At the Price of Oblivion
Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 6:05 am
((Tessa Blackridge continued from Borrowed Time))
The night was deadly cold, but the knot in her chest was sickly hot.
Two nights already she'd endured, if only barely. She knew nothing of wilderness survival, hadn't even thought much about it until the temperature started dropping and the cold winds rolled in. Her teeth chattered and her skin pulled tight with goosebumps and she could hear the morning's tally already, a dozen or more of her friends succumbed to the brutal cold. But they all pulled through to her surprise, herself most of all. Well, not everyone, but the biting chill was no executioner. Not yet at least, she thought as she lay curled and shivering in the lap of a tree, not til the calories in the class' stomachs all burned away and sweat whisked away half the water in their bodied before they noticed. And for the first time, as the temperature plunged below anything she'd yet seen on the island, she knew she wouldn't be one of them.
Her finger still hurt from it, a small cut but a jagged and a dirty one. She'd been sitting, like usual, and feeling sorry for herself, same. An old maintenance hut off somewhere she didn't really remember. She dug in the dirt of the floor, traced little patterns with her fingers. And then it bit her like the shiny winged ant that caused her so much pause afterwards a dozen years ago. A little slice of metal, a tiny jagged shard. She'd picked it up to fling it or bend it or whatever she decided for its just desserts, but then she paused because it was so clearly functional. A hacksaw, if she recalled properly, or maybe the one that cut around corners or something, except those were supposed to be thinner, weren't they?
She didn't rightly know and it was really better that way, because nothing really good or noble or brave was ever certain. And she was struck somehow with a clarity of thought, how she'd read of soldiers in Vietnam cooking their meals over bits of C4, how there was never any event without the hero, and never any hero without adversity. Theo was going to kill her. He was going to shoot her in the head, or Summer was going to slice her or stab her or try out her new little prize. Someone had to make a way, clear the path for the cavalry to roll in like it had last time. To walk around and be hated and hunted and lauded and most importantly free.
And so she lapsed into restless sleep, or so she pretended, so she wanted them to believe. A snore, a rustle, a little grinding slice, and then all over again. The collar, the all-important collar that she had to trick, had to get her way around or, rather, through. A score enough to let the flame through of the lighter she clutched hidden in one hand, to choke herself out with heat and smoke and poison and let the payload shrivel away unnoticed in her perfect stoic charade. The island felt a lot like Seattle, she thought, and it was a good thought because it kept her mind on the home she wanted so desperately to return to. The sea breeze, the slanted streets, the loving, overburdened mother who didn't need one single more adversity on her plate. Her heart rate soared and she closed her eyes and softly stirred and her collar transmitted every shallow beat, every rushed breath, every zipping grind of metal on metal. She stretched and yawned and a sudden thrill ran through her body.
AHHH said a deep and knowing voice behind her.
The night was deadly cold, but the knot in her chest was sickly hot.
Two nights already she'd endured, if only barely. She knew nothing of wilderness survival, hadn't even thought much about it until the temperature started dropping and the cold winds rolled in. Her teeth chattered and her skin pulled tight with goosebumps and she could hear the morning's tally already, a dozen or more of her friends succumbed to the brutal cold. But they all pulled through to her surprise, herself most of all. Well, not everyone, but the biting chill was no executioner. Not yet at least, she thought as she lay curled and shivering in the lap of a tree, not til the calories in the class' stomachs all burned away and sweat whisked away half the water in their bodied before they noticed. And for the first time, as the temperature plunged below anything she'd yet seen on the island, she knew she wouldn't be one of them.
Her finger still hurt from it, a small cut but a jagged and a dirty one. She'd been sitting, like usual, and feeling sorry for herself, same. An old maintenance hut off somewhere she didn't really remember. She dug in the dirt of the floor, traced little patterns with her fingers. And then it bit her like the shiny winged ant that caused her so much pause afterwards a dozen years ago. A little slice of metal, a tiny jagged shard. She'd picked it up to fling it or bend it or whatever she decided for its just desserts, but then she paused because it was so clearly functional. A hacksaw, if she recalled properly, or maybe the one that cut around corners or something, except those were supposed to be thinner, weren't they?
She didn't rightly know and it was really better that way, because nothing really good or noble or brave was ever certain. And she was struck somehow with a clarity of thought, how she'd read of soldiers in Vietnam cooking their meals over bits of C4, how there was never any event without the hero, and never any hero without adversity. Theo was going to kill her. He was going to shoot her in the head, or Summer was going to slice her or stab her or try out her new little prize. Someone had to make a way, clear the path for the cavalry to roll in like it had last time. To walk around and be hated and hunted and lauded and most importantly free.
And so she lapsed into restless sleep, or so she pretended, so she wanted them to believe. A snore, a rustle, a little grinding slice, and then all over again. The collar, the all-important collar that she had to trick, had to get her way around or, rather, through. A score enough to let the flame through of the lighter she clutched hidden in one hand, to choke herself out with heat and smoke and poison and let the payload shrivel away unnoticed in her perfect stoic charade. The island felt a lot like Seattle, she thought, and it was a good thought because it kept her mind on the home she wanted so desperately to return to. The sea breeze, the slanted streets, the loving, overburdened mother who didn't need one single more adversity on her plate. Her heart rate soared and she closed her eyes and softly stirred and her collar transmitted every shallow beat, every rushed breath, every zipping grind of metal on metal. She stretched and yawned and a sudden thrill ran through her body.
AHHH said a deep and knowing voice behind her.