Bad feelings are one part of what sucks about this world. Good feelings are the other. Because the good stuff is what can get taken from you, the rug that gets pulled out from under you. A warming feeling that, once it's gone, leaves you out in the...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
└───────────────────┘
2 4 D A Y S A F T E R
My knife drags down the stone wall as I chip away at its grey paint, creating yet another line—a tally mark—of sorts. The conventional method of counting being something I used to do to the walls in my own cell, before all of this.
Our extended occupancy of this small room happened in the blink of an eye, and with very little forewarning.
First, I saw the panic in the eyes of news reporters as they tried to explain what was going on. Then—before getting any answers—the guard shoved us in storage room, locking us in until the foreseeable future.
All of the rest was just a series of distant sounds of chaos echoing from the tombs.
"Why do you keep scratching the damn wall?" Another inmate, Rosa, asks me from across the room.
She's a bit older than me. Her age not quite dictating her sense of maturity about the situation, as she's set easily set off by anything and everything. That being the only quality about her that I can have fun with.
She stares at me with furrowed eyebrows. "I can't stand that sound."
"Just counting the number of stab wounds you'll have when we're out of here." I roll my eyes and quietly mumble under my breath.
To my surprise, my words echo a bit louder than I intended.
Rosa's loud voice quickly intensifies as she tilts her head to the side. "What'd you just say you lit—"
"Guys, calm down." Gianna cuts in. "No one is getting stabbed. We just have to be patient and wait for the military to come."
Gianna's the oldest of us all. She's the barricade that keeps me and Rosa from constantly going at it.
"What makes you think there's still a military?" I start. "It's been over three weeks, and we still haven't heard a thing." My eyes squint towards her.
"I don't know." She mumbles, a certain gravity bringing down her expression, before she quickly tightens it up again. "But, what I do know is that we've got enough food to last just the three of us a couple of years."
"And that's a long time to be dealing with this nonsense between the two of you."
