Connection

Chapter Twenty-Two: Charlotte

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Chapter Twenty-Two: Charlotte

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Over the past few weeks, Charlotte's life had not improved, though it had not worsened either. She was being given meager meals daily and had been hydrated enough.

Her captors had been interrogating her multiple times a day, relentlessly, but it never seemed to be on things that mattered; it was more about how their community had been doing than anything else. The one topic that arrived consistently was the mayor. They always wanted to know what the mayor was doing.

Though as much as the various inquiries intrigued her, other things were occupying her mind.

While she still had nightmares or flashbacks to the moment she was tortured, something even bigger seemed to fill her thoughts.

All she could manage to think about without losing her train of thought was the dream she had. Or was it a dream? She still couldn't be sure. Tirelessly she worked through the possibilities of the situation, searching for a logical and satisfying explanation though she rarely came up with anything that was worth thinking about further.

But she had decided this much: while it most definitely wasn't real, there were too many factors of it that felt like living for it to merely be a dream. What it might have been, she had not a clue.

Yet it ate at her mind relentlessly, refusing to leave. No matter what she attempted to do in order to rid herself of its grim and haunting presence, it stuck. What had caused that in Mallowkeep? Was it related to her kidnapping? How had she gotten there? How could her mind have conjured something so realistic? Why did it feel as if a gaping hole had replaced her stomach; as if she was missing a part of herself?

Out of all of them, there was one that stood out more than others. Why had it seemed to be so centered around Cliff? It felt like she just couldn't leave a place in which he stood, and it seemed he ended up to be her only option to speak to. Why was that? The two had always hated each other, so why, now of all times, did it seem that he was the center of one of the most peculiar things that had happened to her?

The possibility of him being the center of everything, including the kidnapping had crossed her mind many times since this dream, though as badly as she wanted to believe it, her mind wouldn't let her. It wasn't logical. They may have despised one another but in the dream, he seemed just as she was.

Each time she followed this path, though, she mentally slapped herself for thinking along these lines, for it was just that. A dream. A figment of imagination. Though she couldn't shake the feeling of reality from that particular moment. And she remembered it with perfect coherence and astounding sharpness. How often do people remember a dream in that way, even days after it had happened?

As the questions pounded at her head, begging for an answer, she couldn't find one. All she could find was an odd shred of hope which she thought had been dashed and destroyed after two failed escape attempts and treatment worse than before.

If something like this had happened to her, was it possible someone else was in the same position as her? Could someone else have seen a glimpse of her life and wondered whether or not it was a reality somewhere in the world?

Though every reasoned fiber of her body thought otherwise, her heart believed someone else may have; that someone may have a chance to save her.

For days, this ate her up. In fact, after a great amount of time, it was all she could think about.

Until, of course, Brooklyn came sprinting into the back room of the cave pulling Charlotte up. The chain that hung around her wrist yanked her toward the ground, but Brooklyn held her as high as she could.