Chapter 3 – Chap 3

Cloe’s so called house was actually a small room about the size of my bedroom, it contained an old, dirty matress, that made the ones found in jails look like a bed from a 5 star hotel in comparasion… and that was pretty much it. There was also a corner filled with some kind of yellow liquid.

“Cloe, do you know what a bathroom is?”

“No, what is it?”

That gave me all the information I needed… I slowly walked away from that corner.

“Oh,I forgot about Little One!”

Little One? Did Cloe have a little brother? Or maybe a pet? Perhaps she had found a mouse or a bug or something…however, given her deplorable living conditions, chosing to spend part of her precious and limited recources on a pet seemed like an idiotic move, and Cloe wasn’t an idiot, ignorant, sure, but not an idiot, if she were, she wouldn’t have survived years of being trapped down there with Primal. When I finally found out who Little One was, my jaw touhed the floor. It wasn’t a living being, it was a picture… of myself, when I was a little girl, about the same age as Cloe, or that’s what I first thought, upon closer inspection, I noticed the girl from the picture was wearing a certain shirt, a shirt I’d never EVER owned and/or worn in my life. This was a picture of my sister, it HAD to be.

“Cloe… where did you find this?”

“In some random room… I don’t remember. I think she’s sick, she’s been standing still, smiling for a long time.”

“It’s just a picture, an object,it’s not alive! Anyway, I gotta keep exploring, let’s go!”

“Hold on, I’m hungry!”

Cloe walked towards a dark corner and came out with…a bone?

She then started chewing on the bone as if that was the most normal thing in the world. I flashed my light at her, hoping to see what the dark corner was hiding. Leaned against the dirty wall, were a bunch of skeletons, human skeletons. What´s worse, the larger ones looked no bigger than the average teenager, and the smaller ones…were babies. My skin went pale, I screamed, an urge to puke came up from my stomach to my throat.

” Ugh… What are you doing? What’s wrong?”

For a second I forgot about everything, about my sister, about the mystery, about Primal… and just stared at Cloe in a mix of confusion, shock and terror. Did she really… do it? Was she no better than Primal? Was her innocence just a trick and I had fallen into her trap, lured into her lair to be consumed and turned into a pile of bones? After a few seconds of tension, I gathered the courage to whisper a few words.

” What…are…those?”

“Oh, they were my family when I was little, some of them were small ,and some big. I don’t remember much about them.”

“Your family? You lived with other people? There were other people living here? How? When? Why? I have so many questions!”

“Of course there were other people, how do you think I learned to talk?”

“Good point. But…what happened to them?”

At this point, I prepared for the worst, for the big revelation,for the I killed them, I needed to eat, or something like that.

” Some were sick, some couldn’t find any food, and some ran into Primal, and weren´t as lucky as me, you know.”

I then felt a huge relief, knowing Cloe wasn’t a murderer, eating the remains of your deceased family is still pretty messed up ,though I don’t blame her, finding food down there must’ve been pretty hard, especially with Primal roaming arround.

But that relief was at the expense of even more question, confusion and curiosity. Cloe said she was born here, and she also said she had a family, so could two of those skeletons be their parents? Then again, none of those were taller than me, and I wasn’t especially tall,they didn’t look like adults. I was so invested in my crazy conspiracy theories that I took me a few seconds to realise Cloe had started talking.

” Yeah, I tried talking to Primal once, but she didn’t want to…”

She then pulled up her shirt, revealing a large scar that ran diagonally across her chest.

“That monster…”

“No, she’s not evil, she just wants to eat and survive.”

I felt great pity for Cloe, for Primal too… but mostly for Cloe. Being trapped down there for your whole life, having to live every day alone, with the constant fear of running into a creature that will try to kill you on sight…must be horrible, especially for a little girl like her. I wanted to continue exploring and searching for clues, I wanted to solve the mystery of my sister and this whole thing, but I also wanted to help Cloe, to show her a better life, to get her that better life.

“Cloe, follow me. We’re getting out of this dump.”

” What do you mean with that?”

” I mean out of the basement, far away from this place, from Primal, from this misery, and into actual life.”

” I still don’t understand…”

“Don’t worry, you will soon!”