Unwound

by Yolanda Olson

  endured, I escaped, and here I am.”

  “Do you ever plan on going back?” she asked.

  The thought honestly hadn’t crossed my mind. I had no desire

  to go back to London’s hell, but I remember the silent promise I

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  had made to myself to go back for the Other. Still. I wasn’t going to trust Morrison with that; not yet anyway.

  I shook my head.

  She stopped walking and eyed me for a moment. For the first

  time since I was constructed, I didn’t look away from a being that was trying to read me. I forced myself to stand up straight and not have the slight hunch that London had given me with her cruel

  actions and malicious words.

  “I have no need to go back,” I said in as steady as a voice as I

  could manage.

  “Not even for her to finish you?” she inquired.

  “London will never finish me. She never finished any of us. I

  say us because I’m sure I couldn’t be the only one she ever made.

  Take care of the way you speak of London; kind words are

  nothing if not wasted on describing someone as lost in lunacy and

  delirium as her. Kind words wouldn’t save you from her if you

  ever have the misfortune of meeting her,” I said quietly.

  Morrison shrugged and pulled me along next to her, “She

  seems interesting enough, though. I mean I can never understand

  what you went through with her and I’m not saying this because I

  think what she did was a good idea or anything, but looking at

  you tells me what kind of genius she is. To make life out of

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  nothing is not simple I would imagine and to be quite honest with

  you if I had never heard you ticking in the factory and lifted your eye patch, I never would have expected you to be anything other

  than a young man who had gone through a harrowing ordeal with

  battle scars that prove his worth.”

  My mind wandered off to Finnegan for a moment. She too

  had battle scars only I didn’t know what kind of battle she had

  been through. She didn’t hide her face from the world as I did.

  When she approached me, she did so with an amazing confidence

  for something that looked so young and fragile. I would be

  haunted by her confidence and her face for the rest of my life, but I would also try to mimic her and try to build myself up to not be afraid of anything, and that included London.

  Morrison and I walked through the streets until the sun started

  to come up again. As she pointed out things here and there I kept

  thinking of how I just might be able to muster up enough courage

  to go back to London’s home.

  Cars whirred past us and more than once she had to pull me

  back from the crossroads onto the sidewalk so that I wouldn’t be

  injured. I couldn’t help it though, my mind was elsewhere and it

  showed.

  As the sky started to show that beautiful lavender and orange

  serenade it had the previous morning, she guided me back to the

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  factory. I didn’t say a word to her. Instead I left her pulling the wooden boards back over the opening so no one else would enter

  and I made my way back up to the room I had taken for myself on

  the third floor.

  I dragged the bed from where it had sat by the window to a

  darker corner near the mirror and laid down. As I stared into my

  own face, my thoughts were erratic.

  Maybe Morrison sees London as a genius because she’s had

  the same tendencies.

  Maybe she’s keeping me here to lure London out.

  Maybe I should’ve followed Finnegan.

  Maybe I should’ve set London’s home on fire.

  Maybe I wasn’t real, but that didn’t mean I could be

  programmed to feel could I?

  Maybe I could teach myself new emotions.

  Maybe I could make myself stronger.

  My eyes had started to close as the thoughts raced through my

  mind. With as erratic as they were I knew these were my own

  thoughts and not borrowed.

  I especially knew that I had finally gained some control over

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  the brain and mind that was harvested for me when I had one last

  thought before I finally stop fighting my resting state with a smile.

  Maybe I was strong enough to kill London.

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  Six

  Morrison was gone when I came down the next evening. I

  wasn’t sure if she told me she would be gone or if maybe she

  decided to take a few days away from me. I didn’t care. Either

  way it was nice to have this place to myself again for once.

  I glanced at myself in the mirror before I made my way to the

  window. I noticed that for some odd reason it looked like I had

  slightly aged. There were small lines around my eyes and my lips

  and I was beginning to look tired. My hair seemed to have grown

  slightly and my skin looked slightly darker for some reason.

  I dismissed my reflection and placing my hands on the

  windowsills I leaned out and took a deep breath. My resting

  schedule was so erratic lately that I was surprised I could still

  function properly. I had to get on a normal schedule which was

  something I promised myself to work on soon.

  I took one more deep breath and noticed something was

  different about the air, for some reason it seemed a little cooler and crisper.

