Chapter 10 - Gen 2 - Tapestry

The first thing that I am aware of as I start to regain consciousness is the damp horrible smell hanging in the air and the hard cold uncomfortable floor underneath me.

I lie there uncomfortably for quite a while fighting the sleepy feeling that keeps trying to draw me back in as my mind is drifting in and out of the darkness not really making sense of anything.  My heavy eyelids are closed tightly as I just lie there listening for the slightest sound but I hear nothing except for an eerie silence.  I move my fingers around slowly on the floor because they feel completely numb from the cold.

I wander where I am and why?

Slowly a sound like a dripping noise creeps into the silence.  As I lie there listening to the regular drips, I wander for a moment if I'm lying out in the garden at home listening to that dodgy outdoor tap that constant drips into the puddle that collects underneath it on the patio, which Dad always promises to fix but never does.

This place doesn't smell nice .... I'm not at home am I!!

The fog starts to clear in my brain and I open my eyes slowly and all I can see at first is the concrete cobbled floor and what look like spaced out vertical metal bars and beyond them is a bare brick wall just staring back at me.  I close my eyes quickly and reopen them again just to check I'm not seeing thing.  I'm not!  What is this place?

I carry on lying there for a while, just staring at the metal bars, as slowly everything starts to come back to me and I remember everything.

I struggle to sit up as my head is spinning dizzily, that's when I see Honey lay out on the floor beside me.  I touch her nervously at first, the last thing I remember is hearing her screaming.  I'm relieved to see she is still breathing and is just sleeping like I had been. They must have sedated both of us.  I know I can't wake her I've just got to wait for her to come out of the sedation.  I look around then, slowly at my surrounding ... they frighten me ... it reminds me a little of a scene from one of those movies off the horror channel that I'm always watching.

We seem to be in some kind of square cage, metal bars running along two sides of it the other two sides are bare bricked windowless walls.  Besides me and Honey there is nothing else in here other than a pile of large wooden crates over in the one corner.  The rest of the room is open and empty except for more crates and a single chair.  Everything is so bare and cold looking - like we are in some sort of cellar or dungeon, that is very dimly lit ... and what is that god awful smell?!

I shudder because of the cold as I try to get myself up onto my feet.

My wrist hurts and when I look down at it I realizing the handcuffs have been removed.  I have a red mark around my wrist that hurts which I start rubbing as I walk unsteadiness over to the cold metal bars and look through them.  There is nothing there but a few crates and cold emptiness and I can now see a set of stone steps leading upwards in the far corner of the room.  I stare at the old chair sat in the middle of the room which looks strangely out of place.  I wander if the hat woman or Manderine have been sat there watching us while we slept?

I suddenly think about my phone, I can call someone for help, I reach into the pocket where I usually keep it, but its not there. I frantically search through all my pockets, its gone, obviously .... they would take our phones away!!!  I looked up in frustration that's when I spotted the arch in the wall, I walked towards it slowly, a little nervous of what might be in there.  I peered around the corner nervously, and couldn't help but laugh out quite loudly, well at least we have a bathroom!!!  A toilet and sink are sat in the otherwise small empty windowless room.

There is an eerier silence all but for that occasional dripping sound and the quiet flame crackling from the torch on the wall which is providing the slightest bit of light.  I just stand and watch the torch flames for a while before I rest my head against the cold bars and close my eyes and start to rethink everything that happened at the funeral, already wandering if I could have done something differently which might have prevented this from happening, our parents I wander what they are thinking and feeling right now.  I get a horrible pain in my chest just thinking about them and all I want to do is go home.

"Tap ..."  I hear Honey moaning behind me  "Where are we?"  she says as she tries to sit herself up.  I rush over to help her, instantly regretting my quick movements as my head starts to swim dizzily again.  "Where are we, what's happened?"  she asks again.

