Rising Dusk

Chapter 1

I winced and squeezed my eyes shut as flecks of warm blood splattered across my face. A moan came from the floor in front of me, followed by the crack of a belt. I took a step back, both to avoid any more blood and to not make the boys administering the beating more angry. They had already been doing this for several long minutes, and I wasn't sure how much more of it the boy could take. This should be me. I took a step forward to stop them, but my sister grabbed my arm and held me back.

"Don't," She muttered softly.

I gave her a small nod and she let go of me.

Finally, the sounds of leather on flesh ceased and the boy dropped the belt. It fell to the hard concrete floor with a satisfying clang. It was over, and it looked like no one would need to take a trip to the emergency room. The boy turned to me, and I immediately dropped my gaze. He grabbed me roughly by the collar and forced me to meet his eyes.

"Try anything like that again and I'll do that," he gestured to the boy, "and a hell of a lot more to your little sister." He threatened with a fierce shake.

"Yes sir." I grumbled, and he dropped me.

"Clean this up." Snapped the other boy, and they both turned to go up the stairs.

My sister and I practically fell beside the broken body of our close friend, Travis. He was barely conscious, and I got his head up so that he could spit out the large amount of blood that was in his mouth. He coughed, and spluttered, then put most of his weight on me.

"Oh my God, Travis, I am so sorry. I wouldn't have taken it from them if I'd known they would have gone after you." I was talking too fast, but I needed to tell him how bad I felt about his current predicament. "It should have been me."

He shook his head and smiled up at me. "I don't mind taking it if it means that we get a little extra food." He closed his eyes, and then gave my sister a smile, "And you know, saving your pretty face."

I could practically hear her roll her eyes. "Come on lover boy." She said with a small, sad smile, "Let's get these cuts cleaned up before you bleed out or die of some infection."

We worked together to pull him to his feet and get him up the two flights of stairs to where his bedroom was. We got a shirt on him and set him in bed before going to get disinfectant for the cuts. We went into the bathroom and dug around in the cabinet for what we needed.

"You know it's not your fault right?" My sister asked me.

I turned to face her. "Like hell it's not Emma." She dropped her eyes at me. "If I hadn't decided to be stupid and steal from them, he never would have gotten hurt."

"Yes, but if you hadn't decided to steal from them, we would all be hungry." Emma argued. "And besides, he was willing to take it so that everyone else would be off the hook."

I shook my head. "Yea, but I was too."

We found what we needed and went back into Travis' room to clean his wounds. He was almost asleep when we went in, and he jumped awake like he'd heard a gunshot when we shut the door behind us. He rolled over and allowed us to lay bandages on the long lash marks that the belt had left. By the time we'd finished he was almost asleep again. With some sort of silent communication, Emma and I left him to his sleep and went back to our own shared room.

When we were settled in our old, rickety chairs that were in our room, I turned to Emma. "We need to get out of here." I told her bluntly.

"And what's your escape plan this time?" She scoffed.

We had tried several times to get out of this place. It looked like a mansion on the outside, but inside, it was like hell itself had made a small outpost in the real world. Both times that we had tried to get out however, we had been caught by the police and drug back, literally kicking and screaming. Emma trusted me completely, and I knew that, but she also knew that I wasn't going to put her in harm's way again unless I was sure that I could protect her.

"We could steal Walt's car," I started, "And then steal some skeletons from the biology room,"

She fed off of my crazy escape plan. "And we could drive the car into the river, and put the skeletons in the seat so that they think we're dead."

I laughed and pulled a small notebook out from behind my bed. Across the front in Emma's neat cursive she had written, Escape Plans. Some of them were logical and we really could use them to get out with the right planning and supplies. Others, like the one we had just made up, were more to keep our minds off of what was happening around us.

Escape plan #26, I wrote on the next blank page, Use fake skeletons to make them think we're dead.

Hello readers! Thank you for reading! Any tips, corrections, ideas, or suggestions can be sent to my email, cazador.j.b.s.26@gmail.com.

And I am aware that I do not yet have a cover. I have a friend who is good at artsy stuff working on it now.