The Beast And Me Page 4

Silently I scolded myself for correcting a ‘he’ into ‘it’ and therefore making it even more obvious that I was humanizing his test subject. He didn’t turn back, just hesitated for a moment, making clear that he had noticed my confusion, and then he walked towards the door, just to stop once more.

  “Do you want to tell him?” he knocked against what seemed to be metal, without turning around.

  I am sure that he wanted to scare me, and he did, but not as much as we both had expected. I mean, it had almost killed me, but he didn’t. No, he didn’t try to, it hadn’t been his intention. Does that make sense?

  Can I make sense?

  I don’t know this thing at all.

  Day 24

  How am I supposed to lie around all day and wait? My mind starts doing exactly what I don’t want it to do: plotting out what they might do to me, what they expect it to do with me. Honestly, there is only one way I know how to understand “socialize”. And there is no way for me not to obey. If I don’t, they get rid of me, and after having put so much effort in stitching me back together, they probably will not just put a bullet in my head.

  Maybe now is my only chance to get away.

  So I got out of my bed after the Doc left. God, I didn’t expect it to ache and pinch that bad. I can feel the staples in my belly when I move. It is so weird, so creepy. Probably it’s a mistake to get up, but I can’t lie around anymore. I have to distract myself and try... something.

  Of course, there is nothing here, nothing un-locked at least, and naturally one does not make mistakes here.

  I get it.

  The door doesn’t even have a window, so I cannot look into the corridor and check out if anything is different. And the door has some sort of scan panel, that makes a beep when someone puts I don’t know exactly what against it.

  A card, maybe or a wristband? I should try to watch her leave the next time.

  My legs feel like pudding. All the workouts the last few days were in vain. So I guess I’ll just walk a bit and lay down again. I’ll walk every time my thoughts go a wrong direction.

  Day 25

  Obviously there are cameras here. Great, just great.

  Not that I am really surprised.

  After Breakfast Doc showed up again and looked at me reprehensively, despite my innocent look.

  “You shouldn’t walk around that much, Meg”, she said after a long pause and allowed my stomach to drop in a pit and recover before she continued and instructed me to sit up straight. “I know lying around all day is boring, but I want to make sure that your scar tissue is strong enough so that it actually holds.”

  There was somewhat of empathy in her voice, for the first time I think. She shoved up my hospital gown and started to unwind me.

  “No nurse today?” I simply asked.

  “She’s getting you a book”, Doc responded and her tone became cooler again, so I decided to shut my mouth and hold up the shirt and she rolled off the bandage.

  “I want to make sure that you are sufficiently healed when I dismiss you”, she repeated and I instantly knew, because of the subtle change in her voice, that if I wouldn’t be healed as expected once I met up with my ‘session’ partner, it would be she who would be punished.

  Everyone apparently is fungible, apart from the beast, him. I don’t know why I have a hard time naming him an animal or creature.

  They haven’t told me anything about him. Maybe that’s because I need him to be human?

  There is no way I can picture him as something else.

  There were so many questions I wanted to ask her, but I felt like I knew that she wouldn’t answer a single one of them. I had no chance to get any information through asking directly, so I had to use my brain.

  “I just... can’t lie around all day in this room”, I sighed and she pushed me carefully back, so that I would lie down again, which I did.

  “Well, you have to”, she answered.

  “But this room makes me feel sicker than I really am”, this time I tried to sound more whiny.

  “Your room is barely any different”, was her answer, while she took a close look at my stapled stomach. “I know what you are aiming for, Meg”, she said lowly, “but there is no way for you to get fresh air. We are below ground... somewhat.”

  I cannot really tell if the pause she made was because she realized too late that she spilled something, or was intentional. However, my thoughts were already racing again and I didn’t inquire any further, simply, because I didn’t expect that. Everything here reminded me of either a hospital or a prison and I have never heard of something like that underground. On the other hand, no one would call me an expert.

  The rest of the day I spend asking myself what exactly she had meant: if we were only one level below, directly beneath the surface or if this was some super-secret lab a mile beneath the earth.

  They didn’t give me new bandages.

  Day 26

  I forgot to mention that they – as in: the nurse – brought me ‘Phantom’ by Susan Key. I just wasn’t in the mood to write. Maybe I should have, to sort my head, to stop myself from panicking.

  Sooner or later I will have to learn that, because there will be no meds helping me. ‘Phantom’ is one of my favorite books – and of course the one they gave me was mine. It tells the life-story of Gaston Leroux’s ‘Phantom of the Opera’ using different narrators. This story is so disturbing that it always makes me cry. It was a good choice. It is a genius distraction for me.

  The Doc tells me in two days I will be able to leave, and that if I behave – I have the feeling that I will hear this like... forever – that she will un-staple me tomorrow.

  Did I mention that this cream they put on my scars stinks? Well, now I have done.

  Two days, two more days... I’ll continue reading, or I’ll go insane.

