by Ryan Schow
“The reason Patricia’s mother didn’t say anything is because, having it happen to Patricia was better than having it happen to her. Can you imagine that? Your own mother not wanting to have sex with your father so she lets him have his way with you?”
Cameron’s eyeliner became black trails coursing down her face. She stopped struggling, twitching only with the plucking of each hair. A stillness settles over the air between us. She’s finally comprehending the impact of her actions. It’s really getting inside her now. Unfolding.
“Constant rape. That was Patricia’s every night and weekend. Tad Blalock was a brutal, sadistic, downright terror of a man. What you didn’t see under the ugly dresses Patricia used to wear were how bruised her thighs were. How sore her vagina was from the slamming, pounding abuse she endured. How much shame she had packed inside that head of hers. Whatever he did to her, you made it so much worse. She got away from him every day only to have to face you and your arrogant self. What you did, your unrelenting abuse, you and her father…you made it easy for her to kill herself.”
I’m still in Tad Blalock’s head because a part of me lost my way out. My body starts to shudder and rage; tears gather behind my eyes. Shove it down, I tell myself. But this isn’t mine. The sorrow is, but the memories aren’t. They’re his. The memories. They’re Patricia’s father’s memories and they’re the thing of nightmares. I start sobbing, barely able to pull out of his head.
It takes a minute to pull out, but once I do, I compose myself again. Cameron can only look on in horror, in complete witlessness.
“Eventually Patricia would have murdered her father, but she couldn’t because you got involved. You changed nature. Now he’s now out raping other children like her because you didn’t let that take its course.”
My mind bumps off Cameron’s. She’s horrified by what she has done, by what she is hearing. So horrified she wants me to kill her. Just to make it end. Plus, she’s thinking, what about my hair? She’s thinking, what about my freaking hair?!
That shallow, haughty scab.
“Now that I know this is happening, now that I’ve got a bead on this man you let live, I’m going to put an end to him. But not before you recognize that his violations are now on you, you flaming twat.” My insides twisting and lashing out, I snarl, “The constant, brutal raping of those children, that’s on you!”
The hair is now coming out so fast blood is drizzling and draining down her face, mixing with the trails of tears and eyeliner. She’s a disturbing mess my brain can hardly process. There are voices inside me screaming for a stop, but I can’t stop, so I shove it down. Right now, I can’t afford to be nice, to be compassionate, to be forgiving.
With my mind I tear off Cameron’s bra and underwear. She’s just hanging there, spread eagle, completely vulnerable. Searching the room using her mind, I find Cameron’s cell phone. It’s in her purse. The Samsung device slides into the air, hovers before us until it’s facing her.
“What are you doing?” Cameron’s voiceless mouth asks as more tears roll into the blood already draining down her face. “How are you doing all this?” She’s not so pretty with most of her hair gone. Not so pretty with a chunked flesh head and a blood-stained face.
I access her smart phone’s video feature.
Turn it on.
7
“You have a beautiful body, Cameron. The boys who want to screw you, they only want that so they can see you naked, but now I’m going to show everyone what you look like the same way you showed everyone what Abby looked like.”
I crawl her mind, for one second, and the dread inside appeases me. Nourishes me. The shame, the grief, the misery and the embarrassment, it’s all there, like spoiled milk. She’s going to kill herself when I’m done with her. Which is fine by me.
I get out of her head while I can.
“The way you feel inside, how you feel desecrated, mind-raped, destroyed, imagine that feeling every single day until you get the courage to end it. Patricia took the butcher knife from the kitchen sink, went to her father’s office, sliced her own neck open. She bled out in a matter of moments on his office floor. Her mother found her, cried herself senseless, then shot herself in the head with her husband’s gun. They didn’t tell you these things on the news, but you need to know that that’s what happened.
