Shatter

/=!\/e

Chapter Five

Jaison didn’t give up.  All night he rummaged around the cell looking for something that would help with his escape.  Basically I spent my whole night wide awake, in a cage, with an ass that didn’t know when to give up.  In all that time I learned three things about Jaison:

His name was Jaison.

He got angry fast.

He was determined.

None of those three things made a whole night of banging metal and his frustrated grunts worthwhile.  The list of things I didn’t know about Jaison had so much more meaning.

Was he one of the gifted or just another test?

If he was gifted, what was his gift?

How did he get here?

Why was he put in my cell?

Why did he always seem so angry?

These were the questions that kept me awake while Jaison slept, passed out from exhaustion.  No one yelled at him to stop his feeble attempts at escape last night.  Not me, not the guards, not the other fourteen gifted people.  We all seemed to have this unspoken agreement not to disrupt Jaison, not to break his hope and we all kept to our secret agreement.

I laid on the bed watching as his stomach rose and fell with every breath he took.  I could never remember sharing a room with someone.  Hell, I couldn’t remember spending more than an hour or so with one person.

Jaison’s hand twitched.  He mumbled incoherent phrases in his sleep.  In the corner of the room, rain dripped into a bucket.  I listened as the thump of water hitting the empty bucket turned into a plunk of a single water droplet hitting the surface of even more water.  I sighed deeply and closed my eyes, trying to catch up on my sleep but my brain was buzzing.

Jaison was just a few feet away.  What happened if he woke up and touched me?  The answer was obvious, he would shatter, completely disappear, cease to exist.  The unknown was what kept me awake.

I kept wondering what his first punishment would be.  Probably something physical, unless of course he was like me and the boss preferred the emotional tests.  It all came down to what kind of person Jaison was and what his gift was.

Next, I thought about how he would react when he discovers my gift, or my name at least.  He didn’t seem the least bit interested in me, his only goal was escape.  I suppose it was reasonable for him to want to escape, but eventually, he would give up or need me for something.

            Jaison’s sleeping form drew in a quick breath and a moment later, his eyes were wide and darting around the room.  The steady tick from the bucket was the only sound.  Then there was a low groan from Jaison.  He covered his face with his hands like he expected the whole thing to be no more than a dream.

            “Are you awake?”  He asked, his voice gruff from the sleep.

            “Yes,” I answered.

            A silence fell between us after that.  The water in the bucket continued to ‘plunk’ as another drop collided with the surface.

            “What do they do to you people in here?”  Jaison asked.

            “You’ll see soon enough,” I answered vaguely.

            Another silence.  Twelve ‘plunks’ of the water passed.

            “How long have you been in here?”

            “I’m not sure.  Time has sort of lost its meaning.”

            Seventeen ‘plunks’.

            “How old were you when you came in?”

            “Five.”

            Twenty-one ‘plunks’.  My eyes were growing heavy, but Jaison was still awake and I didn’t want him to touch me.

            “I’m never getting out of here, am I?”

            I let four ‘plunks’ pass before I answered him, “No.”

            Forty-nine ‘plunks’ later and Jaison got up and moved to the gate.  His eyes were locked on the hallway.  He set his head back against the wall with his feet stretched out in front of him.  The beating of water against water picked up and every other noise seemed to fade away.  My eyelids were growing heavier and heavier by the moment.

            “Two?”  Jaison asked.

            “Hmm?” I hummed.

            “What’s your gift?”

            The air around me grew cold.  Jaison’s head was turned in my direction but still tilted back against the wall.

            What would he think?  Would he look at the tallies on the wall and see the people I killed or would he pity me?  Either way, I didn’t think I could handle it.

            “I hope you’ll never know,” I answered after fifty-one ‘plunks’.

            “Is it really that bad?”  He asked.

            My eyes involuntarily drifted to the tally marks and then back to Jaison.  Would he be just another scape against my wall?  Another innocent victim that would fall prey to me?

            “Horrifying,” I answered.  With that my exhaustion took over and my eyes closed.  Eventually, the plunking drifted away from my ears as I drifted to sleep.

___________

Comment & vote!