The Beast and Me (15 page)

Day 64

I really need that mat because a towel doesn’t have enough hold on the rim and I could really hurt myself climbing into that vent. It’s small and tight but fortunately I’m not that broad and I think I really lost weight since I’ve been here... and got stronger. I could pull myself up, but I need to train my arms more so that it gets easier.

Maybe I should ask for a Yoga book or something like that. I need not only to be strong, but to be tough and persevering.

I’m tired. I tried to hide it this morning, but Peter saw it I think. He looked worried, not concerned, so that’s a good thing. And it’s a bad thing that I am thinking like this. He didn’t talk to me though, just brought my Breakfast silently, not even daring to stay too long in my room. Peter sticks to his word: unless I’m not ready to speak, approach or what else first, he will keep silent and... meek. It annoys me, it really does.

So yes, I didn’t get that far. I had to climb up and down a lot and my socks weren’t really helpful. Next time I have to go barefoot and I really need to work on the strength in my arms, because there’s no chance for pulling me up with drive, I actually have to be able to pull myself up slowly, and hold myself steady.

This really screams for Yoga.

I never thought I’d actually be into that stuff, but also I’ll change my workout plan myself. I will train how to hold my own weight for a long time. Luckily, there’s no one around and even if they watch, I doubt that someone actually has an eye on how I am working out. 

Back to the vent: It’s really tight in there, but I try not to think too much about that.

Yes, I don’t feel comfy in tight spaces, not at all. And that’s nothing I need to write down to remember, because I will be reminded from now on.

There are crossings in which I can turn around so that’s an upside. I only have to be careful not to fall down the exits. That’s why I need to focus on endurance from now on. And I have to draw maps.

This is a maze. But writing all of this down is already a risk. However, I can’t start hiding my diary, because they might look for it and realize that I have managed to open one of the vents. Yes, I have another one – another vent – in my sleeping room and I am thinking that there is a camera. Better to think of that, I’ll start looking for cables as well. But on what should I write the maps? I cannot pull out pages from my books or from my diary, can I?

There’s a room next to mine that looks somewhat identical to mine. Instead, there’s no bed, but a desk. I don’t know if it will belong to me one time. I could think that White might expand my place. I don’t want to think of what will have to happen that he would think of rewarding me with it. I’m happy with the space that I got, thank you. Or maybe it’s just an office. I couldn’t see much.

That room that is followed by another bedroom with a bath. So maybe... yes, maybe I’m not the only one... or there will be another one like me in there in the future? Can’t tell, don’t want to know either.

Maybe the reason why I don’t dare to write this down is... I don’t want it to be true? I know now why we don’t go through those rooms for a short cut. I thought that those chambers were maybe two large rooms or one big one, but in fact they are five.

One is a storage room. So that’s where my towels go – cleaning stuff and such – maybe useful things, if I have a chance to get in there.

Next to that is a large closet. And there are not only clothes like mine, but uniforms and such, as far as I could tell. The third room... It seems to be some sort of secret one? I’m not sure, since I only can see through the mesh. But it’s some sort of... interrogation room? And that’s... nicely put. Yet again, I couldn’t see everything so, I don’t know if torture chamber is the right expression. In here it’s probably both. I hope I’ll never end up there... and I hope that Jay will never end up there. Maybe he has? Maybe he is in such a room right now somewhere else in here? Because of me saying a name? That’s crazy. But crazy is normal here.

The fourth room is full of dark lockers and a part of me hopes that they are holding weapons.

Room five seems to be some sort of monitoring room for number three.

I need to get tools, a way to get down into these rooms without destroying the mesh. I can’t screw them open from the inside, even if I had a screwdriver. The only way would be using force. And that someone would hear, and even if they didn’t, I would have to find something to put the mesh back in its place and keep it there.

Okay. I still got the tape, but would that one hold such a mesh in place? I doubt it. Maybe if there’d be strings and tape in the storage room, I could... But first I need something to open that vent from the inside. Going in there barefoot I definitely won’t use my feet to push it open. No, I need a screw-wrench, ideally two, so that I can open the vents from the inside.

The most important discovery is: there’s an outside, fresh air, sunlight. But there is a downside to it.

I came across an opening with two fans mowing opposite each other and behind that: dim light, natural light: moonshine. That place seems to be a deep hole in the ground. Like an atrium for this building complex, but from the outside, above the ground, it must look like an abyss.

I could smell the earth; fresh earth like it had rained heavily before. There was chirring in the distance, or maybe I misheard humming electricity.

It doesn’t matter. There is an outside, an accessible outside. I doubt that one has the chance to climb out of here, but hey, I never thought I would be crawling through a ventilation system.

I honestly doubt that the opening, the end up there, is unprotected. There is probably at least a huge mesh and there definitely will be cameras, maybe even guards, maybe even some automatic system... after all this facility obviously researches in DNA alteration.

