Torn Apart • TWD

Chapter 2 - torturing its mother

The fat woman is staring down at Tessa like she has three heads, the young girl is used to the looks from the people caught in her traps, they assume that since she's young she will be easy to manipulate into releasing them before the adults arrive, and the look of horror on their faces when she aims an arrow at them makes the condescending interaction worth it.

This woman is already scared though, which kind of takes the fun away from Tessa as she answers the child's question.

"I'm pregnant, and somethings wrong," she says with a tense voice. The word is familiar to the girl, but not enough for her to know what it means which led to her next inquiry.

"Why are you so fat?"

The little girl has seen women like her before where their stomachs are unusually enlarged compared to the rest of their body, and they normally laugh and rub their belly when her loose lips call them fat, unlike people who are actually overweight that would glare at the child until her parents reprimanded her.

This woman is the same, she lets out an airy laugh with a small smile which makes her look down, as to not want to child to feel like she's laughing at her.

"I have a baby that's been growing in my stomach and it's time to come out but it's stuck-" she takes a breath while her hands turn to fists to clench to rope while her teeth sink into her bottom lip, "That's why I'm bleeding," Tessa likes that the woman is explaining it to her without acting like she's talking to a toddler, that's what sets her off into sending an arrow to the eye.

"Why are you here?" The child's voice is strong, almost as if it belongs to someone older. Her arrow is nocked but facing the ground till she decides otherwise.

"My group was attacked, I had to run-"

"Group?" The word makes her whole body tense, if there are people nearby then she will have a problem depending on their size, if it's less than a dozen she can let her traps deal with the problem, but any more then she will be forced to flee her home, "How many?"

The woman stutters for a moment, trying her best to think despite the pain, "Thirteen?" She says it like a question before quickly spitting out, "B-but there's kids, my son Carl a-and Beth she's only-"

"How many fighters?" She interrupts the woman tripping over her words. Tessa is practically bouncing on her feet, ready for someone to appear out of nowhere and attack.

Before she could get an answer, a moan of pain escaped the woman and more blood fell down her legs from inside her jeans, now no need to catch the falling drops, she did her best not to lie down and point her gaze back to the clouds.

Tessa's now pointing the arrow up at the net, encouraging the woman to scramble to get her thoughts together once the pain has passed.

"S-seven," Tessa lets out a sign without meaning to, making the woman confused. If this girl was alone like she suspected, then why did she think she was safe if seven armed adults came her way? Before it dawned on the woman where she is right now; a trap, she realises this probably isn't the only one the girl has on the perimeter.

"But-but I've been running for hours," the woman swallows, saying the words reminding her that she hasn't eaten or drunk anything which brought her attention to her dry and cracked lips, but the contractions have overshadowed her hunger, "They don't know where I am, an-and they won't know where you are."

The girl hesitates, unsure of what to do, this situation has never come up before. So she takes the arrow from the bow and places it back into her bag, which she grabs and swiftly turns to walk back the way she came.

The woman's face scrunches in confusion before realising she is being left to hang from a tree while in labour. She pulls herself to her knees to get a better look at the girl's retreating figure.