When it rains in the desert

Poison

Celia was sat on my lap when I woke up the next day. I could smell oatmeal and I almost jumped out of my seat before I remembered that I was handcuffed to the chair.

I'd moved enough to startle Celia though. She looked at me with a worried look and it made me love her just a little more. "What's wrong?" I chuckled at her question. "I can smell oatmeal, I think i'm smelling things" I whispered.

She looked around and I followed her eyes. There was two bowls on the floor next to the door. They must've  been put there when we were asleep.

Celia got up and brought the bowls to me, but I noticed the hesitation in her eyes. "Okay, I know you're hungry, but there will most likely be small amounts of poison in the food"

I looked at her in surprise and she carried on "It's not enough to kill you, just to make you feel weak enough that they can control you."

I was so surprised at how she knew so much, how she was so casual about it. She might've been telling me about the weather. "Do you still want to eat it?" She asked.

To be honest I was weak anyway, I needed to eat, so I nodded and she handed me the bowl and sat next to me. I'd never been a big fan of Oatmeal but it was the best damn Oatmeal i'd ever tasted.

Celia wouldn't touch hers. She looked sad and ashamed. "How did you know it was poisoned?" She shook her head and then looked into her hands. "It was my idea" She whispered.

I looked at her, waiting for the rest of the story. She took a deep breath "There was this guy being held here and he was giving us a little trouble. He wasn't talking, he would stay in one place until he needed to eat."

"When someone came in, he'd just attack them. He broke my arm and Rick's nose. None of us could crack him so I suggested we add small doses of poison into his food to neautralise him a little."  She shrugged her shoulders. "But then rick got really sick with it. His new interrogation technique had become, starve, beat and then poison. "

She looked back up at me, wringing her hands in her lap. "He figured the hungrier you are, the less likely you are to care what we feed you." I was clearly her prime example here, even though she'd told me there was poison in the food, I still ate it.

I looked at her, noticing the selection of her words.  I turned my head to the side, "We?" She looked back. She still saw herself as one of them.

"Yes Jacob, we" She was irritated now. "A year and a half ago, it would have been me out there coming in to tease you, to get under your skin," She lay her head back on the wall behind us, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her hands on her legs.

"I was good at it Jacob." A pause. "I know you read my letters, I know that you know the things I did, but you don't know that I was good at it. The reason Rick let Carter live for so long was because I was good at my job."

"I was good at the interrogating, and the killing without leaving a trace, I was good at the maintenance of hostages and the-" She cut herself off.

"I didn't like it, but I was good at it." She sighed, looking at me. I realised I was just waiting. I don't know what I was waiting for but my mouth wasn't moving.

"Celia, it's not who you are. You chose who you wanted to be the minute you decided to get out of here. Its's not who you are." I wanted to get up and hug her, I wanted to take her away from all of this but I was handcuffed to a bloody chair.

She wiped her face and came over to me. She placed her lips to my temple and said "you don't give yourself enough credit for how much you changed me." She whispered.