I feel a massive, non-alcoholic headache ripping through my skull as Julia’s soft words seem to dangle in the air like rotting skeletons.

                Charlie.

                It was Charlie all along.  On the brink of our escape, he sold us all out and cost Beth her life.

                And for what?

                Words he had so slyly let slip begin to creep back into my ears in hollow echoes.  All his nonchalance around the situation, his suggestion to me that I just try to enjoy the rape-and-murder-filled thrill ride that is Julia, and the time that he wanted to speak to her alone for just a little bit longer than everyone else.

                The rest of it hits me a few seconds later, though it doesn’t strike any easier, and nausea comes on despite my sobriety.

                He was enjoying this.  He loved every second of it, at least until his giant queen stuck him in a jar as reward for his war crimes.  Replaying his words in my head, I could hear it all coming back, this time dripping with greed and lust.

                It was Julia he wanted out of this.

                He wanted to get his greasy little mitts on her, and sealed the fates of five and soon to be six people into a doom almost certainly involving a slow, lonesome, wallowing death in the shallow grave of Julia’s trash can.

                I give into the sickness I feel and vomit.  I cup my hands around my mouth to try to limit the amount of it that I dribble into my girlfriend’s giant palm, although it’s of little help.  It’s good that we’re drinking, so Julia doesn’t give it a second thought as she roughly rises to her feet, using the wall as unbalanced support, and meanders toward the bathroom to clean me up.

                She doesn’t even say anything as she cups me over the sink and lets water rush down from above with a cold crash, over my back and between her soft fingers.

                I can feel the fingers of her other hand on my shoulders, stroking me slowly from the back of my neck and down to my butt.  Somehow my skin manages to tingle from the warmth and delicacy of her touch, and yet I still want to wrench myself away from contact with her.  With no clothes on, the feeling of her doughy palm flesh on my knees as I crouch over the edge, and on my bare back, adds an intense air of claustrophobia as the vomiting stops finally.  Even freed from the sickness, though, I feel like imploding.

                Every inch of me is alive with fury so white-hot that if he was in front of me I don’t think I would be able to stop myself from fastening my hands around Charlie’s neck and wringing until he was dead, no matter the cost to my precarious act in front of Julia.  The mere thought of it is my only oasis as I cough up the last dregs and endure my girlfriend’s finger petting my back, despite itching to leap from her palm and scream my lungs out with every fiber of my being.

                What are we?  Could we be seen as people anymore?  Charlie’s obviously perfectly content lowering himself down to the role of cockroach that Julia has assigned all of my friends.  He can’t possibly care anymore, and honestly I almost can’t.

                But I know the others had hope once.  Is it still left in them?  Is any part of them still alive, really?

                I can hardly keep myself focused.  I want to cry at the thought of it all, but I can’t.  Not yet.  Not with Julia bearing down on me and raising her palm closer to her blinking eyes, a rolling wave of hot, briny stench billowing out of the back of her throat from the vodka as she tries to comfortingly huff onto me.  I shiver a little at the acrid air I’m treated to, but I’m so atrophied that my body doesn’t even react.  It’s not like I have much further to fall, anyway.

                “Feel better yet, little mister?” Julia coos, intoning in odd places as she embraces her drunkenness more fully.  I feel her weight shifting from side to side with a little more haste than normal as she tries to stay upright.  “Got it all up?”

                “Yes,” I manage to croak, wiping my mouth with a knuckle and looking up into her glassy expression just above me.  She tilts her head and lets a couple of her chocolate locks sweep over my body gently as can be.  It actually doesn’t feel too bad, especially since my chilled skin is still shaking beyond my control after the evacuation of my already mostly empty stomach.  I try to allow myself the chance to catch my breath again as the velvety follicle cascades of the most psychotic woman to ever walk the earth offer me fleeting pleasures that make me hate myself even more.

                Some stupid intuition led me this far.  I convinced myself in my sleep that I had to get Julia drunk in case she could reveal something useful to me.  Now that she has, I realize I have no idea where to go next.

