by Riley Mason
"Who’s been watching you all this time?" I ask her.
“No one,” she says a small sense of pride in her voice.
"Someone had to raise you, honey."
A blink and her eyes have changed. Gorgeous eyes that were glowing with laughter and happiness suddenly became red, tears began to bubble and slide down her face. Her pale skin had begun to take on shades of scarlet.
“No, honey,” I say to her and try and bring her closer to me but instead of allowing me to take her in, she swats my arm away from her.
“NO!” she says.
“Your body killed me,” she says to me.
I heard the words, but I wasn't touched by them. “What did you say?”
“You killed me.”
Then the migraine slides into place.
The pain in my head quickly erupts.
My hand goes to my eyes, blinding them from whatever light is around me. My teeth grind into one another causing the muscles at my jaw to charge and flex.
It feels like I’m going to saw right through my teeth.
CHAPTER 73
I squirm with one hand over my eye and me still down on my knee, I use my other hand to try and hold onto something. It’s like my entire body is caught in the middle of the ocean, a violent storm raging around, my life caught in the turbulent war of waves carrying around me.
A sizzled shriek leaps out of me, as I tighten my hand over my face as if the extra added pressure will block more light from finding its way into my eyes. It’s like a needle being dragged through my mind, so painful that my mouth is arched open despite my teeth being squeezed shut.
I fall on my back and start to work on my breathing, it feels like I’ve been stabbed directly in my temple and the blade that’s in there has been twisted to make sure the wound won’t close.
I try and time myself, to see if she’s still there, to see if this little girl who claimed to be my daughter is still standing there at the doorway, watching me struggle, watching me writhe in pain. Or if she’s vanished. Another figment of my imagination, some deceptive illusion from this infection inside of me.
My eyes sealed, I lift my head for only a second and slide my fingers a little further apart so that I can see through the small window that I've made in between them. The little girl is there, I can see her, standing there obedient, patient as she watches me in pain. There's no smile on her face, no laughter that comes out of her mouth. She waits there in silence, never once stepping into the apartment, not once offering to help me or to see if she can get someone.
She’s not alone either. There is someone standing behind her, someone waiting with her as both of them look at me, not for study but because they know that I’m inching closer to them. That I’m losing what control I have on reality and I’m falling victim to my past. Allowing all the good I’ve done for myself to wash away, slide itself down some drain where I know I can’t get it back once it’s gone. It’s lost because I lost it.
That woman is there, standing there with white eyes, her hands on the little girl’s shoulder, the blood caked to her pale skin, heavy bags weigh down on the underside of her eyelids.
“No,” I whisper but the pain of getting the words out is too much for me to be able to handle. It’s like drawing blood to get them out of my mouth to distract me long enough to say them from the pain my mind is in. It feels like my scalp has been cut open, a doctor is removing vital tissues from my brain and I’m paralyzed to fight it, but I can feel every maneuver of his fingers, every decision that he makes with the instruments of the surgery.
Soon, tears are falling down my cheeks because the pressure is so intense above my eyes that I'm afraid it'll cause my skull to crack. To fracture somewhere along it’s seams because the pressure built up behind the bone proved to be too much to contain, my body couldn't prevent it.
The only thing that I could think of, the only thing that was clear in my mind amongst the fog of pain that blinded me was that I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t capable enough to fight this. All the effort I had put in to prevent this from happening, to remove myself from guilt and pain, to learn to cope with things just beyond my control, had failed.
I was lost.
CHAPTER 74
With my eyes closed, I relive all those nights. The ones that followed Luke raising his hands to me. Bringing his fists to my body without care if he broke it. What damage he could do to me if he gave into the temper he had, fueled the anger that was in him instead of ignoring it, knowing he wasn't the only one going through pain.
That first night was the most difficult, staring at the mirror, looking at the indentations he had left on my neck. The screen of purple he had left on my throat, his fingers pinching into my skin.
I stood looking at those markings for hours because it was easier to concentrate on that pain than the pain that was going on inside of me. Knowing I was about to face a miserable truth, a horrific decision that was already made without me involved one bit. That I was going to lose my baby and that there was nothing I could do.
For a long time, I held Luke's side of the argument without him there to make it. Knowing I had taken the only chance he had to have a son or a daughter. That I had given him the hope that we would, that I could give him the family that he's always wanted, and then tell him that his child wasn't going to make it. Before that baby got to breathe it's the first breeze of air before he got to make a single sound.
I was the one at the center of our pain, the one to blame for ruining the love he and I shared. I was the failure behind all of it, the architect of our downfall. I couldn't blame him.
