Untitled ( Part 11 ) Wasted Words

WHEN WE WENT into the red room and it was busier than I had ever seen it in my life.


It took me a while to realise why but then I remembered all the capsules were in the process of being rebuilt and everybody also had a ghoul attached now. So for everybody else it probably didn't look that busy.


'Dunstt!'


I turned around at the sound of my name. A little startled. We didn't really do the whole name thing, partly because we didn't need to and we didn't want to waste our words on trivialities.

It was Coin. She wears grey and I spend time with her on Exposure Day. I wanted to say Hi but I also wanted to keep my twelve words to use all at once. But she and some of the other girls never did. They were careless and spat them out a tiny piece at a time.

'Hi.'

Two words wasted. Foolish girl. I nodded and sat down next to her. The red room is only tiny but it's where we all like to hang out when we all want to be together. It's a round room and we all sit along the edge in a circle.


'Can't go to our rooms.'


She only had five words left now. I shook my head. Sometimes I think that's all we do. We nod and shake our heads like sheep. Stupid stupid girl. And then I started to worry about what would happen if Coin had the gift of mindspeak and she could hear what I was thinking about her. But then I stopped thinking like that because mindspeak is something I've made up so why would anybody have it in the first place?

Everybody had a ghoul and most of them seemed to be sleeping except for one which did something I wasn't expecting. It slipped off somebody's back and stood in the middle of the circle. And then it looked at me. Eyeball to eyeball. And it was like we were both in our own party that nobody else had been invited to.

It looked uncertain, as if it was waiting for my permission to make the next move.


'You can see me.'


Four words. I froze. I wanted to answer him back but I wasn't going to waste my words on a ghoul, I was saving them for my friends. I nodded.

He was agitated. I think he was more nervous than me at this sudden turn of events.


'Nobody.'


I still refused to return my words.


'Nobody should be able to see us. How can you do it?'


And then they fell out. Like spittle. They fell out before I could grab hold of them to put them back.


'A crackle gave it to me. It's a gift I don't want.'


Twelve words. All gone in one go. I could have cried.




A few seconds later she was dead. The girl that he came from. She was dead because he killed her.