Chapter 52
Scrambled Thoughts

A crash startled me immediately and my eyes snapped opened. Groggily, I sat up, squinting around the room and looking for where the noise had come from. One of the wives stood in the doorway staring down at where I was. When I moved in response to the noise, a physical look of relief overcame her features and she leaned against the doorframe, holding her heart where she had been shocked.

"Oh my god. I—I thought you were dead for a moment. When I saw you lying on the floor like that I was afraid you may have…"

I worked onto my elbows, propping myself up to look at the woman a little better and rub my eyes from the crust around them. "I'm not dead, I just… I think I may have… uh… passed out or something for a moment."

The woman looked concerned as she straightened. "I'll get the doctor."

"No. You don't need to." I told her, waving the suggestion off. "I'm just a little tired. Nothing more. I don't want to start a fuss."

She looked back at me, hovering in the door before finally abating. "Alright then."

I looked up at the wife and recognized her as the one called Sherry.

"Frankie or the guard usually checks up on me." I noted, getting up to sit at the table and face her at a better vantage point. "What are you doing here?"

"The guard needed a break and Frankie's with Negan, so they're a little busy right now." Sherry explained, simply. She didn't go into any more detail than that so I shrugged it off.

I really couldn't understand why Negan needed so many wives. What was so great about sex or fucking as he had mentioned before? I mean I had an abridged understanding of it; you got naked and you kissed a lot and then what? That seemed to be the basic mechanics of it from my point of view at least. I didn't think I was ever going to understand it.

"Alright." I sighed. My attention turned as she stooped down to gather together the remains of what appeared to be my lunch. Food and broken china was everywhere. Instinctively, I lowered from the chair.

"Let me help." I offered, kneeling down to assist.

Sherry only held up her hand, issuing me to stay right where I was. "No, no. Don't help me with this. There's sharp things and you don't need to be getting too close to this stuff."

My hands drew away and I stared back at her, knowing exactly what she was talking about and understanding just why she was refusing my help. She used plastic tray and took extra precaution to place each broken piece carefully on it before cleaning up the food.

I waited at the table, feeling stupid as well as useless while I sat there just watching. It made me uncomfortable when I wasn't allowed to do anything about a mess.

Eventually, Sherry had it all back on the tray and left promptly, holding it out in front of her. She was back not long after with a new plate piled high, this time with more durable plastic dishes.

"Alright, here's some new food for you." She set it down in front of me while she took the only other chair in the room. "I was told you haven't been eating as much as you should be, so you need to finish it all this time."

I grimaced but obediently began eating at her insistence. It was awkward sitting there while she monitored and made sure that I definitely consumed all of it. It was hard, but I did my best, managing to finish the majority of what she presented me with.

I couldn't stomach the cookie though and had to call it quits after the vegetables were all gone.

"They want you to finish the dessert." She reminded.

But I shook my head. "I'm full. I'll save it for later if I have to, but I just can't finish it, now." It was almost uncomfortable to be so full, especially when I was unused to satisfaction.

She looked on the verge of insisting more but finally decided to let it be.

"Alright then."

There was an awkward silence while she gathered up the dishes and turned to go. I got up from the table and went to curl up on the bed when her voice distracted me.

"Would you…" She hesitated, trying to find the right words while she stood there. "I'm not sure if you would like it, but you've been stuck in here for a week and a half now and I was wondering if there would be any chance you might like to play a game with me?"

I looked at her, stunned by the invitation but a lot more stunned by her announcement indicating how much time had passed.

"A week and a half?" I repeated quietly. "Is that all it's been?"

I was losing my grip on reality. I had never stayed inside for so long before. Not ever in my entire life. But somehow it had felt so much longer than that. So, so much longer. I was sentenced to stay here for another few weeks, but after barely ten days and I was already succumbing to insanity.

Sherry looked at a loss. "I… just thought you might enjoy some… company."

The suggestion made me pause while I considered it. I expected revulsion and anger to rise at the suggestion for the absurd assumption, but they did not. Instead, the most distinctive feeling that came to me was longing.

I thought I had made it abundantly clear that I wanted nothing to do with any of her kind; wives, Saviors and workers alike. Anyone and everyone behind these walls was definitely no friend of mine. I wasn't even about to tolerate the school children as potential acquaintances. Plus, she was a wife, to boot. Negan told me that all his wives were willing, and she had willingly married him, and by extent must have agreed to the methods that had been subjected to both me, my uncle, and my people. She consorted with the devil on a daily basis and allowed him to move close and touch her with no objection.

If she was friends with him, she was most certainly no friend of mine.

That's what logic had told me.

