Lost

Chapter 32

Belle’s POV

I can’t say the next day is better-no it actually gets worse.

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My fingers are healing up nicely-or at least that’s what Bethany says. But this doesn’t mean it makes it easier to work-in fact, just about the opposite is true. I don’t know if it’s the lack of sleep, the scarce amounts of food, the low water supply, or even the smell, but I think my health is actually worsening.

Is it possible?   Do people gain the ability to know they’re sick even before it happens?

I’m not too worried though, as long as Bethany is here, I’ll be alright.

I’m slowly weaving a strip of white stained fabric over a thread ever so cautiously, without making any further damages to my skin. (The man made me take out my bandages.) I’m almost through with the last set of strings, when I hear a heart-wrenching scream. This no doubt catches me by surprise and I feel my finger get sliced under one of the strings.  Of course no one is paying attention to my cries of pain, but that may have something to do with the tragedy going on elsewhere.

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I’m stuck!”

Stuck?

“HELP ME! PLEASE!” Her deafening cries increasingly grow more frantic and desperate with each lingering second.

Soon enough, the new addition to the family of cuts and scrapes on my hand make no difference to me. What’s one sting compared to…that’s just it I don’t know what’s going on. But the girl’s screams tell me that it must be something excruciating. It must be something awfully painful. It has to be-that girl hasn’t said a word in days and now she’s spewing out words like a geyser.

So the big question remains: Did I even want to look?

Why should I care? The only person who cares for me is Bethany. Everyone else here would rather see me gone. Why should I care?

Although this place may bring out the worse in me and it does feel right to stop caring about the world around me, that is now who I am. It doesn’t take me long to decide-someone needed help and they needed it now. By the time I make my mind up, everyone is enclosed around the screaming girl. Apparently, they’re all trying to do…something. Something I don’t quite understand. The conversations amongst the panicked prisoners make no sense to someone who doesn’t know what’s going on.

Maybe if I just push my way through…

I squeeze through foul-smelling bodies and old wooden looms until I am a witness of calamity at hand. At first I am a bit befuddled, I’d have to admit, it seems, that at first glance, as if the girl is screaming for no reason whatsoever. But then it is when my eyes behold the truth of the situation: the big rickety table loom standing about 4 feet tall on the table had collapsed on the poor girl’s hand. But I wish it was as simple as that, the loom is so old that the wooden pieces are jammed so deep into her flesh that there is no way to pull her hand out without…

I can’t even say it.

“No wait! Please stop! I take it back! Leave me be! Please don’t! Please!” The girl’s agonizing pleads are enough for me and I do my part to depart from the scene, but  it doesn’t stop the approaching boy from pulling on her arm.

“No you’re only making it worse!” Bethany screeches her way into the crowd, but it does no good. Everyone else is too busy helping the boy rip that poor girl’s hand apart. The howling gets louder with each simultaneous pull from the other prisoners, and with each pull more blood oozes onto the table and drips onto the floor. The color red is all over the room it seems. Before I can pass out onto the floor, Bethany grabs a hold of me.

“What are you doing? Just lie down. You shouldn’t have to watch.” Bethany cradles me in her arms like a baby and lays me out on the floor, as far away from the commotion as possible.

“What’s going to happen to her?” I mumble as my mind threatens to slip away from me.

“I dunno. I mean-everything is going to be alright.” I know she’s lying. I can tell by the way she won’t look me in the eyes. I don’t need someone to tell me that she’s going to die…

My head rests underneath the table, away from the screaming and the yelling and the blood. But it doesn’t take me away from the real world. I wish it would though. Even with all the screaming, I’m sure everyone in the room can hear the door slam open and the sound of heavy rubber boots tapping rhythmically against the hard floor. The room grows silent, even the girl stops screaming. It’s hard to talk I guess when you see a man with a hatchet enter the room. I get up from under the table and cower by my stool, like all the other prisoners, watching as the unspeakable happens.

“No. NO!” the poor girl whimpers frantically as the horrid moment comes when…

“NOOOOO!!!!” the hatchet comes down on her wrist and cleans her hand right off.

Just like that…

The girl has only one hand.

The man takes her away.

There’s a hand trapped and wrapped in the strings of the loom, not to mention the remainder of her chain, which was also cut loose.

Two things are freed: the girl and her chain.

Just like that...

She’s dead

and hanging loosely from the man’s back as he carries her away.

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