Free Intentional Dissonance by pleasefindthis, Iain S. Thomas Page B

know’s he’s dead. He felt something die inside him when The End happened. No, the doctor was only playing games with him. Messing with his head for the sake of messing with it. Jon tries to sleep. He doesn’t. It’s not the whir of the machines outside, it’s the grinding of the gears inside his head. In the middle of the night, the guards throw open the door.
    “Here’s your friend, you freak,” says Deformed.
    A gasping mass of wood and sap is thrown into the cell with him. Edward. The guards slam the door shut and the rustling of leaves and shallow breathing is the only sound left. Jon quickly gets on the bucket of water and pulls some of the boarding off the cell window, letting the cold in but also some moonlight, enough to see Edward. Jon’s heart almost stops. Edward’s wooden body is covered in cuts and burns, thick gouts of sap weep from his wounds. He shouldn’t be alive. He probably won’t be for much longer. Thankfully, he’s only barely conscious.
    “What did they do to you?” asks Jon, stripping his shirt from his back to turn into make-shift bandages, forgetting that this is the same person who called him a junkie hours before.
    “Only the things I’ll be doing back to them soon,” says Edward through what must be exquisite pain. Jon rolls him over to try and cover the worst of the wounds, which is when he sees that one of Edward’s arms is gone; thin ribbons of wood are all that remain.
    “Your arm, Edward, your arm…” says Jon.
    “I know, son, it’ll grow back,” says Edward. He laughs and hacks up sap into his throat. Jon has never and will never meet a man or creature with the ability to laugh in the face of pain like Edward ever again. Jon shakes his head and continues to bandage him. It takes him more than an hour but most of Edward’s more serious wounds are covered, even the stump that used to be his left arm.
    “The bastards didn’t even take my good one,” says Edward and that’s the last thing he says before his brown eyes close and he sleeps. Jon is almost thankful for the distraction, for something to take his mind off his father and what the doctor said. He too finally finds some sleep.
    He’s woken up by the same two guards, kicking his body.

Chapter 10
    Then
    Two sets of initials in a heart, carved into the heart of a tree more than 100 years old, grown over with bark, keeping love a secret. Now hacked out of the wood.
    Meanwhile, somewhere else in time, Jon is eating his breakfast.
    “Where’s Dad?” asks Jon.
    “He went to work early. Why?” asks Jon’s mother.
    “No reason.”
    “You know you can talk to me, too.”
    “Uh-huh,” Jon says, into his cereal. Maybe not about this. And besides, he’s fallen into this trap before, he knows what happens: he tells her what’s on his mind and the next minute, he’s in the shrink’s office, having to explain why what’s on his mind is on his mind. She made herself an alien. Not him.
    He finishes his cereal, gets his bag and starts walking to school. He doesn’t like school. He must hand in his recording for music class. He must write his test. He doesn’t want to write his test. He just wants to be alone. He runs a stick along the side of the fence as he walks and it makes a click-clack sound. He just wants to see Michelle again. He loves her. He loves her like every mushy, romantic song he’s ever heard has ever told him how to love someone.
    Instead, the bells ring and he’s late. He sprints around the corner, into the school playground and there’s Gregory Ashcroft, resident asshole, who’s good at sports and does fairly well academically. If you didn’t talk to him, you’d say he was fairly good looking but as soon as he opened his mouth, everything about him screamed asshole. Right now, for example, Justin Pearson, resident geek, who’s not good at sports, kind of pale and doesn’t do that well academically, is sitting down on the edge of the low wall in the playground at the front of the