Saints Before Sixth

SECOND

Andy's arms and legs shivered uncontrollably, she hadn't been in Solitary for years but still remembered it being as cold as it was right now. A feeling of helplessness hugged her body, out of tears to cry after spending countless hours in here already. There were no clocks nor lamps in what she assumed could only be the very lowest level of this building. Her journal was the warmest thing in her cell, as it'd been pressed against her stomach ever since she slipped it into her clothes.

Her throat was sore, the bags under her eyes felt swollen, she failed to close her ice-cold fingers into fists. Captain Clammy Hands mentioned snow outside. She had no memory of seeing snow before, did she ever? It might be in the journal, but reading was impossible when darkness consumed everything in her near presence.

Rhythmic thuds started echoing through the space, increasing in volume as seconds passed. Andy put weight on one elbow to lift her body.

'Christiano!?' Her voice sounded harsh. 'Is that you?!'

The darkness left her question unanswered, much to her displeasure.

Light suddenly beamed into her eyes, as a reflex her head turned away. The light had come with a simultaneously as invasive sound, a metal creaking or maybe even scraping sound.

'Eat up,' Glasses said, he seemed to be the only Keeper with bad eyesight. A paper bag thudded onto the ground, whatever was in there probably lost all form after it was so mindlessly dropped for her - like the prisoner she was and had been for so long.

Barely thinking about it, she shot forward in the direction of the light. She scraped both her knees in the process; it was a sacrifice worthy of its cause. Andy put her hand in front of the opening, right as the metal plate intended to fall back onto its designated place. Preventing it from closing shut would offer her the light she so desperately needed for her journal.

After about a minute she lifted the plate back up, by now the Keeper should be far away enough to notice her further doing. While keeping her hand positioned, she sat her back against the freezing metal and took the book out from underneath her shirt. The warm material made her long for her room, her blanket to be specific. The food she'd shoved out of her way, whatever it was it would most certainly be worse than anything served in the cafeteria.

She balanced the book on her knees and flipped open a few pages with her free hand. The 9th of December had been the last day of her time in the Program. She remembered almost nothing from before that, wondering if this was another thing the Keepers had orchestrated for her. Her eyes searched for the ninth day of the last month, in a more clumsy matter than she'd have liked - unfortunately, her right hand was already spoken for.

Her handwriting was messy; she was only eight back then.

"They got mad at me today and told me I wasn't good. I was awake and then I fell again. Maybe I was tired and needed to sleep? And I think I did bad, they ask me to do difficult stuff, it makes me sad and scared. Kris told me he would live in another home when he was 18. They never say that to me, I don't want to be alone without my friend."

The sole thing Andy could make sense of was her likely intention to write "Chris", his name might have been complex for her at the time. Anything else, whatever it was, had been long erased from her memory. What was she asked to do and why did it have this effect on her?

What did they do with a child of such a young age?

She went back a couple of pages as a drawing caught her off guard. The page was almost entirely black, only in the middle, there was a small space left. A doodled girl stood up straight with trees surrounding her - she looked sad.