Cara #8 (freewrite fiction)

Cara #1
Cara #2
Cara #3
Cara #4
Cara #5
Cara #6
Cara #7
Warning: this is a really long one.

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They were all gone now, they’d left Cara to sit by herself with her bowl of dirt on the floor beside her and with teddy and doll still cradled in her lap. She was cold now, the floor was hard and freezing. She tried sitting on the bed, even getting under the thick blanket that must’ve been pink once, but was now a faded, sad brown. But nothing helped her get the blood flowing in her hands again, so by the time the knock on the door came, she was twisting her fingers, trying to get them warm once more.

He stood in the doorway and said nothing for a while, just stared at the upturned bed, the blanket on the floor and the little girl who had dragged herself into the furthermost corner. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding between the two of them, or at least the man seemed to think so.
‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said eventually and closed the door behind him. ‘I’m not here to hurt you, though I think others might want to.’
He picked up the blanket and offered it to Cara, but seeing she didn’t want it, he put it back on the bed and sat down on the floor. Though not beside her. He could see she didn’t want him close to her.
‘Time’s almost up, Cara, and I’m worried. What we thought would happen...it didn’t happen. I screwed up, it seems, and now I’m afraid. I can’t imagine what’s going on inside your head, of course, but inside mine, there’s chaos. There’s not a silent moment in my head just now, Cara. And I’m worried about what might happen.’

The man had changed, Cara noticed. He was no longer made of ice, though he wasn’t too warm either. And he was scared, just like he said, that much wasn’t a lie.

‘I promised I’d tell you my name if you ever needed to use it and while I don’t know if you ever will, I’d like for you to know my name, Cara. I’d like it if you could remember me, once this is all over, if that’s not too much to ask.’
For just a second, he reminded her of Christopher, though she’d never thought that was possible. He was the furthest thing from her Christopher, and yet there was something in his eyes that reminded her of him.
‘Roger. My name is Roger, Cara. And I am truly glad to have known you, just a little. I never meant for it to come to this, I never wanted to hurt you and I want you to know that. But people are selfish sometimes, I was selfish, we all were. But that’s not your fault. I’m sorry. For everything. For nanny. For the words I took from you, for your life so far and for what’s about to happen next.’

But what was supposed to happen next? Cara couldn’t understand the change in this man, the surrender inside him and it frightened her. Who would they be, come tomorrow?
They waited in the room, in the quiet, in the cold, although the man didn’t seem to be aware of it. They waited for the time to pass and Cara wished she could trust him enough to ask him what he meant by that.
But she couldn’t and she was feeling sleepy. she’d fallen asleep earlier, after the man had first left her, but she’d slept with her back to the wall, teddy and doll still in her arms, held firmly, for fear they might catch whatever these people were suffering from. And she slept a troubled sleep, broken in by uneasy dreamers, by violence like she’d never seen before. And it felt so close to her, lapping at her heels, and it was suffocating. And then, she dreamed of the beast and remembered it and wondered what had happened to it and where it was, if it had journeyed into this sunless world after her or had just let her be. Because maybe there’s place where not even the hungriest monsters will journey for prey. Maybe.
And she’d woken up, understanding it wasn’t enough. That regardless how much she tried to fight it, the cold was getting into her. It wasn’t the room that was that way, but it was coming from the inside. And while she was warm still, she wasn’t as warm as she used to be. She felt inside her that her light was fading, that the stories in her head were dying. She sat, not really seeing the man sat beside her, and tried to focus on her one-eyed doll. Had it had a name ever? No, how could it?
Martha...but Martha was someone else. It was all wrong, but the thoughts in her head were becoming bleary and she couldn’t focus. A man, but who was he? What did he want? Who was he speaking to and about and what were they waiting for?
She was so...tired. She wanted to go to bed so badly, but she couldn’t even remember the bed at her old house, the one she’d slept in for years. What years? When?

And suddenly, she was there. The woman with the hair like Cara’s, the one who’d given her dirt to eat. Martha. She was standing in the doorway and she was frowning at them both, because maybe she hoped she could burn through them with her eyes. She was angry with them and her face looked like something out of a nightmare, distorted into a terrible mask of hatred. But hatred for what?
It didn’t make any sense to Cara. If only she could get warm again.
‘It’s time,’ Martha said, ‘Roger, the twenty four hours have passed. We’re all waiting for you downstairs.’
Roger looked at Cara, as if asking her to handle this one. But this one wasn’t hers and she couldn’t.
‘I want to test something first.’
‘Fine, we will wait, though don’t be long. They won’t wait forever.’

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But that wasn’t true. Martha wouldn’t wait forever, there was blood in her eyes and it had to be released somehow.
‘No, I mean I want to go to the field.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes, now, I want to take Cara to the field, I have a theory. An idea and I want to see what will happen and if I’m wrong, we’ll turn right back and then, everyone can see her and decide what’s to be done with her.’

He was lying. Cara could feel her blood freeze over and goosebumps on her skin. He was lying, but he was scared and his fear was betraying him.
‘Fine,’ Martha nodded, but she was lying as well. It wasn’t fine and Cara was afraid they wouldn’t be allowed to go. Because only if she could get to the field and then a little further, there she’d feel the sun again and she’d be warm again. She just wanted to feel warm.
The man held Martha’s gaze until she left the room and then whispered to Cara. ‘Come on, let’s go. We have to hurry now.’
But for all the hurrying they’d do, it still wouldn’t be enough. They walked out of the room into an equally dim, cold corridor and then down the stairs, into the great big hallway where Cara had first arrived. It had been twenty-four hours. And whatever they’d waited for hadn’t happened.
Cara felt Roger’s hand squeeze into hers and he pulled her along faster.
‘Come on,’ he said again and shuffled her into the car. Not even stopping to strap her into the seat. She pulled on the cord he’d pulled on, but it just slid back behind her and then, he was beside her in the car and they were moving and so, she stood still. But it was all wrong, she realized, as she took her last look at this great glass building on the edge of Olympus. It was all deserted. They said they were waiting for them, but there hadn’t been any heartbeats in the building as they’d gone. Cara hadn’t heard a single one. It had just been them, somehow, even though there were supposed to be many others just...waiting for them.

