Ruin - By N.M. Martinez Page 0,1

forget that part."

Now, lying on this hard mattress, I crumple. My face presses into the blanket. No tears come, though I can feel them deep inside locked in my chest filling my lungs. It's a struggle for air. I don't know where Mom is. I don't even know where I am.

But I still remembered the glimpse I caught of her as they hauled us to different dark vans parked askew in front of our house. Her eyes were wide enough that I could see the white edging, the black irises like perfectly round holes. In that instant I drunk in the sight of her as if I knew I wouldn't see her again. Her short hair, dark against her light skin, was all over the place, hanging in her face wildly as she fought them. The top she wore clung tightly to her body and rode up as she struggled. But when she saw me, when her eyes went wide, she stopped. The group around her stopped too like she'd suddenly become too heavy to push on even though she's hardly over a hundred pounds all together.

And then she screamed my name. Surrounded by the noise suppressing darkness, her voice pierced through the enforced quiet. "Paula!" She began to fight again ferociously in a way I never believed I could see her fight, but it was useless. The darkness surrounded the both of us and pulled us in different directions. Before I even had a chance to call back I was in the van being pulled to the cold steel floor and held there as we set off.

My lashes have become heavily saturated with tears, and as I blink the wetness spreads to the smaller lashes under my eyes. It's hard to know what to do right now since I'm still unsure of what exactly happened. I don't know where Mom is or what these people are going to do to me.

There's a metal click at the door, then it swings open and I hop up into a sitting position on the bed. Another special enforcer dressed all in black stands there. By the harsh white light of the bare bulb, I can clearly see that this blob is in the form of a woman. She doesn't hold a gun, but I notice a holster at her waist.

"Come. Bring your clothes."

I stand up quickly and grab my duffel bag. She doesn't wait for me. Before I've even lifted my bag, she's out the door and I race after her. The woman is tall, her strides long, and I have to struggle to keep up as I drag my now heavy feet down various gray hallways. They all look exactly the same to me which only adds to my unease. In each hall, I try to count the numbers of heavy metal doors we pass, aware that they may hold others, maybe even my mom.

The last turn takes us to a different kind of door. This one is a heavy wooden door. We step through into a smaller room where the walls are covered in a deep red fabric from the ceiling to the floor. They drape over the wall like curtains and I almost reach out just to feel it, surprised at the richness of the soft looking fabric.

"Don't touch that," says the guard as she reaches a hand out to grab me and pull me even closer to her side. I bump into her, surprised at how solid her body is.

We step through another door and end up in a Judgment room. I freeze just as we step through, and she stops with her hands behind her back as if waiting to be called. Right away I notice the small group standing in front of the judge's place. They speak in mostly in quiet voices though some of their words snap in anger.

Everything in the room is bigger than it looks on TV. The statues in the corner of the room reach to the ceiling which is just a tiny bit higher than the ceiling of the halls we walked through. Over each door there is a large and ornate covering made of wood supported by large columns of marble. The room is filled with heavy wooden benches, each perfectly polished so that they shine warmly though they don't look very inviting for actual sitting.

In front of us is the large bench for the judge. It's at least seven feet in the air. Four men stand in front of