The Beast In Me (The Beast And Me Book 2) Read online

  The Beast In Me

  The Beast And Me II

  D.S. Wrights

  Copyright © 2015 D.S. Wrights

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 150093710X

  ISBN-13: 978- 1500937102

  For Gosia, Padyn & Brit.

  ... sorry for that cliffhanger...

  First of all, I want to thank my beta-reader Gosia for spending that little free time she has on my novel.

  I wouldn’t have made it without you.

  Thank you to all who showed interest in the first volume, even more for actually buying it. You gave me a lot of inspiration and lit up my life when I needed it.

  Prologue

  Meghan,

  I just want you to know that it’s okay. If it’s you holding this in your hands, it’s okay for you to read it.

  Just know that I want you to have this and I want you to read it because right now this is the only way I can be close to you, the only way I can help you.

  Jay

  Day 101

  I've waited for days, waited for a sign, any information, just a hint, or a certain look on Peter's face.

  Anything.

  I've fought with myself to write, or even more: Look at what is written down on those pages I am holding.

  Your diary.

  It somehow feels like betraying the trust of the only person that I never wanted to disappoint, or hurt, just having it in my hands. Let alone the mere thought of reading your lines... writing in the same book as you is unthinkable.

  Even more so now that it seems to be the only thing left of us, left of you, Meghan.

  It’s like the ground opened up and swallowed you whole. I’d rather believe that it was the ceiling and you’ve left all of this to go to a better place, one way or the other.

  I know... how can I think something like that? But the last days, these days without you, finally being myself again... these days are far worse than any moment being a slave to the Beast in me.

  At some point they must have simply given in, because I now have a book of my own. They realized that I would never dare to taint your diary with my thoughts.

  And I ask myself why it is so important to them to have me writing. They even risk giving me a pen, such a tiny, inconspicuous tool with which I probably could kill the man coming through that door without the Beast takes over.

  Maybe they believe that if I write just like you did, it would help me stay sane even without you.

  Maybe White thinks that I’ll give in easier to the temptation to break your trust and read your diary, if he just evens the path by making me write and therefore think myself. As if this could make me wonder even more about what you have written. But your trust is all I have.

  He’ll never understand that I could never betray that. You have trusted me as long as we have known each other, blindly. And you still trusted me after I hurt you, injured you so terribly, how could I ever do that again?

  * * *

  Now that I have these empty pages, and now that I have started to use this pen, I feel like I simply have to write. I have to continue, even though I don't really know what to put into words, or where to begin.

  It's been so long, much too long and it kills me.

  * * *

  White – as you call him – his name is Doctor Clay Severin – he came to me, a week after the last time we saw each other, and gave it to me, your diary.

  He told me that it was yours, so as he left it in my shaking hands, I simply stared at it.

  You should have seen his face: that smug smirk of his, when he feels safe, superior and in control. As if he had won a war I didn't even know we had fought. But... it had to be about you, about him knowing that you are all I think about, while I am being absolutely, helplessly clueless about how and where you are, or what he has done to you.

  As he gave me your diary with nothing but that grimace on his face all I wanted to do was rip it off, entirely, slice for slice, fiber to fiber, until nothing but bone was left.

  Even though you weren’t there in person, you still kept me together.

  Because there was this book, your diary, and it smelled of you. I hadn’t seen you for days, and holding this piece of you in my hands... it just paralyzed me, and I stared at it, not even noticing had White left, not perceiving what he said in that moment.

  When I looked up to meet Peter’s glance as he shut my door, the only thought grazing through my mind was that I should have killed White right then and there, that I should have taken the chance, to make sure that he wouldn’t hurt you anymore.

  Retrospectively, I’m pretty sure that my reaction wasn’t exactly what he had expected. My shock definitely, but not that I didn’t move an inch to open that front cover and start to read. Thinking back, I know he hid his disappointment, because he had made a mistake and misjudged me.

  Day 102

  I ask myself what happened – apart from the obvious. I've heard nothing.

  Peter just punishes me with silence as if this is my fault. And it is. Everything that happens to you is, in the end, my fault.

  All of it.

  If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be here.

  If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be living your normal and safe life. And Peter’s eyes agree with me.

  I guess his silence tells me that he has no idea and no information either. For the first time I wish he would try to hurt me with his tales about you again. But he’s quiet and it drives me insane.

  The little consolation, I have is that he apparently doesn’t feel different either. He’s rarely checking in on me, never saying a word – apart from his eyes blaming me. Somehow he behaves like being assigned to stand in front of my door is a punishment, which is most likely true.

