john murphy, WITCH

24 | Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

Salt water dripped from the cave ceiling right onto the back of their necks as they hunched down, not bothering to look up. Their whole body moved with every strained breath they took, pushing them against the shackles that bound their wrists above them.

Their toes just touched the ground causing them to be in a constant state of discomfort along with their exposed skin to the dampness of the large cave meaning they had a constant chills John Murphy could see every breath materialise in front of him in a cloud as a thin line of blood ran down his chin, staining his teeth even more so no white remained.

Winnie sweated so much that her clawed scraps of fabric serving as a t-shirt clung to her becoming an extra layer of skin that rubbed and itched.

They both had taken to staring at the floor, the bones at the top of their spine protruded out like scales. John spat at this moment, the routine of clearing out blood clots in his mouth no longer disgusted him, it only took what little pride remained in him. Most had gone when they stripped him of everything besides the trousers he wore, now they were even taking his blood.

Winnie never closed her eyes in fear of what true darkness may bring; even when her eyelids threatened to give up she lazily let them go only halfway. Murphy had been the same but soon the state of Winnie opposite him, within a normal touching distance became to much to bare and he chose the pitch darkness with the occasional light show behind his eyelids over seeing her like that and knowing he looked just as bad.

They learned they couldn't talk at all, even when it seemed they were alone. They tried and ended up with a whip to their backs and spit on their faces from their lover. It wasn't worth it and it's not like they had much to say to each other anyway, they only wanted to confess one thing but now did not seem like the best time to admit that you were falling in love with someone, not when it seemed that they were going to die.

Thirty six hours without the sun and without saying a word, they thought that had experience loneliness when they had been banished but this isolation was twenty times worse then they could have ever dreamed.

They broke in different ways. At first Winnie would not cry out or even mutter a small cry, she couldn't bear to add on to the noises that John Murphy made but she broke when he finally fell unconscious after a knife had been dragged all the way from his right hip to his left shoulder.

It was deeper than a paper cut but not deep enough to need stitches, she cried as she watched the small beads of blood swell up to surface and then turn into scabs before he awoke. She tasted the saltiness of her tears in her mouth and was thankful for the change from the tang of metallic blood.

Murphy was silent after that moment. He broke right then hearing the usually silent Winnie whimper and flinch with every new entrance to the cave. The spells hadn't worked, the gods had abandoned her. She didn't stick to the plan.

Yet all of this wasn't the worst element, your body could survive a maiming for a while but when your heart breaks, when you look at the person you love and realise that the burn around their neck isn't the worst blemish on their body, that is when you lose hope.

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Viena hadn't seen the sunlight since she and Anya had dragged their lifeless bodies into the cave. But she missed when they were giving her a fight, the hours before they begun to break. The grounder could tell they were determined people, it emanated from them as they stood up to the captive with heads held high. Viena actually found it quite enduring before it became suffocating. But she would not get the information they all needed by keeping their spirits high, no they needed to be grovelling on the floor.