We took your advice. I wish we never did.
…
Ryuk came by again today. Someone suggested we stop drinking whatever Ms. Devanna was feeding us in those bottles and we stopped.
On one hand, we did stop growing. On the other hand, both of us have been feeling sluggish, tired, and starved.
I drank a small sip before pouring it down one crack in the floor. I noticed it aged me a little, but it satiated my hunger, too.
“We need to go back there. To figure out what’s going on in that room. Whose those people are. And if they need our help.” Ryuk suggested.
I thought about it for a moment. I didn’t really know if that was a good idea.
“Maybe we just let it go. I don’t know if it will be safe. What if they catch us?”
“Then we should escape.”
My head fell to my chest, and I could feel the hunger burning in my stomach again. “I don’t know if we can survive without the food.”
He threw his hands up, turning to the opposite wall. “Then what are we supposed to do? We can’t stay here. We don’t know what they’re going to do to us.”
Before I could respond, I caught a slight movement in the corner of my eye. The curtain to the room moved back and forward, as if someone had just let it go.
When I looked out into the hallway, no one was there.
…
“Hey Nahom, how are you doing today?” Ms. Devanna’s voice calls from the doorway.
Without looking up from my book, I responded. “I’m doing great. How are you doing?”
“Good. I’m glad.” She set the bottle down in front of me, but I kept my eyes focused on the book. “Yeah, thank you. I’ll finish this chapter and then I’ll have some.”
“I would like you to finish it now, actually. I just wanted to make sure that you’ve been eating. You seem like you’ve been tired. Please, drink it.”
I turned back to her, leaning into my seat. “I’m not eating this. If you want me to eat it, you’re going to have to force me.”
She looked taken aback, and she stepped away towards the door. I stayed in my seat, watching her. She turned and ran out, not bothering to close the curtain.
Before leaving the room, I took a sip from the bottle. It filled my empty stomach a little before I pour the rest out.
When I got to the door to the living room, it was locked. I quickly ducked below the window, pressing my ear up to the door.
Normally it was hard to hear them, but the voices on the other side were yelling.
“What do you mean, they aren’t eating it?” A man’s voice boomed, shaking the door.
“I mean, they haven’t been eating it. They won’t eat in front of me. And they stopped growing.” I recognized Ms. Devanna’s voice.
“Wait, what do you mean they stopped growing? They can’t stop growing, right? How could they not be growing?” This voice is a younger woman’s, one whose voice I didn’t recognize.
I heard their voices come in my direction, and I quickly ran from the door. I couldn’t make it to my room in time, so I quickly snuck into a different door. I pressed my back up against the door, trying to catch my breath.
“Nahom?”
I jumped.
“Ryuk? What are you doing here?”
“I told you. I’m trying to find out what’s in that room. You said you didn’t want to come so I decided to do it on my own. Why are you here? Changed your mind?”
“Look, just hurry and try to get that lock open. They’re looking for us. And they know we stopped drinking that drink.”
He fumbled with the small paperclip in his hand before inserting it into the lock. After watching him for a few minutes, I heard a click.
We stared in horror as the door pushed open. Something that looked like an enormous spider, bigger than any human I’ve ever seen, suspended upside down in the center of the room. Each leg was strapped against the metal walls of the room. When it looked up, it saw us and screeched. I wanted to cover my ears, but I was shocked by its head.
It was the head of a woman.
“They’re in here!”
A woman with red hair pulled the door open, grabbing Ryuk by the arm and pulling him back towards his room. He struggled against her, but he was took weak.
Ms. Devanna stood in the doorway, eyes looking into mine. She looked sad.
“I’m sorry Nahom, I didn’t want you to see that.”
“What is all of that? What is going on here? What are you doing to us?”
She tilted her head back to the ceiling and she blinked a few times. Tears streamed down the sides of her face and she wiped them away on her wrist.
“It’s a Shikari. It takes the DNA of the host bodies and creates perfect clones of them. The drink we’ve been feeding you is the food from the creature. Like mother’s milk.”
“Why is it chained up like that? What are you doing to it? Why are you making it do this?”
Her back slid down the wall, and she brought her arms up to her face. “We needed to. To survive. We’ve been cloning them for years, ever since I was a child. We used the clones as meat. To feed our families that live here. My parents found the creature, and when they lost their jobs, they struggled to feed us and the creature. So they did all of this. To help feed their family and any other families that had fallen into desperate times.”
My mouth fell open. But I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t struggle as she led me back to my room.
“Do you want to drink it now?”
…
When the others fell asleep, I could swipe the phone from my neighbor. But now I have no idea what to do, I don’t understand what I am.
What is going to happen if we do run? Can we survive outside on our own?
And that spider creature… that thing. I couldn’t tell if it was trying to attack us or if it was trying to get us to help it.