The final week of Writer In Motion 2021 is here! Okay, okay, I’m a couple days late with my final version. For the final stretch, each participant was paired with an editor. I was matched up with Justine Manzano, who had some fantastic advice. Like last year, the final tweaks came down to nailing down the specifics and tightening up my formatting. Fix the areas where things were a little jumbled or unclear, adjust where I’d read past an error so many times I didn’t even notice it anymore.
I love participating in Writer In Motion. It’s all about the process: Taking a prompt and turning it into a messy first draft, polishing it on my own, getting a CP to check it all out, then having an editor fine-tune the piece.
But, no matter how much my piece changes, watching as the other participants craft their own stories from the very same prompt—and seeing how different they all turn out—is the most exciting bit for me.
So, many many thanks to my CPs and Justine for their advice, and thanks to the other participants who cheered each other on through the whole month. I can’t wait until the next time! And now: the final, CP’d, editor-critiqued verison.
The Guarded
Contained. Restrained. Locked down and under control. Keep it together, no matter what. Keep the secrets, share the imperative, withhold the truth.
The person wearing green gloves had peeled away layers to explore her memories—to read her mind. She’d held steady.
Now, they circled her, their hands clasped, faux trustworthiness worn like a cloak. “Someone has a little secret.”
She bit into the worn-sore skin inside her cheek. The pain grounded her as she buried her thoughts inside an ink-black cavern. “Rumor has it there are lots of secrets around here.”
They grunted, lips turned ever-downward. Time was a tool of the trade, and they were taking full advantage. You earned more when the subconscious did the talking—when the waiting was too much. They weren’t going to rush.
“Someone trained you well. No matter. It’s there; I’ll find it. Then, I’ll undo you with a whisper.”
She shrugged as far as her bound arms would allow, nonchalance the only weapon she had. “You’ve got the wrong gal. You can’t find something that doesn’t exist.”
“Friedrick’s Pier, seven dead, one escaped.” They prodded the center of her ribcage with a meaty finger. “You.”
Cross denial off the list of probable tactics. Her mental bear trap tightened—metal tooth upon metal tooth—to keep her thoughts unreachable, untouchable.
Unsellable.
Her mind was granite, but their words were the rain. A relentless beating of raindrops in the form of accusations and misdirection. But, no matter how hard the rain poured, there was always something left of the stone. Pieces and sand rather than boulders, but pieces would do.
If they had enough secrets to sort through, she could outlast them. Keep the thoughts steady, silent. Entombed. Buried beneath the irrelevant brain fog, beneath lesser truths. Never lies. Lying was too easy to spot.
“Someone’s not supposed to be here,” they crooned. “Someone’s supposed to have joined her bloated companions at the bottom of the sea. How does a wispy thing like you escape an ordeal like Friedrick’s?”
Memories tried to spring up like crocus in early spring, but she conjured a shadow to bury the tiny, wriggling worms of thought. Irrelevant flashbacks, insignificant faces, a back and forth of wishes and dreams being beaten away by the idea of regret. The battlefield inside her head morphed as needed.
Slowly, bits of thought slipped—but not by accident. Hers was a calculated effort.
“Ah.” Their teeth flashed in a satisfied sneer.
She resisted as her mind tried to shift, to think about the one thing she had buried, had forced herself to forget. She held the image of The Company in her mind instead—the crew who hired her to steal memories, the most precious commodity. She feigned a twinge of distress at the thought of sacrificing them. To survive. To live.
She teased a thought beneath a pile of mental rubble. A stone wall, a rusted iron gate pitted by the overspray of crashing saltwater waves.
They took the bait.
They snapped their fingers, the thunder to accompany the lightning of their epiphany moment. “What a pitiful place to hide. But, that’s what you get for dealing secrets to the other side. To the enemy. And for what, a moment of glory?”
“You only despise glory because you’ve never had it.” She tipped her chin upward, defiant. “Might like it, given the opportunity.”
They spat on the floor. “Betrayal is despicable.”
After tearing through her thoughts, they had the nerve to speak of betrayal.
What did they know of betrayal?
She let flashes of memories slip through, one by one. Fuzzy, then clearer, then clearer, until it was obvious which faces she wanted them to pick out of the crowd. Each person who had betrayed her along the way.
The people who laughed and turned her away when she had nothing but the clothes on her back. Those who had shunned her for her uncanny knack for knowing. Nothing specific, and nothing intentional. Just knowing.
Those who had called her too dangerous for freedom. Those who had thought the worst of her, and yet still underestimated her. She gave them up. All except one.
She’d kept his location locked away, and instead flooded her oppressor with images of The Company—her former associates. Turned the lesser evil over to the enemy, because her friend had become the enemy. A different fate awaited traitors.
She slumped, a mask of fatigue painted across her features. Exhaustion, defeat, frustration. A far cry from the smug cheer she held back, the mettle she hid in her heart.
They laced their gloved fingers and reached their arms above their head in a cocky, spine-cracking stretch. “Not a fair fight, by any means, but a good effort. I’ll end you when we’re sure we’ve extracted all of the information we need.”
They left with a satisfied chuckle.
She wiggled her wrists to finish the untying process she’d begun the moment they’d bound her, then tugged the rope between her hands to test the strength. A sufficient weapon.
She shook away the fog she’d created in her mind, then pulled forward the memory she’d risked everything to keep. Where he’d hidden.
He’d promised her freedom in exchange for one final favor: incite an ambush to rid him of The Company before they snuffed him out for his artifice. Because only she could deceive this way. Only she could hold a secret so closely.
But she knew he wasn’t going to keep his end of the deal, and the one with the green gloves wasn’t going to give up either. So she’d planted ideas elsewhere—they weren’t going to arrive at base to find The Company unaware.
The Company was ready and waiting, willing to raze the building behind them if it meant survival. Then they’d find him, and he wouldn’t survive.
Betrayal tasted sweeter when it earned your freedom.
When it’s kill or be killed, it’s better to bury the biggest secrets beneath the ones that keep you alive.
