Devils Game

Eight | Desperate Times Desperate Measures

Again, the lights shut off suddenly and Im left with nothing but the sounds of my own sharp and rugged breaths. I inhale and exhale rapidly, hearing the alien-like sounds come towards me.

I feel something on my neck and immediately turn back, my hands out to defend myself but find nothing but darkness there. I struggle to look around, my tears clouding my vision. But its not likes theres a lot to see; theres nothing but complete blackness.

I feel something pinch into the back of my neck again, and I tear out a scream from my mouth. My hands fly up to the back of my neck to see what happened to it, and I touch blood. I wince as my finger goes over the wound, whatever object it was touched by.

But then my head starts to spin, and I'm whirled around side to side unwillingly by a force that I cannot see. I close my eyes shut as tight as I can, trying to shut out whatever is happening. All I can feel is my body being tossed from side to side forcefully, and I can already feel bruises forming on my sides.

Then the shaking stops, and my body comes to an abrupt stop and for a moment it seems like I'm soaring, and then I feel cement slam into the right side of my body, and hear cracks and crumbles roar down my side. I scream out in pain, and drop to the floor.

I'm barely able to move my right leg and arm, but I stay on the floor and catch my breath and wait until the numbness lifts off of my arm and leg. Once the pain drifts off like a feather in the wind, I get up and limp around the space I was left in. Its still dark and I can't see anything, so I use my working arm and feel around the walls, hopefully awaiting to find something.

And then my fingers brush something, excited I feel it around and flip a switch, and a big light comes on and illuminates the room. I let my eyes adjust to the light and after a while of just standing there, I slowly open up my eyes and look around the room.

I scream. I turn and see Val's head placed on a stick, in the corner of the room. I fall to the floor, hysterically, and back away from the horrific sight, wishing nothing more for the head to be fake. Why would he show me this? How dare he.

I curl my legs to myself, and shake for what seems like forever. I expect a voice to boom around the room, but it seems my reaction was a show enough to him, and Im left with hearing my wails and screams echo off the wall and bounce back to me, tormenting me.

I put my hands to my ears to block out the numbing sound surrounding me, but it does nothing and only makes me feel worse. Feeling sick, I push myself up and walk to the opposite side of the room than Val's head. I sit down, facing the wall and clutch my stomach, giving it all my power to not puke my guts up right there and then. It didn't work.

Once I was finished throwing up what little food I had in my stomach, I began realizing how long it had been since my last meal. I didn't even remember what the last meal I had was. I missed the taste of food so much, as a distraction from Val I began to fantasize about eating something, anything. Everything. A loaf of moldy bread began to be the best thing in the world, and my mouth began to water. Finally, I was alone with my thoughts.

"Enjoying your friends company, aren't you?" The voice rang around the room, "I know you are. You must be hungry, no? Well, I put your next meal right there in with you. Find it."

I really hope he doesn't mean Val. And then my head turns towards her, and her lifeless eyes stare straight up at the ceiling, leaving me with her unresponsive whites of her eyes. And then my sight travels down to her mouth, and notice the red apple shes biting down on. Just like the one in the other room. I recall back to myself.

"No! No, I wont! You cant make me!" I say, not wanting to touch Val, her lifeless head. Not wanting to disgrace her.

"You know what they say about not eating for a long period of time, right? How you could... die? Well seems to me you haven't eaten in about oh well, 35 hours? And your last meal was alcohol, may I add. All liquid, that apple will be the most amount of food you'll see in a while, so take it or not. You'll probably die either way." And with that the voice clicks off, and Im left with a undecidable decision.

Do I take it? Should I? Ill die without it. But like he said, I'll probably die even if I do take it, from who knows what.

My head runs in all different directions, sorting out the pros and cons. I don't want to disgrace Val, she was my best friend in the entire world and even though she betrayed me, I still loved her. Nothing could ever make me un-love her.

But in the end, hunger won.

I shakily stand up, keeping my head and eyes away from her face, not wanting to have this mental image haunt me further. I walk over to her and sit down in front of her. I tilt my head only slight enough to see the red, juicy apple placed in her mouth and nothing more. Carefully, I place my shaky hand around the apple and pull it out of Val's reach.

Breathless, I fall back and within an instant I devour the apple out of pure starvation, and the sweet bitter taste of my tears mixed in with the apple lingers in my mouth and I stand up and walk into the doorway that opened up seconds after eating the read fruit.

You know what they say, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Im sorry Val.