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

  Day 108

  It feels like the first time when we were separated. It has been 18 days, almost three weeks. Just now I remember the guilt stuck inside me like a rusty blade, etching through my body whenever I dared to think. Those were days when I gladly surrendered to that thing inside of me. All my memories are faint, apart from the emotions. Maybe because it and I shared them.

  And yes, I know it is confusing that I was ridden with guilt, even though when it happened I wasn’t really present. I’ve claimed often enough that, when this Beast takes over, I’m a mere bystander incapable of doing anything. It is true. For a long time I had stopped trying to influence its actions. I had given up. Like I wrote yesterday: it held me under water and I had given up struggling, I was ready to let it drown me, but that moment, when I was that close to you, again, something made me fight against it.

  I know I keep repeating myself. I will never forgive myself for what happened, on that day and every other that followed, even though that Beast was in control.

  I won’t because I didn’t fight enough.

  If I wasn’t able to sit here and write these lines, it might be different, but I am here, more or less in control of my own body.

  If I just had regained control earlier...

  I know I am still circling around this subject and it’s plain stupid. If it hadn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here and myself right now. But I just can’t accept the price you had to pay for my sanity.

  I was sure that I had killed you, even though... I had never before fought so hard for control as in those moments its claws slashed through your skin. In those days I realized that exactly that had been the reason I had hurt you. If I just had allowed this Beast to continue, you would have still been alive. I was sure of it.

  I still am, to be honest.

  There are no words in my head to describe what I felt back then. The cruelty of irony is more blistering than Hell. And now again you are gone and I don’t know how you are. I just know it’s because of me, because of what I did to you, because it’s the only thing taming it.

  Now I wish more than ever that I would have been able to kill myself. But I couldn’t and I still can’t, for so many reasons.

  I pray that you are alive, and still I pray that what I have sensed is wrong. The very thought that you could be pregnant with... and I know that’s all they ever really wanted. Yes, Severin... I mean White... has more than once told me that I am the most important asset to his endeavor but... officially his experiments are a failure. Peter told me, before you were brought here.

  Whoever financed all of this withdrew most of their money because White wasn’t able to bring his creation under control. He had believed that if he could control me, the others would follow my lead as their... Alpha or whatever he chose to entitle me. I had disappointed him and I fear that you are the one who has to atone for it.

  Most importantly: Severin has no resources to create more of us like he had done before. It makes so much sense now. Bringing you here, he was able to kill two birds with one stone.

  I know I am doing it again: exactly what he wants me to, what he expects me to. I keep thinking about the times we met, reliving the memories, regaining them.

  It is paranoid to believe that everything that I do, or you do, or anyone does is exactly what he’s planning and expecting. I know it is, but he always seems to be prepared for every outcome. I am sure you must think it too.

  But I will try. I will try to focus on something else. Somehow you must have managed to protect your sanity from him. I wonder how you did it.

  Day 109

  I have been staring at this piece of paper for what feels like hours. Maybe I didn’t even blink the whole time. There’s no way I can sort my thoughts into reasonable sentences. I don’t know how to tame the chaos that is my mind, and heart. Is there even a word for what I am feeling? Probably a whole library.

  Before I rip this diary to shreds, I’ll rather do pushups until I collapse and that might take a while.

  * * *

  I’m so irritated, so annoyed, so fucking angry that I can’t even write properly. For 19 days now I have kept myself together, I have behaved well. Did everything they asked for. And what for? Nothing! They give me nothing. Not even a hint.

  The nescience, the worry... it just drives me mad.

  Day 110

  I feel like I am losing it and I wish I could simply give in. Allow these raw emotions to take over and find some kind of relief, because it doesn’t look like I will see you anytime soon, or hear about you, or get any information about you.

  I can’t stop my head from picturing what they might do to you, no matter if you are really pregnant or not. I just wish I could see you for just one second.

  Day 111

  I got to see you.

  Still, now as I sit here again, in my cell, I can’t tell if it was just a dream or reality. You know, just like these short trips home when you see your family for a day or two and then get back to your life and you ask yourself if you really were with them or if you imagined it, because you can tell how they act. And then, you realize how you can be sure, because all of a sudden the images, sounds and faces in your mind are clearer again. As if an art restorer has just finished his work.

  You simply can sense that you remember them a bit better, a tiny bit truer than before.

  I saw you, only through a window. So close, so far away still. I couldn’t catch your scent, but seeing you lying there asleep, I could remember it. I could remember how your skin felt beneath my fingertips, how it felt against my lips, how it tasted.

  Every memory of that was refreshed like it had just been yesterday.

  My hands were pressed against the cold glass, which was keeping me away from you. Somehow I managed to remind myself to stay calm, to stay human, and to be obedient, so that I would see you again.

  And the Beast in me complied with me.