                The first thing would be to let the others know about Charlie.  The only way we’ll ever have another opening to get out of here is if we manage to cut him out of the loop.  Ideally, that would mean getting him on Julia’s bad side somehow and letting her do the job for us, but given how dangerous it is walking on these eggshells already, our best hope might just be speaking in whispers.

                And that’s assuming Julia even lets the four of them out of the jars before one or all of them die.   For all I know, these considerations are all for naught, because we’ll all have the life squelched from us between Julia’s fingertips before another opportunity even arises.

                I’m only seventeen and I’m carrying the weight of five lives on my shoulders.  It’s anyone’s guess as to whether I can actually support that weight.

                “Jack, listen, I don’t want you to worry about Charlie at all,” Julia says quickly, breaking me from my reverie, as though she’d been holding it back for minutes on end while caressing me with her hair and fingers.  “He knows I’m your goddess, but that’s as far as he goes.  There’s nothing between us at all.  He doesn’t touch me like you can.  Understand?”

                “Of course,” I answer as reassuringly as possible.  She clearly assumed I’d be riddled with jealousy over the possibility of another suitor in her life, although I can only imagine how righteously gleeful it would make her to imagine a pair of her pet men coming to blows over her honor.

                Not that I wouldn’t throttle the absolute shit out of the bastard’s neck if I had a ten second window to do so.

                “I hope you do know.  Because nobody is above you in those jars.  Nobody.  I mean, I love you more than anyone who’s the wrong size outside, too.  You know?”

                “I do know,” I say, nodding profusely.  With the bathroom door unlocked and the sink shut off, I notice Julia is wobbling back toward her bedroom.

                “Good,” she grins, another cute little burp escaping her lips.  “It does remind me, though, since we’re talking about them…”
                “Remind you of what?” I ask abruptly, probably more so than I should.  Whenever possible, I try to draw attention away from my friends, knowing there are far worse things Julia could do than leaving them in there if she had half a mind to experiment.

                Julia’s eyebrow tilts upward just a little, but she’s clearly still too drunk to be suspicious.  “You’re an eager itty bitty beaver, aren’t you?”

                “Oh, not really.  You know.  I just want to know what you were going to say,” I correct.

                “That’s good,” she says, stroking the top of my head with a fingertip and elbowing her way back into her bedroom.  “Not that your… beaver… is all that itty bitty.”

                I chuckle to appease her in spite of myself, far too drained to shudder at her terrible joke as we arrive back in front of the closet where she’s trapped all of the closest people in the world to me in conditions that would make hardened POWs beg for mercy on their knees.

                “I just need to move them around a little.  And, you know…” she drawls with a little giggle, cupping her other hand over her mouth.  “…make sure they’re still alive.”
                I try to hide the trembling I feel deep in my bones at her words.  Even inebriated, the jagged coldness is barely contained beneath her flowery girly-girl disguise.

                “We’ll get to that in a few minutes, actually,” Julia declares as her finger finds its way down to my exposed crotch once again, her words melding into a lascivious purr as she tries to rub me off.  “Think you can handle the wait?”

                “Oh, I don’t know.  It’ll be tough!” I laugh as convincingly as possible, the old familiar chill spreading through my bloodstream as the next molestation session begins in earnest.

                Normally, Julia would deposit me safely in a pocket, but given her freer state of mind, she instead sets me on her shoulder and winds a few strands of hair around my waist for protection.  Feeling the windy pull of gravity on either side, I wrap my forearms in the individual hairs for protection and look on as she swings the closet doors open with gusto, holding her arms dramatically to the side to put on a show for her pets.

                The row of jars is just as she left them, and as the artificial light of her bedroom pours in, I can see them all flinching at the drastic shift in shadow and sound.  Looks of emaciation are stretched over their faces and naked ribcages, but all of them are indeed alive and capable of movement.  As sickening as it is to look at all of them, none of them appear on the brink of death, and I breathe the most tentative sigh of relief in my life.

                I make eye contact with Gina, and I can see that same glint in her eye from before, fainter than it used to be, but nonetheless there.

                Her mind is alive in there too.

