Chapter 3

I threw my upper body backward.

My dead legs dragged across the mattress as I collapsed heavily onto the edge of the bed.

"I was just... trying to shift my weight," I stammered, letting my chest heave. "My hips ache from the chair."

Thomas didn't answer.

But as my eyes adjusted to the dim hallway light, my blood froze.

Martha was standing perfectly still in the pitch-black shadows behind him.

Her unblinking eyes bypassed my face completely, locked dead on the muscles of my calves. If I had flexed a single tendon to break my fall, she would have seen it.

The blinking red light in the air vent flashed in my mind. Did they see me stand?

I dug my fingernails into my thigh, using the sharp physical pain to suppress my urge to scream.

Thomas stepped into the room. In one hand, he held a heavy cordless drill. Under his other arm, a stack of thick wooden planks.

"Night wind is too cold," he grunted, walking straight to the window. "Bad for nerve recovery. I'm sealing it."

Martha drifted in behind him, a heavy claw hammer swinging loosely from her grip.

They were boxing me in. They were locking the livestock in the pen.

I had to play the victim.

I reached out and grabbed the hem of Martha’s bleach-stained cardigan.

"Martha," I whispered, forcing tears down my cheeks. "Will I ever walk again? I'm so scared."

Martha froze. She looked down, reaching out with her grime-caked nails to grip my trembling hand.

"Don't worry, sweetie," she cooed, her maternal voice sickeningly genuine. "We're going to cure you."

I understood instantly. As long as I was a helpless, paralyzed doll, the "meat" wasn't ripe yet. They wouldn't butcher me until I was fully healed.

BZZZZZT.

The drill screamed. Thomas aggressively drove three-inch screws through the planks, violently sealing the window frame shut. My only escape route was gone.

He wiped his forehead, walked over to the bed, and clamped a filthy hand over my kneecap.

"Be a good girl, Elena," he whispered, a crazed, lifeless smile stretching across his face. "The absolute second you feel a twitch down here... you tell Uncle Thomas first."

I nodded frantically.

They turned off the light. The deadbolt clicked shut from the outside.

I sat in the pitch black. If they knew for a fact I could walk, they wouldn't have just boarded the window. Thomas had squeezed my knee to test me.

They hadn't checked the camera footage yet.

I shoved my hands deep into the crevice between the mattress and the bedframe, frantically searching for a weapon.

My fingers hooked onto solid, cold metal.

I pulled it out. Into the sliver of moonlight slipping through the floorboards, I held up a broken silver chain.

A tiny, custom-engraved crescent moon charm dangled from the end.

My lungs seized.

It was my younger sister Mia’s anklet. She never took it off.

Mia wasn't just murdered in this county. She was kept captive in this exact house. She had withered away on this exact mattress, waiting for her legs to heal, completely unaware that her recovery was her death sentence.

I squeezed the anklet until the metal sliced into my palm.

Suddenly, a faint scrape broke the silence.

I froze, looking down at the bottom of the bedroom door. Where the hallway light bled through the tiny crack... the light was blocked.

An eye was pressed flat against the floorboards, staring through the half-inch gap directly into the room.

I choked back a whimper. Using my hands, I blindly hauled my dead legs onto the mattress, rolled over, and yanked the covers over my head.

I lay awake all night, crying silently in the dark. But beneath the grief, a cold, venomous hatred boiled. I was going to make these monsters bleed.

——

The next morning, Martha and Thomas rolled me into the living room.

"We have to tend to the southern fields today," Martha said smoothly. "Caleb is going to stay here and watch you."

The second the front door locked behind them, Caleb stopped pretending to clean.

He began pacing in slow, heavy circles around my wheelchair.

His milky eyes were glued exclusively to my thighs. A string of drool slipped from his severely burned lips.

I stared out the window at the heavy wire fences surrounding the property. Martha and Thomas weren't farming. They were probably hiding in a back room, finally reviewing the camera footage.

Caleb was mentally stunted. If I wanted answers, I had to pry them out of the butcher right now.

I buried my face in my hands and let out a loud, pathetic wail.

"Caleb!" I sobbed, forcing my shoulders to shake. "It's been so long. I'm never going to recover! I'm completely dead from the waist down!"

Caleb stopped circling. He tilted his ruined face, clicking his tongue.

"No, no, no," he wheezed, stepping uncomfortably close. "They get better really fast."

He practically vibrated with excitement. "The other pretty girls in the chairs! They cried too. But after seven days? Bam! Legs all better. Perfect, fresh meat."

He pointed a greasy finger directly at my chest. "And today... today is your seventh day."

My heart stopped. The warnings in the pockets. The timeline. This was an assembly line of slaughter.

"Where... where did they go, Caleb?" I whispered, my voice shaking with pure horror.

Caleb grinned, exposing rotting black teeth. He slowly raised his hand and pointed toward the back window.

"Out the door. Take a right," he giggled, his voice dropping to a raspy whisper. "In the rusted old barn. Lots of people waiting for you in there."

I looked out at the massive, boarded-up structure isolated behind the overgrown grass.

Suddenly, Caleb’s smile vanished.