The Beast and Me (4 page)

Day 23

I got my first real visitor today. I guess they were maybe visiting me while I was held in a coma, recovering, but this a real visit – well, you know what I mean. This guy even knocked. Of course he didn’t tell me his name but he was wearing a doctor’s overalls and I just knew that he was one of those people who had been there. Of course he knew my name, and naturally he didn’t feel obliged to address me as “Miss” or something; he called me Meg, and he spoke like a man who was used to giving orders that were followed without questioning, and being respected without having to prove anything. I can’t help myself but believe that I have met the one who ordered my abduction, who handpicked me for this, who is to blame.

“I am quite pleased that you have healed so well”, he said with a smug smirk that made me feel sick,

"Don’t expect me to thank you", was my reply which took us both off guard.

I hadn’t realized how angry I was, still am. This wasn’t the Meg I knew, and yet this wasn’t a situation I was used to. He, however... he was simply amused and swiped off my words like dirt from his sleeve. And deep inside it made me even more furious.

“Your... sessions have been quite a success”, he simply continued as if nothing had happened, but I have this feeling that he will keep an eye on my behavior.

So meeting up with him - whomever or whatever he is - are ‘sessions’, like I’m some damn therapist. I chose to pout and keep silent, being obedient and yet rebellious. Probably I shouldn’t have, but I just couldn’t help it; it was the only way to let off a little bit of steam.

“It never retreated by itself before”, obviously he felt like there was a need for explaining to me what he meant.

However, knowing that they already had been there, with another girl, maybe, and that it seemed to not have ended well, it made me feel even sicker.

“This is why I have assigned you a new room”, he continued, like I was an idiot and he a hero. “When the doctor dismisses you, you will have a real place to settle, which you will be allowed to furnish after your own taste in time.”

So whenever I was able to accomplish whatever they wanted me to, I would be rewarded, like I was some sort of animal too. They really do expect me to go back into that cage, and they believe that if they are waving some belongings in front of my face I will willingly risk my life again? The irony is that if I don’t I probably will be dead anyway.

And still there was something else circling in my head, something that surprised me even more that my anger or my snotty remark from before.

“Have you... what have you done with him?” I asked, realizing that I had given it a gender, and this man noticed it as well.

He cocked one brow, but didn’t answer.

“Have you killed it?” I added and made him laugh sarcastically, which made my heart drop and gave me a cold chill, even more than his words that followed.

“Deary, he’s more valuable than you or me”, he emphasized the last two words and I chose to hate him.

No, I didn’t really choose it. I mean, I’m not quick in hating someone and to be honest you cannot hate someone you don’t know so: if you are reading this: I am despising you, resenting you, five minutes after meeting you. Congratulations: you have tainted me. Showing up here after three weeks and one week after your creature almost killed me to be all that cocky, this arrogant, no, this presumptuous...

However, I know now that they probably would tolerate very much to make sure that their precious beast wouldn’t be harmed. They would allow it to kill me, to rip me into shreds and just replace me. I get it. And they would also replace him, my snotty visitor.

“So what are these sessions for, if I may ask?” I tried to copy his way of speaking, and he seemed to like it.

“To socialize it and to make it... more cooperative”, I was stunned.

Not the information itself made me speechless, because I didn’t really comprehend it at that time, but also that he answered so directly. It took me a bit of time to digest, to let this sink into my brain, to realize what he really just had told me. I already had suspected that, but hearing my theory proven true literally made it real.

I felt dizzy.

“S...so I’m his reward?”

Now he was astonished, since he really had underestimated my intelligence.

Maybe it was a mistake, but my tongue had been quicker than my mind.

He didn’t respond.

“You don’t need to punish it”, I heard my own voice speak from a distance as I tried to refocus my eyes on the person who was standing at my bedside, thinking that maybe this beast was already suffering from my absence. “Does he know that I am still alive?”

For the first time since he had gotten into this room, I tried to sit up and my face distorted a bit due to the ache. It already had gotten better.

I looked at this scientist in front of me and by the way he glanced back, I didn’t need him to speak out the fact that they hadn’t.

“How long?” my voice was weak, even though I had wanted to sound demandingly and he laughed again: “I was unaware how much you have already recovered.”

“He... it needs to know that he hasn’t killed me”, I exhaled despite shouting as he turned away.

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 my 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.