M.J. Orz

“Abby is in a better place now.”

I was wrong.

She would tell me these horror stories about bad little boys and girls who decide to wander off at night and they never come home. I would ask her why they were called the Liars and she would shrug her shoulders.

“Just a precaution. We do it for everyone.” I pulled the leather padded straps tighter and tighter. “Just relax for me.” I could hear his breathing get heavier as I finished his legs.

Sammy was always there.

I am a coward and I may have begun the end of everyone I ever knew.

Run, damn it. Run. I couldn’t. She smiled, still. “It’s not so bad.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. Last night my brother said so many terrible things when I went down onto the carpet in our room to look – so many awful, cruel, and hateful things – that I just gave up and crawled back in bed without even a glance or glare beneath the furniture.

My head had bumped into a grate – more so like a cage rather than just a grate. And inside the cage, in a small dirt and concrete cell, sat a woman.