The In Between

Chapter 37

Justin

The Halfway House is fake. Just like the stores and the huts and my stuff that isn't really my stuff in my room that isn't really my room. It's all just an illusion to trick my soul, my consciousness, into believing that I can get up again. That I can live. 

I lift the sheet off my bed. A woman with a severe white bun and oversized clipboard stands at the foot of my cot. She is running her bony finger down the ledger. Damaris steps out of her shadow.

"You must sign him out," the woman instructs, tilting the clipboard to Damaris.

"Yes, of course." Damaris takes the pencil from her and scrawls an ornate "D" that takes up three lines. The white-haired woman shakes her head in apparent disapproval of the flourish and leaves our side.

Damaris takes a deep breath, her narrow shoulders rising and falling. "I knew you would make it," she whispers. "How are you feeling? We don't have far to go. Do you need assistance? Shall I call the Operators?"

I shake my head. The Operators, with their long, gangly arms and their grim, expressionless faces, spook me too much. "I'll be okay."

"Good." Damaris's eyes are pinker than usual and slightly swollen. "We should go then, no point in lingering." She glances anxiously around as if the sickness and the sins of the others might be contagious.

I swing my legs to the floor and, holding onto the nightstand, carefully stand up. My knees begin to buckle but I catch myself in time before I faceplant. I'm desperate to be out of this god-awful place, with the astringent stench of medicine and stern women in white coats carrying clipboards.

Damaris, half my size, pushes up the sleeve of her slate robe and wraps her spindly arm around my waist, guiding me as we walk past row upon row of cots, filled with the broken and the damaged.

"I'm never going back there," I whisper to her.

"You won't," she replies. "Because if you err again and are returned to Hell, there will be no coming back, Justin. There never is."

I stumble at her words and she clutches me tighter, the implications of what she just said burning across my mind.

"Where are we going?" I ask groggily as we turn right and head in the direction of the main road, its wide metal lanes spreading out before us.

"You have been consigned for the remainder of your time here to the High Security Zone. Your privileges for the remaining days left of your Mission have been revoked."

I try to do the math: How long has it been since the accident? How long since I was with Tara at the quarry, our hands and lips so close? How long since I promised her I would return? 

All I'm sure of is that too many days and nights have passed without me being able to reach Tara. She's must think I'm never coming back.

"Forever," we  had said.

"No matter what."

Those words seem careless now. 

Dangerous.

I will break Tara's heart if I can't find a way back to her. I know that. But I also know something I didn't know then: Hell.

I double over and feel like I'm hyperventilating even though there is no air in my lungs.

"Maybe we do need the Operators," Damaris suggests nervously.

I force myself to straighten up. "I'll make it," I tell her.