Beauty's Cursed Sleep

by Mary E. Twomey

  She’d been good to him, despite everything. Though she didn’t understand all the fractures in his mind, she accepted him – broken though he was. She’d loved him back when he was whole, happy and foolhardy as well. He wanted to fight her on this, but it was the only thing she’d ever asked him for.

  “Fine, I’ll do it. But it won’t work, so don’t say I never said ‘I told you so,’ because I did.”

  Adam hadn’t kissed anyone in nearly a decade, and worried he’d forgotten how. As he leaned over, he remained frozen, his mouth inches from hers. His eyes closed, and for a solid three seconds, he allowed himself to hope that his kiss could break Rory’s curse. He touched his forehead to hers, wishing with everything in him that life could be simpler. He didn’t want to hear the voices that haunted him in his castle. He wanted his normal face again, which he’d taken for granted back when he’d been a spoiled young man, manipulating those around him with a dashing smile as he saw fit.

  If love was a thing he could feel, Adam felt it for Rory and Henry alone. No one else had stuck by him after the years of him pushing everyone away. Though truthfully, he hadn’t had to push all that hard. Most of his friends had been superficial - a tragic flaw that was mostly of his own making. Henry and Rory had come to visit him when it became apparent he needed professional help. They hugged him when he yelled at them. A few times a year, they even made it a point to force him to leave the castle he’d sequestered himself inside.

  They loved him, and however capable he was of harboring those same precious feelings, he did only for Rory and Henry. Though he could never see himself writhing in the sheets with the girl who’d tagged along with Henry and himself on many an adventure growing up, he hoped the steady rhythm of their solid friendship would be enough to set her free.

  Adam had scar tissue over his top lip that made the skin puff out a little, and it was covered in facial hair that every year started to feel more and more like fur, giving him his ever-popular nickname of “Beast”. His canine teeth were elongated to the point of him having to make a concerted effort not to cut her when the dreaded moment finally came. He hadn’t kissed a single soul since he’d been deformed, and wasn’t even sure he remembered the mechanics of a subject he’d once dominated.

  But there she was – the only woman who believed in his redemption enough to love him. The better man she cherished was nowhere in sight, yet still she held firm to her hope. Dainty though her hands were, she’d always kept a tight grip on her belief that fate could be changed, and that he was somehow capable of goodness. The three of them had the kind of loyalty that was the stuff of lifelong friendships, but true love seemed to be a different thing entirely.

  Her lips were soft, thanks to the fluids they were pumping into her. He turned his head on an angle to compensate for his puffy upper lip, tucking his fangs beneath, but the kiss was still horribly awkward. Anger flared up in him that she’d forced him to know what it was like to kiss with the deformities that had taken over his face, but he tried to be brave as the last vestiges of hope began to fade. What little optimism had been planted in his heart started to shrivel and choke as he kissed her again, smacking his hand on her bedrail in frustration as he grew more desperate to make this work.

  Adam lost count of how many times he kissed his best friend, losing hope as the minutes ticked by with no marked change in her besotted state. When he began to taste a stale rust, he realized with self-loathing that he’d accidentally sliced her lip with his problematic overlong canines.

  When he finally pulled away, he was surprised to find condensation misting his eyes. Immediately, he was cross with her for forcing the emotion from him. But he was enraged with himself for hoping – a bad habit he’d cast aside long ago.

  There was no point in being angry with her as he pulled a tissue from the box on her nightstand and dabbed at the dot of blood on her lip, but he unleashed a torrent of lectures anyway until he’d exhausted himself. Then, plopping down in Benjamin’s chair, he snarled at the old paperback Western the guard had been reading his charge. “You don’t want to lie here and listen to this insipid book. If you’re going to insist on lounging around all day and night for months on end, your head will at least get filled with something useful.” He glanced at the door to make sure it was shut, and then reached into his leather satchel that he’d left on the floor. “If you don’t like Alexandre Dumas, well, then you’re stupid.” He flipped to the page he’d left off at, about a third of the way in. “And I’m not recapping what you’ve missed. If you wanted to know, you should’ve read the book yourself. It’s centuries old, Rory. Centuries. Don’t tell me you haven’t had the time.” He grumbled a little while longer, as if she had sighed her exasperation over his choice in classic literature.

