Joshua watched his mother drive away from the window of his room. He shared with three other children. Chuck and Edna seemed alright, but he felt a certain…well…wrongness about the place. He was blissfully unaware of his mother’s fear of him, but he still found it strange his mother was broke again when just the day before she was saying how stable they were. He was brought out of his thoughts by Edna’s dinner call.
Joshua got his first taste of what the wrongness was about a few days later. He was feeling ill and wondering if it was blood day yet so he wasn’t able to do his chores. He tried hard, but he got dizzy half way through and had to lay down. At supper he wasn’t able to finish because everything that wasn’t dark red and at least semi liquid made him nauseous. He wolfed down the cranberry sauce, guzzled the fruit punch, but nothing made it better. He took a few bites of the turkey, but pushed it away after it nearly came back up. Edna glared at him and tried to make him eat it, but he wouldn’t. She ripped him from his chair, and dragged him outside. The children ignored it and went on smiling while eating. She said that he was a bad boy for not doing his chores and not eating what she had tried so hard to make. She told him she had to punish him. She told him because it was his first offence, she would go easy on him. She shoved a hose into his mouth and turned it on full blast. Joshua felt the horrible sensation of water coming out of his nose before she turned it off.
The next day was worse. Joshua could barely walk without holding onto a wall and he had double vision. All sounds were like he was hearing them through a pillow and it felt vaguely like someone was sitting on his chest. Even the fruit punch at dinner made him sick, so he pushed the plate away again. And, once again, he was ripped from his chair and brought outside. This time, however, he wasn’t brought to a hose. He was brought to the run down barn and thrown down through a trapdoor. The cellar was pitch black, but Joshua could see nearly perfectly. On the walls there were chains where he knew, just knew, children had been attached to. He wanted to move, maybe to try and find a way out, but he was so tired. So he lay his head on the hard dirt floor and slept.
He couldn’t breathe. There was pressure, like somebody was sitting on his chest. He was hyper sensitive. He could feel each particle of dirt on the floor beneath him. He could zoom into actually see each particle of dirt. He could hear people snoring lightly from inside the house. And the smells. He immediately picked out the first one. Blood. Long dried and wiped up, but he could still smell it there. He could smell each individual child that had been here and what they had had for breakfast that morning. So, naturally when the rat came scurrying along it gave him a massive headache. Then, through one of his racking breaths, he heard it. The glorious sound of a heart pushing blood through tiny veins. Without thinking his arm flew out at the rat, catching it. He ripped a chunk out of the rat and watched transfixed as the blood poured out onto his hands. He sat up and drank. He drank until there was nothing left and he felt much better. He licked the blood off his fingers and lips and smiled.
The rats were worse than the blood his mother gave him in many ways. He didn’t like killing them, but it seemed he couldn’t help it when he got into the breathless stage. They only lasted him 4 days instead of 7. But they were also better in a few. People didn’t look at him strangely when he answered things they said anymore. The blood was also warmer and had a fresher taste. Though, the blood his mom got him tasted a lot better. Unless Joshua found a mouse or rat around the house, he had to go into the cellar again. Chuck beat him a few times for his eyes. Joshua didn’t know what the problem with his eyes were, but apparently it was one of the Bad Things he wasn’t supposed to do.
The children didn’t like him too much. The oldest boy took him into what he called the ‘playroom’, which was really more like a black market doctor’s office. In the middle was what looked like an oversized ironing board with straps. The boy would strap Joshua down in it and said he was going to play doctor. Then he would stab him with these sharp things he called needles.
Thankfully, Joshua only had to stay there for a year. Joshua was locked in what Chuck called ‘the cage’ which was really a hole underground with bars at the top and a wood plank above it. Joshua didn’t even get an explanation of what he did wrong. Chuck just shoved him into the cage, took out his gun and said, “You keep your mouth shut no matter what or I’ll kill you.” with a deadly seriousness that scared even Joshua. He heard the cars and the people saying things like ‘Your under arrest’ and talking about lawyers and yelling the names of all the kids but him. He heard the others protesting. Nobody ever said his name.
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