by Chase Erwin
The professor stepped towards me. He gazed over my body. “You truly are something special, Abel,” he said. “We’ve had him do that little vine trick on two others, and they both died straightaway.”
I quivered in pain. I didn’t want to speak to him anyway.
“And that’s to say nothing of how quick that Blight elixir took effect. Your brain knows exactly what to do with each of these potions and puts them into use immediately.” He smirked. “You are going to be of great use to us, Abel.”
He turned towards the door. “You have deserved a rest, Abel. Get some sleep. Besides, there is nothing I can do for broken ribs. They must heal naturally,” he said with a rueful laugh.
He made a quick exit through the door, slamming and locking it shut behind him. I laid there on the table, still strapped in, trying so hard not to sob and disturb the broken bones in my body.
There was one thought repeating in a loop before I drifted off to the first natural sleep I had received in god-knows how long:
I really wish they would just kill me and get it over with, I thought bitterly.
8. Mercy
I kept thinking of something my brother said to me one summer afternoon when I found him at the far edge of our farmland.
One of the sheep had broken out of its pen and had wandered out on the far edge of our land, right into a patch of poisonous brambles.
You may hear “brambles” and think of a simple bush with annoying prickly parts. But that is a misnomer in our part of Londolad.
These plants were predatory, and they used poison thorns to paralyze and devour small creatures — dormice, woodchucks, maybe the odd bird — but they couldn’t feed off something as large as a whole sheep.
The poor creature was writhing in pain, a nasty purple sore on its hindquarters.
Antareus was holding a small hatchet in one hand, raising it above his head.
“No, stop!” I cried. “Do we really have to kill it?”
“I’m afraid so, little brother,” he replied solemnly. “It’s the merciful thing to do; the toxins in the thorns go straight to the brain, but all this sheep’s gonna feel is burning and pain until it dies. And if we don’t do something now, that won’t be for a few more days.”
Perhaps stubbornly, I protested. “Couldn’t we bring it back to the house? We could feed it and see if it could fight it off?”
“No,” Antareus said. “There’s nothing that can fight off bramble venom.”
He had chopped off the vines around the sheep’s body, and they were slowly retracting away, back to the woods a few yards away from the edge of our property.
He held the hatchet up to me. “Do you want to?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Then you better turn away now; I gotta do it quickly,” Antareus said.
I did as I was told; I turned back to face the house. I held my arms up to cover my ears. It did very little to muffle the sounds of the blows landing. Luckily, I couldn’t hear any sounds from the sheep.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Will you help me bury it?”
I put my arms down. I saw that he was holding the hatchet behind his back so I wouldn’t have to see the blood.
“Okay,” I said.
Later, as we were walking back to the farmhouse, Antareus put his hand back on my shoulder.
“Death is a part of life,” he said. “You should look forward to it.”
“What?” I stopped walking to look at him. “That’s kind of a sick thing to say.”
He grinned. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to sound macabre about it. I just meant that death is a release. It’s a release of pain and of suffering. The way I look at it, death is the world’s way of offering you mercy; the chance to move on to something better.”
We began to walk again as I contemplated his words.
They echoed in my mind time and again, as I continued to suffer at the hands of the guards and experimentation inside the Ravens’ lair.
“Death is the world’s way of offering you mercy… Death is a release of pain and suffering.”
I got so mad hearing it repeated over and over in my mind, and I slammed my fist into the stone wall. I had to have broken every finger. There was blood everywhere.
But then, as I stared at my hand, I watched in wonder as the bones righted themselves. The cuts and gashes healed. Within minutes, it was as if I hadn’t broken the hand at all.
Did I really do that? Was that something that really happened or did I imagine that?
One night as I was thinking about Antareus’ death, and why he seemed to know that he was drinking the acid. Was he acting selfishly? Was he eager to move on to something better and leave me behind to suffer?
No, I scolded myself. He had to have thought I would make it out of here sooner than this.
If that’s true, I have to start seriously thinking how that may happen.
9. Thunderblast
I awoke, as I so often did, in a haze, my vision blurred. I was slumped, as I so often was, against a corner of the observation room that had been my home for so many weeks.
Brennan was sitting at the other end of the room. Brennan was the name of the guard assigned to watch over me during the overnights as of late. At least what I assumed were the overnights. I hadn’t seen the moon or sun since I was brought here.
He was eating his dinner. If there is one thing that hadn’t suffered during my time in chains it was my sense of smell. I smelled everything from the stagnant water pooling down the hall to his wild boar sandwich. I couldn’t help but look in his direction. So hungry…
But I shouldn’t stare too long, I thought, otherwise he’ll--
“Keep those eyes off my grub!” he says, gruffly. I grimaced and tried to turn my gaze back to the cobbled rock wall I was chained to. My stomach growled, and in reflex I groaned.
