Cassandra: And they all fall down

by Julie Hodgson

  “Now, that I can help you with,” Dr. Somner told him, and Cassandra was disappointed to hear that he sounded cheerful rather than broken. “I have her just through here,” he added, and the confession was followed by footsteps in their direction.

  “Why is she here at this time?” she heard the officer asking, and then he was in the doorway in his crumpled jacket, shirt, and pants, with the weight of the case on his shoulders, looking straight at her. It was the strangest moment in Cassandra’s life. His face was a portrait of shock, and he couldn’t move or speak for a moment. Somner had completely caught him off guard, but he was quick to snap back into action and reached into his jacket for his gun. His movements were just a split second too slow, and before he could get his hand to it, Dr. Somner had tightened a noose around his neck, which automatically snatched him towards the ceiling and held him just high enough, so the tips of his boots touched the ground. It was a trap. His face reddened in an instant, and this throat gurgled and gasped at the strain. His hands darted to his throat, desperate to free himself from his imminent death, while Dr. Somner easily reached into his jacket, took the gun from his holster and place it out of reach on his desk.

  “Nasty things, gun,” he smiled, and then returned to the dying cop.

  Cassandra was instinctively dragging at her wrists again and kicking out her feet, desperate to save him, but she knew it was no use. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was, but she couldn’t even do that. All she could do was watch his cruel demise. Dr. Somner had intentionally left him just close enough to the floor so he could support himself just a little, so his death would be prolonged so he would remain hopeful as he hung there that he might be saved, but Cassandra knew better. He was as doomed as she was. Dr. Somner just wanted to play with him.

  “Now I have your attention,” Dr. Somner told him, speaking as close to his puffy face as he could get. “You raise an interesting point. You see, you missed the beginning of my lecture, but I’ve been telling young Cassy here all about her origins.” He was now circling the room as he spoke, enjoying holding court. “If you haven’t worked it out, she’s your monster, Captain Barnsley. It’s very complicated, but the key points are that I genetically engineered her to be a killing machine with the ability to avenge justice. The kind of sickly superhero that governments dream of owning, but haven’t got the balls to create.”

  Captain Beardsley was making a croaking sound and looked as if his eyes might pop out of his head. He didn’t have long left. Dr. Somner moved over to the wall beside him and manipulated the buttons of a keypad that Cassandra hadn’t noticed before. The noose lowered by what must have been less than an inch down his neck, enabling the cop to get a little more purchase on the ground and maybe adding just a few minutes to his life.

  “Don’t want you missing the end of the story, do we?” he beamed. “So, the boys. I was just telling Cassandra before you joined us that parents are altogether too trusting, Captain Barnsley, especially when their kids have the undesirable conditions, like ADD. Parents are happy to pack their kids off for meetings and feed them as many pills as their doctor prescribe. You would think they would take more interest in the treatment of their kids, but there’s a sad truth here. As long as their kids aren’t swinging from chandeliers, performing moonies, smashing things up, and embarrassing them, they don’t care what you’re doing them with.”

  Again, Cassandra detached from her predicament to listen to the words. She could feel her heart breaking just a little more with every word he spoke because she could now see where this was going. Or at least she suspected she knew where he was going. If she was right, then it turned everything on its head.

  “I was torn, you see. Here I was in possession of the most powerful advancement in modern science to ever walk the earth, and I had no way of testing her abilities. It was my own fault, you see. I created her to respond violently to attacks on others. We saw this was exactly what she would do when she was a child, didn’t we, Cassy, when you disfigured your future boyfriend.”

  The mention of Braydon had less power now. There was so much more for Cassandra to take in.

  “No, I needed something for the full-grown beast to sink its tentacles into. Nothing was going to happen in Garden City that came close to stimulating the beast, so let’s just say the local crime scene needed to be manipulated. I found myself in a fortunate position. I had regular access to fifteen young men and hundreds of years of pharmaceutical and psychological weaponry. Just how difficult do you think it is for a man in my position to manipulate the behavior of a group of adolescents with only one thing on their minds anyway? Very easy,” he answered himself with a grin. “First, he giveth then he taketh away,” he mumbled to himself. “I got them medicated, mind controlled, working in pairs. It was beautiful, even if I do say so myself.”

  Cassandra was desperately trying to talk now. Her head felt the way Captain Barnsley’s looked – scarlet, swollen, and ready to explode.

  “I’m sure you have lots to say, Cassandra,” Dr. Somner told her, but you need to get used to this feeling because no one is ever going to want to listen to what you have to say again. You are a thing, a creature. Creatures do not talk, so you better get used to it. Let me imagine, though, for argument’s sake, that the realization of what happened is beginning to sink in and you are considering the implications of that. Well, I’m here to tell you what you’re thinking is absolutely right,” he told her. “This is all your fault. Those guys are dead because of you, not just because you killed them, but because I made them target practice for you. They were innocents, Cassy. Still, think you’re not a monster? Those girls were attacked because of you. Bindi, your best friend, is unconscious in the hospital because of you.”

