One day in hell

Trix squatted in the dust, digging around a thorny yellowish plant with a sharp rock. She worked one-handed, her other arm hovering at her side to keep her balance. She reached out to try and move the leaves out of the way so she could get a better view of the base of the plant, and the stump where her hand should be appeared in her peripheral vision. It was her left hand that was missing. Dean had been there when she awoke earlier that day and tried to tell her before she noticed herself, to break it to her gently. She had been too confused, too much in pain to understand, and it was only when she tried to grip her throbbing head that she had understood what he was saying. He held her until she stopped screaming and crying.

Sweat dripped from her brow as she worked, sucked into the dry grey dust at her feet. The plant had deep roots that had curled around the rocks that studded the land. It did not want to come out. She tried slicing at the base with her tool and a sticky white substance started leaking from the cuts. It had a musty, rotten smell. God, I hope this isn't edible she thought, death might be better than surviving on this. She winced, her left shoulder contracting in pain. She sat back on her heels and rested for a moment, holding her handless arm, massaging the wrist. It didn't hurt as much as it should. It was only when she thought about it that the stabs of pain would issue from where her index finger should be. The cut had left a smooth shiny finish like one big scar. Dean had said that she was sprawled on the ground when he found her: One hand behind her back, the other flung out ahead, through the door, into the corridor, out past where the redness had dissolved the rest of the world. Like the stone walls and the ceiling and the flagstones, her hand had been neatly removed, sliced away.

A few more minutes work cut the plant away from its roots leaving a ragged stump. She dropped it in the plastic bag at her feet, avoiding the white milky liquid. The bag was half full. A sad collection of spiky, wilted plants that she had dug up from the grey soil. She stood up too fast and wobbled, the blood rushing from her head. She waited for the blackness to pass. She hadn't eaten breakfast, and hours had passed since then, she was beginning to feel weak. She licked her dry lips, feeling the dust on them. Resisted the urge to wipe at them with the back of her hand. It would only make them worse, they were already cracked and bleeding. Had it been a day, yet? The light hadn't dimmed, there was no sun to move across the sky. For all she knew it could have been a week. How unfair, she thought, that I still get tired and hungry and thirsty in hell. We should at least be spared that.

The ruins of the classroom were still in sight. She was on the side of the ruins where the courtyard had once been. From here she could still see the slice of yew tree that had descended with them. She had been luckier than the tree, at least. Only a thin semicircle of the old yew remained, its top sliced off at the same height as the classroom walls. It stood resolute in its patch of rapidly drying earth. She walked back toward the school, her path intersecting with one of the giant bulbous cacti. It towered over her, twice her height, primary green, a barrel-like body balanced on top of a thick woody stem half a meter long. She ran her fingers across its skin as she passed, it was cool and smooth, the surface firm under her fingers like a ripe grape.

She pulled her knife from the plastic bag: it was another sharp rock, taken from the edge of the ruins where a stone had been sliced away into a sharp curved point, one edge narrowed to an invisible point. She dragged it against the cactus and it slipped into the flesh, slicing out a thick wedge that fell wetly into her hands. The fibrous flesh inside was a pale yellow. It glistened with moisture. She made the mistake of licking her lips again, tasting dust and blood and sweat. Her throat was like sandpaper. She looked up at the sound of a shout, Wilbur was walking over waving his hands. He had given up trying to stay clean and had taken his shirt off entirely to stay cool. His entire body was streaked with dust which had mixed with sweat as it ran down him. He looked like someone had tried to paint the outline of muscles on him with mud. His face was filthy, his hair stood up on one side.

"What?" he said as he saw a smile cross her face.

She looked down at herself, she had caught one of her shirt sleeves on a thorny bush earlier and ripped it open. She grabbed it and ripped it all the way, taking the whole sleeve off. "We look awful".

"Yeah. And you look guilty. What's that?"

Trix looked down at the chunk of cactus in her hand. The beads of moisture had gathered on the surface and formed drops. "It's a piece of cactus, it's full of water."

"Nice, bring it back to the classroom with the rest and we can show the others"

"I was thinking I should just try it now" said Trix, "I'm so thirsty"

"I dunno, we should do it gradually like Dean was saying, right?"

"Have you found any water?" said Trix

Wilbur shook his head.

"Right, so if it's poison, I die either way." She hesitated, then took a deep breath and bit into the chunk, her teeth squeaking as they cut through the fibres. It was like biting into a piece of cardboard soaked in Brussel sprout juice. The liquid squeezed out into her mouth and she swallowed. There was the slightest taste of melon, then an overwhelming bitterness that lingered in her mouth. "It tastes like shit" she said, gasping.

"Are you ok? Like poison or just, like..bad?"

"I'll let you know if I die" said Trix.

Wilbur helped her carry the rest of the piece of cactus. Trix picked up her plastic bag of plants, and they walked back to the ruins together. Wilbur had his own bag tied to his trousers, full of equally sad looking weedy green plants. As they grew closer to the ruins Trix's mind stuttered at the lack of shadows. It felt like there should be shade, there: a welcoming area of shadow thrown by the wall onto the dust, but there was none. Trix had no shadow either, the area beneath her body was as well lit as anywhere else. Earlier, she had tried cupping her hands together tightly and peering in through a gap. It was as bright within as without. The light didn't come from anywhere, it came from everywhere. The classroom walls looked flat and fake in that light, dream-like, like a child's painting.