Watching myself in that mirror showed me things about myself I had never known. Things that had never once come up in sessions that I had used to try and talk through these issues. A child that had seen a quadruple murder, a woman who had lost her unborn child, I felt that trauma was written into me. Some part of me I just couldn’t escape because it was so much a part of me I couldn't exist without it. I was naked if it wasn’t there with me.
I remember touching the markings, running my fingers softly down the patches of purple that discolored my fair skin. Trying to feel the anger and the rage that constructed making these. To know, or at least understand, what had made him like that. What had made him want to kill the woman who was so nearly the mother of his child. If he even saw me like that. Like the woman, the mother, or the murderer of one of his lifelong goals.
I looked again to see her. This illusion of who my daughter is. That to the best of my mind's ability, it was showing me a truth because my body had been the one to help design her. That if this was the portrayal I was seeing, there had to be some fact to it. This had to be who she would grow to be.
My head was throbbing, it felt like there was blood slowly leaking out of my eyes and ears. I wanted to scream but even the vibration from my chest would rattle my mind loose. I couldn't move, I was paralyzed to the pain and it wasn’t budging. I just knew they were watching me, waiting for something to happen, I just wasn’t sure what that was or what it could be.
Then it happened, the first explosion erupted.
CHAPTER 75
The glass of my window erupted, spraying sharpened glass everywhere, all around me. The shards flying toward me like projectiles of razors, shredding my skin as they passed over, gusts of howling rain accompanied the glass, bringing sheets of water into the apartment.
My hand still guarded my eyes, the first blinding beam of lightning came and the roll of thunder erupted, bouncing around the steel towers of my street, trapped in its valley of concrete, shaking it's sound up until I was certain my jaw was going to crack from holding my teeth shut so tightly.
The second explosion came only seconds after the first. This time it was the wall next to the window. Bits of brick and metal flung themselves into the apartment, I could hear their chunks hitting and scraping against the floor, the island of my kitchen blocking most of the debris that was heading toward me. I had to turn, switch my body
to one side so I could leave an arm over my head, protect it from whatever was going to fall on me.
The eruptions moved more quickly after that, shattering walls and furniture, glass, and accessories in the house. The two of them, standing there, watching as everything around me was destroyed while they continued to wait.
Eventually, everything, all the explosions had accumulated an incredible amount of debris, the scraps of what my home was, the body of my apartment, rained down on my body, laying there on the floor defenseless to fight it.
I screamed, despite the pain that was going to argue it, I let out a violent scream, but it never came out. Before it could, everything went black.
CHAPTER 76
My eyes reopened to tile that I recognized. My headache was gone, crawling back from wherever it came as my eyes adjusted back to light.
There was pain all over my body but as I looked at my hands, there was nothing. I was empty of scars or bruises, cuts or scrapes from the glass that slid across my skin, from any of the other explosions that had happened around me.
When I went to move, I felt it, the soreness that fought at the reflexes and motion of my body.
I grit my teeth as I tried to pull myself back up to my feet, to stand.
I recognized where I was but only barely. It was my lab, that I was sure about, but it was different. It wasn't in the pristine order that it had been when I left it. Instead, it looked old, aged, as if the touch of neglect had gotten a hold of it the same way it had taken control of my parent’s house.
The walls were covered in mold and grit, the floor looked like it had been sprayed and splashed with mud that had grooved into the lab’s tiles. Most of the instruments were destroyed, demolished, and broken as most of them lay on their sides, victims to whatever had gone on here.
My hand went through my hair as I looked around. Trying to gauge what had happened. There was no sound around me, only the lights still managing to produce some illumination flickered in the still room.
When I turn, I see her, a body laying there on the medical table. The same woman that was brought to me by the NYPD.
I walk to her, studying her body, a body that hasn’t aged a single day since the last time I’ve seen her, despite the fact that my entire lab looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. That it was left with her here and forgotten about. There was no effort to save or salvage it, it was abandoned and left alone.
As I look at her, I think the same thoughts that I had the last time I’d seen her, when my lab was up and running, when the worst part of my day was looking at that child, the thoughts that were going to come with it. Thoughts that felt like months ago now, knowing that I did it, knowing that that sleep had interfered with my own memories as much as the trauma had.
I look at her in astonishment that takes my breath away. That she hasn't been touched by decomposition. Her body still pristine, a woman found in the ravines of New York, to come with this level of hygiene didn't make sense.
I go to her and put my hand on her head, to feel the ice that's there. The cold greets my fingers, almost freezing them.