  You are in a coma.

  From what I could see and figure they keep you in it. However, you aren’t injured.

  At least not externally. And if so, then not that crucial that it would be still visible now.

  The only explanation I can come up with is that they need to make sure that nothing happens to you and to... that thing inside of you.

  Can I really think of it as a child? I know I should. Still, if it has inherited everything from me, it will also be... that. Why else would they keep you asleep? Did something else happen to you? I don’t think so. I can’t think so.

  Can I trust my instincts? Or did something else happen? Is there a different reason entirely?

  Still, you looked so peaceful and it reminded me of our last time together. When you lay next to me, with your eyes closed, the only difference being that there was this tiny, slight smile on your lips.

  It wasn’t there this time. And some stupid idiot part of me whispered inside my head that this was because I wasn’t there with you.

  They had given me what I had asked for.

  For the first time they had done that. And I know pretty well what they expect in return. I am willing to pay that price. For now. Because I know that one day just seeing you won’t be enough for me and I hope that they will allow me to at least touch you once.

  Just to make sure that you are real.

  That everything was real.

  On the other hand, thinking that this and all of this, and everything before you came here, was just my imagination... is even more tempting to believe?

  I’d rather be schizophrenic, I’d rather realize that you are just a product of my imagination than a real person, that all of this isn’t really true, than knowing that it is really you lying there, because of me, being pregnant with such an abomination because of me, having lost your life, your freedom, your future, because of me.

  * * *

  They allowed me to see you right in time, just when I needed it and not a second before that. As if they were able to read my mind. Yet, my emotions are an open book to anyone. Espec
ially, if you look at my side of my door...

  Looking at Peter now is different.

  Again.

  I know he doesn’t hate me. I know he wants to.

  Peter looks at me as if I am the reason for his agony. He couldn’t be more wrong, and I know that he is aware of it, but I am the easier target.

  Now, having brought me back to my cell after I had seen you, the way he looks at me has changed.

  I was to him what he was to his brother. Yet, Peter will never be able to see that. Because he would realize then that there is no way for him to gain his older brother’s approval.

  White just blames him for everything. Whatever he does, it is always a failure in Clay Severin’s eyes. And that’s how Peter had always looked at me until today.

  Now, it’s not pretend hate anymore. It’s gone.

  The jealousy has faded as well. All there is left is pain and... Could it be sympathy?

  Guilt, even?

  I know now that all his actions, all these words he spoke, were just to hurt me, because he was jealous. He even told me, without choosing the words to openly admit it. I should have seen that, but I was jealous myself.

  He’s in love with you, you know. He believes he is.

  But I think what I saw as he stood right next to me, looking at you lying there, appearing more dead than alive, that he’s fooling himself.

  I think, he believes that he loves you, because you are able to love me despite being an inferior beast. That’s what I am in his eyes. But since you are able to love me, he thinks that you would be able to love him too. Even more: that you should love him instead of me.

  He deserves you just as little than I do.

  It was the first time for a long time that he stood right next to me – far enough to not be accidentally touched or rather attacked by me – still, it wasn’t me who got his full attention. And I figured that he hadn’t seen you in quite a while as well.

  Maybe I’m doing him wrong, maybe he is genuinely worried about you because he in fact does care about you, but I have to admit that all he has done in the last months – especially since you have been here with us – makes me doubt absolutely everything about him. Everything he does apparently is to get his older brother’s approval.

  Nothing more.

  However, as I watched him briefly out of the corner of my eyes, this drive seemed to be gone. Maybe there was even a glimpse of guilt and regret. I don’t know why he should feel like that, but somehow I saw it.

  Peter brought me back. Not saying a word. Not touching me. Not even looking at me. He was present, doing his job, but he wasn’t really there.

  How easy it would have been to overcome him, to kill him, right then and there. I would have been able to snatch his wristband and try to escape. But I know that I wouldn’t get far with it. I doubt that he’s allowed to leave this place, let alone to enter your room. And apart from that... I am so endlessly tired of fighting, of killing. I don’t know if I could ever do that if I had a choice.

  It’s not like I trust him, or think of him as a friend, but it’s not like I am ignoring that fact either. I still see the soldier who once was my comrade, my friend.

  That’s what I see in all of them, Beast or not.

  That is not a reason why.

  I never really had it in me, I guess.

  After all I wanted to be a doctor before life tore my family into shreds. A doctor saves lives and doesn’t end it. Yet, when I look at White... he is a doctor too, a scientist, or that woman you called Doc... her name is Valerie...

  It’s so hard to focus again.

  There is so much you still need to know.

  Day 112

  I cannot write. Anything.

  I can’t.

  * * *

  Seeing you like that... it just reminded me... it brought back memories that I didn’t know I had, memories I had buried deep inside myself, memories of a horror far beyond everything I had known until then, and maybe until now, and I pray and beg that you are not living through the same: memories of the time between me being human and me being the Beast.