  I walked quickly down the stairs and made my way to the

  back of the factory on the main floor. There had to be more than

  just the door at the entrance and for now it would serve my

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  purpose to find it. I walked along the wall running my hand

  across it from one end as I made my way to the other. It was so

  dark in this part that I knew I wouldn’t see a difference; I would have to feel it to find any hidden door.

  Halfway down the wall I felt a small bump. I ran my hand up

  and down the bump for a moment before I was sure that it was

  what I was looking for. Leaning toward the wall, I pulled at the

  bump as hard as I could. Slowly it started to come away from the

  wall and I could feel the breeze from outside. This wasn’t like the wooden boards that were used to barricade the front. Grunting

  with effort, I pulled harder until the secret door finally gave way causing me to fall backwards. Thankfully I had a good enough

  grip on it that I was able to stop it before it landed on top of me and caused irreparable damage.

  I shoved the door to the side and got to my feet. As I

  suspected, it wasn’t as simple as wood and interestingly enough I

  felt a small flicker of fear when I looked at it. It was made of

  some kind of metal and had an odd design to it. In a way, it

  reminded me of the doors that London used to lock herself into

  her workstations.

  I tore my eyes away from it and stepped out into the night air.

  My feet touched the wild grass that was growing in the small lot.

  I looked down and couldn’t help but think that freedom was a

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  beautiful thing. There was nothing sharp or dangerous under me

  like when I was kept prisoner. The grass was pleasantly caressing

  my feet with
each soft gust of wind.

  I leaned down and picked a blade of grass and smiled. The

  color was somewhat lighter than what I had seen in the woods

  around London’s home, but as I looked up at the trees I noticed

  that the leaves seemed to be slightly colored differently as well.

  Almost as if overnight they had gone from a dark green to

  yellows, reds, and oranges.

  How long was I asleep?

  I let the grass fall from my hands as I reached up and felt one

  of the leaves from the nearest tree. It felt slightly weathered just as I had woke up feeling.

  More time than one night had passed, that was sure but I just

  didn’t know how much. I glanced up at the moon for a moment

  before I went back into the sanctuary of the factory. There was

  nothing in here that could tell time and if my body hadn’t woken

  itself in what seemed to be a season, then I was running out of

  time faster than I thought.

  I walked from the back of the factory out the front door and

  into the night. Something, somewhere would tell me how long I

  was asleep.

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  As I quickened my pace I glanced in store windows but it

  seemed that anything that would be able to tell me what time I

  was in right now was hidden from view or put away for the

  evening. I was becoming frustrated which I knew would lead to

  nothing good. I remembered seeing London frustrated one time

  when she was making one of her creations. In a fury, she kicked

  over her work table and pieces of material, tools, wheels, and

  everything else she used had gone flying all over the room.

  Thankfully she hadn’t known I had been watching her; that was

  the only time she had ever left the door slightly ajar.

  I chuckled to myself then thinking of what she would’ve

  possibly done to me had she known I was standing there watching

  her.

  “Watch it,” some man barked at me as we bumped into each

  other.

  I was so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t realized I had just

  walked into someone. I didn’t feel any need to reply to him

  because I was on a more important mission; to find out how much

  time had passed while I slept, so I kept my eyes forward and

  glanced around for any tell-tale sign of how long it had been.

  After another twenty minutes of walking I came across a

  curious cube that held what looked like news stories folded neatly inside. I gave the small door a slight tug and accidentally wound

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  up pulling the plastic door completely off the hinge. I looked

  around frantically to make sure no one had seen me. It seemed

  like beside the one man I had run into I was alone in the street.

  Letting out a sigh, I placed the door next to the cube and pulled

  out a paper. October 2nd it said.

  Closing my eyes, I recited the months to myself trying to

  remember the month I had left London in. April. It was April. So

  then how long had I been asleep?

  April, May, June, July, August, September, October.

  There was no way.

  I couldn’t have slept for six months.

  That left me with less time than I had imagined.

  Why hadn’t Morrison thought to wake me up? I couldn’t have

  alienated her in the span of a couple of nights, could I?

  I felt a surge of what I assumed to be anger. I would never

  have left her vulnerable and sleeping for as long as she left me,

  alienated or not. In that moment I decided that I could no longer

  trust her.

  Placing the newspaper back in its little box, I started to walk

  toward the center of town. I had no desire to go back to the

  factory tonight and I had never been to the center of town.

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  It didn’t take me long to reach my destination though I had no

  idea what my intentions were of being there. The deeper into the

  heart of the town that I walked, the more I noticed droves of

  people huddled outside of doors, talking loudly amongst each

  other or smoking by themselves.

