The gutter above Kate’s window held rain water from the storm that had long since reached its conclusion. Raindrops fell in pairs from either side of the brown, plastic tubing. Perfect liquid crystals that reflected the world at every angle, plummeting to their tragic and simultaneous demise.
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
- So what are you suggesting exactly? That there’s a secret room where they keep the heavies and then draft them out at the slightest sign of any commotion?
Kate’s tone was loaded with sarcasm. She wanted this conversation over fast, but knew that her avoidance of the topic would attract unwanted suspicion and further questioning from Adam. Or perhaps she was just being paranoid.
- Well Katey, you were there too. Did you recognise those guys then?
- Who, Joe and Harrison?
- You know I don’t mean Joe and Harrison. I’m referring to the other two bruisers that came after.
- They’re probably just agency relief staff.
- Relief for who? Joe and Harrison? Joe and Harrison who just happened to be there as well? Joe and Harrison who were thrashing big sticks about the place…?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah… I get the picture! They overreacted. They didn’t kill anyone.
- How can you be so relaxed about this Katey? This is big news! Something’s up here!
- It’s big news if you’re pathetic enough to let it be. I know this place can get boring, but creating your own entertainment by over-dramatising every little thing that happens outside of the normal routine is just low.
Kate purposely faced away from Adam and stared through her barred windows out onto the smoking quad, as she struggled to summon a convincing facial expression to accompany what she was saying. She tried to detach from herself, as she listened to her own voice and tried to work out if she was coming across as sincere.
- It wasn’t so long ago that you insisted that Sally Hibbert was a government spy, because you’d apparently seen her with ‘listening equipment’.
- I still think there is something funny about that woman.
- She had just got a fucking hearing aid fitted Adam! The poor woman is as deaf as a door post.
The short silence that followed, gave Kate fleeting hope that she’d stopped Adam in his tracks. She hadn’t...
- But what if we’re not here because of the drugs? What if it’s all to do with something else altogether? None of us here have much of a memory left anyway, the state we’re in. What if they want us to be drugged up? What if they gave us the drugs in the first place?
That last suggestion of Adam’s hit Kate like a punch to the stomach. Her insides churned in such a primal and immediate way that she felt that she was lucky to have escaped an involuntary bowel movement. She knew that Adam wasn’t as stupid as he liked to act, but how the hell had he pulled this off? In this sinister game of Battleships, Adam had blindly launched a pop- shot missile, and it had landed squarely on Kate’s ship, rocking her to the core. No amount of verbal gymnastics would make her lies sound convincing now. With an instinctive urge to smother his mouth, so no more trouble could pour from it, Kate grabbed the back of Adam’s shaven head and covered his bearded lips with hers. The dense bush of his facial hair tickled her every pore, like an army of unkempt spiders attacking her face. It all happened too quickly for her brain to translate all this into feelings of disgust, then a second or two later, she found that she was enjoying the moment. It may not have even been Adam, but just the intimacy and the contact that she had intentionally deprived herself of since… well… since when exactly? Since long before she’d even heard the word ‘Ducie’, that much was certain. In her quest for solitude and escape, this is what she had been missing.