The realization shook her to the core and had her re-evaluating her entire gameplan – there were no other Borrowers living there. She was completely and utterly alone.
There were no scuff marks on the nobs and counters. Everything was pristine. No fibers were missing from the edges of the carpet. It was hard to come to any other conclusion.
There would be no one who knew what the other humans were like. There was no one who knew where food was stored or how to obtain it. The supplies she had in her pack were the only ones stored; and that wasn’t very much. She couldn’t even get into the walls to hide. She wasn’t strong enough. There were no borrowings available to her because they were all trapped in boxes.
The crushing realizations were beginning to sink in. She tried taking a breath. She tried reciting her parent’s mantra. Nothing was working. Her breathing became shallow. Why was it so hard to take in a breath? She wasn’t sure how she ended up there, but suddenly she was sitting on the counter, knees to her chest and arms wrapped around her torso. There was a cold pit in her chest, wracking her body with shivers and a chill like a frigid winter. The only warmth residing in her body began leaking from her body through thin stream of tears.
She would’ve stayed there on the counter. She wanted to stay there and do nothing else. Instinct, however, refused to let her give in so easily as her ears pricked at the faintest sound of jingling keys.
The humans were home.
Shay scrambled to her feet and propped herself against the backsplash of the sink. Her trembling hands fumbled with the hook at her hip. Could she make it to the ground? Would she even have enough time? Did it even matter?
Yes. Yes it mattered. What would her parents and her brothers think of her just giving up like this? No. She was a Borrower. She was going to do this.
Shay sprinted across the counter and just managed to latch her hook onto the handle just as the door opened. There was no time to do this safely. Heart pounding, Shay grabbed the line and threw herself off of the edge. The rope burned her hands as it slid through effortlessly. They tingled and stung as she hit the ground and rolled under the cabinets just out of sight. She bit back a cry as she stared at the thick red rope burn on her palms and her fingers just as an immense set of shoes stepped into the kitchen.
Shay sat down on the ground and shoved herself into the corner until she was half her already unnoticeable size. The humans stomped around, shaking the ground around her, evidently bringing things with them. She heard them talking but wasn’t listening. There were more pressing matters at hand. Now, on top of everything else, she was injured. Shay literally watched as red-hot blisters formed around the burn she inflicted on herself from her rapid descent. Now, she was alone with limited supplies and she was injured.
Soon, the sounds faded, doors shut, and now the only thing Shay could hear was the shuffling of boxes in the nearby bedroom she came from earlier. Evidently, the human was in the other room and, much like herself, was alone.
The Borrower teen hated to admit it, but there were only so many options available to her given the circumstances. One was obviously to try and get into the walls and hope she could get the necessary supplies. Another was to try and find the other members of the human’s family and sneak into a bag or case to make her way home – all the while not be discovered or seen. The final option, which terrified her to no end, was to approach the human and ask for help.
When she was young, she heard plenty of stories about Borrowers being kept by humans as pets or test subjects. Some of her brothers’ favorite scary stories consisted of these elements. Shay’s mother, on the other hand, had told one story – one singular story – that she held onto.
The story was about a young Borrower boy who befriended a human. The human was sick and couldn’t leave the bed without considerable difficulty, and that made her very lonely. So, taking a chance, the Borrower spent time visiting the sick human, talking about the adventures he had and the things he would do. Shay couldn’t remember how the story ended, but it was that sliver of hope of a Borrower befriending a human that she clung to.
Limited supplies, injured, and alone, Shay could only hang onto that sliver of hope as she forced herself, trembling, to her feet, and began to walk to the bedroom.
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