                Her body is broken down, though, and she looks too weak to do much more than walk for a few inches.  There’s so much I need to communicate to her, but I force myself to look away.  I might break down in tears if I look at her too long.  She seems to have the same belief and averts her gaze as well.

                Julia sets about the usual ritual depositing dried food and water inside the glass prisons, as well as cleaning out the edges and allowing some fresh air in.  The poked holes in the tops of the jars can’t really be doing much in the way of oxygen provision.

                She doesn’t say a word through this whole thing, and neither does anyone else.  Finally, she performs a last body inspection by plucking each of my friends one-by-one from their jars between her thumb and forefinger.  She examines them like scientific specimen grown in petri dishes, turning them over between her fingers and flattening them against her palm just hard enough to hear them gasp a single time for air.  Not a single thought to how they’re feeling or how close to the end they might be.  They’re just her living dolls who refused to worship her and now have to live like moths.  They appear so weak that they only summon the strength to hold themselves upright when Julia lifts an arm or a leg to feel their muscles.

                First Kelly, then Brian, then Anna.  Ghostly expressions hang on their faces, though I can’t say for sure if it’s out of fear or just plain ambivalence.  Anna’s rounded belly is bulging at what I assume is the maximum it’s going to reach.  She could be ready any day now.

                I try not to think about what will happen to her if no one is able to help her during the baby’s arrival.  I need to work on convincing Julia of the direness of the situation, though I can’t help but imagine the sixteen-year-old titaness isn’t going to be forthcoming with the required medical care.

                Charlie is next.  The look on his face is the perkiest.  No surprise.  As Julia turns him over between her thumbs I can see him wrapping his arms across her nails passionately, hugging her, clearly desiring to be kept out longer in her presence.

                An intense fantasy begins to play in my mind of Julia’s fingers mulching him into a fine paste with a single flick against the heel of her hand, and I let myself enjoy it until she puts the disheartened Charlie back in.

                I know this very well might’ve been my last chance to warn them all about Charlie, but the risk felt too great without a chance to even get close to any of them.  I’ll have to bide my time, however much of it we’ve got left.

                It’s Russian roulette with days for bullets.

                Gina is last.  Julia holds her at chin level, so close that the pair of us could call out to each other and hold a conversation.  I shut my eyes as her examination begins, but I can’t help it for long, and make myself to look down at the girl I love being handled like a piece of meat.

                I can see her trembling, the terror of the towering height of Julia’s hand settling in again, but she’s clearly too out of it to summon much physical reaction.  Our eyes meet and I force myself not to blink, holding the gaze as long as I can.

                The glimmer in her eyes is brighter now and she nods her head.  It’s imperceptible to Julia, but it’s there.  I smile, against all odds of the universe.  I so badly want her to think it can be okay, even though I have no idea if it can.  I want her to believe I have a plan, when all I really have are my stupid whims and intuitions.  I want her to believe I can save them all, when I hardly believe I can keep myself moving even outside the confines of a jar.

                I smile, and I lie, because I love her, and I see the tiniest returned grimace on her quivering lips.  Hope, strung out on life support, but nonetheless there.

                I don’t know when, where, or how, but as the most apathetic God is my witness, as long as I have a breath in my throat, I am going to get everyone out of this hellhole of an existence.

                It’s only as I pull myself from this newfound determination that I notice Julia is clumsily kicking the closet doors closed with the side of her left foot, leaving the other four sealed inside their jars.

                Gina is still in her hand.

                I feel myself freezing up, not able to understand or guess what’s coming, but all the same experiencing the slimy sensation that I’ve made a huge mistake.

                The kind of mistake where you lean too hard on a button and release the nukes.

                “What do you say, Jack?” Julia ponders theatrically without breaking her concentration on the cowering and naked form of Gina in her palm.  I watch Julia’s other gigantic hand flatten against her own stomach and slide down below the beltline of her pants, her fingers clearly slipping past the panties and instantly burrowing down into her womanhood as her wrist begins thrusting vigorously.  “Want to bring in a guest to our little party?”