[JOURNAL ENTRY]

July 3rd....?

The sun always wakes me up too early in the morning. The tiny window is the only one down here. When the sun rises, a patch of sunlight shines right onto my bed pallet.

I had to choose the spot where the sun would hit perfectly (in case you didn’t realize it, dear journal, that’s me being sarcastic). I feel like I’m still waking up early for school, even though I don’t have to. There’s no reason to wake up early anymore. Hardly any reason to wake up at all.

I should’ve chosen a spot by the wall, in the shadows. Bonus: I’d escape the notice of Him altogether. But I’d be too close to the Wasters, and while they’re human, I couldn’t stomach sleeping near them. Some of them sleep in their own shi--, um, filth. Others don’t bother to wear any clothes, and you can see it all. Now, I’ll admit, I may’ve had a fascination with the naked human body at one point. Thanks to seeing the Wasters day in and day out, my fascination died a slow and painful death.

A cruel part of me wishes He would corral them in a separate room, like the unfinished space next to the kill room. It has a door, and they could all do whatever they wanted in there, not bothering us regular folk. Still, that would be wrong because they’re living and breathing people. Living and breathing for the moment.

Lately, I’ve had random thoughts, about time, about life. Time…I don’t think it works how we think it does. Maybe it’s a straight line, something we can move forward on, but never back. Or maybe it’s a circle, or an unimaginable pattern. Life, as we see it, is linear. Life is chaos. Is it both?

With all that’s happened, I’m leaning towards chaos.

See what I mean? Random.

I hope Erin doesn’t ever try and read this. I wonder what she would think of me, or if she would agree on some points.

~*~

July 7th (still guessing)

Ah, Fridays are the worst. When school, homework, and after school stuff filled my weekdays, I couldn’t wait for Friday. For a break. Now, I dread Fridays. Every day down here is horrible, but Fridays are particularly gruesome.

The Man calls ‘em TGIF’s, except he adds an extra F when he says it aloud. Which he does, often: “Thank God It’s Fubbin’ Friday!”

I'm young, but aware of the general mechanics which involve, well, I’ll just say fubbing. Fubbing must be a gritty business, especially the way The Man goes about it. Fridays start after he rounds up all the able-bodied women (three total, but at one point, there were six) into the kill room, only, he doesn’t kill ‘em. Still, whatever happens in there involves screaming.

When they're done, the women exit and it's hard not to stare. I want to ask what happened to them, what He made them do, but I don’t need to ask. Not really.

My stomach flip-flops at the sight of their bruised, bloody, and crying messes, but there’s nothing I can do to help them, nothing I can do to stop Him. Once, after the end of a Fubbing Friday session, I caught a glimpse of Him in the kill room, naked and smiling as he cleaned off the twisted end of a wire hanger.

It doesn’t have to be Friday for The Man to play his games. Other days, He’ll come downstairs, put the girls in a row, and play eenie-meenie-minie-mo. While He sings, pointing from girl to girl, the tension builds in their shoulders. Each fall of His fingers is like the point of a knife, and when it finally stops, someone gets hurt. Yesterday, His finger stopped on Erin. She closed her eyes, sighed deeply, and followed Him for the zillionth time.

She’s stopped talking about killing herself, and I’m relieved. It’s hard trying to watch someone all the time, making sure they don’t make good on their most gruesome promise. For a whole week, I didn’t sleep. Well, hardly. I stayed up, near tears, actually hoping for the daylight to filter through the window this time.

It’s been a few days, and Erin’s eating again. She even smiled at me yesterday. When I told her a joke I overheard from Gabriella, she laughed.

“What do you call a camel with no humps?” I asked.

I could tell Erin didn’t wanna answer me, but she did anyway.

“What?” she asked.

“Humphrey.”

The slow build-up of laughter lifted me up, pushing out tears. For a long time, I laughed.

Erin says when she’s alone with Him, she closes her eyes and thinks of the trip we took to Destin Beach. The water was so blue you could see your toes wiggling around in the sandbar. I think of that too when I’m sad. Picturing Mom and Dad is too painful. It’s only been….three months….which means, we’ve been down here for about five.

Five months living like this. Time really flies when you’re trapped like an animal.

~*~

July 9th

My main concern in life used to be when the next issue of Amazing Stories would come out. Now, my old life seems full of details which never mattered, a far-away dream I can’t catch up to.

Some of the Wasters linger at the trough, deciding if they should eat today, or skip another meal. Wasn’t always this bad, but I know The Man is running low on supplies. We enjoyed a few burgers, back in the beginning.

When I say "we", I mean me and my sister, Erin. She’s seventeen and boy-crazy, a fact that doesn’t matter when you’re stuck in a basement. Being around each other day in and day out should have made us closer, and it has, sort of. Once you see someone take a shit in a corner, a wall comes down between you. Shit is (was) a word on Mom’s blacklist, but I'm starting to use it anyway. More so, these days.

I used to want to be a writer, back when we were all living on The Outside. When the world was sane, I read all the paperbacks I could get my hands on, generally science fiction and horror. Even if I had those books with me here, I wouldn’t read them. Don’t really need them when there’s horror here and Outside. But, I’m lucky The Man up and gave me these composition books awhile back. He came downstairs, whistling, and tossed these books at me without saying anything. I’m gonna fill these babies up. All I got is time, Erin, and words. Since words make stories, I’m gonna share as many as I’ve got, which isn’t much for my age.

The first real story I’ll tell you about is school.

Middle school was the tits. Haha, tits. My friend Gary dropped the phrase on the daily. I wonder if he says anything anymore.

While being forced to wake up every morning for school, I hadn’t thought it was so great. All I worried about was fitting in, and catching Ashley Heard’s attention. I longed to touch her dark, shining curtain of hair every time it fell across her perfect face. She wasn’t one of the popular girls; my crush wasn't that cliché. But she was beautiful. Outright talking to her twisted my tongue, but I slowly moved past the can-I-borrow-a-pencil phase.

My mom offered me advice to progress things from creeper to friend.

Carry her books. Tell her a joke. Girls love that stuff.

Only, Ashley didn’t let me carry her books. She laughed when I offered, but she let me walk next to her on the way to class. I told her a joke Humphrey would've laughed at. Pre-algebra, English, and Biology became my favorite classes, because she sat next to me. At lunch, we talked about TV from the night before, or our latest book finds. We talked about anything and everything. Gary always made fun of the small gap in her front teeth, but to me, the imperfection added to her beauty. She had this thing where she looked down at her shoes as she walked, so on occasion, she ran into walls. This was another point Gary poked fun at. I didn't care. I was less than perfect, too. Ashley’s corny jokes, gap teeth, and clumsiness were part of her.

One day, she stopped coming to school. She wasn’t the first kid to do that, but when her absence stretched from two days, to five and onward, it killed me.

Fewer and fewer kids showed up for school. I even missed cranky ol' Gary. The riots and fires started around that time.

Just as our neighbors and friends had, my parents packed up our car and headed for a less populated area.

~*~

A/N: Click on the cute little star if you like where things are headed!

Then navigate on over to amzolt's page, a speculative writer I just discovered. Read his short story collection, Strange Fantasies, and look for my favorite entry "Dance of Immortality":

https://www.wattpad.com/story/54649054-strange-fantasies