Part one
I woke up by the wet grass soaking my backside. I tried to sit up but my whole body was paralyzed. Slowly I managed to move my toes and then my feet and legs. I got to a sitting position and opened my eyes once my head stopped spinning. There were trees all around. I got myself up on my feet and started walking. Having no idea where I was or how I got here.
A light was showing somewhere in the woods. Not knowing where else to go, I followed it. A thin black tree with shining red leaves was the source. Something about it dragged me closer and I couldn’t help but touch the leaves. They were hard and cold, like glass. On the other side stood a dark shadow. I noticed it as it was leaving the comfort of the trees. I turned and ran. There was no trail to follow so I just ran through the trees. The thing behind me sounded heavy as it ran on all four. It leaped and I crawled into a ball as its claws scraped my back. I fell forward and rolled, falling into a hole. The creature stopped and walked past the hole a few times before running back towards the tree. I blacked out.
I awoke to being dragged out of the hole by my arms. I screamed and flayed my arms to get free. A whisper came from the darkness
“Shut up. They will hear you.” They got me out of the hole and helped me to my feet. A tall guy, with long brown hair in a ponytail.
“Can you walk?” He asked. I nodded. We started walking, he held his hand around my wrist, taking me through the trees carefully. I could hear animals moving around in the woods, but we didn’t see anyone. We got to a clearing, where an old watchtower was standing. He let go of me and walked to it, ringing a bell that was sitting at the bottom of the tower. Someone looked out of the tower and the guy waved. A rope ladder was thrown down, and we climbed up. At the top of the tower there were three other people, a scared looking boy, a boy with a hard face and a girl that smiled at us. I collapsed the moment I took my foot off the ladder.
When I awoke the sun was high in the sky. It was only the girl there. She was brewing something that smelled like rotten eggs and blood. I almost threw up.
“What is that?” I asked in a raspy voice. She looked over at me.
“Oh you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“Not too well. My body is aching.” She came over and sat down beside me.
“You got attacked yesterday right?” I nodded to her. “Where?”
“In my back.”
“Take off your shirt, I need to see.” I did what she asked of me. She trailed her fingers over the wounds, I flinched.
“There are eight of them.” She said, taking out a bit of cloth and dipped it into the brew. She placed the fabric on my back, it burned. I let out a scream.
“This is what we use for cleaning wounds we get from the creatures here. I’m Natalie, what’s your name?”
“J-Jessica.” I said.
“It’s going to be okay Jessica. This will help it heal faster.” She dipped the cloth and continued. “This is blood from one of the creatures, it’s the only thing that heals these wounds.” I recoiled and tried moving away but she grabbed me. “Jessica, it’s okay. I know it feels disgusting in the beginning, but I need to do this before it gets infected.” I swallowed and let her continue.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“What is the last thing you remember before you got here?” Natalie said.
“I went to bed on Friday and then I awoke in the woods.”
“Aha, same for me, for all of us actually.” She put the cloth in a bucket. “I have been here for about six months, I think. Aiden is pretty new to this too, he has only been here for two weeks. Isaiah is the youngest of us, he’s only 12. He has been here for about a year. And Tyler, the guy who saved you yesterday, he has been here the longest. Almost three years.”
We heard something outside and Natalie went to look. She released the rope ladder and the boys climbed up. They had some food with them and some weird fabric. Tyler looked over at me.
“Ah, good you’re awake.” Isaiah went up to Natalie and hugged her. Aiden gave me a node and I nodded back. Tyler turned to Natalie.
“Have you told her about this place?”
“Not much. Thought it was better that you told her.”
The others went down, leaving Tyler and me alone in the tower. He threw the fabric at me.
“Put this on.”It almost smelled as bad as the mixture.
Tyler took out a package of cigarettes and put one in his mouth.
“Do you smoke?” He said, pointing the package at me. I took one.
“Sometimes.” I said.
“How do you get all these things in the woods?”
“From the people who own this place. This is a game to them. They leave things in the woods for us to find, anything to keep the game going.” I looked at him in confusion.
“Game? We’re stuck in the woods, we just need to find our way back to civilization.” He took a drag of his cigarette.
“I wish it was that simple. Everyone got here the same way. Went to sleep and then woke up in the woods. They were sold, including you. By their parents.” His eyes pierced mine. My heart started beating faster..
“My parents wouldn’t do that! They love me! Why would anyone sell their kids?” I said, feeling my eyes sting. Tyler flicked his cigarette out the window.