But things had fogged my perception while I was alone in that room, and the necessity for companionship was so strong that, so long as it was no one that said they were Negan, I could not pass up an opportunity for interaction with anyone sane.

"I—I guess." I finally conceded.

She seemed pleased by the announcement and turned. "Okay, I'm just going to drop these off and I'll be right back."

She returned promptly with a few boxes in her hands and I recognized what appeared to be board games.

"Alright we've got Scrabble, Monopoly, Life, and Sorry."

Geeze. All of them seemed sort of depressing and each individual reminded me of the events that had led to my unfortunate predicament. But I supposed the safest would have been the first.

"I like Scrabble okay." The game actually brought forth a particular sense of nostalgia as I remembered the wonderful individual that taught me it first. The same person that had taught me to love language and to love words. His image came to my mind just then and I focused on the memory of a tall dark outline framed by bright fallen snow.

Sherry nodded, selecting it from the pile and unboxing the pieces. "Scrabble it is then."

I took a stand and reached in to take seven letters when the bag was offered to me.

Sherry started it out, filling four spaces with a vertical "OATS".

I responded with "COALS" across from that.

The game continued that way back and forth while Sherry kept score on a notepad. She was a skilled enough opponent but I had the instruction of a better teacher under my belt and could easily match her wordplay.

While trading letters back and forth we started some light chitchat. It was nice—comforting even to have a conversation with someone that didn't result in shouting, for once. I didn't know a whole lot about this woman, but she was nice and it relieved some of the stress I had been feeling since my first arrival here. In the back of my mind I considered that maybe a few allies would be wise.

A strange quote somehow rang in my head just then; 'Where do we find our allies?'

'Among our enemies, where else?'

Where had I heard those words before? The image of kind yellow eyes looking back at me from the opposite end of a coffee table, filled my memory.

I looked over at the woman across from me. Could she be an ally?

Sherry talked about what she did before the epidemic and I told her a bit about traveling on the road with my family before we eventually arrived at Alexandria.

"I was a baby then so I don't remember much. The others sometimes tell me stories about it."

Sherry looked impressed, by the idea. "I don't know what I would have done with a baby on the road. I would have been scared shitless."

"Well my family are warriors." I boasted without restraint, implying on the difference between my people and hers. "Always have been always will be. That's just how we are. We take care of each other, so we're stronger than other groups, even if greedy lay-a-bouts steal everything we have."

The last words were spoken with venom and directed towards the visitor. In my anger I added a P, A, and Y to a diagonal BACK to create the word PAYBACK, illustrating just what I fantasized about almost constantly these days.

Sherry seemed to get uncomfortable with the thought and attempted to change the subject.

"Before everything… well happened, I was an elementary councilor and substitute teacher."

I forced a smile. "Oh… a teacher, huh?" I was a bit underwhelmed by the news. "That must have been… uh… nice."

She shrugged nonchalantly. "It had its moments."

I glanced back down at the words on the board, adding an S, T, R, A and W to her BERRY to spell out STRAWBERRY.

"You know Negan said he was a teacher." I announced.

Sherry paused by that revelation. "Really?"

"He said he was a gym teacher, from before."

"He told you that? He rarely ever talks about his former life."

"I told him I didn't want to know anything about what he used to be like, but he told me anyways. I don't know if I believe him or not, but if he was, he obviously sucked at it." I muttered. "But I guess it doesn't matter now. No one is like how they used to be."

"No." Sherry whispered thoughtfully. "We really aren't."

There was a strained moment of more silence while we switched back and forth with our words.

BAIL

BOUND

PROOF

FOWLER

On and on it went, till there was at last no more letters we had left. Sherry tallied up the score and announced the winner.

"It looks like I won by about five points. But that was fun," The woman proclaimed. "I haven't enjoyed a game like that for a while. You're pretty skilled with words."

An uncommon moment of insanity must have overcome me as my mouth turned up with a fleeting smile. The praise was so nice to hear that I couldn't help myself and let it consume my starving need for affection.

"Do you want to play another?" She asked enthusiastically gathering up the pieces.

By her question, something occurred to me just then.

"A—are you allowed to be in here with me?" I wasn't sure if Negan meant this as a punishment I had to endure on my own or not.

Sherry only shrugged. "I know that you're supposed to be staying in your room, but Negan never said you couldn't have visitors."

"Visitors…" The only living visitors I had had so far was my guard and brief interactions with Frankie. Other than that, there wasn't anyone who had even attempted to see me. Or if they had I hadn't heard about it. I often thought about Daryl and wished I was allowed to at least see him every now and again, but I had scarcely seen a trace of him since the beating and I wasn't totally sure if that had been an accident or not.

