Tag: interlude

Saori

On the first day, I’m jolted awake out of a sound sleep. Literally jolted; they shove something like a cattle prod against my neck, and I wake up screaming in pain. I don’t immediately remember where I am or how I got there. I’m confused and everything feels very sludgy somehow, like it’s hard to even think.

Before I can adjust to anything at all, the instant I open my eyes, someone sprays what feels like pepper juice into them. It feels like my eyes are on fire, and the vision I hadn’t even begun to sort through is immediately obscured by tears. I scream again, and then again when the first lash lands on my back a few seconds later.

Someone grabs my hands, pulling them out to either side. I struggle, something that didn’t even occur to me until they grabbed me, but I’m weak and clumsy, and they have no difficulty pinning me like this. I feel very exposed, even before the cattle prod returns and starts on my breasts. That hurts so much that I can’t even scream, even before someone grabs my hair and then hits me in the face. He yells at me and I can sort of understand that he’s telling me to look at him.…

New Year’s Eve

Previous Chapter Next Chapter Stories are universal. Everyone has at least one, and some have a great many, indeed. There have been stories for as long as there have been…

Kassandra

“Kassandra Antigone!”

I wince. My mother sounds frustrated. She usually does, when she uses my second name. It was her idea to give me two for some reason, but not even Olga bothers calling me Antigone most of the time if she’s not upset. It sounds a lot stranger than Kassandra.

I set aside my tack and tools, and go to see what she’s upset about. She’s standing at the door of the stables, and if I make her shout it at me from there, that will be added to the list.

As it is, she’s already glowering at me. “What did I tell you about this?” She waves a hand, as though to take in the stables and horses and hounds around us.…

Melissa

I wake up early. I didn’t especially mean to, just woke up an hour before my alarm. I hate it when that happens. I have a hard time getting to sleep, so trying to get any more sleep will take long enough that I might as well just get up now. So I do, stretching. Shoulder feels stiff. That’s annoying. It’s been three days since I helped Shawn carry furniture around. I don’t like that my arm is still complaining about it.

I dress myself with barely-conscious movements. It’s a familiar routine, and I wake up sluggish, so it runs on autopilot. It’s just a t-shirt and jeans anyway. Hoodie today, because it’s cold out. Normal.

Check my bag, it’s fine. I don’t really have much else to do before school. I sit and try to play video games to distract myself, but I’m already too distracted for it to help. Can’t focus through the intrusive thoughts. I don’t know what it’s about, not really. I don’t know why I’m having intrusive thoughts about poison, about fire. It’s not something I remember thinking much about until recently.

There are a lot of things I don’t remember happening until recently.…

Caleb Moorhead

People lie to me a lot.

It’s inherent in my line of work. It’s inevitable. Attorneys hear a lot of lies. Cops lie about their intentions, about their evidence, about all kinds of things, really. Witnesses lie about what they’ve seen. Sometimes my clients lie to me as well, which is always frustrating. It’s very hard to defend someone when you’re working with inaccurate information.

I would much rather work with someone who was open with me about being guilty than try to represent a client who pretended to be innocent when they were very clearly not. It isn’t as though I would rat them out if they told me; it would be wildly against my personal and professional ethical codes to do so. At most, I might decline or drop their case, and even then I wouldn’t tell the police or prosecutors a word about what they’d said, because that confidentiality is a cornerstone of the legal system, and I feel strongly about maintaining it as an absolute. A client has to be able to trust that what they tell their attorney will be kept strictly, entirely confidential.…