Inception

Chapter 10

We must’ve arrived shortly after my argument with Mason because I woke to Blythe dragging me out onto the platform. I felt Karissa’s heels scraping the gravel of the ground, small pebbles itching my calves. She talked to me, breathing heavily as she hurried along. “You-are probably-the most- difficult- participant,” she said, trying to look as mature as possible.

I stopped in my tracks and yanked her hand off me. “You don’t need to babysit me,” I say back. She couldn’t take anything away from me, I wasn’t me anymore. “You might as well kill me now!” I didn’t care anymore. There was only Hell.

“Elizabeth!” Blythe gasps, her mouth creating the perfect “o”. “We are saving you not trying to kill you off.” She surprisingly kept calm as I, well, I lost it. As she kept talking, I was getting more fired up.

“Not trying to kill us off? Like Hell! This is for entertainment for sick people!” I shouted back, my hair flying into my eyes. “You are sacrificing us.” Blythe said nothing, only shaking her head in disapproval. “People are dying because of this. You think you’re saving us but you’re not.”

“You don’t understand, Elizabeth,” Blythe says. Every time I heard the name, I wanted to beat myself. It wasn’t right; nothing was right. Me running away wasn’t right, me changing my name wasn’t right, the Trials weren’t right. “People do not die in the Trials. Their bodies just cannot handle the tests and it’s not about killing each other it’s about survival.” And I thought I knew what the Trials were. Back to square one now.

“I don’t understand,” I say, my mind becoming a maze of twists and turns and spinning ideas. Blythe only grazed my shoulder and lowered her voice, almost inaudible. “There’s no time to explain.” I wanted to contradict, to find out the truth about the Trials. But Blythe stopped clean in her tracks.

I looked slightly over her shoulder to see Karissa, stumbling towards her sister, her red hair tangled, her bright green eyes looking a sad and dreary color. She started chanting some sort of phrase, the words all dragged out. “This is the final Trials. It’s the end.” The phrase sounded from a movie, an apocalyptic, end-of-the-world kind of saying.

“Karissa?” I call for her, coming out from behind Blythe, half-jogging to her while trying to keep my balance on the tall heels. She was unresponsive, continuing to say the phrase. I tried to walk up to her, to help her snap out of it, but before I could, four men were atop her, beating her. I heard myself screaming, crying out for them to stop. I heard the loud crack of a bat, the thud of a foot connecting with her head. The pain of watching hurt so much. I could feel the pain, radiating off her bloody palms. I got so close, I was two feet away. But she was dead when they were finished with her. I turned to Blythe, who breathed heavily, holding back tears. She turned as the men dragged her sister’s—my friend’s body away.

That was the last I saw of Karissa Anderson.

I bit my lip, so hard that the skin started to bleed. I held back the tears, trying to figure out why Karissa was murdered. I wanted to know the truth, to know why my life was so horrible and how everything just went wrong and how everyone around me—well ended up dead.

Blythe could not concentrate on anything, continuing on as if nothing had happened. Her eyes looked a sad blue, a murky, dull, foggy color. I wanted to reach out to her, to tell her that I know how it feels. But I was Elizabeth now: there was no knowing. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t.

As Blythe and I caught up to the others, both of our faces pale, the others stood around, annoyed at our tardiness. “What took you so long?” Trevor asked, clearly impatient as he stood against the car, his forehead glistening with sweat.