A worse day

Rhonda Floam

Escape

I’m sitting in a pool of stagnant water, in a warehouse somewhere in Partameer. I escaped today.

They came this morning as usual. I thought it was going to be another round of “beat the southerner”, but it looked like they’d had enough. Some guy — I couldn’t see him — was telling my usual three jailers to “get her the hell out of here, and take her to Naller.” Whoever this Naller is, it sounded like they were much more experienced at “extracting” information from unwilling folks like me. I’ll call it torture. Scared the hell out of me, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything because they quickly gagged me, blindfolded me, and tied my hands, and started taking me out of whatever place they had me in.

At first I felt wooden floors, and then we were outside. There was a slight wind.

They were leading me somewhere, I think down some alleyways or some place where buildings were close by on either side, and then all of a sudden, I heard the fight.

I found myself in the middle of it, and knocked to the ground. It sounded like quite a tussle, but I wasn’t going to wait around to see who won. I had no faith that anybody was on my side.

I managed to pull off the blindfold, and saw I was, in fact, in an alleyway. It was night, so it was dark. No street lights. I just ran. Nobody noticed. They were too busy beating on each other. I ran quite a ways. Turning a corner I tripped over something in the street (a dog carcass, I think). Got scratched up pretty bad, but it was also lucky. My view from lying face-down on the street I could see a small opening in the wall of the building next to me. I managed to crawl in, and just in time. I could hear several folk running by. They were looking for me.

Turns out I’m in a cold warehouse. It holds fish, a lot of fish, so I found a crate I could hide under and pulled some of the fish on top of me.

For the last hour I’ve been trying not to wretch from the smell, and trying not to freeze to death. If I sleep, I might not wake up.

Writing helps keep me awake. Thinking about Bobby and hoping he’s okay. Just thinking about him in a war in Naldrin makes me so mad! Good. That keeps my heat up.

Writing helps. I love to write. Always have.

Too cold. Hard to get my fingers go