Chapter Six: Shae's POV

Shae, Arielle, and Donnie shared their secrets...

Chapter 6

Shae

I held Arielle’s body close to mine, which felt strange after all of our pointed exchanges about touching and looking.  However, my intentions were pure. I tried desperately to rouse her and get a response, but she stared into space with vacant, heartbroken eyes and a saddened numbness.  It was hard to believe that she’d actually shot that boy.  I hadn’t counted on the idea of her doing something so intense just to save me.  I wanted to feel flattered, but given her current state, I couldn’t stand the thought.

The door Donnie had mentioned led into a dark hall, and he darted ahead of us once again, exhibiting his childlike tendencies.  However, their enthusiasm was fake.  He wanted to pretend that he hadn’t just witnessed a death before his very eyes… the drop of a body.  Unfortunately none of us could forget that, especially not Arielle.  It was hard to see, so I paused and took a moment to think.  What little I knew about pyramids included the fact that they had compartments from top to bottom, rather than linear rooms.

My theory proved true as the hall curved downward into a drop.  Gently, I moved away from Arielle and approached the hole.  Donnie tried to jump down it, but shoved him back, trying to prevent his childish curiosity from getting him killed, though he just glared at me in a huff.  Thinking for a moment, I popped the ammunition from my gun and dropped a single bullet down into the dark abyss.  Shortly after it fell, the metal clinked against the stone floor.  Quickly, Donnie realized the nature of my test and gasped.

The drop was short, luckily.  Gripping the edge of the floor, I swung down.  My feet stung a bit, but it was tolerable, and I called up to Donnie and Arielle to follow my lead. He hopped down immediately, but Arielle hesitated, causing fear to well up inside of me.  This experiment, as the orchestrators had proven several times already, was dangerous.  Her sudden condition of lethargy was understandable, but a detriment to the speed at which we were moving.  If something else came along, I wasn’t sure she would have the will to fight it off.

Reaching up, I indicated for her to climb down with my assistance.  Reluctantly, she complied without making a single comment about touching her or looking up her skirt. The stark change in her personality was painful, instead of relieving.  Quickly, I looked to Donnie, who was waiting on us.

“We need to rest a while, scout ahead and find the next area.  Make sure it’s safe to lie down.  Got it?”

Nodding, he disappeared into the darkness.  I let Arielle lean on me again and tried to coax her to speak.  She opened her mouth, but Donnie came bouncing back and interrupted us, “The next room is just up ahead.  I don’t think anything is inside.  Also, there’s another door, but it isn’t locked.  I guess that means we can leave whenever we want.”

I was surprised by the speed at which he figured all of that out.  The three of us meandered down into the next compartment room with caution, despite his describing it at safe.  There was literally nothing in the dark room; no furniture, life, or even sufficient light.  Reluctantly, I eased Arielle to the floor and sat beside her, closing my eyes.  Donnie paced around for a few seconds, and then flopped down against the wall facing us.  A thought struck me as I began to consider our options.  We were still virtually strangers to one another, despite the challenges we’d faced, and part of me wondered if that was part of the test.

Looking up, I holstered my gun in the waistband of my jeans and motioned Donnie closer, “Listen you guys; I think that we need to clear the air here.  I get the feeling that if we had a little more information, then these tests wouldn’t be so sudden or surprising.  We need to be prepared, and the only way that can happen is if we understand what they’re trying to do to us.”

Donnie cocked his head to the side curiously, though Arielle was lost in her own thoughts.  Sighing, I prompted the conversation further, “Donnie, why are you here? When you were in your cell, you got a piece of paper.  We all did.  Yours said ‘where’s your best friend?’  What does that mean?”

The younger boy shrank into himself, looking uncomfortable.  For the first time in almost an hour, Arielle leaned forward with renewed interest.  Looking guilty, he grabbed his other arm and tried appear innocent, “I used to have a dog, and I really liked her a lot.  She was my best friend ever since I was a little kid.  I tried really hard to keep her, but my parents said that feeding an animal was too expensive, so I had to get rid of her.”

Arielle appeared empathetic as he continued, “After a few days, I went down to the city and tried to sell her so that my parents could buy some more food.  This really nice guy gave me two hundred dollars for her…I’ve never seen that much money in my life. He promised that he’d give her a nice place to live and that he was rich and could feed her.  Later, I found out that he fought her to death and made four times as much as he paid me.”

