[This is a serialized novel, short chapter by short chapter. You can read the previous 32 chapters here. A new chapter will be delivered every week.]
A rap on the door and Carmen sat up in bed. A narrow rectangle of light came through the cracked window shade, a rainbow on her water glass
“Yes?” she called.
“It’s me,” a voice said.
Shonda?
“Just a minute.”
Carmen pulled on her shirt and opened the door. Shonda stood there alone, no sycophants, no guards. Unusual. Carmen didn’t know what to say.
“You alone?” Shonda said.
Of course I’m alone. You know that I am – you have a spy in every corner. Jesus. What was she doing here?
“Come have breakfast with me. I want to talk.”
She had shiny lips and needy eyes. Her need was sexy. It made Carmen feel powerful.
A quick image of a bobcat on top of the woodpile, standing in the snow behind her home when she was a kid flashed through Carmen’s mind.
She was seven or eight years old, headed to the outhouse in the bright sun. The cat sat staring passively through yellow eyes, calm, unwavering. The cat could be her friend! She thought. She put her hand out and stepped forward and the cat stood on its powerful legs, its ears straight and sharp, and it let out a hissing growl, deep and childish at the same time, it’s fangs just visible. Carmen stood still, transfixed by the transformation. She watched the bobcat as it jumped down from the pile into the snow and padded silently into the evergreens.
“Everyone’s got to eat,” Shonda said. “C’mon. Join me for pancakes.”
Carmen said no thank you, and returned to her bed. Shonda stood silently in the door for a moment.
“Ok,” she said. “Another time, then.”
Carmen stayed under the covers. She felt good!
I'm alive.
I said no to Shonda.
The thought came to her: That bobcat didn’t kill me all those years ago.
Carmen pictured Sarah and Joe climbing through the forest headed towards the wall. She knew that they would return for her, but she had no idea how long that might be. She needed to go and find them. How would she get out of here? She was exhausted, a prisoner.
She slept into the early afternoon. She had just opened her eyes and stretched when the door flew open again and her keepers Melia and Brie came in.
“Get up, get up,” Brie said.
“Get dressed.”
“What’s going on?” Carmen said.
“There’s a cougar in the camp. A big cat.”
“Crying like a wounded baby,” said Melia. “Shonda sent us to make sure you were ok.”
Carmen went to the window and looked out. She didn’t see the cat. She cocked her head and listened: a faint growl. A bobcat. How strange.
Have I willed this bobcat? she wondered.
“It’s a bobcat, not a mountain lion. And I’ll deal with it,” she said.
“You can’t,” said Brie. “You’ll get hurt. Shonda will kill us.”
“I won’t,” Carmen said, walking out the door. Her guards were too scared to follow.
The compound was empty and silent. Everyone was hiding. Carmen felt that each of her slow steps came just to the ground and hovered in the grass, spongy yet secure. She stepped surely and quietly forward, eyes scanning the grounds. The camp suddenly looked very small and insignificant.
She heard the growling again, and tilted her head towards it. There was the bobcat, sprawled across a picnic table, batting a live mouse back and forth between its paws. It glanced at Carmen with quick indifference and went back to its gaze. Carmen remained still. She felt the presence of another – she couldn’t say who, or what, but she felt protected and she let that feeling rule.
She stood still and watched the cat. The bobcat played until the mouse was dead and then it raised its head and stared at Carmen with eyes that opened to endless depth. Carmen felt the bobcat’s pulses.
“Go,” she said. “You are frightening these people.”
The bobcat processed this, stood, and flicked it’s tail. Whatever. Then it jumped off the table, velvet paws on the ground, and glided into the woods.
Carmen felt eyes on her from all the cabin windows. She walked through the camp alone for the first time. No one challenged her. Bobcat woman. She scanned the forest for the cat, no sign. As the others began to accept that the cat was gone, doors opened and then women came out.
Melia and Brie appeared and told her she was brave. Then they ordered her back into her cabin.
“No,” Carmen said.
They looked at each other, not sure what to do.
“That’s not an answer,” Brie said. “That’s not allowed.”
Carmen didn’t reply. Just sat down at a picnic table by herself. Brie’s shoulders dropped and she stepped back a tiny bit. Carmen breathed deeply, took it easy for the first time in days.
What were they going to do to her, anyway?
She looked around, wooden cabins, packed earth paths here to there, someone’s underwear hanging on a line.
This place is a bore, she thought.
Beyond the perimeter of this little village there were boulders and poplars and evergreens and a stream flowing down to a meadow.
Melia and Brie backed up and then walked off, as if repelled by Carmen’s newfound sense of liberation.
Wow, she said to herself. I fucking did it!
Power radiated out from her core. She’d never felt pure power before.
She got up and walked through the camp, not saying anything. At the first cabin a woman who had ignored her for the previous days gave her soft eyes and a sweet smile. At another cabin a woman opened the door, bowed and said, “You are amazingly brave, let me tell you.”
Finally, she reached Shonda’s cabin. Shonda opened the door, still magnificent, and stepped outside. She held a small backpack.
“Take this,” she said. “There is food and water, and a good knife – be free.”
“I'm already free,” said Carmen.
She took the bag and walked up the path into the woods. She could feel the cat moving alongside her, hidden in the woods but very near.