When Hell is Man Made

Her knees wobbled under her and collapsed. Breathing hard, she pressed a palm against the side of her head and stared at the blurry figure ahead.

“Cal…”

He heard her hoarse voice whisper and turned around.

“Drat, drat, DRAT!” Cal ran back and put his arm around her shaking back. “Is it the drugs? They’re working? Got to your head?”

She nodded and shivered; she couldn’t see his face.

“Okay, we’re okay…” glancing behind them, Cal squatted and put her arms around his neck. “Try to hold on, Thyme, please? For me, just hold on. You’ll be okay. Fine, just fine. We’ll both be fine.” He groaned as he lifted her, hands under her thighs, limp feet banging on his.

“Stay with me, Thyme…” He began to run, the corridors were empty, maybe the men hadn’t figured out the fugitive’s route yet. But there was mumbling from behind the doors and a few were open as they ran past. Recumbent figures were draped on couches and beds, all alone and talking. One incredibly fat male, perspiring between every pinched fold of flabby pink flesh, sat and applauded for himself slowly as Cal stumbled past, chuckling. A woman, deathly pale and wrapped in rags, lay in the middle of the floor slamming her already bloody forehead against the stone.

“I’m worthless, worthless! Horrible horrible woman, and ugly, and fat, and HATED! Deserve to be hated, yes, DESERVE it, you horrible horrible woman…” Her voice rasped and choked as she screamed and tried to shatter her own skull. But Cal kept running, not looking.

Thyme looked. Blearily and nearly asleep, her vision seemed full of humans alone, loving and despising themselves both.

“Cal…”

Cal grunted.

“Cal…” Thyme, tightened her grip as they ran past a smiling man bowing to the adoring crowds full of no one. “Where… are we? What are they doing?”

“They’re the Damoni…” he panted. “These are the people you’ve spent your whole life serving, their coffers are the ones you’ve filled, and your labor and everyone else’s pay for their shots…”

“Shots…?” Thyme’s head bounced against his neck.

“Chemicals. Drugs. Dopamine mostly,” Cal grunted, “In different addictive combinations. To make them feel all eyes on them, to feel adored or hated is a matter of taste, but they want to feel like the most important.”

“We can’t be here!” Thyme panicked, she whispered in his ear, “Cal, these are the Gentry… guarded, we’ll be caught… I don’t want to go back…” She coughed, spewing spittle on the side of his face and just a small splatter of red. He didn’t flinch.

“Trust me. These are the most passive witnesses a runaway could have, no one will notice a desperately handsome lad with a drugged-up mess riding piggyback.”

Thyme chuckled and coughed again.

“Why do…” cough “…you get to be handsome?”

“Desperately handsome.” Cal corrected, stumbling as the pale and peeling yellow hall took a sharp right, “And don’t worry, you’re a beautiful drugged-up mess as far as messes go.”

Thyme smiled and gave a throaty hack and wiped her mouth on her shoulder.

“Oh nooo…” she frowned and looked at the blood on his neck and back. “I’ve stained your jacket…”

“Don’t worry about it, I look great in red.” His voice was calm, but his fingers tightened on her legs and he sped up. Thyme’s grip began to loosen.

“No, no! Wake up, Thyme! You need to hold on!” He jostled her, but her head was rolling and her breathing was sporadic. Cal bit his lip and shifted his right arm under her and grabbed her hands with his left and kept going.

The corridor turned left and as he slowed around the corner, he saw them. Five armed men at the end of the hall. One saw him.

“Hey! There he is!”

Cal jumped back and ran the other way, footsteps pounded behind him. Picking a random door, he grabbed a knob and opened it. Forcing himself to slow down, he shut it quietly behind them and let Thyme slip to the floor. Then he turned around.

The room was large and yellow like the hallways, bare except for the skeleton of an iron bed and a blanket laid across the springs. In the middle of the bed there was a small woman, thin and still. Cal could see every rib distinctly though her spandex like shirt and her skin was yellow rippled with blue veins. She didn’t seem alive.

Cal leaned down picked Thyme up, trying to support her head, there had to be a place to hide her.

“Who are you?” the voice was high and almost as thin as the speaker, wavering like an operatic soprano without the resonance. Cal glanced at the woman on the bed. Propped up on her elbows, a ghoulish face with sunken eyes completely overshadowed studied him. He said nothing. She licked her lips.

“Are you an admirer?”

“What am I admiring?” He held Thyme to his chest and listened to the sound of slamming doors down the hall. They were looking.

“I’m the thinnest woman in the world.” the woman rolled her neck and stroked her collar bone. “And the most beautiful. What’s not to admire?”

“What indeed?” Cal glanced desperately around for an exit. A place to hide.

“So you’re an admirer?” The ghoul asked again.

She didn’t get an answer. The door burst open. Security flooded into the yellow room and a large man struck at Cal’s head before he could react.

Arms reached for Thyme, but he clutched her tightly even as he fell to the floor.

Everything went black.