The boy looked away, choked up.  I nodded gently in response; that explained the habitat and the collar.  They were tormenting his guilt by subjecting him to it directly. But the gun?  I shook my head, it was obvious that they gave him the gun so that I could reload, but it seemed like such a strange and round-about way to do it.  The orchestrators of the experiment were unpredictable, so I didn’t have the confidence to say that this new information would help predict the next phase, but it shed light on the ones through which we had already passed.  Arielle and I were put into our own homes, rather than an extravagant habitat of our own, which made sense too.

Our problems were more human.

Quickly, I looked over to Arielle, and she too shrank beneath my stare.  Eventually, she regained her confidence, “My note asked me my worst fear.  My father was a wonderful, respectable man, and when he died I was stuck with my mother and siblings.  I practically raised them, because my mom was gone all the time, though she made money.  I found out that she was supporting us by being a w***e.  The second note made me wear this after I told them that I didn’t want to be a s**t like her.”

I tossed those words around in my head.  That explained the house and the clothes, but not the boy.  Biting my lip, I tried to resist asking her a question, but it was vital to the explanation of our situation, “Why?”

“Why don’t I want to be a prostitute?”  She asked with her old, forceful tone.  For the first time in my life I was glad to hear someone being condescending.

Reluctantly, I nodded.

“Because, you moron!  The Holy One forbids it!  Even if it wasn’t sinful behavior, I don’t want to be a sex toy.  Do you know anyone who does?”

Donnie snickered immaturely, but I felt like a light bulb lit over my head.  Arielle curled into herself as she remembered what had happened only a short while ago, “It doesn’t matter now, though.  Nothing is worse than what I’ve done.  I murdered another person, and that’s a cardinal sin… I might as well not go any further.”

She then lay down on the cold floor and closed her eyes.

I shook my head hard, but she wasn’t looking, “No, murder is wrath.”

“Is it really?”  She asked in sarcasm.

Glaring, I rubbed my temples, “Murder is the taking of life in wrathful malice, or for revenge, or in anger.  You…‘ended’ that kid because he was trying to kill me.  He was trying to murder me.  What you did was self-defense.  You saved a life, isn’t that what… uh…the ‘Holy One’ likes, is people working together?”

Suddenly, she pushed herself up slightly to look at me, “What did you do?”

There was a lump in my throat.  I needed to know what was going on with them, because I already understood what had happened to me.  What I didn’t expect was for them to call me on it.  I coughed into my hand nervously as Arielle glared at me with a fixed stare and recalled everything I’d dug up, “Donnie sold his dog to a guy who killed it, so they are making a dog out of him.  I’m religious, so they are trying to make me a w***e and a murderer.  What about you?”

I looked back and forth between her and Donnie, “The paper in the cell, it asked me what was the worst thing that I’ve ever done.  My parents are broke and hungry, just like everyone else, I guess.  I mugged five people at gunpoint for food, money, and whatever else they had that I could pawn or sell.  I was going out for my sixth before I heard about this experiment, which was worth more than all the muggings in the world, cash wise.”

Both of their jaws dropped in unison.

“They gave me a gun.  When we met with Donnie in his room, I got another note in that vent, and didn’t tell you guys about it.  The note told me to reload my gun with Donnie’s clip.”

The younger boy looked panic stricken as he whipped out his gun and popped out the empty clip, “You b*****d!”

“I was worried that they wouldn’t let us leave if I didn’t do what I was told!  And it’s not like you know how to use a gun.”

Donnie glared as Arielle flopped back down with a heavy sigh, “Wonderful.”

Donnie scooted away from me, suddenly looking uncomfortable.  I knew he would react in such away, and it annoyed me tremendously.  Somewhere, deep down inside, I felt ill over the fact that my behavior disappointed Arielle.  It was the same feeling as before when Donnie was getting too close.  I thought that exchanging our secrets would bring us closer together with a new level of trust, but it only pushed us apart.

Within a few moments, Arielle was still, and her breaths rose and fell in a soft purr. Donnie was still pacing around, back and forth, until the motion made me nervous.  I wasn’t sure if it was him, or the current situation, but the more I watched the younger boy the more he frustrated me.  Peeking over one more time at Arielle’s resting frame, I stood.  Donnie saw me and jumped startled as I narrowed my eyes and backed him up against the wall.  Grabbing his shirt in my fists, I shoved him against the rocky confinement.

“Give me your gun,” I hissed.

“But… I….”

“Now!”

Donnie squeaked with fear and obeyed.  I put his empty clip into my back pocket and tossed the weapon onto the floor, “Let me teach you a little something about dogs that you might not already know.  When you’ve got more than one hanging out together, it’s called a pack, and I’d say three is a crowd.  Only the alpha gets a gun, got it?”