Now, I’m really tired.

I know it’s a straight day, but somehow I know that no one will take me to him. Yet, there’s a chance... I need to sleep. I’ll write later, if anything happens.

It’s late now and I won’t go up the vent tonight. I’m too tired, too exhausted actually. I feel like... I had been on the treadmill the whole day, even worse than after my ‘sessions’. Maybe finally these past two months are taking their toll on me. Yet I can’t sleep.

They just checked on me, which means it’s past 12 am and a new day has started and since I know that I will spend the rest of this day in my room, I just started a new page for a new day. So I begged White to stop all of that, to leave him in peace so he would calm down.

Day 65

I do need to write down what happened. White took me. He came into my room without knocking, grabbing me at my upper arm and dragging me along. I still have his fingerprints on my arm. And they did sting and electrify my nerves just as if they had been spider legs, or rather spider bites.

I was so terrified. Thinking of that I start to shake again. It must be the exhaustion. I really thought he would... this look on his face. I hate it when he glares like that. I think he would be nicer to me if I... but no... Never... EVER.

We took the normal way, to the cage. I hadn’t seen that there is another door. Because it has no window and there’s no light hinting it out. And there is the outside. It leads outside.

So when you actually enter the cage like I always have done and just go to the other wall, which lies opposite, there is another door. It has no window, no bars, so it lies completely in the shadow, and yet it leads to the outside, the outside which I found last night.

The sunlight was burning bright in my eyes and it took some time for the white to wear off and for me to actually see anything. Sunlight is so beautiful when you haven’t had the pleasure for a while.

I miss the sun... so much.

It’s as big as a football field, the hole. As soon as I got used to the brightness I could see what this is about. It’s divided by fences into different areas.

All the fields were empty except one. Some figures were standing and others lying on the ground. I heard snarling and instantly I knew it was him. At the beginning I couldn’t say if they were attacking him or the other way around. He was moving too fast for them to shoot him, apparently, but they were too many for him to not get hurt. I could see and hear it.

“Make them stop”, I heard myself breathe out as he pushed me closer.

And I sensed a flood of questions almost drowning me: Did he want to punish me with seeing him being hurt, him bleeding? Why else would he want me to see this? To actually realize how dangerous his Ten was? How important my word? How devastating my carelessness? Was I here to finally help or for me to realize that I couldn’t be of any assistance?

“Make him stop”, he simply gave back and I was stunned. He did believe that I was able to do that?

Before I could answer anything, he yelled a name I can’t recall, and one of the soldiers followed his bark and approached him.

Time dragged on like a chewing gum. It was like watching it all in slow motion: how White stretched out his hand and that guy placing his gun into his palm.

The next thing I remember was feeling the barrel against my temple and I was frozen, just like the scenery before me. I didn’t realize that what had appeared to be just a brief hesitation for me, had obviously taken too long for White.

Jay stopped in an instant, in full motion, like that gun had been a remote and someone had pressed ‘pause’. His opponents were taken by surprise and stopped as well as a result. This wasn’t what I meant when I had offered my help. But I could see how well White’s interpretation worked out.

“I gave her to you, I can take her from you”, his voice was far away and still in my head, resonating a tone that scratched down my spine icily.

All I could do was look at Jay. Seeing him for the first time in full light and in this warped form White had forced on him. He breathed heavily, his chest heaving, looking back, just at me, straight at me. Jay narrowed his eyes as I felt the movement, White lowering down his mouth to my ear on the other side.

My eyes were still locked to Jay’s, who crouched, getting ready to leap, like no other threat was present.

“I wanted to show you the monster you are in love with”, White whispered hotly, damply, sending spider legs down my skin, and by the look that Jay gave me I knew that he had perfectly heard and understood these words.

A tremor rolled though that perfect body of his: tall, athletic, I’d gladly give him some body fat, so no one would be hurt by accidentally touching him. He was a living and breathing rock, bronze colored marmoreal, marvelous and unreal. I didn’t care about that warped face of his, and in the end, I didn’t even care that seeing him would have made me and every other girl my age blatantly drool. What I did care about was his constant shaking, and that look in his eyes, this mixture of rage and fear, and that he, who has physically scarred me for life, managed to restrain himself, because of that gun being aimed at my head.

“Look at him”, White continued, spider that he was, straightening up so he could address us both as he continued: “Isn’t he gruesome? Isn’t he an animal, a monster? Covering itself with blood he’s drawing relentlessly?"

I barely heard the words; just saw Jay’s expression on a face that wasn’t monstrous to me.

This was the countenance of a man being scared for me and afraid of my reaction to those words, that I might actually see truth in them. I couldn’t say anything, not with that gun pressed against my temple, not with what I saw: his suffering, his desperate fight for restraint.

Yes, White was right. I think I tightened my jaw, thinking this. What one could see was a monster, but it was a creature he had created, he had been asking for, and I was sure that whatever happened that Jay had acted like that, it was White’s fault, because he perfectly had proven to me that the only true monster here was him.

