LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter

      8

      DARKNESS NEVER ENDS, even in the daylight. This is something I learned when I was a child, locked away in a dark, dank room, with spiders and centipedes for companions, and the occasional rustle of a mouse, or a rat, or a snake that slipped in through the grate after its prey. I had a tattered blue blanket I assume belonged to some other child kept in the hole, which I used alternately as a pillow and a cover. There was a chipped sippy cup I could use to catch rainwater when it dripped through the ceiling. The floor was dirt, and there was a bucket in the corner. Once a day, there would be footsteps, closer and closer until they stopped. The small window in the steel door would open, and something edible would be shoved through. Bread. Cheese. Once in a glorious while, an apple. And on the special days, the days I was briefly, brutally visited, after—if I’d been good—I was given an orange.

      I hate oranges.

      I hate the dark.

      And spiders and rats and snakes and mice and everything that reminds me of those days.

      Everything but him.

      I’ve often wondered how many children came before me. I don’t want to know how many came after. He told me, when we left, I couldn’t ever look back. Not to the time before, nor to my time there. Looking back would make me unhappy, and it was best to never, ever think about those dark days again. We would make a new life. A life looking forward. A life free from shadows, from pain and humiliation and sharp things in the night.

      I did my best.

      I always did my best.

      Even before, on the special days, when they came for me, blindfolded me, walked me one hundred and fifteen steps to the cold place. They told me I was special. That I was beautiful. Perfect. And when they were inside me, tearing me open, squeezing the breath out of me with their weight hard on my flat chest, they said unspeakable words, words I shudder to remember. Words children shouldn’t know. Instructions children shouldn’t get.

      Don’t look back. Don’t look back.

      Every step I take, deeper into the forest, the bad words come to me. I stop, stand against a tree, take a deep breath. Conjure his face, his kind, loving face. But now the vision is marred, his skin pale and waxy, his tongue sticking out of his mouth, the emptiness of his bulging eyes, the blood on his body. I will never see him smile again, never hear him read to me, or do flash cards at dinner, or watch fireflies as they gather in the twilight.

      Or chase away the nightmares.

      The truth can’t help me now. I crumple to the ground, sobbing so hard my body shakes. The forest screams at me, cicadas and birds and crickets and bats in an alarming cacophony; the trees shriek and stamp their feet, waving their arms, trying to catch the wind. Leaves rain down on me, dead and yellow, and I hear them coming.

      Oh, God, they’re coming. And there’s nowhere left for me to hide.