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I dangled upside-down, swinging from the ceiling like a sad piñata.
My body dragged against the rope tying my ankles, a blade sawing into bone. I wheezed through the toxic fumes, the damn drug factory reeking of burned plastic and piss on steroids. My curtain of hair wavered a good six feet above the brown sludge curdling across the floor. A neck-breaking height. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
I thrashed against my bonds, but there was no give. The Vipers had gone batshit with green nylon rope and trussed me up from shoulders to ankles. Why? Did they win some kind of all-you-can-twine coupon?
Barrels rolled in lines like ants, their rusty AI-powered wheels groaning. A few Vipers were dumping buckets of white powder into industrial mixing drums. Others roamed through the vapor in black hazmat suits, their skull-shaped gas masks styled with glowing red eyes and twin hoses snaking from their mouths.
Sweat dripped into my foundation, my so-called waterproof makeup melting. I shut my eyes before the drops could sting. I imagined the worst: Dad, Mom, and my little sister Kira huddled in a filthy alleyway, lying in a puddle of their own blood. Dead.
Something screeched like a fork on a plate.
My eyes snapped open, and salty sweat torched them. While blinking to clear the blur, I caught a lanky green silhouette.
Not him. I shuddered.
Zee was bare-chested, parading his full-body snake-scale ink, making damn sure I hadn’t forgotten he was the factory’s new lieutenant. He put on a show of swaggering my way, flicking his forked tongue while dragging a bat across the concrete, drawing out a metallic rasp.
The same barbed bat that crippled Dad in 2078.
My photographic memory forced me to relive the night the Vipers crushed Dad’s knees. His shriek when the bat connects. His winces after each step. His lost pride dulling his laughter as Mom and I take over his workload.
Unlike Dad whose knees got busted by the Vipers, mine were out of batting range. But not my face.
“Mayron isn’t a patient man, Ella,” Zee said coolly.
My drug-fried brain could barely focus. With the pain, the cooking vapors, and the blood rushing to my head, there was no way I could think of an excuse the Vipers would buy. Maybe Zee could be fooled into believing I needed more time to sell the uppers. It was my first drug deal after all.
I slapped on a sneer. “Thanks for the pep talk, but I can move H faster when I’m not tied up.” My voice came out rough, the factory’s fumes having sandpapered my vocal cords, chain-smoker style.
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Ly Ann
The Author and The Psychologist
Ly Ann has a Ph.D. in psychology and works as a clinician to offer children and adults neuropsychological assessments and individual psychotherapy.
You can talk to her on Twitter @lyann888.
Click below to learn more about her journey and see pictures of her.