"Hun I don't know ........ are you hurt?"  She shakes her head and says she doesn't think so as I help her stand up on her feet.  She looks around with wide eyes as she wobbles on her feet for a moments, I try to hold her steady but she suddenly  pushes me away just before she doubles up and throws up all over the floor narrowly missing my legs and feet.  She turns away from me and starts throwing up again.  "You know there is a toilet in there!!"  I laugh at her and she swears at me between more bouts of sickness.  The sight and sound of her vomiting has my stomach churning, making me feel like I might be on my way to joining her if she doesn't stop soon.  Then I remember what Parsley had told me.  "You are pregnant aren't you!!" 

"I think so."  she says as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand  "I've been throwing up for days and I'm not ill .... Mom thinks it's morning sickness"  then she starts to cry

I put my arms round her  "Shit!!!  We seriously need to get you out of this place!!"  We are standing there holding each other, my mind is in turmoil, wandering how we are going to get out of this place, it would help if I even knew where we were.   Honey carrys on cry and I seriously don't know what to say or do but hold her tightly.

It felt like hour's had passed, we sit on the crates together, there is nothing else to do but sit and wait, we don't know where we are, how long we are going to be here or even what the hat woman and Manderine plan to do with us.  It's the not knowing that is the scary part.  We try to pass the time away by talking and even kissing, but it didn't help much.  I just hope we are not going to be kept in this cold horrible place, but I get an awful feeling that we will be, we have nothing other than the crates to sit on and the cold bare floor to lie on.  This really is not good!!

I start mooching through the crates to see if I can open one, curious to know what is in them, but they are all tightly nailed shut and I couldn't open them.  I climbed over them to the ones at the back and spotted an old wooden bench, hidden behind them up against the wall that we hadn't noticed.  It took me ages to move the crates around so that I could drag the bench out - it is old and rotten, but it is better than nothing, at least now Honey had something to lie on.

Finally we hear what sounds like a metal door opening and closing then we hear the voices, they are getting louder as they get closer.  I'm relieved that someone is coming, but I'm also scared at the same time, anything could be about to happen to us, we are like caged animals, our fate is entirely in their hands and I dread to think what our fate might be if what I've seen of Manderine so far is anything to go by.  I recognize their voices, the hat woman and Manderine are heading in our direction as they get closer we start to hear their conversation clearly.

"I still don't know why you had to bring both of them?  You've just made things a lot more complicated ... I don't know how we are going to dispose of them!!"  the hat woman says and me and Honey just look at each other.  Dispose of us?!  I really don't like the sound of that!!

"You took too long Maizie, what was I supposed to do - I would never have got away without a hostage - I just grabbed the person closest to me - the freaks kid stepping in to save his little girlfriend was an opportunity I really couldn't resist!!"  So we now know that the hat woman's name is Maizie.  Manderines voice and that laugh go straight through me!! I swear that voice and laugh are going to give me nightmares for a very long time ...... if we ever get out of this place in one piece.

"If the freak had been there, you know she would be the one sitting in that cage not her kid!!" Manderine snapped  "She wasn't there, which I NEVER bargained on, so I had to grab someone!!  Do you know how pissed I am that it's not her sat down there right now!!"  Manderine sounds like she is getting ratty.  The sound of their footsteps coming down the steps  suddenly stop, I imagined that they are stood on the steps to finish their conversation, but they must be really close to us because even I can hear their conversation very clearly.

"Yes but he's also Mango's kid too remember, I'm never going to be comfortable having his kid here, You know River is bound to see him down there and what if he realizes who he is, then I'm in trouble!!"  Manderine starts laughing

"We'll just have to dispose of them quickly before he does see him, then hopefully he'll never know that he was even here!!"

"The quicker he's gone the better, he makes me feel uncomfortable anyway despite who he is  ...I can't read or even hear his thoughts ... that kids is just not normal!!"  Maizie says which makes Manderine laugh and really confuses me.  I frown at Honey who just shrugs her shoulders.

