The Borderkind Read Online Free Page A

eyes and spitting it from her mouth. Her scalp itched like mad, but no matter how she tried she could not get all the sand from her hair. Her captor brought her barely enough water to drink, and trying to use it for personal hygiene would have been idiotic. But still, the itch was maddening. Her body had begun to itch as well and the stale smell that came from her every pore made her nostrils flare in revulsion. Collette often took more than one shower in a day. She hated being unclean.
    But it was amazing to her how easily she could get used to certain things if it meant staying alive.
    Pissing in the corner of the chamber, for instance. At first she had held on so long that the need had brought her to tears. Then, when she could not hold off any longer, she took off her pajama pants—for she was still in her pajamas from the night of her abduction—and simply went where she stood.
    She camped elsewhere in the chamber from then on, and that spot had become
the
spot. For a couple of days she had tried to eat as little as possible of the fruit and cheese and bread the Sandman brought to her, knowing that it would eventually mean defecating in the same spot. But again, need overcame dignity. What unsettled her even more was that after she had relieved herself, the sand always shifted and the offending waste disappeared, disposed of somehow.
    In a part of her mind that had begun to fray, she had begun to think of the spot as “the litter box.”
    When she slept, curled into fetal position, the sand felt as though it crept across her bare flesh. At night, the sand was still warm, retaining some of the heat of the day. When the sun was up, however, the heat was terrible. The round chamber was wide and airy, with no doors but a dozen tall, arched windows set at intervals all around her. There was no glass, the opening to the outside world tantalizing to her, but they were twenty-five feet from the soft sand beneath her, and the walls were hard-packed sand like granite. Even in her few hopeful moments, she never imagined being able to climb up there to escape.
    The days seemed to last an eternity, and the nights even longer, so that she knew her impression of how long she had been imprisoned could not possibly be accurate. Her body, though, told her the only thing that mattered…it had been too long. The muscles in her neck and back and shoulders were knotted from sleeping on the sand and the rest of her was stiff just from sitting against the wall.
    Now, every few hours, she spent twenty minutes walking the perimeter of her prison, during the day moving from one shadow to another. At midday she always rested. There was no hiding from the sun when it was directly above and it was best not to exert herself then.
    After dark, the walking continued.
    The sand shifted beneath her feet as she marched on, sometimes stumbling as it gave way. Her arches were bands of pain, but she ignored them. The light of the Vittora accompanied her, hovering up near the windows now as though watching her, and it spurred her on. The walking kept her from withering, from just curling up and waiting to die. She would not surrender that easily. It was both a tiny bit of madness and the thing that staved off the deeper madness that awaited.
    Step after step, she followed the circular wall, somehow always aware of the spot she had made her litter box. No matter that the sand drew the shit and piss down into itself, leaving no trace; she still circumvented that spot on her walks.
    When she had first awoken to find herself captive, she had found comfort in her memories of her favorite films. Movies were a vital part of her life, so often she lost herself in them, and time and again now, her mind went back to those worlds, to
Casablanca
and
Notting Hill,
to
L.A. Confidential
and
Rear Window,
to
The Philadelphia Story
and
The Godfather.
But the Vittora was inside her mind and heart. It could see her thoughts and sometimes taunted her for her fantasizing about