“Some do it for money. They get an immediate payout depending on the age of the kid. Then they get more money for each day they survive. Others do it because they are sick of their kid or even worse, because they are part of this twisted game.” Tears filled my face and I was shaking uncontrollably. Tyler sat down in front of me and put his arms around me. “It’s going to be okay.” I wailed and tried pushing him off me, but he held on tight, letting me get everything out.
I don’t know how long we were sitting there but eventually I calmed down. My throat was burning and my body felt like I was going to pass out. Tyler gave me a minute to collect myself before we went down to the others. I sat looking at the bowl of food. It smelled good and looked like regular chicken soup, but I had no apatice.
“How do you do it?” I said. The others stopped eating and looked at me. I shook my head. “I mean how do you deal with the fact that your parents sold you?” Isaiah started crying, Natalie walked over to him and held her arm around him. They walked away to the watchtower and disappeared. I felt my cheeks burn in shame. Aiden put down his bowl on the ground and shrugged.
“My parents never liked me to begin with. They probably jumped at the chance to get something worthwhile from having me.” Tyler put his hand on Aiden’s shoulder and squeezed. “So to me it didn’t take long to face reality. It’s not like it’s worse here than it ever was at home.”
“But at home you didn’t have to fear for your life every day.” Tyler said. Aiden took a hold of Tyler’s wrist and stared right into his eyes.
“You have no idea how hard each day at home could be.” He grit his teeths, not to scream. “But you’re right there is a big difference, here I atleast have the chance to survive.” He let go of Tyler’s arm roughly, looking over at me. “I’m going to bed, have a nice night.” He gave me a weak smile and left. Tyler and I sat in silence for a bit, just staring at the woods. He gave a sigh and looked over at me.
“Most of us can’t be sure why our parents gave us up, but in one way or another it’s about money. If they only wanted to get rid of us, there are better ways.”
“Yeah but how do you deal with it? It’s hard enough to imagine anyone doing this to someone, but having your own parents do it. How do you live with that knowledge?” Tyler took hold of my hand.
“It’s not easy, but we don’t have much of a choice. We have to learn fast if we want to survive, we can’t waste our time feeling sorry for ourselves, it will kill us.” Tyler stood and started cleaning up after dinner. “You should finish your food, you’re going to need your strength for tomorrow.” I forced as much food down as I could, before going to sleep in the watchtower.
I was at home in my room reading, when my mom yelled for me that dinner was ready. I walked down the stairs towards the kitchen, when I heard my parents talking.
“I think she can be the one.” My mom said,
“We have trained her longer than the others, so if it’s not enough, I don’t think we can have another.” My dad said, my mom gave a sigh.
“Yeah, we are getting old.” I threw open the door, the kitchen was empty. Outside was only darkness and no sound could be heard anymore. I walked around the house but no one was there. Behind me I heard a window break and all sounds came back at once. I turned around and a creature jumped on top of me.
I woke up in my own sweat, the other four were staring at me.
“W-what’s going on?” I lifted my head and looked at the others.
“You were screaming.” Natalie said.
“I did?” looking down at my hands and then back at her. “I was just having a nightmare.” Isaiah walked over to me, giving me his stuffed animal, it was made from different coloured fabrics sewed together to look as close to a teddy bear as possible.
“It helps me when I have nightmares.” He said.
“Thank you.” I smiled at him.
“I’m going back to sleep.” Aiden grunted.
I was awakened by Isaiah shaking me. The sun was almost all the way up and the others were gone. I was still holding the teddy bear.
“Thanks.” I said giving the teddy bear back to Isaiah, he smiled. “What’s its name?” He looked into its face.
“Twinky.”
We joined the others outside making breakfast. Isaiah ran over to Natalie and gave her a hug. Aiden gave me a bowl of what looked like porridge and I sat down on the grass to eat. Natalie went around and gave all of us a piece of bread with butter and we all ate in silence. When we were done eating, I got stuck with cleaning the dishes.
Afterwards we all got together to decide what needed to be done for the day. We got into three teams, Natalie and Isaiah to pick up the foodpackage of the day, Aiden and I to hunt down a creature, to get more materials to make new clothes, Tyler alone to get materials to make more weapons.
Aiden and I decided what weapons to bring with us, he told me that I should focus on bow and arrow, because it was my first time killing a creature. I also took a few knives. Aiden took a spear and a couple of knives. He asked me if I knew how to use the weapons, I told him that my parents had put me on training in different weapons and also in different martial arts from a young age, so I knew how to fight in many ways. He gave me a funny look at that.
“What?” I ask him, a bit too aggressively. He looked straight into my eyes.
“Don’t you think it’s weird? That your parents taught you how to fight and then sent you here?”
“What do you mean? It’s good for a girl to learn how to defend herself.”