“And Kristen,” I say. “She was such a sweet child. Her sky blue eyes were her prettiest physical feature, but those same eyes flooded with shame when you caught her masturbating in the bathroom at school and told everyone. She wasn’t doing that, though. What happened was she had an underwear rash on her vagina from the scented laundry soap her mother had switched to. Kristen was a young soul. Delicate. You picked on her, you stupid bitch, you picked on her because she was soft and quiet. You picked on her because she was humble. How strong do you feel now, Cameron? Now that everyone sees you for what you are, how is your self-confidence holding up? And how disgraced do you feel now that you’re the vulnerable one? The prey at the mercy of the hunter?”
When she was completely bald, when the last strand of hair fell, I let myself breathe. The first thing they do to prisoners in black site prison camps like Abu Ghraib is strip them naked and shave their heads. Whatever dignity they once had, whatever strength was left, these two actions consistently took that away. That’s what I wanted for Cameron. I needed to break her. I needed her to be able to hear me, to listen. She’s broken, now.
And she’s finally listening.
“Your hair, it might grow back,” I tell her, continuing to video her. “But not the way that it used to. Your head will be scarred, and hair won’t grow out of the shiny white patches of scar tissue. But you’ll be fine. Only you will know the difference between what it is and what it used to be. Your body, though, I’m going to make that a different thing.”
With my mind I start pulling out her pubic hairs one at a time, all the rooted bits of brown stubble falling on the pile of bloody blonde hair. When it’s all torn out by the follicle, I use my mind to carve the word BULLY into her pubic region. I open the skin, let it bleed, then close it shut and seal it, but not fully. The letters of scar tissue—if she doesn’t end herself—they will be jagged, ugly. A constant reminder that even the most sacred parts of her are scarred. I then open twin X’s over each brown nipple. It’s cruel and it sickens me to the point of personal shame, but it’s a necessary evil. No, it’s not necessary. It’s just.
She’s screaming muted screams, her body bucking against invisible restraints.
“Everything you hold dear, and that’s not much because you’re worthless and shallow, I am taking it from you because you have taken too much from everyone else.”
When I’m done, I take her phone, Bluetooth-send the video to my phone, then say, “You hurt a single person before you suicide yourself or die, and this video goes viral. I’m not talking about just the school. I’m talking the whole world over from now until your natural or unnatural death. If you think for one second that I can’t keep tabs on you, or that I’ll fail to make good on my word, just watch this video. Watch it and ask yourself what kind of a person can do what I’m doing to you? I think you’ll come to the conclusion that I’m not human, which I’m not, and that I don’t have empathy, which I don’t for you, and then you’ll realize how easy it would be for me to keep this promise.
“If this happens again, though, the video will be the least of your problems because I’m going to do what I did to you today. But instead of taking your hair and your clothes, I’m going to take your nails, your skin and your eyes. And then I’ll take fingers and toes and arms and legs until you’re nothing but a bled out corpse. However bad you think this death will be, I will make it infinitely worse. Do you understand?”
Her body still in shock, bleeding and sobbing, she nods and I release my hold. Cameron drops like garbage to the floor where I leave her.
“Go ahead and kill yourself if you want,” is the last thing I say to her before dropping her pho
ne at my feet.
At the end of the hall, in the floor’s guest bathroom, I go to the nearest stall and throw up. I throw up over and over again and then try to shake off what I’ve done. Sitting on the cold tile floor, hugging the toilet, my face is a mess of spent rage. I recognize that I’ve been in too many minds lately: Jake’s, Abby’s, Brayden’s, Caden’s, Cameron’s, Patricia’s father’s and Kristen’s mother’s.
Eesh.
It’s exhausting just thinking about it!
A fresh surge of revulsion cycles up through me, making me vomit hot air and yellowish bile. I puke until my guts feel squished against each other. I vomit and cry and choke down my hatred. This is not my hatred for others, though; this is my hatred for myself.
