Hideout Jack Heath (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

and all the prisoners out of this alive. But I can’t think of it when I’m this hungry.

Samson’s foot is sticking out of the sheet. I try not to look at it.

Some days the voice in my head is the sensible one, and I’m the bad guy. Other times, I’m the responsible one.

If you weren’t so hungry, you might be able to think of a way out.

‘No,’ I grunt, still digging.

He’s dead. He won’t mind.

‘No.’

Plus, he was a killer. Who cares what happens to his body?

‘No.’

It’s not like you’d be destroying evidence. Not any more than you already are.

‘No.’

You’re a dead man anyway. Why not have a last meal?

The dirt at the bottom of the hole is too compacted to dig through. I throw down the shovel and drag the bundle over. I put the sole of my shoe against the shapeless mass inside and push. The corpse tumbles in, landing with a wet thud and a snap of broken bones.

The foot is still sticking out. I look at it, breathing heavily. I’m so hungry.

The voice is silent. It knows it’s won.

I reach down and grab his ankle. Glance back towards the greenhouse. No sign of Cedric.

I put Samson’s dirty toe in my mouth. It’s bigger than it looked and covered with fine hairs. I’m about to bite down, when—

‘What are you doing?’ Zara is standing on the other side of me, holding a bag of flour.

Panic. I drop Samson’s foot and hastily turn my face away. ‘Nothing. Just, uh, saying goodbye.’

I wipe my mouth and glance back at Zara to see if she buys this. A delighted grin is spreading across her face. ‘Do you have a foot fetish, Lux?’

‘Um … yes?’

‘Well.’ Zara smooths down her skirt and sits on a flat rock next to the vegetable patch. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’

‘Thanks.’ I’m cursing her for showing up at the wrong moment. I really, really wanted that toe.

‘Actually, you don’t need to keep it a secret,’ Zara says. ‘We’re all very open here. We don’t kink-shame anyone.’

She’s hasn’t mentioned the fact that Samson is dead. That’s a bit more than a kink. ‘It’s … kinda hard to be honest about what I’m into.’

‘Don’t worry. It gets a little easier each time.’ Zara kicks off her shoes and starts stretching out her stockinged toes. ‘Can I tell you a story?’

‘Sure.’

‘When I was a kid, I loved drawing. I’d make pictures of dragons and ruined castles and knights on horses. Some were in black and white, some in colour. I got some free illustration software and drew something new every day. I was obsessed.’

‘That doesn’t sound too kinky.’

Zara gives the comment a more generous laugh than it deserves. ‘Well, one day I broke my stepmom’s laptop. It was an accident—I tripped over the power cable, and it fell off her desk and cracked. But she wanted to punish me. So she took my laptop and she threw it out the window. It was only a ground-floor apartment, but the fall still killed it. All my illustrations were on there. Years of work. This was before cloud backups.’ She snorts. ‘A wicked stepmother. What a cliché, right?’

She doesn’t know how much information she’s giving me. If she had her own laptop but used free software, and a ground-floor apartment but a desk for her stepmom, I can pinpoint her household income within a couple of thousand dollars.

‘She apologised, of course,’ Zara continues. ‘She said I’d just made her so angry, and that her work was keeping a roof over our heads. I should be more careful in future, she told me—it was the kind of apology that was really just a list of the things I’d done wrong. So after she and Dad went to sleep, I snuck into their bedroom.’

So far every encounter with Zara has felt like a performance. She’s always glancing at the others as she talks, measuring their reactions. Not now, though. Her eyes are trained on the forest, but I don’t think she’s really seeing it. She’s back there, in that bedroom.

‘I might have made some noise, but they didn’t wake up, or maybe each of them thought it was the other one. I hid under their bed, right under my stepmom’s side. I had a needle for sewing badges onto my Girl Scouts uniform. It felt like I sat there for hours with it trembling in my hand, trying to work up the courage. Then I reached up around the side of the bed and pricked her.’

I stare at her. She doesn’t appear to be kidding.

‘I don’t know which body part I got. Her thigh, maybe. I expected her to scream, but she just stopped snoring suddenly, and then there was a little gasp, and she muttered, “What in God’s name?” She grabbed around in the bedclothes like this—’ Zara mimes rummaging ‘—looking for whatever had bitten her. Then she gave up. I waited for her to go to sleep … then I stabbed her again.’

Zara’s cheeks glow as she describes this. She has one hand resting between her thighs.

I’m distracted by something panting nearby. When I turn to look at the dog run, both dogs are asleep, their heads on their paws. Must be an animal somewhere in the forest—but it sounds close.

‘This time she yelped,’ Zara continues. ‘Ever step on a cat’s tail? It sounded like that. She scrambled out of bed and turned on the light. I could see her veiny old feet, right next to my face. I just lay there, my heart pounding. She pulled back the blankets so she could look under the bed. But just as she was bending down, Dad told her to knock it off. “You’re imagining things, honey. Go back to sleep.” They argued for a while, but eventually she got