“Yeah that is true but if they only wanted you to be able to defend yourself it would have been enough for you to learn one thing and be done with it.” I looked at him puzzled. “It’s like they have trained you for this your whole life, almost like they only got you for this moment.” I bit my lip and looked away. “I’m probably just overthinking it.” He said with a chuckle. Aiden put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a big smile. “Let’s go, we don’t want to stand around here all day.”
We did most of our hunting in silence, tracking was one thing I did not have much experience in, but as luck would have it, Aiden was pretty good at it. He found footprints for us to follow, about 20 minutes into the woods. They were close to a bear but longer like human feet, but it was definitely walking on all four. We walked slowly trying not to give ourselves away. When we got close enough to see it, Aiden told me to stay there and be ready with the bow. I got in a position where I could see it well enough to shoot. The creature was standing with its back to me, its legs were just bones but its back had a thick layer of fur with the tail of a monkey.
Aiden was creeping up on it from the other side and nodded at me. I raised my bow, placing an arrow in it. I drew it back and fired, the arrow flew forward, piercing itself in the back of the creature. It let out a loud roar, standing up on its back legs, turning its face towards me. We locked eyes. Its eyes were just two black orbs, making me feel like I disappeared into nothingness. Aiden jumped up on its back, breaking the spell. It fell forward back on all four, Aiden raised his spear and brought it back down, breaking the skin. A thick dark green liquid poured out. Aiden jumped down, taking out a knife in each hand. The creature looked angry, its face was a human girl. It turned and jumped on top of Aiden, with the sound of breaking bones. I shock my head, getting control of the situation. I raised the bow again, letting the arrows rain over the creature. It didn’t give me any notice. I could only see the creature, flailing its legs at the ground. I threw the bow to the side, jumping into the fight with my own knives.
Both Aiden and I were panting, the creature laying dead beside us.
“How did you like your first hunt?” Said Aiden.
“I thought we were going to die.” I chuckled, he joined in. We both sat up and looked at eachother. Neither one of us were badly hurt, just had some scratches.
We carried the creature back to the tower. We were the first ones to return and Aiden showed me how to harness the creature. Before we started I asked Aiden why the creature had a human face. Aiden started showing me how to cut off the fur.
“It’s because they all start off as humans.” I stopped the cutting and looked at him.
“This is what happens to all of us if we get caught. They experiment on us until they can’t do anymore and then they let us lose to kill.”
“What!” I screamed. “How can you kill and cut open one of us so calmly?” He looked at me and said calmly.
“They are not human anymore. The experiments remove any humanity they once had, they only have their killer instinct left.”
“But still? They have been through hell. I wouldn’t want to be killed this way and if I had known I would never have joined in this hunt.” Frustrated tears started covering my face.
“I would. After going through all of that and just being a mindless beast, I would be better off dead.” I thought about it for a moment, Aiden was right. If I was just mindlessly killing everyone around me and my mind was long gone, then it would be better for everyone if I just died. I sigh.
“You’re right.” He smiled and continued with the creature.
“It doesn’t really matter if I’m right, we still have to do it to survive. It’s the only way to get fabric and blood”
Aiden was almost done with the creature when Tyler and Isaiah returned. We could hear them before we saw them. Isaiah was screaming his lungs out, telling Tyler to let him down and how horrible he is. Both Aiden and I stood up when they came, Tyler let down Isaiah when he saw us. Isaiah ran over to us, crying his eyes out. Tyler just walked past us and took out the material he had gotten.
“What’s going on?” Asked Aiden, “Where is Natalie?” He just shrugged his shoulders. Aiden turned to Isaiah and gave him a moment to collect himself.
“A-a creature got her.” He said. “And he just left her there, she was still alive.” We all turned to Tyler. He gave a loud sigh.
“You should be happy I came when I did or you would have been taken too.”
“She was still alive!” Isaiah screamed. “We could have saved her!”
“Not without risking ourselves. I haven’t survived this long by taking stupid chances.”
“You always do that! Every month a couple of people are being taken and you just happen to be there!” Aiden and I looked at each other confused.
“People die in places like this, there is nothing we can do about it.” Tyler said calmly.
“But they are our friends! We should be working together!” Isaiah yelled.
“They are no friends of mine. You are just people I happen to be stuck with. New kids come here all the time. If I want to survive, I can’t afford to care.”
“How can you be so cold?” Said Aiden and spit towards Tyler before taking Isaias hand and walking with him to the tower. I stood staring at Tyler with an open mouth.
“Don’t look so surprised. You would have done the same if you had been here this long.” I shook my head and followed Aiden and Isaiah to the tower.