’s surface, her face contorted in agony as she begged and pleaded for her life. Then Mr. Baker came into focus as he pounded away the keys on the control panel keyboard, typing things like “Attack!” or “Eat Them!”

Finally, I saw myself, strapped down to a hospital gurney. A surgeon with a scalpel hovered above me, lowering it slowly, inch by inch. I tried to scream but I had no voice and the closer the scalpel came to the top of my head, the more real the thought felt. It was like I was seconds away from receiving a lobotomy without an anesthetic.

Someone was tugging on my arm and I started to panic. I thrashed violently, feeling my palm connect with a person’s cheek. “Ouch,” Frankie whimpered, and then she started wailing. “Mommy! Mommy!”

I bolted upright in my bed and realized I was having a nightmare. Frankie recoiled, sulking over to her bed, and she curled up into a little ball. She sobbed softly and I exhaled slowly.

“Frankie, come here,” I said convincingly.

She whipped her head and snapped, “No!” before tucking it back into her lap.

“Frankie, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I was having a bad dream.”