  He used to stand in front of yours.

  * * *

  I don't have a real sense of time anymore, so, I don't really know when you made your last entry, or if it is really day 102 of you being here. It is just an assumption that it has been twelve days.

  I think I counted that many:

  For a whole week they left me to rot, to go mad, but I didn’t. And then another four days since I got your diary, Meghan.

  * * *

  For hours I kept staring at the cover... and inhaled the scent that was still clinging to it... yours, while I tried not to think of what might have happened to you, of what he has done to you, because of me, because of that scent I caught the last time I saw you, before they took me away.

  That was the reason why I was prepared to offer him everything, anything he wanted, my blind obedience, my loyalty, if he’d only send you back home, make sure that you’d be safe. I would even offer not to ask for you, if he’d just let you go. And I knew he would have believed me, and maybe even agreed into it.

  But I fear that I was right, my senses were right, and they found out that... that you are pregnant.

  I might be able to lie to Peter, but I cannot lie to myself.

  It is my fault.

  All of it.

  Though I can hear your voice, in my head, reminding me that it’s not.

  I remember your face perfectly, your expression and this pristine look in your eyes as you told me that.

  And still, the choice I made, to seek revenge for my sister, brought me here and my action led to you being here with me.

  That you were and are my salvation... I would give it all back. I would gladly forever stay that monster, that beast, if I knew that you would be safe and sound and oblivious in your old life.

  It was my memory that made me snap out of it.

  I don’t know if I even blinked once while holding and starting at your diary. It wa
s me remembering what White had said, when he gave your diary to me. That short phrase finally had finished its travel from my ears to my brain:

  “Read the last page.”

  Even though his voice seemed to point out that there would be no harm, no breaking your trust, I really couldn't.

  I really didn't mean to, but in the end curiosity got the better of me, the hope that there was some information about you, or that there were a few lines addressed to me.

  Reading what he HE had written in YOUR diary... it made me so furious...

  How do I describe something that seems to be so far away from human emotion?

  It’s like you’re getting soaked in gasoline and a spark catches you. In less than a second you burn, but you aren’t burned.

  The fire is anger, wrath, and biblical fury. It consumes you with a hunger so devouring that it feeds itself.

  And it goes on and on and on even though you have forgotten what you were angry about, even more you have forgotten everything else, everything that makes you not angry, and everything that is not this firestorm raging in every fiber of your being.

  And exactly at that very moment you reach the point when the fire eventually starts hurting you, when it begins to eat your flesh away, to melt your nails and teeth, gnawing on your bones, braising your hair and ears, cooking your eyes so that they feel like popping out of their sockets, microwaving your brain. Your muscles tense that heavily so they seemingly break your own bones and turn you into a puddle of petrified lava.

  Until you turn blind, and deaf and numb.

  The first times this happened, I really thought that I was out, being unconscious, having fainted from the pain. I didn’t connect the destruction I saw after I woke up to me, or that the scientists were exchanged.

  I really cannot recall how long it took until I started to be conscious and aware that something else had taken over my body, degrading me to a paralyzed witness watching the rampage that was created by me, by whatever it was that moved my body.

  One cannot imagine this feeling, unless one has experienced it and... I wouldn’t want anyone to go through this, apart from White. But watching myself being such a vile, lethal creature, thirsty for the blood of every living being within its reach... it was terrifying.

  And this doesn’t even begin to describe it.

  Watching a train in slow motion moving towards the car you are trapped in, that might be a fitting description. No, more like you are the train driver and the people you love most sit in that car. It’s more like that.

  It’s still like this. Those times... the first times we met... the first time those bars were gone... White knew it would happen like it did happen. He made sure it would...

  I really understand now, I think, why there is a diary filled with words written down by you.

  It’s strangely soothing, calming down, even though it’s so upsetting, tormenting to live through everything again. Seeing the truth put down permanently in letters, words, phrases... it makes them more real and you cannot outrun them anymore.

  Still, somehow, it’s like imprisoning the nightmares haunting me into this book.

  But I still can’t write down anything.

  Anything else than this, apparently. I will try to. There is so much you need to know. And I hope that White will give it to you nonetheless.

  Maybe, I’ll just scatter all information; he will not catch every single scrap I try to hide in these pages. And I hope that I will be able to tell you everything.

  Day 103

  How did you fill so many lines?

  What did you write about?

  Did you have so much time left to spend on your own?

  I never really thought about how your days might have been, the time when we weren’t together. Not that I wouldn’t have cared, no, it’s just that I don’t get much time for myself and somehow I assumed it would have been the same for you.

