Summer was alone in the dark.

11

Then
A year later

“You swing like a rookie, Summertime.”

Her name sounded wet in his mouth. She didn’t like it when he called her that anymore.

Her hands gripped the bat, her breathing hitching in terror as she stood over home plate; she wouldn’t look at him, but she could always feel his eyes as they probed. It was a sixth sense she wished she hadn’t acquired on that terrible afternoon a year ago. Since the day she’d overheard his conversation with Sammy, everything had been...different. The change was noticeable to everyone; she’d gone from being attentive and eager to sullen and rebellious overnight.

“We don’t have all day.” He scratched his chin, eyes narrowed, focused on her.

She took the stance he’d taught her, and it pained her to do so—to obey him—even if it were something she cared little about, like softball. Softball was merely the newest way he’d found to torture them. Before that, Taured had become obsessed with the chemicals companies were putting in food: he made lists of bad foods and good foods, posting what they were and were not allowed to eat on the doors of the dining hall.

“Isn’t that very Luther of him?” her mother had mumbled when she first saw them nailed to the door. As the weeks went by, Taured had added to the list, saying that anyone who ate what was on them would be sent to isolation, insisting they work together as a community to bring about change in their own bodies. The list grew and their meals shrank. For three months they ate one meal a day consisting of nothing but broths and the vegetables they grew at the compound. Taured called it detox fasting. The crux: people started passing out, falling down while they worked outside, malnourished and dehydrated from the laxatives he made them take. When productivity went down, the food came back, this time in the form of potatoes, which they also grew themselves. When he got something in his head, Taured’s obsession would overtake the compound.

They were less hungry than a year ago, but as his focus shifted to softball, he was learning more creative ways to break their bodies.