Her

Chapter eleven: Killed (Edited)

Chapter eleven: Killed

"Arrow!" I yell, sitting up in bed and my eyes flash open. Initially, fear shoots through me but the vision that had laid before me only seconds before was now gone, left with the interior of my bedroom in the Breeder's wing. 

I sigh in relief, but then feel a fearful kicking in my stomach. "It's okay," I say calmly as a I smooth my hand over my stomach. "It's okay." The baby must have become restless because of my sudden movements and I try to soothe it again. Soon, the kicking comes less intense and eventually subsides to just a steady beat before going back to nothing at all. I sigh again and lay back down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. A vision of Abigail from the day before flashes through my mind; her eyes full of fear, her erratic movements and how they had taken her away, unconscious after sedating her to have her baby. We hadn't seen Abigail since then.

Abigail didn't seem to feel like she was safe, no she seemed to think that there were people out to get her, people out there wanting to purposely harm her. But I couldn't believe that, I couldn't believe anyone in our city would want to harm anyone. I mean that is not the way our city worked; our city was built on peace, harmony and cooperation. It was built on people working together and people getting along. It wasn't built on people hurting one another. But Abigail seemed to think it was. She had thought that ever since she came back to us after she gave birth to her first baby, which made me think that perhaps what had happened to her while she was in recovery had been even more traumatic then any of us has realised. But I knew even if the doctors and nurses had to have had forced her down, it wasn't because they were trying to hurt her, its because they were trying to help her. No one in our city wanted to see someone get killed because they couldn't do their career. Everyone wanted to see everyone else do well and succeed. We were all there to help each other, to make sure everyone was safe and okay. No one wanted to see anyone get in trouble if they could help them avoid it, everyone wanted to help one another to the best of their ability and if helping someone meant holding them down and making them do something they didn't want to do so they wouldn't get a bullet through their head well... that's just what one had to do. It wasn't that our City Leaders wanted to kill people (I mean the whole death thing did act as deterrent for people within their careers). But it wasn't about punishment; it was simply that if one didn't have a career, they didn't really have a place in our society.

Our society thrived on the career system; everybody had a career and everybody contributed to society in some way; everybody had a place and everybody knew where that place was. Each career helped the other like an intersected web that was all connected; one couldn't function without the other and vice versa. We all needed every career in order to function as a society and so if you didn't have a career or couldn't work in the career you had been set there really was no place for you. So why didn't the City leaders choose another career for you if you weren't happy with the one you were originally assigned? I mean to some that would seem like the logical thing to do. But in reality it wasn't, because in reality if one person wanted to change careers then everyone would want to and then there would be certain careers that no one chose that still had to be done and other careers that became too competitive because too many people wanted to do it. The career system also helped to maintain peace and harmony among our citizens so there was no reason to compete and there was no jealousy or bad blood. Instead, there was enough for everyone and everybody flourished equally.

But I still felt sorry for Abigail, even more so when she came out of recovery, having been forced to be inseminated. I think anyone who had gone through something like would have snapped. Maybe just some more worse then others and Abigail was the worst; worse then I had ever seen and when she had grabbed onto me yesterday, I felt something. I felt like she was begging me to protect her and I wanted to protect her like a bird taking its infant under its wing. I felt like she needed someone and although I didn't know if I was the right person for that job. I felt like she had chose me without giving me any choice and I wanted to look after her and after my talk with the girls lately, it seemed I was the one who was assigned to do so. "Leah!" a voice yells which breaks me out of my thoughts. I perk my head up at the sound of my name. "Leah!" I hear my name coming down the hallway, outside my room and I sit up on my bed instantly to be met with Eva coming through my bedroom door.

Eva looks like she has been running; she is out of breath and gasping for air. But most of all she looks scared, an emotion I had never seen on her before. Her face was all red and she was shaking, looking utterly and completely petrified. "What's going on?" I ask her at once.

"It's-it's Abigail-" I instantly get up from my bed. "She's-she's –"

"She's what?" I ask frantically.

"Just come on!" Eva grabs me by the hand and pulls me out of my bedroom into the narrow hallway.

Eva leads me up to Abigail's room and before we even get there I can hear the screaming. But as soon as Eva and I reach our destination, we run through Abigail's bedroom door and see the others standing around the room. Dianne was the closest to me and I instantly ask her; "What's going on?" But Dianne didn't answer me; instead her eyes are glued on the sight in front of her. My eyes follow her gaze and immediately, I suck in a breath at the sight. 

Abigail's room is completely trashed with things flung around the room everywhere; things were broken, shattered across the ground, others had been ripped up or tipped over to lie on the ground; everything was complete and utter chaos and it looked like a bomb had just gone off. But there, amongst the rubble was Abigail, sitting in the corner of her room with her knees to her chest, crying and swaying back and forth like someone sitting on a rocking chair. Her skin was deathly pale and in-between her cries she was whispering things to herself, although I couldn't make out what she was whispering about. Abigail sways back and forth like a rocking horse in a child's nursery and I slowly make my way over her, being cautious enough not to startle her. I keep my eyes on Abigail who did not look up from her foetal position. She has broken her bedroom window and the wind from outside whipped around her clothes and her hair in all directions.

"Abigail?" I start gently and Abigail instantly snaps her head up to look at me and I feel myself internally jump at the sight of her; eyes so dark like the night sky, tears streaming down her face like the rain and so much pain on her face, it made me want to scream. But Abigail doesn't answer me, instead she stares directly at me with her eyes dark and almost alien-like. I turn to the others. "What happened?" I ask them. But my eyes graze over them to see that each of them have blank looks on their faces, so it is Eva who answers me.

"I don't know," she answers with a shrug. "She hasn't spoken at all. When we came to her room we found her like this –"

"Leah?" my eyes instantly flick back to Abigail at the sound of her voice.

"Abigail," I say again. "What happened?" But Abigail looks down at her legs again. But I think I know what happened. "How did your labour go?" I ask gently and her head instantly snaps up to look at me again.

"They took my baby," she says. "Again."

I look back at the other girls who are all still looking at me blankly before I look back at Abigail. "Abigail," I whisper to her as I kneel down in front of her. "The girls and I want to help you with that.. with how you're feeling about the babies."

But Abigail's eyes remain on her legs. "You can't help me," she says. "No one can help me."

"Oh but I think we can. I think we can Abigail because we are all going through this together, so we know what -"

"They killed my baby," Abigail interrupted me and I looked at her strangely.

What?