  I was never really religious. I always believed that the concept of Heaven and Hell was something written down in a book, something that had always been a story my mother told us about to make us be nice and well-behaved, and most of all nothing a soldier like me could have believed in, especially after I had lost my siblings and after what I had experienced in battle. If there is a Hell – so I thought – I was already living in it.

  And yet there I was: in complete darkness.

  Alone. But awake.

  Conscious.

  I could remember the pain, the impact, the weariness that followed. I was even able to recall how my knees had given in, forsaking their duty.

  What I wasn't sure about was if I had sensed hitting the ground or not, if this memory was something my mind had brought up because it was the logical result of falling.

  There was a faint memory of waking up in pain and yet numb, of a man whose face seemed familiar, who came and made me an offer. And in that warped and distorted state of mine, I wondered if it had been the devil offering me a deal, because it sounded like giving him my soul in exchange for my life and the lives of the ones I had lead into death. But I wasn’t sure if I had taken it.

  What I did know was that I had died.

  So why was I still here?

  Remembering how life was bleeding out of me was way clearer than that conversation, just like the blood that had bled into my body from the shot wounds.

  I had failed – not just myself, but my comrades who had been scattered around me, but even more my family, the dead and the living – and the torment of this realization was a hundred times more painful than those holes I was pressing my hand against.

  This thought, this perception was still present as if I was caught in that flash of a moment.

  I remember wondering if maybe this was in fact Hell and it wasn't a pit of fire, melting down the flesh off my bones, but reliving my regrets... and I had a lot of them:

  First, that I had left my mother, had died on her, just like my siblings had done.

  And that I would never see her again, that I would never have the chance to tell her that I loved her.

  Then I had failed my siblings. I had followed them into death, leaving our mother alone, burying all her children before their time.

  Even though I had never really thought about the possibility of meeting them again in some sort of afterlife, I was terrified of facing them. And I still am.

  And eventually: all the soldiers that I had been responsible for, who had now followed me into death. Even there, in complete darkness, in this place without echo, light and ground, I felt as if I was able to hear their whines and moans, their laments of dying.

  So this was Hell: being alone all by myself, only my guilt and regrets to accompany me, to eventually go insane. I couldn't imagine anything more accurate. There couldn't possibly be anything worse than this.

  At least this confirmed my guilt to me.

  Going through my regrets over and over again wasn't something entirely new to me. I already had done this a thousand times with a similar pain: the pain of loss.

  However, sensing this strange ache, this tucking, this pulse, right then, in this timeless black hole, was not something I had expected.

  I could feel it, as if it was physical. It seemed as if I could sense my heart racing and with this idea, this realization, a heat wave suddenly washed over me, rushed in my ears, filling me up with panic.

  Suddenly I felt how my body, and with it my perception of it, reappeared.

  I could sense how I breathed shallowly and quickly, and how my chest heaved and lowered. It seemed as if something was rebuilding me slowly, gradually and everything else but painlessly: First, just like a hallucination, a hint, a threat, but growing and increasing, like someone had gathered the ends of my nerves.

  My body tensed.

  There it was: the heat. What an i
rony.

  I remember how I almost laughed. Only I couldn't. Whoever or whatever had found those strains of senses running through what appeared to be my body suddenly crushed them.

  And all that was left of me was nothing but excruciating physical pain.

  Swallowed by the darkness, all my other senses seemed to have been devoured by it. Apart from perceiving my body, which I knew would only heighten what I was sensing. I tried my best to numb this torment with my mind, with rational thoughts but it was impossible.

  It has never been my strength.

  My nerves were on fire and my heart was pumping acid through my veins. There was no way for me to move, though I knew that I had to be somewhat corporeal to perceive a pain like this.

  Or at least a brain that was processing pain.

  My muscles tensed and yet there was no movement, as if my body was drowned in cement.

  I knew better, I knew that there were chemical substances that possessed the ability to paralyze a body while inducing pain.

  Yet, this would mean that I was alive and I knew that this was impossible.

  I remembered dying.

  I remembered that after the Devil in White had made his offer and smiled at me with that wicked grin of his, that the world around me had faded, and all my senses along with it. The darkness, that now tormented me, had claimed me slowly, but inevitably.

  My thoughts were swallowed and I swear that I learned right then what it feels like to be consumed by lava.

  I recall how I wanted to scream.

  It was nothing but instinct. I knew I had lungs to fill in with air and a chest to move and push it out. The pain was like ink coloring a picture that had been drawn with water, a nightmare becoming real.

  I knew I had a throat, but I couldn't use it. There was even no way of swallowing. It felt as if it was filled with barb wire, made of it.

  At that moment, agony was accompanied by panic.