Young Writers Society

Rushing from door to door, fear in my belly, passion in my chest, something indescribable slipping up my throat, parting my lips in puffs of fog. Their laughter reaches me as if through glass walls, my heavy breathing reverberating loud in my head. My limbs are clumsy in the dark but my eyes are sharper with adrenaline, my fingertips numb on the cold wood door frames they grip. I can feel them getting closer before I see the flicker of a candle climbing the walls. Feel their vibrations through the floor, the walls, feeling them through my body. I hike up the blankets that run from my shoulders to my ankles and rush for the next room, that thing in my throat unfurling in glee. Uncontrollable I’m screaming and laughing, choking on cold air, rushing for the glass doors in front of me, my blankets abandoned in a heap and the cold seeping under my skin, shivering up my spine raising the hackles at my neck; my fear renewed and rushing through me with the tenfold face of my heart. I’m crashing though the double doors baying at the frozen moon, slamming the doors behind my back holding them with my weight. I watch teeth bared knuckles white against the latch as his face appears at the window, laughing at the animal cornered, the victory inevitable in this stalemate, his smile urging me to admit it, my grin daring him to make a move. He does, resting his forehead against the glass, words catching on the window in a fog.

“Your it.”

The weight to those words. The cold seems to get stronger through sweaters, scarf and the heat of the chase in my veins; I still feel the bite of cold needles on my hands and cheeks, the sting of the wind and cold silence in my ears. Everything seems to be leaving me, the damp chill in the air sapping me of my life. He watches for a moment as my smile fades, my hands unmoving on the door handles, curious to see how far I’ll take the game, just how desperate I am to keep living, for this feeling, this warm feral happiness to last. It’s leaving me and as my fingers slip from the latch so does he, running to join the stampede of wild horses though the house; leaving me, without a candle to continue my life of searching.

*****

Back inside the old bones of the house keep the wind from blowing right through me, but the cold is no less. The shelter of the house keeps me from the wind but slips a shade over my eyes, leaving softer and softer negatives of the moon to dance circles around me. I grope around for my blankets, the wall, a path to follow through the hallway. I hear muffled titters behind me as I walk, around the door frames, inside the walls, but I know I’ll never find them in the dark and the floors still vibrate with the stomp of hooves. Somewhere they’re still running from me. Something catches against my ribs when I breath in, frustration gnaws at me from the inside, I don’t want to play this game anymore, I want a light to hold and the warmth of bodies next to me. The power should have come back on by now. We started this to keep the heat in, our pulses strong, our worry, fear, speculation at bay. The escape is evaporating off me with every moment of this numb darkness. How long have we being hiding and seeking? How much time has passed since the adults left for help, supplies, for news? How long have we been left here? I can no longer feel the beat of my heart in my head, I’m shivering and stumbling through the house, searching. How long since my last meal, since I slept without dreaming? The creak of floorboards snaps my head to the left, in the distorted beam of light through the bedroom window I see a flash of skin, a wisp of red hair, like a flame in the void. I reach for her as she runs back into the shadows shrieking, cackling with laughter. I catch the blue of her sleeve in my frigid grip and she struggles, slipping free of her coat and my hands. Frustration, confusion, fear, sadness pull me under and tears fill my eyes, the next time I catch her arm my grip is solid and my finger nails dig into her forearm. She turns on me gasping in pain and I see I’ve drawn blood. The tears flow freely down my face as the blood down her arm. She’s still laughing, giggling like a child, she watches the red half moons on her skin bleed out. I find her eyes and in them I see that rush of happiness, adrenaline and fear I held so close to me a moment ago. But I’ve caught her and slowly I see it sinking in with the pain, the hunger in our stomachs, the desperation in my hold on her.

“Penny, where are your parents?”

It’s a whisper of the truth between us, a bit of reality we’ve being trying to escape. She looks at me, dazed, shaken, she breaks my gaze and I see the connections being made behind her eyes as she tries to remember a moment before this game.

“We have to stop playing Penny.”

****

We lead each other through the house, where I stumble she pulls us on, she winces and I hold tighter to her hand. Red threads slide down her arm and lace our fingers together and apart and I find I’m comforted by the warmth.

The house is begging to lighten to a grey dawn, a few children waiting to be found, tired of hiding have crawled out to the eerie call of morning doves to chase each other through the halls, wild, giddy, free. They brush passed, no body warm enough to make an impression even as they push, pull, break into us like waves, fingers entwined in each others hair, some reaching, hoping to draw our bodies in. We flee the chaos of the game breaking apart on the upper floor for the dead silence of the ground. We creep through the chain of rooms, creep past the pit of blankets and huddled bodies around the flaming garbage pail that has left a great black stain on the ceiling, ever growing. People crawl in and out of that cloth sea every now and then, drift down from the game, in from the kitchen and back out of it toward the shouts upward like a tide. No one down here looks awake. I search for a hope, passing through the room, and think I’ve found one in the tightly balled fist of Penny’s little brother as he sleeps; we’ve made it this long haven’t we? I wonder if anything else is left of our lives, buried beneath the dune of empty cans spread across the kitchen floor. I remember counting them, stacking them, assuring my mother we had enough. Every can we could muster from our ten families, from every house this side of the train tracks, and here Penelope and I sit among the smeared baked beans, our fellows, our charges to cold to think, to afraid to stop moving, racing around us. Her head is held upright by the wall and will alone, I cry into her lap as I count the dark crosses on the calendar, cry as they stop one day, fade and disappear, as I am unable to, even when Penny’s fingers have stopped raking their methodical path through my hair and I hear her breathing slow into sleep, I’m unable to close my eyes. I know what happened. I know what must be done. I’m afraid.