The Marriage Swap

19 | 𝙰𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚜' 𝙷𝚎𝚎𝚕

I do not know why I brought the journal with me to the torture chamber. Or why I held it tight, hidden under my top, during the entire time I was in the simulation cell. Or why I can't help but write in it now after being dragged out of the simulation cell, be thrown into a wooden box, and dumped in the container compartment of something called a 'plane' where I spent hours in darkness before someone opened the lid of the wooden box I was in.

Suddenly I could see a dimly lit basement around me with a strange stone altar in the middle, had hyper-awareness of an identical wooden box being opened beside me. Zia, one of the twins who dwelled in the cell next to mine, with her missing right eye, looked at me with her left orb. In her gaze, for the first time, I saw sadness. Not the sick pleasure at another kid's pain, not confusion and lunacy, not even the fear when one of the guards would approach her. Sadness. It disturbed me.

Then my jaw was harshly pulled to the side, my gaze clashing with Bartholomew's manic sadism. "You'll kill us?" I kept thinking about how it would feel if I dug out his eye the same way he did Zia's, while he laughed in my face and said, "You want to know what happens to young brats like you in the base? Especially when we think you're an eyesore or discardable or simply irritate us? You'll see with your own eyes today."

I thought maybe this was when I died. I dreaded it, hated it. Not because I would leave this cursed earth, but because I could not die before I killed them all. A part of me refused to acknowledge Kai Park; he would shatter-not that there was much part of him left to break anymore after Sienna—and I wasn't in the right mind to ponder over why he ever cared whether I lived or not. You did not care for anyone in the base. I thought they would do to me what they did to Sienna.

But they didn't touch me, they dragged a violently protesting Zia with them instead and. . .

. . . I can't breathe.

~ from the Journal entries of Daisy

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☘︎ Eᴠᴇ Kᴀᴠɪɴsᴋʏ ☘︎

There are times when I have an out-of-body experience; like a spectator watching herself from behind a glass dome, like a person who doesn't know what she's doing but she does it anyways—revels in her actions anyways. Or perhaps she doesn't, but she'd never really know.

It feels the same way now as I drag Bartholomew's motionless body through the backyard and into the dark forest, over broken branches and crushed leaves. His groans of agonized pain mingle with the melancholy of the wind, creating a melody I shouldn't be relishing so much.

A smile which is all sorts of wrong but right, makes it to my face when I spot the grave Maa had her people dig up here. A grave for a dead person to be buried. Too bad this one was going to be alive.

Adrenaline buzzes faintly in my veins as I scoot down and start rolling Bartholomew towards the open grave with my gloved hands. Likely realizing what was going to happen to him, despite the broken arms and legs—the limbs I shattered with my hammer before I dragged him here—his eyes widen in horror, a cry of protest leaving his lips.

I scowl, tilting my head and pausing. "Afraid, Bartholomew?"

He manages to nod, his whole body shaking visibly and his cries growing louder. Pathetic.

With a sadistic satisfaction, a laugh breaks out of me, disrupting the eerie silence in the woods. I lean down to whisper softly in his ears, "Good. You're exactly supposed to feel that way."

I don't wait for his response, simply rise and kick him right into the deep pit. Few of his bones break instantly from the harsh impact. His scream echoes through the forest, reverberating along the mountain.