96
“People would steal it, if they knew where it was,” I told him, counting the bills in my memory with pride. “I locked my door every day, but that wouldn’t stop most of the people that would want to come in here and take it.”
Damien and his Brothers did not understand. Men on their world were honorable. The few men that would steal were identified and kept far from the villages by the Administrators. They had never had something like a door lock and they found my use of one odd.
“People aren’t always honorable,” I tried to explain, but the men still didn’t understand.
I failed miserably trying to describe how humans could be. There was no Administrator here that could remove thieves from society. Some humans were honest and some weren’t; it was a choice.
“It has value?” Master Bane asked taking the stack from me and examining it.
This looked like nothing to them and they didn’t understand how it was important. In my memories they saw what I could do with this. Much like the stones, money here was a representation of wealth with no real value in itself.Belongs to NôvelDrama.Org - All rights reserved.
It gave the men a new appreciation of the stones they used. Christof sat on the end of my bed as he considered the matter.
“This is where you slept?” he asked passing his hand over the rough faded comforter.
“Yes.”
“It isn’t comfortable,” he said and moved around making the old springs squeak, “and it is very noisy.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t that bad if I didn’t toss around at night.
“Where did you get the money?” Kein asked as he walked around the room.
I explained the concept of a paycheck to them. Mr. Pensky paid me less because I lived here. The money in the toilet tank was whatever I didn’t spend on bus fare, food, and clothes.”
The men followed me back outside to look at the dingy swimming pool on the property.
“I see why you liked the place you took us first,” Damien said looking into the still, murky water.
“This place is unpleasant,” Christof said looking around. “You felt fear here constantly. There was no pleasure in your life.”
Evan hugged me from behind, pulling my back flush to his front. “We gave you better than this. Come back with us,” he stated.
I melted into Evan and left willingly. They took me to the mountains, to the untouched beauty of Pateria. With them, in this world, I felt peace.
It was all good and relaxed. No more nightmares plagued the dreams the rest of the night. We were together and we were happy.
“Wake up, slave,” my fake Master said loudly.
Groggily, I remembered hearing him yelling at me. I’d been in such a wonderful, peaceful sleep. It took me longer to wake than usual.
The men commented on my slow progress and pulled me to the table to eat. They fed me all they usually did, but what I really wanted was some of those worms.
“Why don’t I ever have worms, Masters?” I asked.
The men stared at me with fury on their faces.
“They are expensive, slave. We do not see the need for you to have them. You will sleep in the box again tonight for your impudence,” one of the men growled.
I stayed silent and looked at the floor. Before last night, I was sure I hated the worms, now I was asking for them. It didn’t make any sense.
The Keepers was like it always was, we played inside in the morning. Strange catches of feelings assaulted me throughout the day. Boredom while I played the drums, for instance, and that didn’t make any sense.
I concentrated on the weird sensation and looked at Fuji. She shouldn’t eat the worms and she was obsessed with her skin. These were things I already knew and learning more about this slave did not interest me.
“Ciara,” Rose called in a singing voice, “what are you doing?”
“Thinking,” I answered trying to act normally.
“Can you play and think at the same time?” she laughed.
“Of course,” I blushed and started to beat out their favorite rhythm again.
In the afternoon we went to the beach. There were several games being played but I wasn’t taking part. Even after having spent the night dreaming of swimming, I still wanted to go into the water. Perhaps next time my owners had me, we could go somewhere swimming.
I remembered a place then, a place I’d never been to and never seen. It looked like a lake, surrounded on every side by tall mountains. Water from the mountains washed into the body of water from a several streams. Master Damien and his Brothers often stopped there to play as they left the mountains.
“CIARA,” an annoyed Fuji said, grabbing the ball that had landed at my feet. “You could have just thrown it back to us. Come on, we need another person for this game to work.”
I apologized and walked over to join my friends. My mind was all over the place today. Hopefully I wasn’t having some sort of a mental breakdown.
As I cleaned the apartment that night, I thought about all the strange feelings and strange dreams. They were consuming and came out of no where. It was almost impossible to think or do anything with them plaguing me.
I panicked a slight bit as I considered the issue further. One of my cousins on Earth had schizophrenia, at least Mom had told me she had it. The girl thought aliens were invading and wore a classic tinfoil hat most of the time. Even with the best of medications she was not able to think clearly.
It made me smile sadly now. Poor girl, she really wasn’t wrong.
Perhaps it was the box, I thought. Maybe all those days with the calming creams stuck in the box had driven me mad. Strange it would just pop up suddenly, so many day cycles later.
My rag touched a clear jar of liquid on the table and I caught it just before it fell over.
“Slave,” one of the men barked, “pay attention to what you are doing. You almost knocked over one of our experiments. You spend another night in the box.”
Dropping my head submissively, I apologized to the man.
He was right, I was not being cautious. I shuddered to think how many days in the box I would get for ruining their work.