Delusions of the Mind

Day 7- Maverick

The crowd of people drowning each other’s voices out, as shouts continue to ring out from them. I knew what they were thinking. The person lying here, shouldn’t have been dead, I also knew they were thinking that I had killed him. No one would take my word that I was in the warehouse when he died, and from the sounds of the shouts still coming from around me, no one had been here to see who his killer was. I would be blamed, because of the fact I had simply had a disagreement with him and Ariella a few days prior.

Backing away from the scene of flesh torn from bone, and eyes bulging in horror as not only knife wounds seeped blood, but also the ghastly way his hair was matted to his bloodied face. What a horrible way to die, alone and stabbed to death, then to have your flesh stripped from its own anchor I thought, as I bent over clutching my stomach. The rise of vomit burning my esophagus, could we truly escape before day fifty? Would anyone band together with me to give it a perfect attempt or would they fight me every step of the way? Whatever, was to be done, had to be done quickly, it was clear the longer we stayed locked in, the more of us would die.

Losing the ability to fight with my own body, feeling the fire ignite down in the pit of my stomach as it propelled everything through my esophagus. The horrible sound of my retching echoing through the silent night, mixing with the screams of horror still coming from the tent inside. Footsteps falling lightly as they approach me, a gently hand on my back, the soothing touch, coming from someone I couldn’t look at right now.

“You’ll be ok.” Came Emilia’s soft, gentle voice. She was right, I would be ok, but so would the people we could save.

Attempting to straighten back up, the intense pain in my stomach from emptying its contents on the ground below, grimacing as I begin to retch again. This time only dry heaving as I had nothing left to empty. Deeply inhaling the cool breeze rustling through the trees around us, the clammy feeling on my forehead slowly disappearing. Leaning against Emilia’s shoulder once I straightened up completely.

“We have to get out of here Emilia, I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to find a way to escape what has become our nightmare.” I reply softly, trying to ignore the burning sensation in my mouth.

“What do you mean? We’re under lock down we can’t go anywhere!” Emilia stated.

“We may be under lock down, but we have to get out of here! There is nothing good happening within this secluded area! Look around first we lose Ali, now we have lost Maverick! It’s either we find out who is doing this, or we all suffer a similar fate!” I half shout at her, trying not to alarm the others inside the tent still.

“Even if we could figure out who was behind the murders, how are we supposed to stop them?!” Emilia asked, frantically, the situation playing out in her head obviously a lot scarier than what we are dealing with now.

“We fend them off to survive. The longer we can fend them off, the better our chance of surviving until we can escape. This isn’t going to be an easy task. We’ll have to travel in pairs, so we don’t lose another life. This idea would have to come from you though. You have seen how they treat me now; no one is going to want to be paired up with me. No one is going to want to listen to me. They all think I am the murderer, they all want rid of me, because they think if I am gone then the murders stop. I highly doubt that’s the case, I haven’t been around when either murder took place. I was leaving the tent used by the knife-throwers when Ali was found dead, and I was in the warehouse just a few moments before Maverick was found. I never entered the big top today.” I state, watching as her facial expressions changed, she obviously knew I was telling the truth.

“He’s right, you know. I seen him in the warehouse before finding Maverick dead, and when Ali was found dead, he was leaving our tent.” Keylan piped up, he had obviously overheard most of our current conversation. “The question is, how do we pull off a flawless escape? If we do this we can’t be caught, being caught would just anger our assailant worse.”

“I don’t know, a flawless escape will take time, and planning. We’ll all need to spread out and canvas our areas thoroughly. We’ll need to know every route, every stone, and every person well be taking needs to be accounted for, well must go out in batches to not rise the suspicion of our assailant. Who wants to lead the first group out if we pull this off?” I inquire, looking up to the brilliant stars above, praying Emilia would offer to take the first group so I knew she was safe.

“I’ll take the first group.” Keylan spoke up first.

“Ok, then let’s start finding a way out. Remember we can’t take any of our objects or tools from the circus we don’t want to raise anyone’s suspicion at all about what were doing. The more people who know, the more people we put in danger.” I sigh, rubbing my wrists as they had just recently begun to hurt. It must have been a side effect from throwing daggers with them at practice.

“How can we escape without tools?” Emilia asked, looking between Keylan and myself.

“We can, we just have to plan meticulously.” Keylan replied, before walking off into the night to go surveillance the area around us.