I pull my hand away, the cold almost sends them into frostbite. But, it’s enough, my headache comes back, throbbing and beating at the inside of my skull, ravaging the parts of my mind that are most valuable to me, the one that I want to preserve and protect.
Then I feel it, the cold, blood coated hand slide against my neck, the other hand my dad’s razor. The tip of the razor goes into the soft flesh of my neck, digging its way through my skin. A small bit of blood slides out as her feral chant is no longer just a horrific sound in my ear, it’s something else, something different. “I’ve missed you,” her words say as she drags the razor across my throat.
Blood erupts out of me. I can see it spray into the air as the airway that connected my nose to the vital factory in my chest no longer exists. Blood starts to soak me, and I can no longer breath.
I fall to the floor, my eyes staring up at this woman, this version of me standing over me, her eyes still their ghost white but a smile breaks her cracked lips.
EPILOGUE
I look through five feet of protective glass encased in five feet of concrete at the scene on the other end of the view. I’m amazed at what’s there. Seeing it with my own eyes, I’m still astonished that it’s not a dream, a hallucination.
My hands wrap around my chest, the lab coat is warm and worn after nearly twenty hours wearing it, watching what I’ve seen, it still intrigues me—scares me beyond belief. I see what I’m seeing, knowing that it’s real, seeing it live and in action but it’s so far-fetched that it’s hard to believe.
In my profession, I can go years, even a career, from start to finish, without a discovery like this. Here I am, at the forefront of something that will change everything, changes people’s minds on what they know, on what they believe, even on what they remember.
I watch this girl, this no one, a girl with no name. A homeless girl that we found on the street, she’s the ninth one that’s been fed to this room. We gave her over willingly, drugged her, gagged her, and supplied her to something we didn’t fully understand. To see what happened, to see what changed in her, to see simply how she reacted. Choosing her because there was no collateral damage, there was no reasoning. We had to explain nothing if she did what the others had done, if she vanished, if she hurt herself.
I saw her when she came in. I saw all of them when they came in. Saw their drugged faces, knowing they had come willingly, the promise of a high, something to chase, anything to dilute them, they came, and they begged and groveled for it.
Forgotten genders, forgotten people that just don’t exist to the better parts of society, that belong to no one’s memories. They belong to no one’s history, they belong to nothing. They had no names, no identification, no place in society, and most importantly, there was no one to miss them. I had nothing to worry about taming this herd of people, meat to be fed to something so extraordinary and to be free of guilt, of pressure because I could see what was going to happen. I could sample what science has yet to explain, see the growth of something that shouldn’t exist.
The strange thing is the animal that's in there with them. There is no clear explanation for him at all. Seven men had seizures, all seven of them were dead within the hour of coming into his presence. As he lay there, eyes closed, sleeping, in a coma just like we found him.
It took heavy doses of medications just to allow some of the personnel to be able to take his vitals. Strong, almost suicidal doses of antipsychotics to cut short the paths of neurotransmitters to and from the brain to keep them sane for the duration.
I've watched him do this now. There is such minimal activity in his brain, but it doesn't seem to matter, not from what I'm seeing. All eight of the people before we're dead within two hours and as he's gotten more practice, they are dying faster. His brain is showing next to no activity on conventional tracking devices. The measurements and readings that we are taking show someone who is simply asleep but on a reduced mental capacity.
What his brain is actually doing, is guarding him, guarding its main center while he sleeps, protecting him. Feeling the presence of others like fingers combing the air and ensuring that the body is protected by ensuring that the people close to them are incapacitated. Are killed by their own minds and thoughts. New directions being fed into their minds, directing their bodies to harm themselves, to kill themselves.
I saw that this girl was different though, a different variety than the others. When I saw them bring her in, some woman from over in the Village, she looked decently cleaned and had some documentation with her. I remembered seeing what she used for an ID in her bag when it was inventoried, a girl named Aly.
I saw the markings on her arm, the smell of her breath, she was rotting from the inside out, killing herself almost as fast as she was about to the second we dropped her into the room, to let him do his work.
I thought she would put up the biggest fight a
nd instead, I was proven wrong, absolutely wrong.
She’s been in that room for two minutes and she was absolutely insane, by minute four, she was dead, grabbed one of the medical instruments intentionally left on the tray and stabbed herself in the throat with it, sliding it clear across her neck until she bled out.
{I don’t know what we’re dealing with, I don’t know where this woman is from, but I know her mind is dangerous, to those strong and weak alike and it’s evolving as it’s getting closer to waking up. }