Like To Be You ✓

forty seven

**Trigger warning: Blood and exploitation

o-o-o

Water. 

I want water. 

My mouth and throat burn with dryness. My tongue feels heavy, like it's been covered in sandpaper, and each time I lick the inside of my cheek to generate saliva, it feels like dehydrated flopping jelly. 

"Neil." A distant voice says. If my head weren't filled with cotton, I would've been able to put my finger on the person. "Neil, you have to wake up."

I try to groan in response. My throat shuts down. 

"Neil— no, don't move! You'll hurt yourself." 

The words register a few moments too late. A sharp sting goes up my arm, and it turns into burning, scorching pulses. 

"D— Don't move! At all!" Tyler says. 

Tyler. 

"Yeah, yeah, it's me." His voice comes again. Have I been trying to speak? I can't even feel my mouth moving. 

"Spread your hands up." He says. "Lift them just a bit for the blood to stop." 

Blood? 

"Don't freak out, man." Another voice comes. The familiarity freaks me out even more. 

"Zayne?" I feel the words now when I say them, and my hearing clears. 

"Yeah, yeah, it's me, man. They got me. They got me. I don't even know what's happening." 

"Stop freaking out! You're freaking him out even more!" Tyler's agitated voice filters through my ears. 

"How are you so calm?!" Zayne squeaks. 

I open my eyes, then close them again. It's like a hundred pokers are going in and out of my sockets, twisting and turning my eye balls. 

"Why does it hurt so much?" I want to say, but it comes out something like "Why duh ih urt so muh?" 

"There's a glass shard under your eye." Zayne says. "Don't— Don't open your right eye." 

I barely have any control over my body. When I try opening my eyes again, it hurts like nothing ever has, but I manage to keep them open. 

Then I really begin freaking out. 

Daylight flows in strips through the lone window barricaded by iron bars, dully illuminating the two battered boys in front of me. They're each tied to a chair seemingly made of steel, one hand fastened to the arm, the other lifted and tied to a bar on the backrest. The wire that binds them— I've seen it before. 

It's the same one that cut through my father's throat. 

"Just don't move." Tyler repeats, his eyes hooded. Something brown and sickly is sprayed all over his face. A crimson drop of it hangs from his mouth. "It's cut into your wrist. Stay still." 

I look down to get a glimpse of my own position, when—

"No!" They both shout. My head whips back up, my heart beating a thousand miles a minute. 

"It's around your neck, too." Zayne whispers, his eyes red and terrified. I can see the beginning of a bruise on his nose, which now I realise, is slightly crooked and has dried blood caked under. 

I still, willing my heart to slow down. 

"How—" I clear my throat, which is futile because it uselessly rumbles, dry as bone. "How did we get here?"