  When Adam began to read, his shoulders relaxed and rolled back. The knot that felt constantly lodged in his sternum loosened, and he breathed easier. It was the rhythm of the old language that soothed all that ailed him. He ached inside – a deep, guttural pit of despair that he’d learned to live with over the years. Yet in the dusty pages, Alexandre Dumas soothed him.

  As he read aloud to Rory, he hoped that same comfort would cover her, as well.

  27

  Pushing the Limits of Magic

  “Again!” Jared shouted, hoisting Cordray up from the floor for what felt like the hundredth time that morning.

  “You don’t understand how my Pulse works. I can’t shoot out electrodes at a target. I have to touch someone with my bare hands for anything to happen.”

  Jared was immovable, his expression never veering from the soldier who always did as he was told. “If the queen thinks you’re capable of breaking the laws of magic, then you’ll do it.”

  Cordray scowled at Jared and shook his arm off once he was on his feet. “What about you? Can you throw your Pulse? No! This isn’t even possible. She even said no one’s ever done this before! What makes you idiots think I can do this?”

  Jared never argued more than was necessary. He stood back and pointed to the bullseye on the other end of the concrete room Cord had been locked in.

  Cordray obeyed, but he had little frame of reference. He’d never heard of anyone casting their Pulse without the use of touch. He knew it couldn’t be done, but somehow, he now had to figure out how to accomplish such an impossibility.

  Cord stared at the bullseye across the cold concrete room and raised his palms, his nostrils flaring as he tried to do as he was instructed. Three whole minutes of him gritting his teeth as his face tightened produced nothing – the same result he’d had every day thus far. Malaura only came by once a month to the bunker, he was told, and she would be most displeased if, once again, there was no progress to report.

  Jared never appeared hopeful or frustrated. He was stoic – stuck in the bunker, which didn’t seem to affect him any more than being out in the field under the sun might. He punished Cordray for not performing the task, which was how he ended every night, and then left the prisoner to lick his wounds in the dark.

  There was a hole in the floor that served as the toilet, and meals that came two times a day. Other than that, Jared and Dustin were the only interaction Cordray was granted on a daily basis. Dustin was at least amiable and relatively chatty. Jared was a brick wall with absolutely no personality.

  Cordray lost count of the days he’d been locked up, but didn’t lose hope that he would find a way out and get back to Rory. He’d almost escaped four times already, but was caught and punished with tortures that only enforced in his mind that he would never join them. The more they beat, suffocated, waterboarded, and attacked his internal organs, the more concrete Cordray’s will became. He spent his spare time doing pushups when he was left alone in the room, planning and preparing for when the next opportunity for escape arose.

  He’d surpassed the pleading and panicking portion of his imprisonment, and skipped right to plotting, which turned out to be a far more soothing color on him. When he’d escaped the first time,
they’d broken his leg. The second time had been his arm. He knew he’d been incarcerated for at least eight weeks, because the medic they had onsite commented that it had been as long when they removed the cast from his wrist. And that had been who knows how long ago. His leg was mostly fully functional at this point, which only worried him more over how much time had passed.

  Cordray pushed at the ground, repeating his calisthenics for the fourth time that day. He wanted his repaired arm up to snuff, without any weak points on his body when his next window of escape came about. He’d already killed seven of their people, which, he reasoned, was their own fault for taking him off the pill and trapping him like a dog. He’d gone his whole life trying not to harm anyone, and only a few months spent with the Lethals had him murdering. He tried to talk himself through the guilt, but it stung him all the same.

