Jason and Tommy
I pick the lock on Jason's door and Casey sticks her head in. "Jaaa-sooon..." she half-whispers. "Casey is here with Dagger, and we will escape together."Casey takes her head out, and a boy peeks out of the room and into the hall. His skin is dark, and his eyes are, too. He steps out of the room completely. He is very skinny, and I can see his spine and shoulder blades. "Hello, Casey. Hello, Dagger," he murmurs, staring straight ahead. "The voices said that you would be here."
"What voices?" I ask, snorting. I don't even know why he's in here. He seems normal.
Jason slowly turns his head to look at me, and in his eyes, in those empty pits that are his eyes, I see reflections of dark figures, swirling around, whispering in someone's ear. They make my blood run cold, so I pull myself away. Jason cocks his head. "The voices. They talk to me. Always. I can always hear them. They whisper secrets in my ear. Weaknesses.. strengths.. information that will someday prove to be useful." His face twitches. "But sometimes..." he lowers his voice and leans closer to me, whispering. "Sometimes, I don't like the voices. Sometimes, I've had enough. I want them to stop." A single tear rolls down his cheek.
I turn on my heel. "Oo-kay. Casey, let's just take Mr. Voices-in-his-head here, and go get Tommy." We all walk to Tommy's door.
Again, I pick the lock, and Casey lures Tommy out. Except unlike Jason, Tommy steps right out into the hallway.
He's missing one arm, and seems to be limping. When I look at his foot, I see why. Most of it is gone. I look up at his face again, and he smiles. His teeth - at least, the ones left - are bloody, and I see bits of skin in them. He raises his arm to his face, and I notice that he is missing a few fingers. He bites off the tip of his thumb, still smiling, and chews it up.
"I would very much like to escape," he says in a low voice. His tousled hair is missing in spots, probably eaten, and so is his shirt. "In the outside world, I would be allowed to eat.. as much as I wanted. Here, they do not like my eating habits." He shrugs, biting another bit of his thumb off. "I cannot help it. I have an appetite."
I shudder, and motion for them to follow me down the hall. We make our way through the maze of corridors and into the main lobby. I pick the lock, but the second set of doors is chained shut. I'm about to start picking, but Tommy grabs my wrist with his bloody and mangled hand. "Allow me," he says.
Tommy clamps his teeth on the chain and bites down, hard. I hear a crack, and he does it again. He wrenches his mouth away from the chains, and rips a section off. Then he spits the chain out, and with it, one of his teeth. Blood is dripping from his mouth, and I notice how chipped his other teeth are - not to mention the numerous scratches on his gums. He smiles again.
"What are we waiting for? Let's go," he says, and we all step out into the night.
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