When Songbirds Fly | Bellamy Blake

Chapter Eleven: Unity Day

Long corridors stretch out before me. A bottomless box of dull metal. Doors line up on either side, locked.

With each step the path before me seems to stretch, elongated by a force I cannot see. I walk and yet I go nowhere.

An eerie tune bounces off the compacted walls, the humming of a song I have not heard in so long.

One door swings open and suddenly I enter a darkened room. A loud drip, drip, drip can be heard when I stop to pick up a spanner from the tool box lying by my feet.

'Okay. Let's see what you're up to, you little bastard,' I mutter under my breath. A flashlight appears in my empty hand.

The large room is a maze of pipes that twist and turn in seemingly tangled knots. A single neon-white light flickers in the far corner like lightning striking the earth thousands of miles away.

I know that I'm not meant to be here. I can't remember why.

One of the pipes by the door has a leak. Water falls to the floor, creating a large puddle. 'Gotta be fucking kidding me.'

The door flies open even further, casting a spotlight over me. The spanner falls to the floor without a sound. It takes me a moment to adjust to the sudden bright light, squinting at the figure staring at me with what I realise is fear.

'John? What are you doing here?'

The flashlight vanishes from my hand but light still streams around us with a strange heat.

He doesn't reply.

Feeling the urge to look down, I see that his hand is grasping onto my wrist. I barely register the fact that I had been standing on the other side of the room only seconds before.

'Hey, what the hell are you doing?'

We now stand in a room. It's crowded — not by people, but by children's drawings, spare piping, plumbing tools, empty bottles.

He closes the door and begins to bolt it shut. A girl rushes over to help him move the table to form a barricade.

'Okay, what the fuck is going on?'

The girl barely turns her head in my direction. 'Shut up, okay? This is important.'

Once they're sure that we're securely barricaded in, the two teenagers turn back to face me. John begins to pace, anxiously running a hand through his dark locks of hair.

The girl — who is practically identical to me, save for the moles that scatter my face — takes a pill bottle from the table. She shakes the few murky green capsules that remain out into her palm and hurriedly swallows them.

I still receive no explanation.

Finally, the girl sighs and lets our deep brown eyes meet. 'I did something bad, Wren, something real bad.'

'But there wasn't a witness, right?' John interrupts. 'Ez, tell me there weren't any witnesses.'

'No. Well, yeah, but... things went wrong. And, of course, there were cameras. Look, Babe, I'm sorry. Is that what you want me to say? That I'm sorry and I made a mistake? You wanna hear that bullshit? Because he might have been the wrong guy but I don't regret it one bit.'

'How could you have been so fucking stupid? I know you've been angry about everything, but why couldn't you have just talked to one of us instead of doing something so messed up? Do you have any idea what you've done?' He groans, his panic reaching its peak as he kicks over one of the chairs. Again, it doesn't make the amount of noise that it should.