"Well with his parents what do you expect!!"  they are really starting to irritate me as well as confuse me by what they are saying  "We do actually need to watch that one, he is the one with all the disabilities that Storm constantly used to talk about, he was Storms side kick they were always getting into fights and trouble together ... its because of him my boy faded ... and he's the one that nearly faded my Pine caving his skull in!!  He can be quite a handful when he blows apparently."  Me and Honey are just looking at each other, she knows I always get very irritated when I hear people talking about me when they think I'm not listening.  I'm beginning to think, she's got quite a few reasons there not to like me and she can add Fern to that list, I bet she wouldn't think twice about disposing of me and take great pleasure in it!!

"You might need to watch him maybe, but I don't need to worry about that do I!!!  Maizie says there is silence for a moment  "Come on, she can hear us!!"   the sound of their footsteps coming down the stone steps start again.

Their conversation has completely stops by the time they reach the bottom of the stone steps.  The two women walk into view, both of them just stand there looking at me and Honey but say nothing at first as we just stare back at them - my mind is racing and I'm scared, wandering just how they are going to dispose of us and when, we really need to be on our guard from now on.

"Good you are awake!!"  Maizie says, she stands looking at me, her eyes are disturbing me  "Boy you look just like your Dad!!"  she says finally.  Who is she I wander?!  From the conversation I've just heard I gather, like Manderine, she knows both of my parents even though I've only heard her call my Dad by his name once, the freak and nerd is how they, especially Manderine,  have been referring to them, this is all too confusing for my head to take.  What have my parents done exactly to warrant this?!

Maizie, I'm looking at her face properly for the first time, she has now lost the long coat, hat and the glasses - the first thing I notice is her eyes .... it's almost like they are shining, they definitely don't look normal. Her skin looked wierd too, like it is all cracked, especially round her eyes, and she has a funny mark on her neck like a tattoo.  As she starts to speak again I notice her teeth .... she has fangs ... two pointed teeth either side of her mouth top and bottom ..... I'm so focused on watching her teeth that my head totally switches and I don't actually hear a word that she is saying.  She's like one of those things that I've seen in films  .....  like a vampberry ..... but vampberry's aren't real ... are they?!  I hear Honey let out a shocked gasp as she clings onto me tightly, I wander if she has just noticed too.

I couldn't help it, I had to find out  "Are you a vamp ..... your teeth .... your eyes ..... you're a vamp ...." I struggled to say the word because I feel pretty stupid never thinking that they were actually real, but it would make sense of why she was dressed so ridiculously when she was at the cemetery. the dark glasses to hide her eyes, the coat and hat to protect her from the sun ... that's if anything I know from films about vampberries is even real or true ... They can't be real!!

"Vampberry ... yes boy you can say it ... I am a vampberry!!"  Maizie says and both women look at each other and  start laughing  Oh Berry!!!  Now we definately are in trouble!!  That's when I realize what the awful spell is in the air down here ... blood ... I can smell stale blood.

"So now that you know she's a vampberry - any funny stuff from either of you and you know what you'll get ... DRAINED!!"  Manderine hissed at us quite nastily as she comes right up to our cage, her glare is directed straight at me, both me and Honey automatically take a step backwards to move away from her even though there really isn't a need to with the solid metal bars between us, she can't touch us without actually coming inside our cage.

"So boy, why was your freak of a Mother not at her nephews funeral?"  She's already pushing the wrong buttons in my head after talking about me on the steps and talking about my Mom like this now.

"She is NOT a freak!!" I spat nastily at her

"Tell me boy, NOW before I come in there and beat it out of you!!"  she's unreal

"First you tell me what did you do to Prelude ... did you fade him?"  she starts to laugh at me, that horrible evil cackling laugh, she's holding her stomach and pointing at me ... she shouldn't laugh at me that way, it always unhinges me ... just looking at her evil face is starting to wind me up, and I seriously need to know she hasn't faded Prelude!!!  "Well did you, you murdering bitch!?"  I shout at her quite nastily because I can feel my head going, I'm scared she's faded Prelude and its really starting to get to me that she's not putting me out of my misery and my tongue starts running away with itself.