  I try not to be bored, and not to get up, so maybe writing. How exciting. Doc is really nice and pretty, so of course I ask myself what she’s doing here. She could be working anywhere. Is it the money? That would make her appear far less nice.

  She’s taller than me and has strawberry blond hair, which makes her blue eyes appear even more unreal.

  Doc doesn’t say much to me, but she’s friendly. There’s this slight smile on her lips, just a hint. Maybe that’s why I can’t help myself but like her, unlike that grumpy nurse.

  She’s exactly like I would picture an old WWII nurse, who has had too many hands on her behind when nursing in some military field hospital. I am mean, I know, but laying around all day makes me restless and this book, I know it already and it already psychologically traumatized the first time I read it, and the second, and the third...

  Day 27

  Everything is removed and it feels... strange. How can I describe it? It feels like I miss it, being stapled together, like I am less safe now, more vulnerable.

  Or maybe because I realize that... I will go back again. They will put me back in that cage again.

  I have been somehow looking forward to it, to a change in my daily routine of... nothing, waiting, trying not to think of the day that will come. And now that day might even be tomorrow.

  I missed my workout... but did I miss being shackled, blindfolded and put in a cage with a beast I haven’t even seen? I don’t know anything about it, about him, and it... yes, it scares me. Yet, there is nothing I really can do, right? I will be there again, soon. She told me. I guess I will miss her...

  Day 28

  I have a room now. After Doc gave me instructions on how to use my ointment and what the pills they would give me along with my food were, I was ready to leave.

  My heart beats almost as fast as those times they had brought me to the cage. This time, however, it was from excitement. This man, who had visited me days before, had told me that I would get my own room with my own stuff and he kept his word: it’s a room.

  Completely clinical white, no metal, everything is made out of white plastic or transparent one. No pictures, but two shelves for m
y now three books and my diary. They look quite empty, but there is room for more, telling me without words that there is room for more rewards.

  I’m sure giving me nothing but these few books and my diary is some sort of training. If I am a nice obedient girl, I will get more.

  I mean, I won’t complain. This is far better than my cell. I have furniture, a closet and a bathroom, a real bathroom with a basin and a large mirror and a shower.

  Well, in this closet, it’s not my own clothes, but light-blue training pants and shirts of the same color or white, two pairs of white sneakers, and lots of white socks, and white underwear. Nothing special, sportive.

  They want to make me feel comfortable and yet won’t give me the illusion of safety.

  As if I would forget to behave, and be a nice girl. As if I would forget that they would get “rid of me”.

  I have a bed which is made of – wait for it – white wood, and the mattress is really comfy, just like the one in my medical room. I have a small table with two chairs. Meaning I will get visitors, because I doubt that it is made for my feet.

  The first meal in my new room was Lunch, with pills, as promised... After that, nothing happened. I tried to read, but I felt like crawling up those crazy white walls. It’s no better than the medical room, when I don’t have anything to distract myself. And I keep remembering. That he felt so human. I wonder what happened. I mean, he was human first and then... something else. He had changed. Something had triggered that change. I don’t think that he wanted to hurt me. But I’m still scared to meet him again.

  There is someone at my door.

  They took me to the gym and a note told me I should take it slowly, carefully, just working on stamina and not strength. I think that it was at least an hour they gave me. I worked out carefully.

  That’s it. Nothing more today.

  Day 29

  My stomach still hurts, but it’s getting better. They are still giving me pills along with my meals, just as promised. More than I expected, honestly. Of course I’m reluctantly taking them. Who knows what kind of pills they are, but then again, who knows what they put in my food? Why should the Doc lie to me about pills if they could simply put something in my food or water? I shouldn’t think about that. I get paranoid if I do that.

  It’s late. Just a normal ‘Beast-free’ day, apart from having a room all for myself that makes me not feel like a political prisoner, but rather a mental clinic patient.

  It’s not only the room; it’s the clothes as well, obviously. Everything reeks of freshness and chemicals.

  I shouldn’t feel so used to this. Maybe they have drugged me so that I don’t freak out? Or it’s just that... life feels so pressure free: I eat, workout, read and sleep. I don’t have to worry about money or grades or people. I like being alone, and I always have.

  Now I am even supposed to.

  They are taking me...

  I don’t know if I can write down what happened. I mean... I wanted this diary to keep myself sane. I have no one to talk to, no one to share my experiences with.

  Well, I don’t want to talk to them, freaking voyeurs.

  White, that’s how I am calling that smug guy, who seems to be one of those whose words are law, and the one who told me that I would get a new room, walked with me this time. I am just calling him White, because I doubt that he’s a doctor – a scientist definitely – but he doesn’t deserve to be called ‘doctor’, not when all of this is really his doing. And the way he moves around, behaves and talks, how proud he is, there is no doubt that he at least plays a big role here, and he thinks of himself as some savior, some pioneer, so ‘white’ is meant more sarcastically. And he wears white, definitely thinks he has a clean slate as white as the jacket he’s wearing, when he really should wear a straight one. Doc at least had some green shirt beneath her white; he is all ‘glorious’.

