This is Prompt No. 9-Broken
Mitchie lay awake, shivering, on her bed of straw. She shifted a minuscule amount and winced as pain coursed up her thigh. She stared up at the ceiling, wishing away the pain she felt until the throbbing actually ceased. The position she was in was making her uncomfortable. Could she manage to turn over and readjust herself without jangling the manacles and waking Lonnie or George?
"I'll try," she whispered, knowing the painful consequences that would befall her if they woke and found her able to move.
Of late, George and Lonnie had found their amusement by testing out their fighting skills until Mitchie was unable to walk anymore. When she collapsed on the ground, unable to get up, they would finally leave her alone, until her strength had returned for another round.
"If I could just get my hands and feet free," Mitchie thought, rubbing her wrists against the shackles she was encaged in, "then I could fight them both. It wouldn't even matter that they're heavier than I am."
But she knew that such a wish was impossible. Neither one of the jailers would let her out of her bindings, for they knew that she would try and fight them. It didn't matter to them that it was obvious she wouldn't stand a chance against them in her present state, or that she could barely function, it only mattered that they didn't kill her. In their minds, driving her to the brink of death, but not sending her over, kept Queen Victoria's wrath away from them.
Mitchie grimaced as she remembered Lonnie's words: "It's our duty to the queen," he had said, "to flush out every unworthy person-"
"Spy!" George had spit out, interjecting on Lonnie's speech.
Lonnie had cuffed him, shouting, "Will you shut up? I'm trying to speak here!"
George had pouted and had looked sullen. "Fine," he had muttered.
"It's our job to flush out spies," Lonnie had gone on, casting a glance at George to make sure that he had picked up on the word usage of his reconstructed sentence. "Queen Victoria hasn't set a date yet for your trial, so we have to get as much information as we can out of you before she does."
"Like I've told you a thousand times," Mitchie had begun, her words slightly muffled around her split lip, "I'm not going-"
"To tell us anything," Lonnie had finished in a bored voice just a moment before the back of his hand connected with Mitchie's cheek. "We know."
It was from that moment on, the moment where he had switched from speaking to hitting and back again with such ease, that Mitchie understood for a fact something that she had wondered about. Lonnie and George were not completely "there." From that moment on, Mitchie had begun to fear that she would never make it out of the prison.
Back in the present, Mitchie shivered again from the cold that radiated out from the window directly across from her cell and managed to turn over on the horrid, straw excuse for a bed without disturbing the noisy shackles. She closed her eyes, thankful when she heard one snore and then an answering one. For now, she was safe. For now, her body had time to heal.
"Shane, where are you?" she silently cried out, wishing that he could somehow hear her across the vast ocean that separated them. Mitchie pressed her cheek into the straw, determined not to cry. A part of her, the trained, controlled part, warned her that crying was a sigh of weakness, and that it proved to the enemy that they had won. But the part of her that was still a young woman, a girl barely over eighteen, screamed and cried on the inside, tormented by the pain and suffering she was feeling.
"Please, Shane," she thought as she listened to the quiet sounds of the dungeon, now intensified by the lack of daily activity. Water dripped somewhere, and Mitchie shivered once more as she realized that it sounded like a clock, ticking down the time until Queen Victoria ordered her execution.
"Shane!" her heart cried out, wishing for the knight in shining armor from the fairy tales, the harlequin from France, to come rescue her.
Ever so softly, Mitchie ran her less bruised hand over her stomach, thinking of the baby she might never hold again. "My dear Shania," she thought. "How I love you!"
She lay there for the rest of the night, her left hand on her stomach, and her right fingers cradling the base of the finger where Shane's ring should have been. As dawn began to turn the walls of the cell from black to an ugly gray, Mitchie rolled over to face the wall so that Lonnie and George couldn't see that she was awake. She stifled a yawn, worried that even a whisper of a sound would wake up the mad jailers. The did not awake, and Mitchie breathed a sigh of relief once more. She closed her eyes and let her body relax onto the floor. Perhaps she would be able to sleep just for a few moments...
"Of course that's what she said!" someone yelled, startling Mitchie from her sleep. She clenched her hands into fists, worried that the blows would came at her back first. After a moment, though, she realized that the person speaking wasn't speaking to her.
"Are you sure?" That was George. Mitchie could identify him easily by the low, almost growl-like tone he always used.
"Of course!" Lonnie's high pitched voice rose to an even higher peal. "What, do you think I got it wrong or something?"
"Well..." The pause said everything.
"I didn't! Why else would the queen send for me and not you?" Mitchie's ears perked up at this. The queen had sent for Lonnie? Why?
The door to her cell opened and Mitchie automatically tensed. The footsteps drew closer and closer to her, but no blow was lashed out. The person bent down behind her, and Lonnie's voice asked, "Are you awake?"
Mitchie chose not to answer, fearful that it might be a ruse, and excuse somehow to beat her more.
Lonnie chuckled as though he could hear her thoughts. "That's fine," he said softly. "Sleep all you can. Your beauty rest is important." He ignored the snort from George and continued. "Because when the queen executes you in two weeks, you'll want to look your best." He grinned again and stood, exiting the cell with a loud clang.
Mitchie was almost too frozen to think. Her mind worked hurriedly, but all that made sense to her at that moment was the body inventory her mind was calculating. "One broken leg, one broken wrist, a fractured collar bone, more bruises than I can count, a black eye, a split lip, and a queen that wants me beheaded," she thought. "The next two weeks should be interesting."
A/N: Well? Please review because I want to know what you think!! Some shorter chapters will be coming up, just to warn you! :D