  It was all too much. Colors began to swim in Cassandra’s mind, and she thought she might pass out. She closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath, but the loud bang, bang, bang of her heart beating was drilling up through her chest to her skull. She swallowed hard, stopping herself from throwing up again while her senses thrashed and bled as if something inside of her had short-circuited, and still she had no power over anything happening to her. She dragged at her bound wrists and ankles and tried to scream the silencer out of her mouth, but she was in a box, and there was no way out. Please! She begged, but no sound came out, and there was no one to hear it anyway. Captain Barnsley had fallen into unconsciousness, and Dr. Somner was simply standing there watching her struggle with a smile on his face.

  “Right then,” he told her when she was still again, with a calm that contrasted so sharply with her desperation, and reinforced her helplessness. “I just need to do a few last-minute experiments before we go. Now, I should warn you, Cassy, that this isn’t going to be very pleasant for you.”

  Cassandra watched as Dr. Somner pushed one hand and then the other into a pair of surgical gloves, viewing her body as if seeing it for the first time as if it were now the most delicious meal he had ever seen and he couldn’t wait to devour it. She looked from him to the unconscious detective hanging by the doorway and began to squirm again. She knew it was pointless, but it was her body’s natural reaction. She couldn’t just lie there and take whatever he was going to do to her, so she protested as violently as she could before quickly exhausting herself. And now he was moving towards the bed with a tray of nasty looking and intrusive implements.

  “We just need to get you out of those clothes first,” he said, now sounding creepier than ever, and Cassandra watched him select a set of surgical scissors from the tray. He started at the foot of her jeans and slowly began to cut a line all the way up, passed her knees, and up to her thighs. He was salivating, Casandra could see it in his face, and his dilated pupils made her stomach heave. But there was absolutely nothing she could do. There was blood oozing from her wrists and ankles where she had tried to free herself. She just couldn’t get free. There was no solution here. She was stuck and this man, this beast, could do anything he wanted with her, so now she simply clos
ed her eyes. She had to be there in body, but she didn’t have to be there in mind. She thought of Bindi and all the New Age advice she had given her over the years.

  “Like when you go see the dentist,” she had said.

  “I hate the dentist,” Cassandra answered.

  “I know. It’s why I’m telling you this. It’s all wrong. You have some guy’s fingers in your mouth, there’s the piercing sound of the drill, it stinks if they break through and you’ve got a rotting tooth, and you can taste it although your mouths numbed to hell and back. You’re in an unfamiliar place, you can’t move, you want to scream. You have to be there in body, but your mind can be anywhere. Do you know what I do? I imagine I’m at a festival with my folks and the girls from the Daisy Club. We’re in a circle, holding hands, there are flowers in our hair, and someone’s playing guitar. It’s my happy place, where the warmth of the sun is on my face, and the gentle breeze brings the aroma of the spring blooms. All you need to do is find your happy place.”

  This was easier than Cassandra thought it would be. As the sadistic doctor slowly snipped at her pants, enjoying every minute of it, she took her mind back to a few weeks ago, sitting in someone’s yard with Bindi, just chatting, laughing, enjoying the sun, innocent, happy. She could feel his hand on her leg, and she knew there were tears and panic waiting to explode from her, but Bindi stayed with her. They were in that garden, and she was holding her hand, telling her about her campaign to feed refugees. She took the best deep breath in she could manage, then out. In … two … three … four … Out … two … three … four. In … two … three … four … Out … two … three … four. This may have been the end, but she was going down on her terms. He would never have the satisfaction of seeing her scream or cry again. There was no such thing as powerless. As long as she was alive and as long as she had Bindi with her, there was hope. And just at that moment, just as she took her power back, the window smashed inwards and the night itself had broken in to save her. Her eyes snapped open. At first, she thought she had done it. She looked out over at each hand. They were still bound, and her tendrils were still being contained by the cocktail of drugs Dr. Somner had given her. Perhaps this was a new manifestation of her power, to manipulate her environment and control the external world, but as the room filled with glass and an agitated wind, and the trees beyond rustled and howled, she felt no connection to what was happening and tried to scurry up and off the bed. She still couldn’t move.

  Dr. Somner was on his feet, yelling to be heard above the din that had burst into his lab – the whistling and smashing. “No! No!” All his possessions – the books, test tubes, jars, and papers – were thrown around the room, and he was in a panic to restore them. He crawled around the room, retrieving armfuls of his precious research, and managed to stow some of it away into filing cabinets. He then ran to the broken windows and pulled the thin curtains closed to protect from the fierce elements, but they blew out of his hands and into the air. Cassandra could only look on as he battled the night that had intruded upon them, complaining and cursing the mess and destruction, and then before he could react or defend himself, a thick vine shot through the window and drilled straight through his head. Cassandra cringed as she watched it explode out the back of his skull, dripping with blood and brain. A second tendril whooshed in behind and flicked its grip around his throat. He was lifted off the ground more violently than the poor detective, and if he weren't dead, already he soon would be as the creature from beyond the window thrashed him around the lab, up to the ceiling and smashed him against the walls with such force that Cassandra could count the bones breaking. He was then dropped in a broken heap of contorted limbs and blood.

