NINE YEARS AGO。。。

**_HOLLAND

_**School was a living hell. The second hell I had other than my home. It was were people stared and judged, and I already had enough of that from my mother.

I was hiding in the library that day, eating my lunch and finishing up my homework, when he stopped in front of me. I looked up, eyes tired, and stared back at his dark gaze.

His hair, the color of blood, was shaggy and disoriented, curly at some ends, but straight at others. His glasses were perched on his nose, square and rigid. The glass inside the frames was clean; the light from the ceiling reflected off of the glass, causing his eyes to stay hidden behind the white sheen.

We stared at each other for a while, or, he stared at me. Then he licked his lips—I noticed that his nostrils flared as if he was smelling me—and said, “You look like an angel.”

I smiled and a warm feeling settled into my chest that day. An unfamiliar one at that. It excited me.

I didn’t know it then, but, I was in love.

Me, an angel living in hell.

---

PRESENT。。。

**_THOMAS

_**How is Jack going to get us out of this one?

How indeed.

At the moment, Holland and Treasure are preparing sandwiches with the materials we gathered from the store. Adon is laying down and muttering to himself, swaddled by a blanket that Holland folded him in.

On the other side of the van, Penny and Aubrey sit. Penny is rocking herself softly, eyes wide and in even worse shape than Adon. Aubrey is clutching her wounded leg close to her chest. Treasure had removed the bullets earlier this morning, but it still looked like she was in pain.

Jack, not having moved from the drivers seat although the van was parked, was stil. Rock still.

I took a deep breath and smelled them all:

Sugar, sweet, soft, and cavity inducing; Adon.

Red; Treasure.

A stench so pungent I cough to clear my throat if it; Penny.

The sharp, metallic smell of blood; Jack.

More feeling than smell, and it confuses me the same as it did when I first noticed it. An itch that creeps on the bridge of my nose; Aubrey.

And then the one I know best, the one of my love. A buttery scent, floating and wafting around the van lazily; Holland.

All different smells, but tinged with the same edge that I feel right now.

Fear.

We, the insane, are fearful of what comes next.

Under different circumstances, I would have laughed. But I am hungry, so painfully hungry, and if Holland weren’t in this van right now….

“Alright everyone!” Jack stands and moves into the spacey back of the travel van with the rest of us. Some of his confidence seems to have settled back; I smell it on him, a powdery smell of gun powder mixed with his usual scent. “I have a plan.”

Aubrey looks up, eyes narrowed. “And who said that we would follow your plan. Hell! I don’t even know you—you kidnapped me!”

Jack regards her with a lift of his nose. “Then go, run back to the police and see what they do with you. I’m sure they’ll protect you, a lady who was seen by two private investigators murdering an innocent woman outside of a public apartment complex. Go ahead, leave, no one will stop you.”

Treasure raises her hand, moving to Aubrey and wrapping the woman in her arms. “I will stop you.”

And that’s that. Aubrey is silent, leaning against Treasure with a goopy smile on her face and waves of pleasure wafting off of her, and Jack continues his speech.

“Penny,” he points to her rocking form, “has two very rich parents. These parents, who so kindly left her in that asylum for us to get—“

“They kidnapped you too?” Aubrey asks. Penny nods, then resumes rocking.

Jack continues as though none of that happened, but I see him working his jaw. He is aggravated—this situation is getting to him too, and he doesn’t want us to see it. “—have an old warehouse not too far from here. There we can get supplies, have shelter, and better yet, stay undetected.”

Adon, cheek squished against the floor and eyes drooping, squirms in his blanket. “I need to use the bathroom.”

Jack sighs, but goes to Adon and starts unwrapping him like an unwanted present. “We’ll head out tomorrow. For now, everyone rest and eat up. Treasure, you don’t mind driving tomorrow if I give you a map, do you?”

Treasure seems momentarily surprised at his question. Everyone does, except Aubrey and Penny who haven’t known him that long, and Adon who’s wrapping his arms around Jack’s neck after the blanket frees him.

Jack asked a question.

The smell of fear has never been more strong around us.

“No, no I do not,” she finally answers.

“Then the plan is finished and complete to follow,” he holds Adon up and opens the van door to the woods, “Meeting adjourned.”

---

HOLLAND

It’s our anniversary today. The anniversary of angel and the savior.

But he hasn’t called me an angel once today.

Obviously, this is a stressful time for all of us, but I really thought he’d remember.

Adon is sleeping on Jack tonight, the women back into their corner of the van. Thomas and I are side by side, my head on his shoulder, and his hand playing with the lobe of my ear.

It’s quiet. It’s dark. He can kiss me if he wants to.

He hasn’t yet.

“Thomas,” I mumble, leaning into his touch, “You must be hungry by now.”

He doesn’t speak, but his fingers trail down to my neck and stroke the skin there. There’s a moment of this, and my eyes close in peace. Then he says, “I am.”

“Would you like to go hunting?” Then, maybe then, he will remember our anniversary.

But he taps my neck in disagreement. “Doing so would get the police on our tracks. I’m sure their looking for every new possible cannibalism case they find on their desks.”

Oh, I had forgotten about that.

“Well, Tommy, don’t you have something to say to me today?”

“Like what?”

“I can’t tell you that. You should—you should know what I’m talking about.” My voice cracks.

His fingers still. “Holland, don’t play with me.”

I open my eyes and frown at him, my head lifting from his shoulder in hurt. “No! You don’t play with me, Thomas. How—how the hell do you not remember? We do this every year!”

“Well, if we do it every year, I’m sure I would remember.”

I stop, my breath rushing out of me like the raging waters of a waterfall. “Okay then.” I stand, brushing off my legs the moving to the van door. “Have a nice night, Thomas. Let’s see if you can spend the rest of it remembering what you should’ve known.”

He stares at me, his dark gaze hungry and restless, as I leave the van.

I wish it’d been hurt in his gaze more than anything else.