Dogtag

Escape

(Alex P.O.V)

It's still dark. My eyes struggle to open. It's too early. I fall back into a restless sleep, plagued by dreams of clown faces dripping with blood.

I'm awake again. It's later now. There's a pale grey light coming through the small window. I sit up and look over at Charlie. She's still asleep. I'll leave her resting as long as she can because if she is as weak as she says, she'll need all the energy she can get. A quick examination of my arms and legs show the bruises from before have darkened to a mauve colour and my wrists and ankles are still red raw and blistered as ever.

I look around at the other children and consider waking them and telling them in advance of our plan. But it has to be like Charlie says- one man for himself.

Besides, learning their names or anything about them won't exactly making possibly escaping without them easy. My father used to tell me it was best to stay detached from things- that way my feelings for them couldn't hurt me.

Thanks to my parents, I never really got much of a chance to get attached to anyone even if I wanted to. Moving from Moscow to New York to London and various places in between meant that I'd not exactly got a whole bunch of friends. I knew their work was important but I had no idea what exactly it was they did. 

One of my earliest memories is attending a small rural primary school in Paris after a sudden upheaval from California. It was my first day in second grade and my parents kept saying "she's safe here", although I didn't understand. Anyway, after school, I walked out to meet them and a balaclava-clad man holding a gun blocked my pathway and went to grab me. 

My dad ran from the car, barrelled into him and tackled him to the ground. I ran around them to the car, which my mother was just getting out of- designer sunglasses and salon-styled blonde hair blowing in the wind- and she bundled me inside.

One inside, she put her manicured hands with sleek red nails over my eyes, and told me to cover my ears. Despite this, I still heard the muffled sound of a gunshot. The door opened, my dad got in, I was allowed to see again and we drove off. The next day, we'd bought an apartment in Vienna.

My thoughts of my parents and their uncomfortable stiffness whenever I mentioned their work to them was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps and voices outside the door. I reached over as far as I could to Charlie's bed and shook her until she sat up. She heard the door and nodded. We both stared ahead.

The door opened and two men walked in. Both in those hideous clown masks which looked even more unnerving in the daylight. The first pushed a trolley in full of plates with a dry slab of burnt toast with a pile of dark red beans poured over and the second followed with a bunch of keys. Once inside, the second turned around to lock the door.

Some of the other children began to stir and wake.

I was shaking at the thought of what I was about to attempt- was it the best way? Or was I about to get myself killed or worse?

Whilst one man waited by the door, the other pushed the trolley around and handed out plates and forks. 

It was too late to change my mind now- he was only two beds away. I had to try otherwise I would never go home. 

One bed away.

I heard Charlie's shaky breath- as I was infront of her, she'd just have to react to whatever happened with the first guy.

This was it.

He walked over and dropped a plate onto my bed. As he leant down to put the fork next to it, I took a deep breath and grabbed it before he'd stood up again. I jammed it deep into his neck and pushed as hard as I could. Tears began to fall down my cheek- there was blood spurting everywhere now, all over my nightie and face.