11th and 12th, I guess
“How does trial day work, if rumours are true?” Owen asked the older man after they had been tossed some stale bread for breakfast. The man shrugged and sighed.
“It could be that we are all put in front of a mock trial,” he said. “It could be they just decide on our fate and do not even tell us what they decided on until they carry out the sentence on us.”
“Some say the captives are taken out of the cell by day on which they were caught,” the guy with the sensitive nose offered. “Then they are taken to the arena and the judge tells them their sentence and if they protest or misbehave, they are tossed into the arena.”
“What is the matter with the arena, anyway?” Owen asked when there was a clang from the door.
“Hairy Owen! Cole!” a man shouted. “Come here!”
Both of them got up and moved towards the door. There was a sharp plop and Cole gasped.
“Not both at once!” the man shouted. “One after the other! You kneel down and wait your turn!”
He waved Owen closer who walked a bit slower towards the door.
“Hands!” the man barked at him. While Owen held out his hands, he spotted a man with a rifle that could shoot wax bullets. A second man knelt down at once to hobble Owen while the man that had shouted at him was tying his hands together.
“Turn around and kneel!” the man ordered Owen as soon as they were done. They waited for Owen to obey, before they turned their attention to Cole.
“Now come!” the man snarled at Cole who slowly got up and shuffled over to them. Owen could not see what they did with Cole but there were some noises that suggested that Cole might got handled rougher than Owen before him.
One of the man grabbed Owen by the scruff of his neck and pulled him up and around. He and Cole were marched through dark corridors until they arrived in a dark chamber. The prisoners were forced down on their knees. The guard that was responsible for Owen placed a boot on his left ankle.
They waited. Without warning a bright light was shone into Owen’s face.
“Some rules,” a man with a dark voice growled. “You ...” - He poked Owen in the ribs with some kind of stick. - “... do not say a word.”
“And you,” another man with a scratchy voice said a bit to the right, where he must have been standing in front of Cole. “You will tell us why you are not talking.”
In another situation Owen would have laughed and called them out for this. Now he clenched his teeth to not try to reply in Cole’s place. He heard the slap of a hand against a cheek. Cole would not say a word - he was absolutely certain of that.
“Where will you be going in your free time?” Orla asked. She counted to three aloud, then they lifted the big box up and moved it over onto the palette.
“Obviously I have nothing planned,” Nia replied and checked that the box was standing firmly in its new place. They went back to the row of boxes. Again Orla counted and then they carried the next box over. They made for a interesting pair. Orla was short and stocky with bright red hair she wore in two long braids down her back. Nia seemed slim and tall in comparison but was really of average height and build. Her dark brown, nearly black hair was cut neatly in a page cut. They had a no nonsense attitude about them, making it clear to anyone with half a mind that thank you, but they were quite able to handle the physical demands of the job.
“I guess I will ask a few favours and follow up on a few promises made to me in the past,” Nia told her. The each picked up a palette and carried them over to continue the row of big boxes. “I will keep to friends and not too close relatives for the start.”
“To make it harder for the guy to find you,” Orla guessed to which Nia nodded. “Until he started to show up about every other day, I had thought he was kind of cute. At least he had been interested in discussing about next to anything.”
They picked up another box and shuffled over to its new storing position. They huffed a little after setting it down.
“The higher the frequency in which he showed up, the less variation was there in his topics of small talk and discussion,” Nia admitted. “Just three more, than this part of the storage is also straightened up.
“You really do not mind coming over for pizza and a movie this evening as a pretext in case he is waiting for me again?”
“It will be the last chance for me to hang out with you in two weeks,” the other woman countered and chuckled. “Andrew will understand. And we can choose a short movie so he will not have to be alone all evening.
“It is a bit weird that we only manage to get the storage tidied up, if something strange is happening. The last time it was thoroughly done was after the anti freak protestors had picketed across the street.”
“You very nearly beat them up,” Nia remarked with a grin.
“They bullied the son of the store owner next door,” Orla said and counted. They both groaned when they lifted the box.
“He is a nice kid,” Orla continued slightly out of breath moments later. “It is not as if he chose to become a freak. The anti freak movement is like discriminating against people because they have - say - red hair or are short sighted or whatever.”
They both fell silent when they heard a chair falling over in the front of the building where the store was. There were voices that were too muffled through all the closed doors to be clearly understood.
“Go up to the back office for a while,” Orla told Nia. “If that is him, you should have as many obstacles as possible between him and you.”
Copyright by M. Huchzermeyer 2013