Occupied

Chapter One

"Mrs. Newton, please, you may come in now." An elderly woman appeared through the door, summoned by the younger woman's voice. I watched, uncertain as to why I was here. I had never been out of the playhouse.

The playhouse was my home, the place where I had been since I could remember. I wasn't alone in the playhouse though so it was a fairly comfy life. Two of my house mates stood beside me now, hands twitching behind their backs.

"I hope you will find the specimen to your liking. I read your file and tried to pull those best suited." The elderly woman turned to look over us, her eyes like beads. They were dark and unreadable and absolutely chilled me to the bone. There was nothing, no personality no color, what was wrong with her?

"You can put the one on the far right up. I do not wish to be male." The younger woman nodded and strutted toward me. She squeezed her hands into fists and opened them, wiping them on her skirt before she placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"Come along Kai." Befuddled, I looked from the newcomer to the woman holding my shoulder tightly. Why was I being sent away?. What did it have to do with me being male? Bending down, the woman whispered in my ear. "You live to see another day, be thankful. Now let's go."

Still unsure, I nodded cautiously. Beside me, my two teammates fidgeted. I gave them a reassuring smile that didn't quite reach my eyes before I was dragged from the room.

. . . .

What seemed like hours later, my teammates both returned from the room we'd been in together just earlier that day. I wanted desperately to ask questions but I could see it on their faces, they had no clue either.

"Did she send both of you back as well? Or what?"

Daphne, a brunette with sharp green eyes and a small pouty mouth looked at me drolly. "Or what? You could have just said the first part, that second quip was implied. And no, she picked Rhonda."

Curiously, I looked to the victor of our three man competition. She didn't look like she felt as though she was a victor. If anything, she looked deathly afraid and pale as a ghost. Did she know more than we did?

"Why does she look so upset?" I wasn't sure upset was the best word, maybe scared would be better but I didn't know. Maybe she was both.

"Hell if I know. At least she gets to get out of the playhouse." Daphne looked longingly at Rhonda. I got a feeling that Rhonda would gladly change places with Daphne if she could. "Besides, she was always like that, even before today."

Daphne had a good point but something in my brain wasn't connecting, I just couldn't quite figure out what seemed obvious. Rhonda knew something, she had to. That would explain why she was always so fidgety when the authorities came around and why she would cry herself to sleep at night.

I mean, the playhouse wasn't the greatest. It was juvenile and we had long since outgrown it, now surrounded by children all under 10. But Rhonda wouldn't cry over something so trivial? She wasn't completely alone.

My eyes followed Rhonda as she moved from the lower level of the playhouse to an upper level, probably the one that we called ours. Later, I would ask her why she was so upset all the time.

"Kai, honey, it's time to come take your medicine." A lady similar to the one who escorted me back to the playhouse approached me. She wore a weathered smile and somehow it seemed sad. She was considerably older than the other lady. You could only tell if you looked closely though.

Wrinkles on her forehead were minuscule but definitely there. She had crinkles around her eyes and the skin on her extended hand was beginning to look less alive than that of the other women. Maybe this was her carrier,

"Oh, yeah, okay." I followed her silently without asking any questions. It would do me no good, I knew from past experiences that they never answered.

"How did you sleep last night?" Her small talk provide me no comfort. It was an empty question. She didn't care either way how I did or didn't sleep and that made the playhouse a whole lot of empty questions and fake smiles, not that we had reasons to smile.

"It was terrible. Rhonda wouldn't stop crying, Daphne was snoring, and the little kids downstairs were being loud after hours."

"That's not good, I'm sorry. Maybe tonight you'll sleep better. The children start their medicine today." She said that with a upbeat tone and I had to look at her face to gauge her feelings. Her eyes were hopeful and blue. Dull, but blue, like the color of my bedspread.

Seeing the orbs of swirling grays and sea blues, I remembered the elderly woman from earlier. The black beady eyes still lingered in my mind in picture perfect clarity. I had never seen eyes like that. They had seemed so empty and hollow. It was as if she was a shell, a hollow body with something inside speaking. It made no sense to me.

"Here you go." I hadn't noticed our entrance to the medicine room. The woman handed a cup with two pills in it to me. I popped them in my mouth and took a swig of the water bottle she'd handed me. With another fake smile, she sent me on my way.

Later that evening, as I lay in bed staring up at the fake night sky above me, I couldn't help but feel like there was something I was missing, something I had forgotten to do. With the feeling lodged in my heart, I pulled the blanket up to my chin and let sleep pull me out of the playhouse.