If Negan was upholding his end of the deal then he should have been treated better like we had agreed on. But Negan wasn't honoring his other agreements so the chances that the quality of living for my uncle improving, was probably very slim.

Maybe it would be okay to ask about it.

"Is… is my uncle okay?" I asked tentatively. "Negan said he'd treat him better, but I haven't seen him for a while so I'm not sure if…"

"I know he got a cot in his room, now." Sherry conveyed. "He's gotten a few changes of clothes, too. They're washed every other week. He has better food now as well. There's not much variety, but it beats what he had before."

"What was he eating before?" I questioned, worried instantly for the quality of sustenance he had been forced to live on for the better part of three years.

Sherry looked a bit uncomfortable. "I heard he had canned dogfood most of the time."

"Dogfood!"

She nodded.

There were no words in me to properly convey my appall. My fists clenched tightly and I looked down at the table, shaking with anger and disgust for the revelation.

"I… I've tried to look out for him for the time he's been here." She said in a small voice. "It's been a challenge."

That took me off guard. "You? Why?" What reason did she have to look out for him? He was an Alexandrian and she was a Savior—a wife of Negan's. They were enemies—or supposed to be at least. Why did she feel any responsibility to look out for him?

"That's… that's a bit hard to explain." There was a look of shame that crossed her face with those words and my mind was instantly suspicious.

"Explain anyways."

She looked towards the commanding tone I used and began sheepishly, almost sadly.

"Well, I guess you could say Daryl tried to help us one time; that's to say me, my sister, and another person here. We were on the run and he tried to help us get away. He distracted the people who were after us. And then he still helped bury my sister when she was killed by walkers. He even offered to take us with him back to his people. But when we could, we betrayed him. Took his crossbow and his bike and left him in the forest. We were caught by the Saviors and told them who helped us and well… the rest is history."

With her story, several missing puzzle pieces seemed to fall into place just then. How Negan had known so much to find our town, especially after everyone had been so careful not to have been followed. It even explained his interest in my uncle, why he was singled out among everyone else during the ambush and dragged here to be a prisoner.

Sherry, this woman, was the reason why we were all enslaved. Daryl tried to help her and her gratitude for his help was to drive a knife through his back. She was the reason he was here. She was the reason he had been imprisoned. She was the reason he was abused.

Her! All her!

"So, the reason Daryl is a prisoner, the reason all my people are under these bastards' thumbs, the reason I'm here in the first place… all that is because of you?"

Sherry's face flushed with embarrassment and guilt. She seemed to struggle with words as she opened her mouth to say something, maybe to defend or deny it.

Either way, I could no longer seem to stomach her presence. A wash of senseless disgust overpowered me and all I longed to do was grab the games and throw them at that bitch's head. Instead, a much more composed part of me stood and pointed to the door.

"Get out." I said firmly. The monster in me growled for blood and violence yet found some slight satisfaction in the stunned expression she held as response for my cold and commanding tone.

There was a small moment of silence between us before the woman sighed, collected the game boxes, and left.

The moment she was gone, I was met with the same overpowering loneliness I'd been feeling since the first moment of arriving at the factory, but I shoved it aside like always. Sherry's visit had reminded me of who I really was and what these people were. She had seemed nice, friendly even, while I was conversing with her, starved for the need of companionship so much I discarded my beliefs for a fleeting moment of comfort.

I had been a fool!

She was an enemy-a traitor! She had stabbed Daryl in the back when it suited her and used the information she had gotten from him to sell out my people, my family, and me.

She was not an ally.

Author's notes: These two had originally been one chapter but they were so long that I had to split them up. So Negan's decided that if abuse and intimidation doesn't work on controlling this kid then some neglect and imprisonment should do the job, right?

Wrong!

She still refuses to take his crap, so even if he plans to keep her locked up forever she's going to find someway to get out. I'm excited to see what she plans to do next update.

In the meantime, I've been keeping up with updates about the new game coming out with Clementine, and was sort of disappointed to hear that it takes place mostly in a School with a bunch of kids, because I had plans for a scenario similar to EXACTLY that later on in this story. It's definitely not going to be what they makers are intending to do, but still. Now it's like I'm just copying them when I swear I made plans about this, like, a year ago before I even heard of the plot for the game.

I want to use as much references from the Walking Dead mythos as I possibly can, but the scenarios are probably going to be pretty different. So for everyone who keeps up with this story till we reach those chapters, please know that I planned this eons ago and didn't steal the idea from the game then decided to just changed things around to satisfy myself.

Thank you for all your lovely encouragements and don't forget to leave a review.

Luv ya lots!