Broadwire

13: Waking Up: Trenton

I keep walking in the controlled environment, and shivering every time I walked by the pit of nightmares. Literal nightmares. E wasn't in, so we really had nothing to do, not even beg for release. Which is what some had done. I'd only seen begging sometimes, and only from the ones who had been here the least, never the old ones who didn't care anymore. I heard the roaring of the doors in the top opening. Emeril was returning. It swooped in from the roof and landed in the chair above the pit, and the wings folding back into the mangled body. I had never truly looked at the wretchedness of its body. The ribs were exposed, flesh hanging off of them. The face was long and distorted, unlike anything describable.

I had been thinking about what they thought happened to me in the real world. I didn't know whether or not my body had died, or was it still alive? I knew it was somewhere in the human world. I had to figure it out, because I had an idea where it could be.

"Emeril, I have a request for you," I said, a plan brewing up in my mind.

"What would that be, Trenton?" It said, with a smile growing on the face of demise and hope.

"I need you to somehow make Brie play with the board, I need to talk to her. Can you persuade her to?" I asked, not knowing if E could even do that.

"Why do you want to talk to her?" E said, with wonder, knowing it would be a funny thing to watch.

"I need to know where my body is, or at least assure where I think it is. I'll just have to somehow get her to talk to me. She thinks I killed them, the ones you killed," I said, sadness seeping into my tone of voice. Thinking of what I dragged my now dead friends into because I bought an antique board.

"Yes, I can make her think she wants to play with. Why do you want to know where your body is? I can let you go back to your body, for a short amount of time. And a price," E said, a smile growing too large for the face. It went above his eyes, as if I were in a Dr. Suess book.

"What's the price?" I asked, worried because of the smile and how I knew prices worked in movies.

"Your friends, the ones I killed, get time added to their time here," I thought about what that meant.

"They're not here for an eternity?" I asked, confused because that's what the person who walked by told me.

"Well, they might as well be. At some point, after maybe twenty or thirty thousand years, you'll go on to where people go after death. Wherever that is, I don't know. Normally, they'll go with you, but if you take my deal. I'll keep them here longer after you're gone. What do you say?" It said with a almost charming voice. Though coming from that mouth, it was unsettling.

"I want to talk to Brie first, then, maybe," I felt bad for them, but what would a few more years do to them. I needed to know where my body was. I needed to know something that only one person knew.

"Sure. I'll be back, but you'll be talking to her by that time," the laughing started as E flew away. I waited and waited. I was sitting in front of the chair, silence was blearing through the room. Only sounds of soft footsteps hitting the cold stone floor. Then, without warning, I was back in the room with the glass top. Brie was standing there, placing her hands on the planchet.

"Who's here?" she asked, looking interested to play this hellish game.

"Trenton," I said, and I waited for the planchet to stop moving to see her reaction.

"What the- you killed them!" she screamed at me. I didn't know whether or not to defend myself or not, but I just wanted to know where my body was. Before I could respond, she started talking again.

"You're alive though?" she asked, which proved one of my points. My body was alive, just soulless. I was the soul of the body.

"That is not me, that's my body," I said, and thought of how to ask my main question.