Escaping the Dead ~ H.S

Chapter Nine

A/N: Heyyyy :p So, I have some good news and some bad news about this chapter.

Good news is, we finally have a flashback-free chapter for Laura & Harry's part of the story, so this is all set in the present day :) Bad news is, though...I had really bad Writer's Block for a lot of this chapter as well so I may or may not think that it sucks :p There's also a lot of time skipping (***) so yeah just warning you on that too :p

Also, I suppose some neutral news is that this chapter is nearly 5000 words long :p

CHAPTER NINE: EASTON

Laura

The Serpents' Den had a lobby on the ground floor that Tanner and the rest of the Ouroborons used for all their fun and games. Down there, they'd drink, they'd laugh, they'd make all these sick jokes, and most of all, they'd play a lot of pool.

The pool table was pretty much the only thing anyone here could think of as entertainment. The only people who didn't want to play pool were the sick fucks who preferred to spend all their time on Tanner's brothel floors taunting all the female prisoners.

The brothel floors were honestly one of the most disgusting setups I'd ever seen. There were two floors in the Serpents' Den dedicated to imprisoning women from all sorts of camps and communities that had been forced into one of Tanner's 'trade deals'. If Tanner was unsatisfied with the trade, or if the people had failed to hand over their rations on time, Tanner would do all sorts of horrible things to those people as punishment. And that sometimes included stealing random single women from the community and forcing them to be trapped on the brothel floors - never seeing an open door ever again except when being fed, or when some of Tanner's most horrible men would go up there to rape them. I probably would've been locked up there too if I wasn't married.

It always hurts me to think of those poor women being forced to service some of the most horrible people in the entire world - people who were barely even human beings due to how barbaric they were. Harry feels the same way - and there's nothing the two of us would want more than to free those women someday, but...binded by Tanner's rules, we were forbidden to interfere, or else.

Harry & I always had to spend time down on the ground floor every day - but not out of our own free will. If it was up to us, we would stay up in our room all day and refuse to ever come out - but of course, Tanner doesn't allow us to do that. He forces us to spend time amongst all the other Ouroborons because he knows how much we hate all his people. He makes us spend time around people we hate the most just because it amuses him to see how much we don't even want to be around them, let alone associate with them.

So, here we were - wedged in a corner and watching absent-mindedly as a bunch of guys gathered around the pool table laughing and cheering each other on as they all took turns shooting all the billiard balls into the holes.

"Martin, you suck fucking ass at playing pool!" Neil jeered - pointing his pool cue mockingly at the guy opposite him, "I bet that even a damn walker could do better than you!"

"Shut the fuck up, Neil," Martin grumbled, "we're only supposed to be having a bit of fun."

"Hey Harry!" Neil turned to him, "Why don't you come over and swap out this useless prick here?" He prodded Martin in the stomach with his cue - making him exclaim in pain and surprise.

"No thanks," Harry replied through gritted teeth - refusing to meet Neil's eyes as he helped me snap a loose thread off my T-shirt.

"Come on, mate, give it a go!" Neil was starting to sound like he was ordering him, "Laura can last a few minutes without you!" He took an extra pool cue and held it out to Harry with a smirk, "you don't want me to tell Tanner that you've been an anti-social fuckface again, do you?"