Lila spent some time in her room, rummaging through some of the old, out of date catalogues and books that she had taken from the local Argos branch whenever they launched a new set of items to buy, and threw out a few of the ones from the previous year that she hadn’t gotten rid of yet. She had kept a few scrap pages from the ones that did throw out, all tucked away in the back of the oldest catalogue in her cupboard and spent some time at staring down all of the items that she had circled with all the little notes that she had made. The vast majority were from the children’s toy section and they were embarrassing. Zuzu robot hamster pets, make your own colour marker selections, a brightly coloured swing set, and so many other things that she prayed that nobody, except for Kai, would find from her. She took all those pages and reviewed the toys that she had picked out, and then threw all

As the sun set, on the kitchen table, Emmet took a kitchen knife to the camera lens and carefully outlined the border between the plastic and glass, easily cutting off the skin of the device to peer underneath. He placed it under the big lamp of their “living room” and peered down into the eyes that had been spying on him. He could hear the catalogue being flipped through from behind him and a quiet sigh. Emmet couldn’t help but smirk to himself hearing Jasper’s sigh, before going to back to focussing on his self-imposed task at hand. A pair of tweezers were picked up next, and he attempted to pick up the inner organs of the machine, wiggling them around a little, before letting them down again, going back to pick up the knife and lightly saw through the plastic around the seam of the camera casings. The popped apart and Emmet found himself immediately cur

“Did you hurt yourself, Lila?” Jasper asked, reaching over to take his third slice of tuna pizza,” You’re not using your right hand.” “Hmm… oh yeah. My sleeve got caught up in between some stuff and the fell onto my wrist. It’s gonna heal up in a few weeks so everything’s fine,” she half mumbled out in reply, chewing on her food and talking at the same time. “That sounds way too long for how casual you’re being,” Emmet idly commented from between them both, pushing the cheese and tomato pizza box closed and lifting it over his head to sit behind them all. “That’s because I really fucked it up and broke it. I was trying not to worry you,” Lila answered him, scowling a little. “This feels purposeful,” Jasper assessed, arching an eyebrow before taking another bite. “Ehh

“Now that the warning about your behaviour is out of the way, we can proceed further on the front of the administrative side of things, then we'll all get to the fun and exciting parts, alright." Gretel did not say a word, hating the man in front of her and his overly cheerfully sadistic demeanour. Everyone here knew that this was all a ploy and a mockery of the lives that they once lived, the once grudging and boring familiarity of the sequence he had rattled off was now a terrifying and demeaning display of loss and pain. The guard knew that they had all witnessed an execution before this and knew exactly damn well what he was doing as well, putting on this flamboyant hate show. "If you may all recall that when you were originally provided with this new employment opportunity, you were provided with your new identification cards. Well, to comply with the laws of this land, they are a necessary requirement, on the

“Hey, I’m back.”Lila’s head snapped upwards towards the café entrance.Stood within the doorway, with a fresh tan and a new red shirt, Kai was stood awkwardly fiddling with his hands, eyes immediately zoning in on Lila’s arm in its sling.“Are you alright? What happened? I was only gone for a bit!” he exclaimed, immediately rushing forwards to fuss about Lila’s injury, hands hovering close to her arm but not quite making the final step to actually touch it.Lila couldn’t help but smile down on him.“You can hold it, if you like. Just let me…” she fiddled with the strap around her neck and loosened the clasp, lowering her wrist away from her body but still making sure that it was snug in its supports.Kai’s hands immediately latched onto the skin around the black cast, feeling around the seam, pressing down slightly here and there, before blinking to himsel