“Shut up!” Brennan was in an even fouler mood than usual. “They make me watch over you. You, of all the maggots here — do you realize how much gold I’ve lost betting against you week after week?”
“Sorry,” I mumble. Seconds later, the growling worsened.
“Fine. You want food?”
He balled the sandwich up in his fist before hurling it towards me. It smacked soundly against my forehead and spilled over my shirt and shoulder. I bit my lower lip.
“Eat it!”
I looked up at him, unsure what to do. Under regular circumstances I might have thrown the food back at him, but the utter humiliation was conflicting with my desperate hunger.
Brennan scooted out from behind the exam table where he had been eating. His eyes flashed, a look I’ve seen before when I’ve angered him. “I said… eat it.”
I shook my head. I was starting to tremble.
It took him three or four steps to stride across the room. He yanked my head up by my scraggly hair, causing me to yell out.
With his free hand, he picked up the remains of the sandwich and started smearing it against my face. “I said eat it, you scum!”
An angry heat started to rise within me. My eyes locked onto the pearl-handled dagger at his side. I stared at it, wishing I could just reach out…
… The dagger began to rise from its sheath. I was sure I was seeing things. This can’t be happening. Brennan didn’t notice it. It rose completely out from the sheath…
My brain began calling all the shots from that moment. I envisioned a hand taking the dagger and striking him with it…
And I watched in awe as that’s exactly what happened. The handle of the dagger struck Brennan in the jaw. He released his grip on me.
How is this happening, I wondered, when I hadn’t been given any potions to give me the magic?
I pictured the blade of the knife turning and grazing against his arm.
And it did. He fell backwards in stunned shock. I lost my concentration on the knife and it clattered to the floor, just before my foot.
“You fucking scum!” Brennan reached out for the knife, but knowing
I couldn’t grab it before him, I did the next best thing and kicked it further out of both our grasps.
The next thing I saw was Brennan’s steel-toed boot smashing against my face. I felt my nose crack. I saw my blood splatter against the wall. I grunted and gurgled.
He slammed the boot down on my face again, before landing another blow into my side.
Fighting against the pain, I scrambled back into a sitting position, raising my chained hands against my face in a defensive pose.
BLAMMMMMM!
A tremendous explosion filled the room. I felt an unbelievable pressure from my hands culminate in a blast that shook the walls, and flew Brennan back about 20 feet.
There was an intense ringing, whistling noise that drowned out whatever he said next, and covered up every word and sound for the next few minutes.
Three more guards came in. One knelt down beside Brennan to examine him. Another stood guard outside the door, and the third approached me. He held a vial of the blue liquid.
I tried to mumble an apology, a plea… but he pulled my head back and made me drink the potion, as they’ve done dozens of times before.
I awoke several hours later in another haze, in a darker room. I was chained up again, and this time I had a pair of metallic gauntlets chained around my wrists.
“Tsk, tsk tsk,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. Another cloaked figure, another person I am not meant to know. He approached me, but I couldn’t see the face under the shadows.
“You are quite the puzzle, Abel Mondragon,” said the cloaked figure. “Every time we think we have you conditioned, you have another one of these… episodes.”
“I’m sorry,” is all I could say. My face hurt badly, and I think my mouth was swollen from the beating.
“Don’t you worry yourself about it,” said the man. “You appear to be Dr. Kane’s favorite. That’s why you’re in here, recuperating, instead of bleeding out in the exam room.”
“Br… Brennan?”
“Hm?” The man took a moment to process what I was asking. “He won’t hurt you anymore. He failed to heed the doctor’s explicit orders when he struck you and he is… no longer a concern.”
“But we can’t have you causing a ruckus again, and that’s why you’re in the shackles, at least until you’re in a more… controlled environment.”
“What does that mean?” I sputter.
“Never you mind,” says the voice. He approached with another vial of blue liquid. “For now you just need to take some more of your medicine.”
I didn’t want to take it, but I was in too much pain to argue. I took it down, and within moments, was once again in a state of perpetual sleep.
10. Things I’ll Never Say, Things I’ll Never Do
I spent a lot of time chained up in the hideout to think about things I should have done while I was free.
I regretted not having been more of a people person. It wasn’t that I intended to be a loner, just that there was so much to do, striking up friendships just wasn’t on that list.
There were so many missed opportunities to just say certain things to certain people.
I had always wanted to turn up to the tavern at the far end of town, the one by the river bridge, on the night they let people sing. I was always too shy to do it, even when I’d had a few too many.
I was sorry I never told Father it was I who broke his favorite hammer that one summer, tossing it up in the air pretending to be a juggler. Instead Antareus took the blame and was barred from going fishing that summer. He was really sore at me about that.
I don’t think I ever told any of them — Mother, Father, Antareus — that I loved them as often as I should have.
There was a jerk at the college that was always trying to rally people to sign his petition to bar otherworldly creatures and gnomes from admission. I had wanted to walk up to him and tell him that if brains were dynamite he still wouldn’t have enough to blow his ears off.