  Cordray was sweating as he switched from pushups to sit-ups. When he’d been a boy and just discovering his ability, he’d only been powerful enough to kill a few bugs and give people a painful shock. When his parents had suggested gloves, his inner turmoil relaxed. He could be normal again and not worry about hurting the people he loved. Now that he was separated from them, and he didn’t have the buffer of the pill, he felt exposed and a little unhinged.

  That night, however, Cordray went to sleep with contentment ironing out the worry wrinkles he’d worn for too many months. Jared had socked him in the stomach a few times, and he knew his lip was bleeding, but he smiled all the same.

  In the darkness, Cordray stretched out his hand and practiced sending a spark of electricity from the center of his palm into the hole in the middle of the floor. The grueling training had worked, though his keepers didn’t know it. He’d endured the beatings, the suffocations and the torture, knowing that he could make it all end if only he revealed the evolution in his ability. But his power would never belong to them. It was his, and he knew just how to use it.

  When Malaura came for him again, he would be ready.

  28

  Cordray’s Plan

  The rumble of the trucks as they pulled up to the bunker was the only thing that marked thirty days passing. Malaura came once a month to check on his lack of progress and “motivate” him some more. He couldn’t imagine what she did with the rest of her twenty-nine days in each month, but she’d been something of a ghost to the world, so whatever it was, at least she was keeping the hazards of it away from the public.

  Cordray sat up as if his spine had been spring-loaded, ready and waiting for this very moment. He stretched out his fingers and renewed his promise to himself that he would return to his life – that he would return to Rory. He pictured her face, ready and waiting for him as she always was. He vowed to buy her blouses with a little color in them, now that he knew her reasons for wearing all black and gray had more to do with self-flagellation over not having magic than mere preference. He wanted to take her out somewhere nice and sweep her off her feet. She’d been treated to mansions, castles and a prince courting her, but Cordray was determined to top all of that by actually loving her how she needed to be cared for, celebrating the parts of her she tried to hide out of shame. Maybe he couldn’t buy her a mansion, but he had enough to pay for materials to build an extension onto his cabin. He was already making blueprints in his mind to construct a bedroom for Benjamin, and an extra for… the future. If she wanted a life in the city, he would use that money for a down-payment on a home nearer her office.

  Cordray had never entertained thoughts like that about anyone, and knew better than to let Rory slip through his fingers. He wouldn’t let any obstacle stand in his way, even if those obstacles had fractured his bones and tried to break his spirit.

  He laid back down when he heard Jared’s boots tromping down the hallway with Dustin’s lax gait sliding behind. Cordray let his jaw go slack and closed his eyes, trying to look as lifeless, limp and pathetic as possible. It wasn’t too far a stretch. If he wasn’t so focused on getting home to Rory, he might not have held onto sanity this long. But they didn’t need to know how lucid and strong he still was. That part would be a surprise.

  The keys jangled in the door, and the sliver of light opened into a whole slice that fell over his face and forced a whine of discomfort from him. Though he craved the newness of light by morning every day, it was still painful when he spent so many hours in the windowless pitch-black basement.

  “On your feet,” Jared ordered. When Cordray’s movements were sluggish and unfocused, Jared and Dustin each took an armpit and hefted him up. Each morning, they fitted him with rubber cuffs that stopped all chance of an electric current moving through his fingertips, so they could move him as they wished.

  Jared took a water bottle from the tray Cordray refused to touch (he’d fallen ill due to tainted food a few days ago, and couldn’t risk any sickness today), and splashed a little cold water in the prisoner’s face to revive him. “Time to show the queen what you can do.”

  Dustin held onto Cordray even after Jared released him. He slapped the prisoner on the shoulder, as if they were old friends. Though he’d been part of the incarceration, Cordray couldn’t help but sympathize. When Cordray had felt the sting of ostracization, he’d found his home in the woods with nature. Dustin’s big mistake was wandering into the wrong group and finding his home with Malaura.

