Link?
"Li... what?" Emmit tried to ask, slurring. Fuck it. He was too tired and cold to give a shit about anything anymore. Death suddenly didn't seem like such a scary concept if it meant he could rest, and the pain would stop.
"Later," the man said, nudging him forward with a fatherly pat on his back. "They know we're out here; we have to get back. Dig deep and keep running."
He did. Somehow, he kept going. Willed his legs to keep pumping, keep plunging his scarcely protected feet into the thick snow. As his first day in the mysterious woods began to give way to night, Emmit began to smell something that reminded him of camping in the early fall and Halloween night; a burnt and smoky smell, the acrid but pleasant stench of burning wood and the enticing aroma of meat being roasted. Jesus he was getting hungry. His body needed fuel and he was pushing it on fumes.
If the prospect of food wasn't enough to keep him going, the thought of being out in the dark woods alone with literal zombies certainly was. When his searing eyes happened upon a fluffy column of smoke, coiling up from the endless shroud of trees like a mythical serpent, Emmit found the last reserves of energy he had left and tapped into them. By the time he saw the dark, boxy shape of what looked like a ramshackle cabin, he was completely drained. He collapsed, falling into a deep sleep even before his body had struck the snow for the hundredth time. He stirred only once, when he felt big hands, like paws, digging into his armpits and dragging him.
Chapter 3: Dinner in Hell
Throughout most of his life, Emmit had been poor. He had never been homeless and sleeping on a sidewalk under a soggy newspaper, but he had also never been able to own his own car or his own house. He relied on a thrift store ten-speed to get him from Godfather's Pizza (where he sometimes cooked but usually delivered pizzas, forced to drive his boss's junky truck) to his tiny, shabby apartment. Emmit wasn't a worthless piece of shit, however. He had never even tried any drugs, didn't like to drink too much (unless he was feeling particularly low), and didn't sleep around. He just had rotten luck. Horrible luck, as a matter of fact, so bad that the "Mills Family Curse" was a running joke among his family.
Emmit's eyesight had also always been poor. He had needed glasses as early as the first grade, when he had begun developing nauseating headaches while squinting down at books. Headaches that were so bad that they made him puke. He had always thought that in life, there might not be anything worse for a kid to go through than being "the new kid". Which he had been, of course. The new kid in a new school with big brown glasses that looked like a figure eight racetrack around his eyes, and hand-me-down clothes from his older cousins.
The memory popped into his head as his eyes fluttered open, the skin of his face, arms, and back burning but not from the cold this time. It was heat, glorious, wonderful heat. Someone had placed a blanket over him as well. The blanket felt and smelled like a pile of old laundry, but it was cozy, nonetheless. He curled into a ball and let the memory play out, because it was really the only one he had. So far, anyway.
It was first grade. Mrs. Z... Zimmern? Zimmerman!
He could remember being so scared and nervous that he had been battling nervous farts, of which he had a seemingly endless supply. He had already missed the bus, on his very first day, and his father (who was a loving man stricken with a frighteningly short temper) was not pleased to have to drive him to school and then work a twelve-hour shift in a paper mill.
He had been wearing faded jeans that were much too big for him, and a stained green sweater with a peeling stegosaurus on the front that had a little black bead for an eye. He never forgot watching the heavy door swing open like the iron bars of a jail cell, opening in on a strange classroom he had never seen before. The walls had been covered with colorful crafts and projects that he hadn't been a part of, because he wasn't a part of this school or this group of kids. He was an outsider, an intruder even. No one would want to make room at their lunch table for a dirty poor kid like him.
There had been a gentle push on his back, and he had ambled in with his head down. He couldn't remember Mrs. Zimmerman's face, but he could hear her words just as well as if she had been standing beside him, saying them now.
"Class, I'd like to introduce you to our new student, Emmit Mills."
Emmit! He thought suddenly, jerking awake under the blanket. My name is Emmit Mills.
The eyes. God, all those eyes. The children had looked up from their notes and doodles, staring at him, ogling him like he had been a slide of a nasty insect shone on the wall from a projector. He heard whispers. He heard snickers. His stomach gurgled loudly, definitely loud enough for all the pretty little girls to hear.
"Nice glasses," a young boy had said to him with a small smile, and for the briefest of moments he had felt a swell of hope, almost palpable enough to make him cry. Maybe these kids would be nice to him. Maybe he would make friends and be welcome here, regardless of his old clothes and big brown glasses. The giggling that followed killed that hope swiftly.