‘They’re waiting for us.’
The man’s eyes grew wide and he shot a look at Cara. He was surprised, though not shocked, because he’d known she could do it. He didn’t know if that was what had ruined his experiment, but he knew.
‘What do you mean?’
‘No people there,’ she said, turning in her seat a little to point at the glass building. ‘They’re waiting in the field.’
‘No.’
The breath seemed to go out of him just then, like he’d been kicked in the stomach with something really heavy. Cara nodded, because she didn’t see what else she could do.
‘No, no, no. Shit. I’m sorry, Cara. I should’ve known they’d never let us do it, that they’d never let us leave. I was going to take us out of here, take you back home, where you’d be safe, at least for a bit. But they’re not going to allow that.’
‘Why?’
And despite the cold, Cara’s heart was on fire. So many strange things were happening. She was talking to someone who wasn’t Christopher, here, in a moving car. And there were bad people and they were there, in the field, waiting.
‘Because they want to kill you, Cara. You deserve to know at least that. They want to kill you because they think you failed them, they think you didn’t do what you promised to do. But if there’s anyone they should kill, it’s me. Because I was the one who promised, not you. I told them you were the key. But now, I don’t think you’re the key anymore. And they want to kill you for it, to punish you. I’m sorry.’

And as the car rolled past the now empty streets, Cara could see them in her head. The people in the glass building, all standing in the road ahead of them. It was just them, because they’d told everyone else to stay inside now. Because otherwise, the people would kill them as well, those in the glass building. They were waiting, Martha and the old man and all the others. And they were waiting to kill her, although why she didn’t really know. But what was truly interesting about the picture, wasn’t the people themselves, but what was behind them.
Slightly to the left and not quite inside the field of dead flowers, there were white eyes waiting for her.
‘We have to go there,’ she said, opening her eyes. She worried, a little, that her words sounded wrong.
‘Why? We can’t.’
The car had slowed down considerably. They weren’t at the field just yet, but it was lurking somewhere in the distance.
We have to. Someone waiting for me there. Behind them.’
‘How do you know that?’
Cara looked at his frowning face and noticed some of the blood had come back into his cheeks. Except no, it was just an illusion of blood, a distant memory.
‘I know.’
And he believed her, because what else could he do? There would be no going back for them and for him, not much of a going-forward. As they entered the field of fallen flowers and he began seeing their shapes in the distance, he understood what he had to do. There were cars on the side of the field and undoubtedly, inside those cars, there were guns. They wouldn’t make it far, not out in the open road.

But Cara must’ve known that, as well, which meant she wouldn’t be going by the open road.
‘I’m so sorry, Cara, I want you to know that. Here, pull on that strap and – no, don’t. Just, hold on to the door there, okay? Hold on.’
And she did, she wrapped her fingers around the handle on the door as tightly as she could and hoped the crash wouldn’t hurt them too much. In her other hand, she held her toys, her only friends beside Christopher. And now, this man. She’d brought them so far with her, it would be a betrayal to abandon them now.
‘Roger,’ she said and when she looked up, she was struck by the gratitude in his eyes. ‘Thank you.’
The man in gray did something he hadn’t done in many many years then, he smiled. ‘You’re welcome, Cara.’

The people in the road never once thought the car wouldn’t stop before them, which is why they kept standing right there, in the middle of the road, until the car crashed into them, catching Martha full on. There was no blood, though. Roger would have to kill for her before their journey was over. Cara had known this from the very first moment she’d seen him. But now, she saw he would only have to kill shadows. Because that was all these people were. Shadows of what once used to be people.
As the car sent five bodies flying into the air and the others running for the fields, Roger and Cara both noticed the beast, its white eyes watching them, greeting them. Because the beast had known they would come this way sooner or later and had been waiting to scoop up its rightful prey.
They drove for a while longer and the beast followed. They couldn’t stop there, otherwise the people in the cars would shoot them. And Cara and the beast would have no chance to get away.
When he could no longer see them in the rear-view mirror, Roger stopped the car and turned to Cara.
He would’ve liked to thank her, for the heat he now felt in his cheeks, even for a little while, but he didn’t need to. She knew.

She knew.
And he hadn’t been wrong, after all, about her. He’d been wrong about himself and about Martha and about all the other dead people.
‘Are you sure?’
But they both knew there was no other way. The cars would be coming after them eventually. Roger could only keep her safe so far.
‘Okay.’
They got out of the car and saw that the beast had come to the very edge of the road and was waiting for them. It wasn’t quite so terrifying in the daylight. It was tall, but its movement was not unkind. Its teeth were sharp and its claws could sink deep. Though that was not true for everyone. It laid down, offering its back to Cara, who didn’t know how to do this.
‘Here,’ Roger offered, taking off his belt and holding it out to Cara. She let him take teddy and doll from her hand and he strapped them tight around her belly. And that was that, Cara sat on the beast’s back fearfully, telling herself there really was no other way and she looked back at Roger, with tears in her eyes and then, they were gone. The beast ran fast with the little girl on its back. Soon, there was no trace of Roger behind them, as they rushed through the back roads and into the woods.

to be continued...

Thank you for reading,