Window Cracks

▶️The Execution◀️

"Before you go," Hannah quietly says as I enter the room that haunts me with last night's memories.

I look at her.

We are alone in the room, and she is sitting where I was, last night. Slowly getting up, her eyes fixated on mine, I am rendered to be a vegetable in this very moment. Her advancing steps towards my body are robbing me of my breath. She takes my hand that was meant to reach for brewing tea in a teapot, and she slowly brings us closer.

I am not breathing. I am not breathing.

She squeezes the hand.

My thoughts drift back to when she did the same thing in the wood, the day before my birthday.

But tomorrow is not my birthday. I could even be dead tomorrow.

My realisation of this makes me let out a whole bout of air in overwhelmed panic. I cannot die as long as she is in this community.

I understand what she is doing to me.

Now, she brings her face a centimetre away from mine, orbs interlocked.

I am now frozen.

Am I still alive?

She breaks her gaze, flutters her eyelashes and looks down as she takes a deliberate, shallow breath, just so I hear it. I hear my blood pounding against my ears, too. She starts to whisper.

"You were right about something, so if you decide not to die and you come back I will tell you what it is that you were right about."

She edges her face towards my left cheek this time. She kisses it.

I feel both of my cheeks have been baptised now.

She lets go and returns to her place as if nothing ever happened. I, on the other hand, could collapse, but I revive my immobilised hand that was originally meant to grab a teapot, and shuffle towards a wall to rest it there and depend on it for support as I slightly lean on my side to recuperate.

My mother strides into the room, looking confused.

"There was supposed to be a authority meeting for Den's search by now. That is the usual process after a hitch in the daily routine. There has been silence since I started checking earlier on. I need to check now, how the situation is looking, it is safer for me still, to go."

"This will delay us even more," Hannah says.

"It is necessary."

Adrianna strides about the room, checking through wide and small crevices of the upright wooden boards bordering us from the outside to see if she can leave. After a lengthy inspection in silence, silence I did not even notice(my eyes were on Hannah the whole time), she charges for the door and disappears.

I am forced to recover sooner, and I grab the teapot and one of the nearby cups, and I start filling it with steaming tea.

"Please pour me one, too."

In silence, I slowly take another cup, and tea starts to filter through the spout. I concentrate hard on the steam leaving the cup.

This is foreign. I have never been in a closed or private place with Hannah. I am probably overthinking this. I involuntarily take a glance at the corner of the bed that is in sight from where I stand. White bed sheets crumpled still. I look away quickly, back to the cup. Tea is filled to he brim, close to spilling. My hand is feeling weak.

I give her the first cup I filled.

She takes it in gratitude and goes into the room I was eyeing a minute ago. I hear ruffling of sheets. She must be making the bed.