Dark Fae: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Dark Fae Book 1), стр. 6

I turn my back on the scissors and reach for another cloth. This one feels clean against my fingers. Worn-out, but clean enough.

I dampen it in the steady stream of tap water before I strip down to my underwear. The cloth feels cool against my skin. I scrub, hard. Got to make up for the lack of soap. If I’d found soap somewhere in here, it would be a start to a good day. But it’s like in the ‘before days’ when you’d have a shower, but not use body or face wash or shampoo or even rinse your hair. There’s something slightly refreshing about it, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Never enough.

After a while, you get used to it though.

I’m as clean as can be when I trade the cloth for the toilet. My heart skips a beat when it flushes, and a small smile takes my lips. It won’t flush for the next person, but I don’t care about that. We might be a group or a tribe or whatever we call ourselves, but we all know it’s everyone for themselves. Any one of these people would leave me behind in a heartbeat if I developed a limp, twisted my ankle, or even started falling to starvation. They wouldn’t share rations with me, I know that for a fact, because I’ve seen it.

We stick together for travel, but we’re no community. I saw that with Mike.

I’m almost finished up in the bathroom when I pick up the scissors. For a moment there, I had every intention of slipping them back into my sweatpants and taking them back to my bag. But it’s so dark, it’s so quiet, and the blade is calling to me. I just need to feel numb, and that’s what it does. It takes the pain way.

Ironic, I know.

Once I’m done, I rinse off the blood in the sink, then wind the damp cloth around my forearm. The thick, coarse fabric coils around the scattered scars I wear there, and the black ink that stains my skin. A stupid, small tattoo I got forever ago to remind me to be strong and all that shit. Doesn’t work. Not in this world, not anymore.

I finish up in the washroom and slip out. Before I leave the hall, I look out of the broken window we smashed, and feel the cool breeze on my damp face. Bit icy. Chills prickle all over my body, but I like it. I don’t feel cold, or pain, or misery. I just feel numb, and it’s the most blissful thing that’s happened to me in a long time.

Wearing that dumb, small smile on my lips, I head back into the shop. I close the door quietly behind me.

With the lantern light, I try another search around the shop. Need batteries, batteries, batteries. But I come up short. Can’t even find a replacement torch, not even one of those tiny crappy ones that are weaker than a match-flame and give off dusty light.

Giving up, I head back to the others before someone realises I stole a lantern. Or borrowed, but they won’t make that distinction. No one is awake when I lower the lantern beside Adam, then creep back to my sleeping bag.

I don’t get a wink of sleep. I lie there, on my side, and feel the hot thrum of pain spread through my arm. It relaxes me. Like a lullaby soothing my soul. But my zen is short-lived. It isn’t long before the others start to stir and, one by one, I hear the rustle of sleeping bags being rolled up and stuffed into their carry-bags. I stay in mine for as long as I can, feeling the pulse of blood rush to my wound. Before I get up, I secure the cloth-bandage around my forearm, then tug down my cardigan sleeve.

Lantern lights start to flick on all around our corner of the shop. I finally follow the lead and pack up my things. We won’t have long before we head out to raid the nearby houses and thatched cottages. On our way into the village, we wandered the cobblestone street with what little lights we had. It wasn’t hard to tell that we’d arrived in the French village, Eguisheim.

I’d been here once before, with my mum and dad before they died. It was something magical, a medieval village parked near the border to Germany, like something plucked out of Beauty and the Beast. I fleetingly wonder if Disney based Belle’s village on Eguisheim. I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world like it. And I won’t ever again.

Even now, back in this quaint, tiny village, I won’t really see it. Like the rest of the world, it has fallen to the darkness. And now, to us, it’s just another place to rest and loot before moving on. Moving on to where, I don’t know. We don’t ask questions like that. Because none of us want to face the truth. We have nowhere to go, no purpose, no reason to keep on going. We just walk.

Some of the others take a last-minute wander around the shop, in case they missed anything good, or left something behind. Others find their way to the washroom I used earlier. No one mentions that the toilet won’t flush, or that the taps are drained of water. They don’t know I used it all up, and I’m glad for it.

Lee spreads out the map over the floor. Slowly, we all gather around it, and some push the lanterns closer.

A cold dread moves through my gut. I know what the map means, and I hate him for it. We’ll be moving