  I was continuing on my way when I noticed one of the

  females staring intently at me in the middle of her group of

  friends. She had long light pink hair, reminiscent of cotton candy.

  Her bangs were cut right above her steel blue-gray eyes and her

  oval face held the innocence of a newborn angel. Little golden

  key earrings, swayed gently beneath her hair as she swiveled her

  head to get a better look at me.

  I stopped for just a moment to take her in. She looked almost

  radiant in her white dress with a pink floral design generously

  smattered about. Her legs seemed to be impossibly long for

  someone as small as she was. I noticed her trick when I looked

  down at her feet and saw that she was wearing some type of shoes

  with a large, curved heel on them.

  I had never seen her before but she obviously seemed to have

  a very stark interest in me. If she knew what I was I was almost

  certain she and her friends would go back inside of their music

  and drink filled building and continue their night.

  Out of curiosity I decided to head into the building she stood

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  in front of staring at me so intently to see if maybe I could find out what she wanted from me.

  As I disappeared into the dimly lit building, I was

  overwhelmed by all the sensations that came over me. The music

  was so loud that it seemed to shake me from the inside out. There

  were lights that flashed colors that I didn’t know where possible.

  It smelled of sweat and passion as couples danced together; their

  bodies pressed tightly against one another. I pushed my way past

  them as I tried to make it to the long table that seemed to wrap

  around part of the room with small stools in front of it. I noticed that here it smelled of sweat and desolation. Some people were

  sitting together in small groups laughing and talking, while others were sitting alone, hunched over their small glasses of dark

  liquids.

  This was too much for me to take in all at once.

  I made my way back out into the night air and past the cluster

  of people that seemed to be making their way in.

  She was still there, small and devious as ever.

  She kept her hands in her pockets and her face was as hard as

  stone as we locked eyes. Nodding at her, I made my way past her

  and her group of friends, feeling her eyes boring holes through

  me the entire time.

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  The more I thought of it as I walked the more my instinct was

  to get as far away from her as possible and I had every intention

  of doing so. As I turned the next corner I heard footsteps behind

  me. One hindrance of having being made and not born, was that

  at times like this I wasn’t able to distinguish if the footsteps were closer or further than I thought.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw a flash of pink duck into

  an alley.

  Not as fast as you’d like to be, are you? I thought to myself

  with a grim smile.

  Angel Face was following me and I wasn’t sure why.

&nb
sp; A plan suddenly formed in my head. I knew where I would

  draw her to and it would be somewhere she wouldn’t have a place

  to hide. I looked both ways at the crossroads and walked quickly

  to the other side. My memory was all I could rely on now to get

  me back to where I needed to get her.

  Her footsteps behind me quickened as I picked up speed. I

  was going to make sure she was exhausted before I got her there

  that way she wouldn’t pose as big as a danger to me as she might

  like to.

  I never glanced behind me again because I knew she would

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  quicken my pace even more. A grin formed on my face as after a

  few more moments I saw the park where I had met Finnegan in

  front of me. Maybe she would be there tonight and we could

  interrogate Angel Face together; I wasn’t sure but I knew I could

  do it alone if I had too.

  I lowered my head as I walked even faster into the darkness of

  the empty park and made my way to the swing set, disappointed

  in the fact that she wasn’t there that night. Behind me I heard the muffled jogging of my pursuer as she followed me directly into

  my new comfort zone.

  I stopped walking and turned to face her.

  It was so unexpected that she almost ran into me. I looked

  down at her. She came up to my chest but for some reason I just

  knew she was dangerous by the way she stared up at me. Backing

  up a bit she put her hands back into her pockets and looked at me

  vacantly, almost as if she were suddenly in a trance.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her coldly.

  “Cassara.”

  Her voice sounded like wind chimes as a soft breeze passes by.

  “Why are you following me Cassara?” I inquired.

  She didn’t answer me; instead she backed away just a little

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  further, keeping her eyes locked on mine. Tilting her head slightly she smiled, revealing a row of perfect and impossibly white teeth.

  “I’ve been trying to find you,” she said softly.

  A look of confusion crossed my face as she took her hands

  out of her pockets and balled them into fists at her side.

  “What?”

  She put one of her hands over her mouth as she giggled.

  Something was definitely wrong with Cassara and I was starting

  to feel that familiar twinge of fear.

  When she was done laughing at my confusion she put a single