  “I can feel it. Today’s the day, brother. You’ll show the queen all you can do, and she’ll forgive you everything. You’ll be her new favorite, that’s for sure.” There wasn’t a hint of jealousy in Dustin, only admiration. Cord wished they’d met under any other circumstances.

  Though Cordray was ready to pounce, he let drool fall from his slack lips, completing the picture of the pathetic prisoner who’d long since lost any semblance of usefulness. He let out a moan, and let his left leg drag slightly to exaggerate any hints of pain that might be passable from a mostly healed broken leg. He could run on it just fine, but they didn’t need to know that.

  Cordray kept his head lowered as he leaned heavily on Dustin, but he listened to every sound that echoed. He knew from his various failed escape attempts that there was no way out that he could find to the east or west ends of the building. There were at least ten men in the bunker when he’d tried to escape the last time. There were always a handful more that accompanied Malaura when she showed up to note the prisoner’s lack of progress. Some were the more stoic ones like Jared, but others had a greedy gleam in their eyes, hungry to let loose on the new guy.

  Cordray waited for the grandstanding, knowing how Malaura loved to tease her food before she devoured it. She moved from her throne and snapped her fingers at Jared, motioning for him to stand a few feet in front of the prisoner. “How very good to see you, Cordray. If there was one thing that would make my day, it would be that you’ve actually learned the one lesson we’ve set out for you. Your Pulse is more than the average person’s, so I expect you to be more.”

  She wore a low-cut black dress that fell a foot past the floor, dragging when she walked. It was formfitting, and quite sheer in parts. It was designed to seduce men into giving up their will to her. Though she possessed much magic, the dress itself left no stone unturned.

  Her painted, sharp nail scraped under Cordray’s chin, lifting his head so she could take in his unfocused gaze. “Are you going to disappoint me today? I fear if you do, I may take it out on your trainers as well as you this time.” She tsked him, as if she cared about the sodden state in which he’d come to her. “It seems as though they’ve been pushing you a little too hard. A boy’s got to eat, right?” Her chuckle was low and throaty, and she leaned in to palm the firm planes of his chest, as she did at every encounter. Malaura relished being able to feel him up. She perused his hard body as she wished, caressing his dark caramel skin as if she had a right to do as she wished. Though he was always unresponsive to her, she delighted in his handsomeness all the same.

  “Your majesty, we’ve reported that there’s been no progress,” Dustin began t
o fret. He pulled a dirty handkerchief from his back pocket and began to mop the beads of sweat from his brow.

  Malaura paid Dustin no mind. “Take off his cuffs, Jared. I want to see what he can do.”

  Jared didn’t hesitate, but caught Cord’s eyes with a warning to behave and do his best. He stepped back with the rubber cuffs dangling in his fist, ready for his inevitable punishment for the failure.

  Cordray had gone over this exact scenario thousands of times in his head as he’d prepared for his final moments in the bunker. He needed to get back to Rory. Even if his kiss didn’t wake her, he wanted to simply be near her. Her presence calmed the tornado of turmoil inside of him. He’d gone too many months without her gentleness that bred civility in complete and total monsters. He feared he would soon turn into the monster they were trying to make him, so he was desperate to return to her. He needed to find his heartbeat again. It felt out of sync, so far away from her smile.

  Cordray lifted his hand and made a grimacing expression as if he was truly trying his best to accomplish the unattainable. His eyebrows pulled together as his upper lip curled in frustration. After a few noises of consternation, he lowered his hand and slumped his shoulders.

  Malaura’s heels clicked on the floor in an angry pattern he knew meant trouble. She was annoyed. She was frustrated.

  It was exactly how he wanted her.

  Malaura was most erratic in her fury, and went for the throat instead of the plan. She snatched at Jared and grabbed onto Cord’s wrist. Cordray was prepared for his heart to seize in his chest, but this time, that didn’t happen. It was Jared whose mouth popped open in a frozen “O” as Malaura stripped currents from Cord and Pulsed them into Jared to punish him for failing her too many times.