I really should have said something, anything, to Ricken, even if it was just to say hey, I think you’re cool, would you like to get a drink or just hang out?
I should have paid more attention to Antareus the last couple years. I should have checked in with him more, asked how his day was going. If I had, maybe I would have realized he was in trouble.
I should have seen this coming.
I should have fought harder. I should have fought for my brother’s life.
Instead, he is dead. He is dead, and I am alive.
But it’s not much of a life, is it?
I said this to myself each waking moment when I wasn’t being pumped full of potions or under the professor’s knife. To be honest, to this day, I still regret not having said or done something in my past that I’m sure would have changed the course of things.
I’ll never stop thinking these things.
11. Experiment 177
After being pulled out of the arena fights, there was a long period of time in which I was subjected to the professor’s increasingly cruel and painful experiments. Each one involved some new form of potion for me to drink.
One day he walked in with a bottle of green liquid for me to drink. Immediately I remembered that the acid which killed my brother was green, and I had a fleeting moment of sick hope — is it acid? Are they finally done with me? Can I have the sweet release of death now?
But no, it was not acid. I gulped the liquid down. There was an embarrassing moment where I belched in his face, though I wasn’t particularly apologetic about it.
Within a few moments, my skin began to turn a pale shade of green. Then scales began to develop — first in clumps and patches around my arms and legs, then over my whole body. My hair fell out as scales took over, and I could feel my tongue compress and elongate in my mouth.
I’m sure I was turning into a lizard-like creature of some sort - I always had some indication during these metamorphosis experiments as to what sort of animal I was becoming, but I was never given a mirror to see myself.
This was the first experiment that I recall was called a failure — the scales grew, the tongue indeed became lizard-like… but it seemed that as soon as that happened, the potion faltered. The scales began to flake away and fall to the floor around me.
The professor frowned, and spent a few minutes rubbing my cheek and one of my arms. I could feel pockmarks — thousands of indentations where the scales should have been but my skin had reformed instead.
“Hmm, never mind,” he said. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
I was turned into every type of creature I could imagine — lizards, wolves, cat-like things with saber-like fangs… And each time the creature was deemed a success, there were follow-up experiments which involved taking me in my new temporary form and placing me in close confines with some other poor prisoner.
I would always kill them. I would always have that natural predatory instinct to kill, as much as I wanted to fight the urge, I could not.
Bottle after bottle after bottle of fluids. The blue sleeping one was always the most frequent, and a rainbow of otherwise pretty colors being poured down my throat and turning me into bizarre looking creatures, or causing me to use magic I had never studied for. These things were not brought to me by birthright, or by gift - like my mother’s bracelet which controlled flame. It felt… alien, in a way, to possess all this power.
Day after day, week after week, potion after potion, I was becoming delirious, my brain crying out for rest — but the experiments kept on coming.
I knew enough about science to know that “harm springs from excess.” I kept wondering how long they were going to keep pouring things into me and not expect there to be some sort of long-lasting side effect.
But they didn’t seem to care. At least, the professor didn’t. I remember assistants protesting his actions from time to time — surprisingly, the twins were the first to do so, and that was the last time I ever saw them. Whenever someone told him he should stop, that he should abort an experiment
, they were soon replaced.
And then, one day, he did indeed go too far.
My eyes snapped open. I tried to squint; a bright light was stinging me.
The professor was there, just out of my line of sight. I was back on the cold metal exam table.
“‘Ello, Abel,” he said. “Do you remember me?”
He stepped forward so I could see. He was re-introducing himself to me once again.
I tried to nod… but I couldn’t. I felt frozen to the spot. I tried to lift my head… nothing.
My wrists wouldn’t rotate. I tried to say “Yes…” but my mouth slacked open and I could only manage a guttural moan.
“Don’t try too hard to speak,” he said. “I think you’ll find movement or speech to be impossible.”
He turned his gaze from me to two assistants on my right side. He began dictating notes to them.
“Day 398. Subject is undergoing test treatment number 177. Objective is to determine solution’s effectiveness at immobilization and nerve receptor manipulation.”
The professor looked back at me. “Your body’s reactions to the treatments we have been administering have been quite remarkable. They often go far beyond our hypotheses. Either they are too potent… or you are.”
He looked at one of the assistants. They are both cloaked; I cannot see their faces.
“You may turn him now.”
They set down their notepads and reached out for me. I tried to fight back, but again my body failed to function. They pushed me on my side, turned and placed me on my stomach. My head was positioned on an oval-shaped rest, with my face in the opening in the middle. I watched my own drool fall from my mouth and puddle on the floor.
“This experiment, Abel, is to determine if our experiments have had any adverse effects on your body’s natural abilities. In particular, we want to examine your ability to sense pain.
“Turn on the blade.”
I could hear machinery clicking above my body, followed by a mechanical whirring noise.