Donnie swallowed hard and nodded.

I drew my own gun and held it to my chest before leaning in close and whispering in his ear, “Stay away from her.  I know you’re doing this cutesy kid thing, and maybe you really are that deficient, but if you aren’t then take this as a warning.”

Turning on a heel, I walked away and left him shivering in the corner.  Gently, I bent down and gripped Arielle’s shoulder, giving it a shake.  She jumped, startled, before realizing it was me.  Her eyes then regained their annoyed glare as she sat up, “What? I was trying to sleep, didn’t you see?”

“Yeah, but we should keep moving for now.  It’s not safe here.”

Arielle dragged herself up from the ground.  I helped her, and though she stiffened up at first, the other allowed me to assist.  I smiled softly, guiding toward the open door.  She passed through it into another hall, and I followed close, catching sight of Donnie’s betrayed glare as he reluctantly moved in behind us.  I could tell that he thought me a bully after our little dominance exchange, but he didn’t speak.  I knew that without some kind of established order, we wouldn’t get very far.  Then again, I got the impression that Donnie was used to being pushed around, especially after how easily he surrendered his weapon.

We had something else in common, and that would prove problematic.

The next room was empty as well, all but a shelf that held three canteens filled with clean water.  Sucking in a breath, I realized that it was another room for preparation, rather than a test.  Next to each canteen was a note, addressed to us individually. Grabbing them up into my hand, I passed the notes out to Arielle and Donnie as we continued down the proceeding hall.  Again, it curved downward, and again, I tested the drop.  There was a small trap door at the end, through the cracks of which shone sunlight.

Arielle perked up excitedly, obviously interested in getting out of that dark, dusty pyramid.  She dug her small hands underneath the stony door and lifted it, realizing that it slid easily upward on guides.  Eagerly, we climbed out and scaled down the bottom edge of the structure, which was only about six feet from the ground.  Donnie gasped, darting out a ways and spinning in a circle.

“You guys!  There’s nothing here but sand!  We’re free!”

I shook my head and laughed, “Haven’t you figured it out by now?  I don’t know how, or from where, but they’re watching us.  Come back over here, we have something to do.”

Curiously, they circled back as I leaned against the hot stones and pulled out my note.  Catching on, they began to unfold theirs, and we took a deep, simultaneous breath.

“Uh, ‘show your fangs’,” Donnie quoted nervously.

“’Pick a side’,” Arielle added, disappointed.

Nodding, I looked at the ground.  It was so strange to openly hear their notes, because each one seemed desperate to turn us against one another.  Though I had found a moment of tri-powered team work, with their influence, I wasn’t sure that it would last, “Mine says, ‘the next meal’s on you’. I guess I have to shoot something.  This will be fun.”

Arielle picked up on my sarcasm and grinned.  Snapping us out of the daze, she jogged forward, out into the open, “We’ll deal with that later.  If they want us to do what they want, they’ll just have to make us.  Until then, let’s go find some shade.”

Grinning, I followed, glad to see her take control.  I could still see pain in her eyes, and I knew that she hadn’t forgotten what had happened in the other room, but she felt the same pressure from the experiment that we did.  With that, the three of us tucked away our disregarded notes and ventured off into the sandy expanse.

Author's Note

I have co-wrote this story with Dog Meat Todd. All of Arielle's POV chapters have been written by me, Vanessa Rico; and all of Shae's POV chapters have been written by Dog Meat Todd! Constructive criticism is appreciated.

Reviews

[George Korolog]

I'm more of a poet, with a poets eye and probably not the best person to evaluate the technical aspects of a story. But I thank you for sending your piece to me. I'll give it a shot. The character development is good and the storyline is clean. I read it with interest and could easily follow the progression of the story. As a poet, my only comment would be to try to add more color to the story by thinking poetically in some of your writing. Like, I turned away and left him shivering in a corner. Perhaps, "I turned, reluctantly, and heard him whimpering, the cold air cutting through his coat without remorse. Something like that. I think that would be the hardest part about writing a story. Leaving simple explanations alone and not make them too wordy, and finding that ones that can add more personality to the story and changing them to something "more."

[Coyote Poetry]

I like the way you are changing the view in each chapter. It is cool to see the point of view from different eyes. A strong chapter. I like the internal thoughts and the boy had some secrets. A excellent chapter.
Coyote

[FantasyWriter01]

I loved it!! Great detail and excellent suspense. If you criticism, build up on the setting. Your characters are excellently developed, and the plot of this chapter is well put. Very good. Keep writing.