  I am living much closer to the cage now. You know what I mean: to that specific one. It’s only two metal doors and they are – oh hey – painted white.

  I will write this down. I have to. Maybe when I read this once again, I can figure out what I am really feeling.

  But I can’t today. Not today.

  Day 30

  I did my best to avoid it, but they didn’t take me to the gym because of yesterday; and I tried everything this morning already to not write it down. Now I sit here and the time for me being taken to the cage has passed, and I feel like crawling up the walls again, because the memories are haunting me, torturing me. Maybe, just maybe if I write down what happened yesterday, it will just end?

  Yesterday... yesterday I was blindfolded again. I’m not sure why. It’s not that I am going anywhere, not that I would try to get there on my own. Maybe, it’s just for the effect, because if they don’t want me to be scared off by what I might see, they could put on that blindfold after they put me in the cage. They don’t want me to see what he really is, what he’s changing into and from what.

  It’s hard to write it down. I don’t want to, actually, because it makes it more real, it makes it real, not just a nightmare. But then again, all of this is a nightmare, I am living in it. Do I really want to think that all of this is just in my head?

  White told me that it would be crucial for my well-being to tell ‘it’ that everything is okay, because if I won’t continue the ‘sessions’ they would finish what ‘it’ chose not to do.

  Long story short: he threatened to kill me -again – if I don’t do what they want. Needless reminder, you think? My panic was written all over my face.

  After they had left and suspended me to the wall – again – I could hear that other door open. And even though no sound followed I knew he was there, staying away, and the bars, the gate, didn’t move.

  “Do you want us to remove the wall?” I heard White through the speaker along with the buzzing sound of electricity, and I knew that this wasn’t a question.

  So, I nodded.

  This is crazy.

  I didn’t hear him move, maybe because he didn’t.

  My voice was shaky even though I did my best to speak calmly: “It’s okay. See? I’m fine.”

  Hesitantly, I added: “now”, and after another pause... I don’t know why, but it felt like the right thing: “It’s not your fault.”

  All of the sudden he was close. I could hear him breathe next to my right ear and he plucked at my hair again, brushing it out of my face. Fingers were on my cheek, with claws. Somehow I knew he was upset. Maybe I just imagined him, humanized him, because there hadn’t been any the last time, when he first touched me.

  I have to think about this later, now I have, I must write this down because... I feel like going insane. Or I am already...

  I heard the cracking of the speaker, followed by the buzz, but they switched it off again. And I instantly realized why it had happened: my hips were shoved away from the wall, two hands on them.

  He was kneeling next to me, reaching around me from the right. And those hands shoved up my T-shirt.

  Was this the true reason why Doc wanted to make sure that everything was satisfactorily healed?

  Of course I flinched as I felt his fingers on my scars – there are scars, I think there always will be.

  They aren’t as gruesome as I feared, probably because Doc was so persistent in treating them, but one can see the marks of his claws on me.

  And then he made a hissing sound like inhaling sharply through his teeth – or fangs – as his clawed fingers ran across his marks. It felt strange, ticklish, but feverish as well... good.

  Suddenly, he started to kiss them, gently, and I was the one inhaling sharply, like he wanted to kiss them away.

  This had been the last thing I had expected.

  His hands were wrapped around my rib cage, his clawed fingers still holding up my shirt, but also pressing me against him, his mouth. I swear, I felt his fingers change even more, these claws grow, but I didn’t dare make a sound. Also, because I couldn’t tell what kind of sound I wou
ld make.

  This is insane.

  Then, his kisses became more desperate and needy. It felt like he was burning me with his lips and then his tongue, and like my body heated up to meet this fever from the inside. I still don’t know what to think about that.

  His mouth moved higher and higher, along with his hands. Snaking up, making me hold my breath. And suddenly, he stopped. His breathing was heavy, just like the last time, when he had started hurting me.

  Until I realized that this time it was more even, like he had seen something or rethought his actions.

  Oh, had he just continued... That had been my thoughts. Again, my cheeks burn as I remember it. But he just had tried to regain control, because his hands went down and he shoved me... my hips further away from the wall, and with his claws being there...

  I can’t write this, can I?

  He pulled down my pants and I knew in this moment that this was what White had meant with ‘socializing’. I wanted to protest, to do something, but I couldn’t... It was impossible with his tongue far too high between my legs. The only sound that escaped my throat was a moan, which did the opposite of driving him away.

  If his kisses had burned my surface his tongue burned my insides, with waves created by his movements.

  I can’t deny that it felt insanely good the way he licked and sucked at my flesh. This soft tongue right there...

  Why wasn’t I disgusted?

  I don’t know what he did to make me feel like that. How was he able to make me feel so longingly helpless? It was like he grazed his teeth against me and then his tongue, his lips.

  Again and again.

  I couldn’t do anything but surrender.

  I can’t believe that happened.