"NO you little freak!!!!"  she snaps back visciously leaning towards the cage glaring at me, this made me fly at the bars, she stepped backwards suddenly and shouts back at me "He just had a little sleep ... Prelude will be okay!!"  

"Oh no he won't ... YOU SILLY BITCH ... not when he finds out what you've done!!"  I'm starting to yell and Honey starts tugging on my arm trying to pull me away from the bars, she knows the signs she can see I'm about to lose it.  "You trashed Storm's funeral you Moron!!" It had only just hit me that she must have been planning this from the moment she found out Storm had faded, to use her own son's funeral to escape prison, this made me really angry.

"Leave him please, he's getting stressed and he hasn't got his medication!!!"  Honey tried to pull me away from the bars, I push her away from me "Lilly got sick, Mango had to take her home .... now can you please leave Tapestry alone!!"

I hoped Manderine would go when Honey answered her question but she didn't she continued,

"What kind of sick?" she snapped at Honey

"Lilly had one of her blackouts, since her coma she gets them when she's stressed and upset."  Honey told her.  This really seems to have amuse Manderine,  she starts to have another one of her evil fits of laughter.  

"It's nice to know that the freak is STILL suffering from her fall!!" she said suddenly  "I should have pushed her ......"

"DON'T!!!  He doesn't know!!"  Honey shouts at Manderine suddenly  "He doesn't know about any of the things you've done!!"  Manderine really starts to laugh at this.  I look at Honey because I'm confused ... What don't I know?  What has she done?

"OOOwww poor baby, they didn't tell you!!" she says to me sarcastically in a childish voice waving her hands around, she looks just like one of those playground bully that always used to pick on me  "I suppose they had to protect the idiot because his brain doesn't work and can't take it!!"  she carries on with that awful laugh of hers.  It's just a good job these bars separate us because I've never wanted to get at somebody so much. "Boy my life long ambition is to dance on that freaks grave, her fall was no accident - I pushed her down those stairs, but unfortunately not hard enough because the freak survived ......."

That did it.

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!!!"  I try to shake the bars violently but they don't move an inch, they are solid  "YOU BITCH!!!  Wait till I get my hands on you ......"  I start banging on the door and trying to shake it open while I'm hurling abuse at Manderine.  I lost it completely when I couldn't open the door .... and away I went.

I vaguely remember smashing up a few of the crates in the corner of the room before I blacked out.

I woke up slowly and confused, I'm really sick of waking up this way, my head is hurting, I know I've had one of my outburst.  When I open my eyes I'm lying on the bench with my head on Honey's lap and I can hear she's crying.  I look up at her and at first she doesn't notice I'm awake, I'm now worrying that she might be crying because I might have hurt her, I never know what I'm doing when my head goes, I could hit her, beat her up even and not even know I'm doing it.  "I'm sorry!!  I didn't hurt you did I?"  she shook her head saying no as she starts sniffing and tries to wipe the tears off her face.

"It's not your fault, she's evil!!"  she looked down at me  "What are we going to do without your medication Tap?"  she asked looking worried.

"I don't know!!  I just hope Manderine doesn't wind me up like that every time she comes down here or we are going to be in trouble!!  How the hell can she be Parsley's Mom?!"  I hadn't even thought about not having my medication, but I didn't expect I'd lose it so soon.  I guess my head just couldn't take anymore, what happened in the cemetry would normally have been enough to tilt my head, but I was so scared of Manderine taking Honey I somehow managed to keep a calm head, but that woman just riles me by looking at her.   I try to sit up that's when I thought properly about where I am, worrying that she's lifted me up onto the bench when we think she's pregnant.  "How did I get up here  .... please tell me you didn't ...!!"

"No!! Maizie did, she sedated you then put you up here, when you stopped trying to fight with her."  I looked at my hands which are hurting, they are covered in loads of small cuts probably from the crates that I vaguely remember smashing up, I glanced over at the mess I'd made in the corner.  "She's scary, she's really strong, she pinned you down with just one hand."  