Wilbur stopped walking, dropped the melon, started sprinting. Trix spotted a flash that he must be chasing: a furry shape that had been hiding at the foot of the wall. The thing zipped across the dust, weaving between stones, legs pumping. Wilbur whooped as he ran, half crouching with his hands extended to try and catch it. Trix saw him stop, "It went into a hole" he said, crouching down. "Did you see that? It was a little mouse thing"

"Yeah."

"There's life here! It survives"

"Maybe it drinks poison and eats rocks."

"Maybe we can eat it!" said Wilbur, he jogged back to where Trix was waiting.

They walked through the doorway of the classroom. The space was half-open on one side where the wall had been removed, but it still felt more comfortable than being outside in the wasteland. Dean was sitting at Jeremiah's desk surrounded by books. He had rolled his sleeves up but every time he turned a page they would slip down and he would have to push them up again. Emma stood behind him. She had tied her shirt up to stay cool, exposing her bellybutton, and used her tights to tie her mass of hair up and away from her neck and face. How effortlessly pretty she looks, even covered in dust and sweat thought Trix.

"How's the reading going?" asked Wilbur, dropping his bag to the floor and placing the melon down beside it, brushing it with his hand to try and clean off some of the mud that had formed when he dropped it in the dust.

"Not great." said Dean, "I've found one book in what might be old french, most of the rest are in Greek or Latin, and my Latin is very rusty I'm afraid. There's only one English book and it is complete gibberish. Mad ravings, just nouns, no grammar. How did you do?"

"I saw a mouse thing. Sort of a lizard mouse? Didn't catch it, but it lives in a hole outside. We could eat that maybe."

Emma wrinkled her face.

"Trix ate some cactus, too". Wilbur collapsed into one of the hard wooden school chairs that littered the room. "So we should watch her and make sure she doesn't puke or whatever."

"She did what? You did what?" said Dean, "I mean, Trix, I told you just to rest here anyway, your hand..."

"It's fine, working on something takes my mind off the pain. I can't afford to sit around doing nothing. I don't read Greek and I only have one hand. It makes sennse that I would be the one doing most of the gathering."

Dean shook his head, "our first priority should be staying safe and healthy."

"Starving to death is bad for your health, Dean, as is dying of thirst." said Trix, "anyway, I already ate it. It was horrible, but wet. I feel fine so far, just a bad taste in my mouth."

"Bitterness is often associated with poison, Trix" Dean's voice rose, "this is why we were going to all do the tasting together."

"It's done. Forget it", Trix dropped her own bag and sat down opposite Wilbur who rolled his eyes at her. Wilbur seemed fine. Unworried about their predicament, unaffected by her rejection of him the day before. Two days before? She still wasn't sure. She glanced at the clock on the wall, it had stopped on 7:45, the time of their arrival.

They spread what they had gathered out on the stone floor. Wilbur had collected a few of the same plants as Trix, and they put those together. A lot of them looked similar: dry spiky green leaves, Trix was unsure if they were different species or not. She felt a tightness in her stomach that could have been the melon but could also be hunger. They ended up with a dozen different items. Salomé had found a perch at the top of one of the walls and was peering down at them.

"Unable to face a violent but honourable death torn apart by voracious hell-beasts, you have chosen to expedite your own deaths by consuming vast quantities of poisonous plants, how fascinating this will be to watch." she flicked her tail back and forth. Trix had come to understand this meant she was amused.

"Come and help, Salomé" said Wilbur, "you would be bored without us."

"I don't eat, and I can assure you that if I did, it would not involve anything from that sad collection of foliage."

Ignoring her, Dean picked up the first plant, it dripped a milky liquid from its stem. "Back home, that's usually a bad sign" he said. "Milky liquid, unpleasant smells, overly bitter tastes, numbing of the tongue after tasting. I think those are the big things to look out for."

Emma whispered in Dean's ear, her eyes avoiding the others. "but like, that is earth plants, we co-evolved with them, we have no idea if that will apply here, too"

"I know, I agree, I told you, but it might, and it seems like a good idea to stick to those rules, at least to begin with. But I may be wrong" he whispered back.

Emma nodded and Dean put the plant to one side. Wilbur said "milkweed, rejected!". They continued through the rest one at a time, Wilbur throwing out a name for each: "razorleaf", "thornball", "frazzleroot". They were left with three things. A bulbous root that Trix had dug up from one low, leafy plant with purple tinged leaves ("puckleplum"). An orange flower with long wide leaves that flopped down from the stem ("wiltgreens"), and Trix's cactus piece ("bitter-grape").

Dean tasted a tiny piece of the wiltgreens, holding it on his tongue for a few minutes. "Seems fine" he said, and took a bigger bite. Wilbur did the same with the puckleplum, scraping off a sliver of root and putting it on his tongue. The flesh inside was a deep purple and had a slightly sour flavour. "Not bad" he said through his mouthful.

"How do you feel, Trix." said Dean

"Still fine." she was sitting very straight in her chair, her leg bouncing. She couldn't bear to just sit there and wait, to sit there awkwardly with silent Emma on one side, Wilbur on the other acting as if everything was fine. Not for one more second. "I'm going to collect some grass and see if we can get a fire going" she got out of her chair and walked stiffly out of the room without looking back. She wanted to break into a run. She wanted to scream and punch something. She found a dry looking stem of grass and hacked at it with her sharp rock. It bent easily out of the way, and she tried to reach out and hold it still. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" she screamed, remembering her missing hand. She pushed it over with her foot and slashed again and again at the stem through the tears that were filling her eyes.