I hate myself because I shouldn’t be able to do such things. This isn’t me! I can’t be this person, I think as I struggle to my feet and flush the toilet. When a person has the power and the means to do anything they want, and they abuse it, or lean on it to do harm to others, that’s when what you have becomes not a blessing but a curse. The doctor from Dulce who was neither man nor alien, he said this would happen. He warned me. For a second, I think of contacting him. I reach my tentacles out, but withdraw them the moment I remember the headache he gave me that day in my hotel room.
With a handful of toilet paper, I wipe my face, blow my nose, then drop the tissue in the bowl and flush. It’s not lost on me that I’ve been here before, in this situation. When as Abby I beat up Cameron and Julie, I’d gone into a bathroom and puked, too. This has to stop, I remind myself. I can’t be this girl. When I come out of the stall, Brayden is standing there, right in the middle of the restroom, waiting for me. He’s a sight for sore eyes if ever there was one.
His face filled with compassion, he doesn’t say anything, he just comes up and hugs me. Then, his chin resting on my shoulder, he says, “Is she dead?” He means Cameron. I shake my head, no. “The girl that hung herself,” he says, slowly, calmly, “that isn’t Abby, is it?”
After a long time, I say, “No.”
“You are, aren’t you? You’re Abby.”
After an even longer time, and much contemplation, I say, “Yes,” and he hugs me even tighter.
New Beginnings
1
Back at the room, Caden is helping Abby into bed. He’s gently dripping water down her throat and he’s helping her relax. Slowly, ever so slowly, he’s massaging the back and sides of her neck. An angry red welt circles her throat and she’s having a hard time not crying.
When Brayden and I walk in, Abby looks at me not like she did when she learned I was the real Abby, but different because I communicated with her when she was dead, and I brought her back to life.
“You brought yourself back to life,” I say.
Caden looks at me and his nostrils flare with…something. Worry, awe, a complete lack of understanding? Abby, however, just sits there with a look of amazement on her face. Into her head, I say the words: Don’t try and talk. Just rest. I’m going to take you home in the morning, just like I promised.
She nods her head like she understands.
“What’s going on?” Caden asks. It’s a general question because the things he’s feeling, the endless questions he has but can’t articulate, he doesn’t know what else to ask.
“Cameron is probably upstairs killing herself right now,” I say, to which Abby croaks out the word: “Good.”
“Be ready in the morning,” I tell her.
“Ready for what?” Caden asks Abby as I’m leaving. At this point, I simply shut the door because my life has become too complicated for words.
2
If I’m taking Abby back to Elko, Nevada, to the trailer park she was raised in, this means I am officially taking Christian and Margaret’s daughter away from them. Janice cannot handle this life. She can’t handle being Abby Swann. And after my assault on Cameron, there will be lots of questions she shouldn’t be around to answer.
“Are you leaving?” Brayden asks me as he enters my room uninvited.
I don’t mind.
“Yes,” I say, “but only for a little bit.”
“What happened to you?” he asks. He has so many questions. More than I can answer right now. “You’re…different.”
“The things I’ve been through since being shot and killed at Holland’s lab, you wouldn’t believe them.”
He takes my hand in his and only when I hold his hand back do I realize how desperately I’ve needed human contact. Or better yet, him.
“Tell me everything,” he says. “Don’t leave anything out.”
So I tell him. I tell him everything.
He has a hard time believing everything that went on, but he knows me well enough to know that I’m not lying. And when he doesn’t speak, it’s not because we have trust issues, it’s because this is too much for him all at once. He’ll need to process this piece by piece.
“What are you going to do now?” he asks.
“I’m leaving town for a bit. To soften the blow of what’s to come.”
When I tell him what I have to do, where I’m going, he says he understands. He wants to come with me, but I tell him no, again, and he doesn’t like it.
He always hates me telling him no.
“Too freaking bad,” I say. “This is not the kind of thing you do with friends in tow.”
“I know,” he says. “Still.”
“I’ll be back this evening.”