I'm not worrying about her strength, my mind starts working overtime because something else is bugging me, that's twice now she's sedated me, that's not normal, My Dad sedates me a lot, he's a doctor so he can, but he has a reason for doing it when I lose it at home to stop me from beating him or anyone else up, to stop me from smashing the house up or hurting myself.  Why is Maizie handy with the sedation? How does she seem to have a supply of it?  It looks like that is what Prelude got a dose of too ... an overdose of that stuff could  put us into a permanant sleep ... I seriously need to try and not lose it again ... that could quite easily be the way they dispose of us!!

The hours passed by again very slowly with no sign of either Maizie or Manderine returning.  We are both very hungry, cold, and getting tired.  We are not sure whether it is because of the endless boredom or whether it is the time of day.  Neither of us have a watch, our phones have been taken off us, there are no windows in the room so we don't  have any idea of what the time is or even if it is still daytime or night.

Honey is sat on the bench falling asleep, her head on my shoulder, I told her to lie down and go to sleep, I'm glad that she didn't have to sleep on the cold floor.  We decided to sleep in shifts, we didn't trust them not to do something to us while we slept.  I sat up and let her use me as a pillow while she lay down and slept.

I am now too scared to sleep anyway, strangely its Manderine I don't trust more than Maizie even if she is a vampberry and Manderine isn't.  Honey said Maizie had been really nice to her once Manderine had gone upstairs, and she didn't have to sit talking to Honey for a while or sedate me to calm me down and put me on the bench, she could have just walked out and left me kicking off like Manderine had done.  She's a vampberry, she had been inside this cage, she could have faded me quite easily, she had the perfect opportunity to dispose of me, but she didn't.

I can't help but keep thinking about Mom's fall not being an accident,  Manderine, why does she seem so determined to fade my Mom, why does she hate her so much?!  Manderine obviously meant for Mom to be locked up here not us, it was Mom they had planned to snatch from the cemetery, we are only here because my Mom missed the funeral.  I'd tried to talk about it with Honey before she went to sleep wanting to  find out what else they have been hiding from me, what else don't I know?  She refused to tell me anything too scared it might unhinge me again.

The time passed by very very slowly as Honey slept soundly. Nobody came.  I am getting very bored just sitting here trying to think of ways to amuse myself, already sick of looking at my surrounding, I even tried talking to myself to pass the time away but it didn't help.

I am actually singing quite loudly knowing Honey is quite a heavy sleeper so it wouldn't bother her ... I hear a strange noise ...I look up and get the shock of my life. My mouth drops open and I instantly stopped singing.

Stood by the bars is a man, a vampberry, I can tell by his eyes and I can see the points of his teeth on his bottom lip and he also has the same tatoo on his neck that Maizie does.   I don't understand how he got down here without me hearing him, I hadn't heard the metal door or heard him on the stone steps.  It is like he just appeared there.

He is just standing there staring at me through the bars and I started to get very scared because he seriously looks angry, very angry, he's not saying anything either which is making it worse.

I jump up off the bench, I think about shaking Honey and waking her up.  I glance at her quickly and she is still peacefully sleeping so I decided to leave her, I really don't want her to get scared by seeing him, and if she's going to get it surely it's better she's asleep and doesn't know whats coming to her.  He looks really mean and scary!!   I'm not taking my eyes off the vampberry for a second  and he's not taking his eyes off me.  I back up against the wall and just stand there shaking waiting for him to do something.

I'm beginning to get really scared now by his constant staring and continued silence, just how long is he going to keep this up for before he actually does something?  I heard footsteps hurriedly running down the stone steps, I quickly glance over to see Maizie and Manderine both come running into the room, I noticed Manderine has that gun in her hand again.

"MAIZIE what the FUDGE is going on here???!!!"

He yells loudly not taking his eyes off me for a second.

Maizie just stands there saying nothing while Manderine hides behind her.

Both women look as scared as I am!!


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