Steady Breaths

T h e O l d H o u s e

8 months later...

Betty's POV
"What do they do with dead bodies" Veronica asked, in a giggly tone, she sounded insane but she's been that way for a while now. She's the only one out of the 4 of us to actually go loopy, I mean Cheryl, Toni and I are on the verge.
"I assume they just bury them somewhere" Cheryl answered, looking up from her book, which had a red bold title reading The Rights of Heterosexuality. Toni was reading the exact same book, as they held hands. Our room is the only place where there aren't security cameras, so they make do with that.

"Do you recon that's what they did with Archie?" Veronica then asks, her voice all light and airy. Toni and Cheryl both look up form their books and I sit up, staring at her, though her eyes stay glued to the ceiling. Uh oh, that can't be a good sign, she hasn't spoken about Archie in months. Of corse I have pity for her though, I mean Archie was killed the day we arrived here, I mean at least I know Jug is alive. The only way I know is because we are usually the ones to go to the viewing room, just cause they need something for us to do. It's scarring but comforting, as insane as it sounds. Cause neither Kevin nor Jughead have been the one on the other side of the glass.

"V, is everything alright?" I ask as I walk over to her bed, making her sit up. She simply nods and smiles.

"Yeah, just thinking."

"If there's something you want to talk about then I'm all ears" I place my hand over hers, attempting to offer some mean of comfort. But I really didn't. I didn't have any idea on how to comfort her. I mean her boyfriend was murdered, there's not much that I can do about that. There's not much I can do about any of this...I mean we already have one member killed, and I'd be lying if I said I haven't thought about the possibility of Jughead being...dead. It keeps me up at night really.

For a moment Veronica looked up at me. She didn't have a loopy smile on, or wide crazy eyes, in fact she looked kind of like her normal self. Like how she was before...everything.

Everything being the so called 'treatment'. They told us we were here to be fixed; cured of our 'ptsd'. Well it hadn't cured any of us, in fact it's done quite the opposite. I feel more emotionally unstable than how I felt when I was pregnant, and those were some dark times. The treatment as they like to call it goes like this; we wake up east breakfast in the girls dining hall, then we go back to our rooms to read whatever educational book has been appointed to us (I'm currently reading one on bdsm), we then eat lunch in the girls dining hall, then afterwards we go outside for recreational time in which some children play sports, some chose to just lounge around, they're all a bit like Veronica really, all loopy. We then have dinner in the girls dining hall. And then we go to bed at 6:30 pm. We are treated like children, even though majority of the people here, I've learnt, are 15-19. Sometimes we are randomly pulled aside to view a torturing, Ive been too scared to act against the rules so I haven't been tortured thus far. Well excluding the times when room by room a lady comes and talks to us, and then often beats us a little. I've gotten used to it though. I mean it's been a few months, I've lost track of time really, but it's getting hotter, and we were captured in Fall, I imagine that we are nearing summer. I cry myself to sleep most nights, admittedly...as do the others.

None of us have had contact with the outside world, we don't even know where we are. And if we were to escape, we'd get caught and killed like Archie...

"I'm fine" Veronica says, breaking my train of thought. She had a moment of just being herself, it was nice. She had this look in her eye that made her seem a lot less insane than what she was. I fear that I may end up in the same position as her, but for now it's nice.
"Betty...?" Veronica said my name as a question, as though she'd forgotten who I was. Although I know she remembers all of us.