“So you say.”
“I will.”
“Just promise you’ll come back.”
I take his pinkie, lock it into mine and say, “Pinky swear.”
3
The drive home takes longer than I expected and half the time I fought the urge to clear the road with my mind. A sort of parting of the metal seas, if you will. But I don’t because I’m not feeling terribly excited about using my powers anymore. I’m haunted by those things the doctor at Dulce said. Maybe that’s why he said it—to frighten me into being responsible. A sort of Scared Straight program for hybrids. Then again, with the hornet’s nest of energy and controlled chaos buzzing righteous in his head, I’m not sure his motives are so pedestrian.
It takes me nearly three hours with traffic to get to Palo Alto. I head to Christian’s house, hoping to see both him and Margaret. It’s just him and Rebecca.
“Hi,” he says, answering the front door. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Abby’s friend,” I say, feeling out of my mind talking to my father like this. “And I brought Rebecca home after…after Astor.”
“Oh, yes. Thanks. Let me get Rebecca,” he says.
“No. Don’t. I’m not here to see her. In fact, I don’t want to see her right now.” Taking a deep breath, I say, “I’m here to see you.”
His face changes. He isn’t sure what to expect.
“Can you come outside, or something?”
He steps outside, shuts the front door, then crosses his arms and says to me, “What’s this about?”
“It’s about Abby. I’m taking her home tomorrow.”
“You mean you’re bringing her home?” he says, his body unwinding with concern.
“No,” I say. “Home to Elko, Nevada. Where her real family is.” I let this sink in, then: “The Abby you knew after the accident, that girl is not your daughter. That was a clone of your daughter. The real Abby Swann died in Holland’s lab. She was shot in the head and in the heart and this killed her. The Abby you know, her given name is Janice Millworth and she was stolen from her family and sold into bondage to Gerhard, now Enzo Holland, to be your daughter.”
“What?” he asks, his energy bunching together in disbelief, in horror. “Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he tell me?—are you sure she’s dead?”
“Gerhard didn’t do that for Damien’s sister, Kaitlyn when she couldn’t be restored. They framed it as murder, when it wasn’t that. This caused Abby, who was then Savannah, to dig into Kaitlyn’s past, and that’s how she learned that
she wasn’t the only genetic anomaly alive at Astor Academy.”
“So you know about…Astor? About Dr. Gerhard?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re saying my daughter, my real daughter, is…is dead?”
“She died in that lab, I’m afraid.” The grief I see swelling in his eyes, I want to stop it, to make it go away, to tell him the truth, but he did this. All of this. To some degree, it started with him. With the Virginia Corporation.
He turns and starts to pace, but realizes he has to get by me to do that and so he stops, his eyes shining bright with tears he can’t stop. “How do you know this?”
“I just do.”
“What about Abby?”
“Janice.”
“What about her? This is what she wants? I mean, you’ve talked with her about this?”
“She tried to kill herself earlier today after a particularly heinous act of cyberbullying.”
“Oh, my God,” he says, going to pieces right in front of me. “Is…is she okay?”
“She is.”
Everything in me is screaming to tell him I’m Abby, his daughter, that I’m not dead, but he started this, and truth be told, I want him to be pissed off. He needs to call Holland, stuff him in a corner, demand answers. Or maybe this is me lashing out at him for having enrolled me in this program in the first place. Either way, I’m going to let him deteriorate for awhile because he deserves it. Good intentions or not, this life of mine, this non-human being I’ve become, all the torture I meted out and all the torture I endured, it’s all because he sent me to Astor under false pretenses.
I love him, but I need this bit of payback.
Out at the car, I consider returning home, but I don’t. I have to tell Margaret. She needs to know. If she’s even back from traveling, if she knows anything about the fake Abby—this girl, this stranger with the familiar face—she needs to know what Christian knows. And I want to tell her myself. That’s not my father’s responsibility, it’s mine.