  The wind dropped, and the papers, books, and broken glass began to settle, like healing memories, years and years after a trauma. Silence. Cassandra’s eyes were wide as she watched the tendrils slither across the room and over to Captain Barnsley. The razor-sharp barbs easily cut him down, but Cassandra had no way of knowing if he was still alive or what would happen next. Her eyes followed the length of the stalking vines as they gently moved around the floor, out to the window and the darkness beyond where she could just see the outline of a shadowy figure. She strained to make sense of it, and it was only when it moved towards the light that she knew she recognized it. She had seen that face every day of her life, but never quite like this. This was a woman with all the power of the world at her fingertips. This was the most powerful woman on the planet.

  “Mom!” she tried to say, but she was still being silenced, and now she was more desperate than ever to free herself so she could put her arms around her. However, when her mom stepped into the light, Cassandra was taken aback by the full sight of her. She was wearing a white T-shirt, but it was splattered with blood and torn at the stomach where her tendrils had burst right out of her belly and into the room. Cassandra watched now as they recoiled back into her and the woman in front of her started to look like something resembling her mother. With her creature contained, Ellen rushed over to the bed and was easily able to free her daughter. Cassandra had so much to say, but the shock of it all was too much. She tried to speak and move, but she found herself receding further and further from her mother. And then, for the second time that day, everything went black.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It had all been a dream. This is what Cassandra knew to be true just moments before she opened her eyes. How can it not have been a dream? The world didn’t work that way. There were no such things as evil doctors and their mutant creations. There was Frankenstein and X-Men, but they didn’t exist in real life, so she didn’t exist in real life. She couldn’t exist. It had been a dream. It had to be a dream, but as she got closer to consciousness, the reality hit her. The memories were too solid to be dreams. She could still smell the lab, Dr. Somner’s perspiration, her mother’s creature. They were as real to her as the pain wrapped around her wrists and ankles, and the ulcers on the inside of her mouth where the silencer had been forced inside. And now she could smell the surgical reek of the hospital. The only question was whether it was a medical hospital or a facility for the mentally deranged.

  She slowly opened her eyes.

  Ellen was sitting on one side of her and John the other. They both moved towards her and held her hands tighter when they saw her stirring.

  “Oh, sweetheart. We were so worried. You’ve been through so much,” her dad told her and kissed her hand. “We thought …” He couldn’t keep the emotion from his voice. “We thought we’d lost you.”

  “I’m okay,” she tried to say, but there was no voice there. She had silently screamed herself hoarse in Dr. Somner’s lab. “Mom,” she mouthed and turned to Ellen on the other side of her. She wore her everyday brave smile, which now said more to Cassandra than it ever had before. Cassandra tried to speak again, but a choking sound came out instead.

  “Go get her some water, John,” Ellen gently said, “and see if you can find the doctor.”

  Cassandra’s dad moved awkwardly, half-elated that she was awake while refusing to take his eyes off her in case anything happened to her again. He practically tripped over the chair as he made for the door, and then the two Jones women were alone.

  Casandra wanted to cry and scream and tell her mom everything. Nothing came out when she opened her mouth, but her expression told of the deep pain she was feeling.

  “It’s okay, Cass, don’t try and speak. I know everything, and I need you to know that none of it was your fault. You have great gifts, and you were saving the young girls of Garden City when you killed those guys. You’re a victim of Dr. Somner as much as any of them. Now he’s gone, and everyone’s safe again. No more attacks, no more killings. It was all on him.”

  Cassandra smiled feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. The words were honey, soothing her. Of course, it would take the time to accept what she was saying as the truth if she ever managed it, but she desperately needed to hear it now.

  “You …?” she croaked.
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  Ellen smiled. “Dr. Somner had no idea he manipulated me when he implanted you into me. That’s why they came out of my stomach, from my womb. I’ve only seen them a few times, Cassandra, and only when you’ve been in danger. They lead me to you, to keep you safe. I’m only sorry I didn’t get there sooner. I wish I had known what was happening to you and what was happening to me.” She stopped talking and looked down at her hands before restarting. “I didn’t ever speak to anyone about it. Who would believe me? I didn’t see a connection until you stopped taking your medication and then there was something in your eyes.” Another pause followed, and Cassandra could see how difficult all this was for her mom. “I lied, Cass, when I said I wasn’t scared of you. I was a bit. I am. I’m scared of both of us, but we can get through this.” She reached out and gripped her daughter’s hand again. She was going to say more, but John raced back into the room with the water in his hand. Cassandra brought it to her lips and had tasted nothing like it in her entire life. It glided down her throat like a dream come true, and the healing was instantaneous. She sipped at first, but she couldn’t get enough and very soon the glass was empty.

  “Barnsley told us everything,” John began, speaking gently to his daughter. “How that psycho doc medicated those poor boys and made them do unspeakable things to girls, and how he genetically engineered some kind of beast to hunt them down. It’s the stuff of horror films, and I have no idea how any of it works. I don’t even know what you were doing there, Cass. I’m just so relieved you’re okay.”

  “He made it?” Cassandra said, and now her voice could be heard just a little.

  Ellen smiled down at her. “He did, Cass. He’s going to be okay.”

  “And that’s what he said about Dr Somner, that he made some kind of beast?”