  However, you are not one of White’s subjects, are you? No, my senses would have told me that, or rather the Beast inside of me.

  * * *

  I barely remember a thing from before the time they started to distract me with the footage of people, of you, especially.

  Maybe they were only desperate to find a measure for calming me down and keep me calm without drugging me. But Severin always has a talent to turn everything into something he can use for his own benefit.

  Everything from before that is a blur in my head, apart from the time I was still human.

  When my thoughts go back it’s like watching a bullet train passing by and it’s so hard to catch memories, to hold them long enough to make my emotions remember.

  All the time.

  Every time.

  It got better since you came here, but now... now I can’t stop thinking about you. You are the only memory I got, the only memory that helps me stay calm and myself.

  What they have done between now and then is just an assumption. And I don’t even know how many of my comrades actually made it out of the war zone, and how many of them survived this.

  It’s so hard to sort my head. It was easier when you were around that night.

  * * *

  I keep catching myself staring at your diary, wondering what’s written in there, but then again, I am afraid what you might have mentioned about me, thought and felt about me.

  When I think about what horrible things I have done to you, I cannot imagine that it is anything good, and still you said that you love me. I know that, even though I’m filled with doubt as if I might have imagined that.

  Still, it has not even been two weeks and I already ask myself which of my memories about you are real.

  No, I can’t read it and I won’t, because I don’t want to betray your trust, if you have any left. Yes, this is a cruel thing to say, doubting your words, your actions.

  Even though I know you do, you have proven it to me so many times. You trusted me, weren’t scared of me even though I had hurt you and...

  It’s just that it is so hard for me to believe that you could care for me, after all that happened, that you would remember me, after all this time.

  Maybe because I feel like I don’t deserve you. Maybe that’s why I keep telling myself that it’s all in my head and you are terrified of me in truth.

  It would be easier to let you go. It would be easier to bear the thought of never seeing you again.

  * * *

  I know, White is taping everything and he will show it to you if I am weak, because that is what he does.

  That’s who he is.

  He will use everything we do against us.

  Our weaknesses and our strengths. I don’t need to read your diary to know that you are aware of that.

  But what you don’t know is: he hasn’t only shown me pictures and videos of you at your Mom’s, at your Dad’s, being around other people that never seemed to be really close to you, being alone, or with your cat, spending most of your time reading books, as if they were able to shield you from the world.

  So, I kind of understood the true meaning when you suggested reading to me because I don’t have any books of my own. And maybe I am more aware of the weight behind your offer than you were yourself as you gave it.

  You have no idea how much that meant to me that night and still does. It always will.

  * * *

  But... that’s not what I was trying to tell you.

  It’s more than that.

  It wasn’t only the pictures and videos that made me cling to you, it was the familiarity as well.

  I know you won’t remember, you can’t, even though there is a tiny part within me believing that you do still know me, simply because it is the only explanation for me, the only reason why you did trust me despite human sanity to do so.

  You and I... we had met before.

  You were merely a toddler when your Mom started to drop you off at my Mom’s as she was starting attending night school.

  When I was old enough, on some days Mom left you
with me to watch over you and I, the youngest of three children, was proud to finally be the one watching over someone else.

  I told you about my siblings, and that they were far older than me, that I was the latecomer.

  I never got the chance to tell you that you were the first person in my life I protected and that you also may have been the reason why I always felt as if I wanted to head into that direction once I was grown up.

  And that... that’s the real reason why I could not stop looking at your footage: because I knew you, because you made me remember who I really was, who I was meant to be, who I aimed to be. And watching you being all grown up yourself, living your slightly troubled, but yet oblivious life... I just couldn’t tear myself away, even though I should have known.

  Meghan, I should have known.

  Nothing good, here comes to a good end, but I couldn’t help it. Like the first times we got together.

  I wish I could make you understand what it is like to be in my shoes, to be the prisoner of your own body. I have fought for years to reclaim myself and I have always failed. And so I did when I saw your pictures. Even more, when I saw how sad you were, how lost, how forlorn. I didn’t even notice for how long I stared at the videos, or that there were others I could have watched.

  All I remember was thinking about why you seemed so sad and lonely.

  I figured out pretty fast that your parents were divorced. After all, that was what your mother secretly learning a job had led up to, because one day she stopped dropping you off at our place.

  It might sound cheesy to say this, but I think you are the first person I missed.

  That’s how cruel White can be, what he truly is like. Yet, that’s nothing you have to learn, you already know that. I can only imagine what he has done to you, but I don’t want to.