The remains

Chapter 68

Molly doesn’t resist.

I don’t resist when he unlocks me from the radiator, grabs my hair.

No struggling.

Our passivity seems to make the monster sad. He has Molly on the dirt floor on her back. He’s pinning her shoulders against the floor. She does nothing to resist. He can’t go through with it. He can’t do it. He grabs hold of me.

I don’t resist.

He throws me on my back.

I don’t resist.

His lips form a pout. He stands up and begins to cry.

“ Cry, cry, cry,” he chants through his own tears.

Molly and I turn to one another, lie on the dirt floor hugging one another. Until Molly spots something. Only a few feet away, a shovel. She lets go of me, lunges for the shovel and grips it in her hand. She sits up quick, raises the shovel high, brings it down hard on the monster’s head.

He drops face first to the dirt.

Molly drops the shovel and takes me in her arms. We shiver, we cry and we hold one another.

We did not resist.

We did not resist.

We did not resist.

Molly gets back onto her feet. She wipes her eyes, stemming a silent flow of tears. Marking the right side of her face is a streak of brown mud.

“ That’s enough, Bec,” she says, with a stone face.

With that, she reaches her hand out for me, helping me up off the dirt floor.