Danielle listens to the crickets singing outside as she massages her cramping finger. She’s been digging nonstop for hours. Her paper tool completely broke at some point yesterday, but by then the surface was ruff enough that she could get some friction to break it up more with her finger. The downside is hours of rubbing has left both of her pointer fingers raw.

She can feel that she’s close to breaking through, but once she does, she’ll have to plug the hole as soon as the man turns the light back off, as any light coming through would be a tip off that she’s been messing with the window. So, she’s been focusing on widening her hole instead of its depth.

Danielle sucks a bit more moisture from the bra pad in her mouth and leans her head back against the wall. She takes in a deep breath and feels her eyelids droop. Just as her mind hazes into sleep she hears the hatch unlock.

~

Alesha hides her water cloth and waits for the man’s head to pop down just as it has done twice in the past dozen-or-so hours. The man’s head indeed pops down, but he doesn’t reach for the lightbulb.

“Time for supper. What would you like?”

Alesha blinks at the man. The empty pit of her stomach had grown quiet over the past few days as it has started working into the depleting amount of fat stores in her body. Yet, the man has no reason to offer her food, her body could survive to the deadline without a meal. But currently, risking any potential nefarious purpose is a better option than refusing.  

Alesha speeds through the list of meals in her head. Pros, cons, protein content, vitamins…

“Ribs with orange sauce, please.”

~

Danielle watches as the man shrugs at the odd meal selection before disappearing and locking the hatch back closed. She waits a minute until she hears a door upstairs shut and the engine outside fade away, to scramble to her feet.

She begins picking up the scraps of caulk piled on the ground. With each handful she walks it over to a different corner and spreads it out towards the center of the room. By the time Danielle hears the car return, the pile is cleared, she is sitting back in her corner, and the crickets have stopped singing.

Three more days.

~

Jackson sits and listens to the man’s footsteps above him. Within a minute the hatch unlocks, and the man peeks his head in. Once he confirms Jackson is in the corner the man lowers himself down. Jackson flashes him a smile.

“Thank you for buying me dinner.”

The man seems pleased at the gratitude and starts to rummage through the plastic bag laced over his arm.

“I can’t say I’m familiar with this combo, is it some sort of new hip fusion?”

Jackson shakes his head and recalls the lie crafted for the man’s potential follow up questions.

“No, I have a mild allergy to the regular sauce, so I found I like this one as an alternative.”

The man gives a slight shrug then hands Jackson a Styrofoam container, packets of sauce, and a child’s juice box. Jackson takes the meal and gently places it in front of him.

“I do appreciate the care you gave for my odd request. Are you going to stay and eat with me? I’d love to chat.”

The man hovers for a minute before sitting across from Jackson and placing his own meal before him.

Jackson opens his container and begins spreading his sauce.

“I’ve been thinking since we last spoke about what I’d miss in the world, but I’ve spent my whole life so busy with work I’ve never really thought about what else I wanted to do. Would you mind telling me what you’ve seen of the world?”

Jackson grabs the bone of his barbeque and begins eating. The man seems to think for a minute while chewing his own meal.

“While I do know much about the world, my work tends to keep me within the United States. But I did travel to Mesopotamia years ago. It is there that I became inspired by Linear A and set about translating it…”

Jackson focuses on maintaining eye contact while the man speaks. Whenever he needs to verbally reply, he uses the meat in his mouth to delay his answers, and craft the most positive response. The man jumps topics from what he saw on his trip, to the history and mythology of the cultures that school deemed too perverse, then skipping to various anecdotes depending on Jackson’s follow up questions and reactions.

Jackson swallows his last bite of his meat, ignoring how empty his stomach still feels.

“That beach sounds like it should be on the front page of a magazine. Did it have a good sunset?”

The man licks the sauce from his fingers.

“I suppose it was beautiful in the classical sense, but what I found truly beautiful was the brief moment the sun flashed green. That flash is a rare phenomenon, few have seen it, and even fewer have done so while possessing the knowledge of its scientific basis.”

“That would have been so cool to see. The rarest thing I’ve ever seen was while I was out in the woods, not too far from where you took me, actually. I was hiking the ridge along the road, and on the cliff across from the gas station I spotted a shooting star.”

The man swigs the last of his soda.

“Ah, with all the light pollution it is certainly harder to see any stars in Silverbrook than it is up here…”

Jackson sucks on his own drink harder to hide the shock in his face as the man begins explaining the science behind light refraction in the sky’s changings of color and clarity. ‘Up here’? Jackson had figured from the loud presence of crickets they weren’t still in downtown, but his guess was the suburbs. Are they not still in Silverbrook?

As the man finishes his explanation, Jackson extends his juice box in a request to discard of it into the plastic bag. The man raises it and begins to pack his own finished meal with his other hand.

Jackson places the empty sauce packets into the container and begins to close the top but slides one of the bones out. He leans forward, offering the Styrofoam, giving himself room to hide the loose bone under his butt.

The man shoves all the trash into the plastic bag then stands.

“I’m glad you enjoyed your meal.”

Jackson gives him a nod.

“Thank you again for bringing it, and for teaching me.”

The man gives a professorial smile before backing his way to the hatch and exiting the way he came in.

~

Alesha retrieves the bone tucked away beneath her. Holding it firm in both hands she snaps it in half and brings the first half to her lips. Sucking as hard as she can, she draws the gelatin-like marrow from within. It squelches between her teeth in a way that grates her eardrums but she removes as much as she can from the first, then she starts on the second. Only when both are empty and her lips are raw does she stop for a full breath of air.

~

Mackenzie stares down at the two shards of bone in her hand. The break was too close to the center for either one to have a great grip, but one is longer than the other so it will have to do.

Holding the longer half at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground, Mackenzie starts grinding it against the concrete. When a pile of bone dust builds up, she blows it away and moves a foot over before starting again. Soon there are almost a dozen smooth spots on the floor.

Mackenzie inspects her handy work, a bone sharpened like a needle ready to pierce flesh.

~

Danielle stares at the sharpened bone in her hand. Placing the smaller half in her pocket as best she can, she uses her free hand to rub at the headache building behind her temples. She moves back over to the window and begins using her new chisel. A chunk, about twice the size of those she had been getting from the paper and her fingers, drops to the floor.  Danielle smiles and begins to dig faster. But as the minutes tick by and her stomach begins to empty again, Danielle struggles to ignore the thought that that was intended to be her last meal.