I don’t know for how long he allowed us to stare at each other, but I could see at some point that Jay did hurt himself by clenching his clawed hands into fists. The only explanation I can come up with is that he needed to stay like that and not shift back, not move an inch, because White wanted me to see the monster. I could only see a man drawing his own blood so that I wouldn’t get hurt.

“Remember that”, White suddenly spoke again, making me flinch instinctively.

I’m not sure whether he meant Jay or me. Somehow I believe he meant us both.

I kept looking at the man in the shape of a warped animal and I knew that beneath this skin there still was a human. White would never understand, would he?

Although he had never told me, I just know that Jay had been a normal human once, that he hadn’t been born this way.

He had been created.

Right then and there in this uncovering daylight, I could see the torment in his eyes. I just knew. And it was, it is, the only logical explanation for him stopping the second he saw me in danger, instead of attacking. I’m not making this up, am I? I need him to have been a normal human once and everything in my head screams that I am right.

“Please”, my voice was less lowly, than I expected. “Don’t hurt him.”

All of them looked at me, like they didn’t believe that I had been saying that, but I didn’t care about anyone but Jay. He just had to know that I didn’t despise him, that I didn’t abhor him.

“Interesting”, was all that White commented on that, but I heard more than just that one word.

This guy is a pervert, a true monster and unpredictable, insane, mad, and everything one can think of when picturing him: the Spider, a real Doctor Frankenstein. I will never tell what is going on in this man’s head and it terrifies me more than Jay ever could. I am sure of it.

The gun was removed from my temple, but I flinched as I felt that man’s hands on my shoulder with him leaning to my ear again: “But how can I teach him a lesson then?”

White asked me like I was a little girl and I felt sick all of the sudden.

“He has to learn to follow orders and since I had rewarded him with you he disobeyed even more. Since you said his name there’s no working with him.”

I heard it.

White called Jay a ‘him’ and not an ‘it’. This is a difference. I am right. That’s proof enough for me.

I need some sleep. I’ll continue writing later.

They haven’t taken me to the gym yet. Why wouldn’t they? I would refuse to work out anyway. So I continue writing.

“No one touches him”, White ordered after I didn’t give him an answer.

“You”, he pointed at Jay, “back to the cage”.

Yes, it is in fact called the cage and he followed that order without hesitation, and White pushed me forward to follow him.

I asked myself if he would force anything on us again, or if he wouldn’t. Actually, there was nothing left, he could do now, at least nothing that came into my mind, apart from all these things that already had happened.

Yet, there was no way I could imagine what was going on in this mad head of his. So many people are so easy to read, but not him. He is truly a madman and I’m at his mercy. We are.

“You know. I need him in the field, I made a promise”, White explained while walking; now solely speaking to me, explanatory again. “I need him functioning. We had made such a good progress and then I made the mistake to give you to him. I had hoped for a certain result. And now I cannot keep you away from him because it gets worse. You understand my dilemma?”

I nodded.

He had given Jay hope, something he probably didn’t even know it existed.

“You think you see a human”, White figured and nodded. “He was this once, yes, and somehow the second he saw you that memory was triggered. But he isn’t. I tried to show you that, in so many ways.”

I could tell by the way Jay’s shoulders tensed that he listened to those words as well.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt and now I could see the old scars I had felt before among the cuts that would be new ones. He had already been through enough.

“This human died and we brought him back, not human, do you understand?” White continued, now obviously trying to convince me with words. “Your feelings for him, your caring will backfire on you. He will hurt you and it won’t be my order.”

There he had admitted it. He had ordered Jay to hurt me. Knowing this was one thing, hearing the affirmation was something else entirely.

“The first time, however, wasn’t my order. That was him entirely”, he added, as if he could read in my face what I had been thinking.

I don’t know if I managed to, but I tried to appear composed, and to keep my face blank, while staring at Jay’s back, which was swallowed by the darkness as he stepped through the door which leads to his cage.

White shoved me right after him. Getting inside I was prepared to answer him, that he was getting this wrong, that reminding Jay of his human side was a good thing, that it actually was what White had been aiming for.

I didn’t get the chance to say any of it, because of the iron grip on my upper arm and those words that followed, as White eventually let go of me: “She wants to see the human. Show it to her... if you can.”

Yes, he said that and my heart started to race in that moment. Jay turned around, but still with these deformed features.

He didn’t change, instead he walked towards me, placing his stained clawed hands on my shoulders and shoved me back outside.

The rest of that day I spent working out and I guess they waited for me to say that I want back. I didn’t and that is why I am sore now.

I still have this image in front of my eyes. Of Jay and how he glanced at me, how he looked. I wish I knew... I mean I wish he had just changed and let me look at him. Why didn’t he show me? Couldn’t he change, was it that?