I don’t know how long we were sitting there but eventually I calmed down. My throat was burning and my body felt like I was going to pass out. Tyler gave me a minute to collect myself before we went down to the others. I sat looking at the bowl of food. It smelled good and looked like regular chicken soup, but I had no apatice.

“How do you do it?” I said. The others stopped eating and looked at me. I shook my head. “I mean how do you deal with the fact that your parents sold you?” Isaiah started crying, Natalie walked over to him and held her arm around him. They walked away to the watchtower and disappeared. I felt my cheeks burn in shame. Aiden put down his bowl on the ground and shrugged.

“My parents never liked me to begin with. They probably jumped at the chance to get something worthwhile from having me.” Tyler put his hand on Aiden’s shoulder and squeezed. “So to me it didn’t take long to face reality. It’s not like it’s worse here than it ever was at home.”

“But at home you didn’t have to fear for your life every day.” Tyler said. Aiden took a hold of Tyler’s wrist and stared right into his eyes.

“You have no idea how hard each day at home could be.” He grit his teeths, not to scream. “But you're right there is a big difference, here I atleast have the chance to survive.” He let go of Tyler’s arm roughly, looking over at me. “I’m going to bed, have a nice night.” He gave me a weak smile and left. Tyler and I sat in silence for a bit, just staring at the woods. He gave a sigh and looked over at me.

“Most of us can’t be sure why our parents gave us up, but in one way or another it’s about money. If they only wanted to get rid of us, there are better ways.”

“Yeah but how do you deal with it? It’s hard enough to imagine anyone doing this to someone, but having your own parents do it. How do you live with that knowledge?” Tyler took hold of my hand.

“It’s not easy, but we don’t have much of a choice. We have to learn fast if we want to survive, we can’t waste our time feeling sorry for ourselves, it will kill us.” Tyler stood and started cleaning up after dinner. “You should finish your food, you’re going to need your strength for tomorrow.” I forced as much food down as I could, before going to sleep in the watchtower.


I was at home in my room reading, when my mom yelled for me that dinner was ready. I walked down the stairs towards the kitchen, when I heard my parents talking.

“I think she can be the one.” My mom said,

“We have trained her longer than the others, so if it’s not enough, I don’t think we can have another.” My dad said, my mom gave a sigh.

“Yeah, we are getting old.” I threw open the door, the kitchen was empty. Outside was only darkness and no sound could be heard anymore. I walked around the house but no one was there. Behind me I heard a window break and all sounds came back at once. I turned around and a creature jumped on top of me.

I woke up in my own sweat, the other four were staring at me.

“W-what’s going on?” I lifted my head and looked at the others.

“You were screaming.” Natalie said.

“I did?” looking down at my hands and then back at her. “I was just having a nightmare.” Isaiah walked over to me, giving me his stuffed animal, it was made from different coloured fabrics sewed together to look as close to a teddy bear as possible.

“It helps me when I have nightmares.” He said.

“Thank you.” I smiled at him.

“I’m going back to sleep.” Aiden grunted.


I was awakened by Isaiah shaking me. The sun was almost all the way up and the others were gone. I was still holding the teddy bear.

“Thanks.” I said giving the teddy bear back to Isaiah, he smiled. “What’s its name?” He looked into its face.

“Twinky.”


We joined the others outside making breakfast. Isaiah ran over to Natalie and gave her a hug. Aiden gave me a bowl of what looked like porridge and I sat down on the grass to eat. Natalie went around and gave all of us a piece of bread with butter and we all ate in silence. When we were done eating, I got stuck with cleaning the dishes.

Afterwards we all got together to decide what needed to be done for the day. We got into three teams, Natalie and Isaiah to pick up the foodpackage of the day, Aiden and I to hunt down a creature, to get more materials to make new clothes, Tyler alone to get materials to make more weapons.


Aiden and I decided what weapons to bring with us, he told me that I should focus on bow and arrow, because it was my first time killing a creature. I also took a few knives. Aiden took a spear and a couple of knives. He asked me if I knew how to use the weapons, I told him that my parents had put me on training in different weapons and also in different martial arts from a young age, so I knew how to fight in many ways. He gave me a funny look at that.

“What?” I ask him, a bit too aggressively. He looked straight into my eyes.

“Don’t you think it’s weird? That your parents taught you how to fight and then sent you here?”

“What do you mean? It’s good for a girl to learn how to defend herself.”

“Yeah that is true but if they only wanted you to be able to defend yourself it would have been enough for you to learn one thing and be done with it.” I looked at him puzzled. “It’s like they have trained you for this your whole life, almost like they only got you for this moment.” I bit my lip and looked away. “I’m probably just overthinking it.” He said with a chuckle. Aiden put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a big smile. “Let’s go, we don’t want to stand around here all day.”


We did most of our hunting in silence, tracking was one thing I did not have much experience in, but as luck would have it, Aiden was pretty good at it. He found footprints for us to follow, about 20 minutes into the woods. They were close to a bear but longer like human feet, but it was definitely walking on all four. We walked slowly trying not to give ourselves away. When we got close enough to see it, Aiden told me to stay there and be ready with the bow. I got in a position where I could see it well enough to shoot. The creature was standing with its back to me, its legs were just bones but its back had a thick layer of fur with the tail of a monkey.

Aiden was creeping up on it from the other side and nodded at me. I raised my bow, placing an arrow in it. I drew it back and fired, the arrow flew forward, piercing itself in the back of the creature. It let out a loud roar, standing up on its back legs, turning its face towards me. We locked eyes. Its eyes were just two black orbs, making me feel like I disappeared into nothingness. Aiden jumped up on its back, breaking the spell. It fell forward back on all four, Aiden raised his spear and brought it back down, breaking the skin. A thick dark green liquid poured out. Aiden jumped down, taking out a knife in each hand. The creature looked angry, its face was a human girl. It turned and jumped on top of Aiden, with the sound of breaking bones. I shock my head, getting control of the situation. I raised the bow again, letting the arrows rain over the creature. It didn’t give me any notice. I could only see the creature, flailing its legs at the ground. I threw the bow to the side, jumping into the fight with my own knives.

Both Aiden and I were panting, the creature laying dead beside us.

“How did you like your first hunt?” Said Aiden.

“I thought we were going to die.” I chuckled, he joined in. We both sat up and looked at eachother. Neither one of us were badly hurt, just had some scratches.


We carried the creature back to the tower. We were the first ones to return and Aiden showed me how to harness the creature. Before we started I asked Aiden why the creature had a human face. Aiden started showing me how to cut off the fur.

“It’s because they all start off as humans.” I stopped the cutting and looked at him.

“This is what happens to all of us if we get caught. They experiment on us until they can’t do anymore and then they let us lose to kill.”

“What!” I screamed. “How can you kill and cut open one of us so calmly?” He looked at me and said calmly.

“They are not human anymore. The experiments remove any humanity they once had, they only have their killer instinct left.”

“But still? They have been through hell. I wouldn’t want to be killed this way and if I had known I would never have joined in this hunt.” Frustrated tears started covering my face.

“I would. After going through all of that and just being a mindless beast, I would be better off dead.” I thought about it for a moment, Aiden was right. If I was just mindlessly killing everyone around me and my mind was long gone, then it would be better for everyone if I just died. I sigh.

“You’re right.” He smiled and continued with the creature.

“It doesn’t really matter if I’m right, we still have to do it to survive. It’s the only way to get fabric and blood”