Activity

It was strange, Mayra thought. For just a moment there, the boy was looking at her as if he recognised her somehow. As if he knew what she was feeling. Not that she was feeling anything. She had been trained to feel nothing but numbness from a very young age.

Finally he turned away. As if she wasn’t worth the effort of looking at. “That’s it I’m done,” the boy said, wearily turning to a corner in the room.

Her appearance seemed to have been the last straw for him. He looked exhausted.  “If anybody needs me I’ll be quietly panicking away from the door.”

She raised an eyebrow. He must have been through hell and back in order to be like this. He sounded utterly broken and finished as he called out, “Can somebody just stab me already so we can get back to some fragment of normalcy? Better yet can I just die finally?”

Mayra gazed at him, seeing the hopelessness in him as he tugged his hood over his head and flopped into the corner. She felt something twinge in her chest at the sight of him, but she immediately smothered it.

On the floor was a pack, bulging with what looked like food. She was reminded of how hungry she was. But what if it was poisoned?

Oh what did it matter? If death came for her it would be better than staying stuck in here with these hopelessly helpless souls.

She bent down and grabbed a piece of bread, biting into it. She heard a soft gasp and a sound of outrage but she didn’t care enough to look up. The bread was soft and delicious. She wolfed that one down and grabbed another.

She glanced down to see that boy staring at her again. Smacking her lips, she moved towards him. His eyes widened but didn’t move a muscle as she flopped down by the wall about six feet from him. And she continued to eat.

She looked at him sideways. His gaze was still hollow, but it was ingrained with a small hint of annoyance. After all, she had taken their food. But no one had stopped her so-

“That’s ours,” he spoke into the silence. She ignored him, chewing on the bread hungrily.

”Hello? Didn’t you hear me? That food belongs to <i>us</i>.”

She licked the crumbs off her fingers and glared at him through lowered eyes.

“So is no one going to address the fact that this stranger literally just snuck in without anyone noticing?”, one of the other guys blurted out.

No one answered. None of them seemed to care enough to ask her.

Mayra looked at the boy next to her. Seeing the hopelessness in his eyes as he watched her eat. A look she knew so well.

Silence stretched between them. She wondered when they were going to bother asking who she was and how she got here. But maybe they were too broken to do even that.

@kimlikesart @this-is-not-an-alien