Was this really Hell? I asked myself. Or was I alive?
Or meant Hell ‘being alive’?
Was I still in the process of dying?
Was this how it felt to die?
Was fading into death a long path filled with regrets and agony? Had I been so despicable to deserve something like this?
My lungs felt like being slowly filled with the dampness of boiled water and my muscles rebelled, screaming, wanting to move, to rip out whatever claimed my throat all the way into my chest.
I could feel my hands cramping, my feet, my shoulders, and then my eyes. They felt like foreign objects moving in my skull. I knew if I had been able to move I would have tried to tear them out. It must have been instinct or rather reflex to shut them tight; I could feel doing it.
Suddenly the agony became a sound, was accompanied by it. So high and loud that it was deafening, almost unbearable, but the torment I was sensing inside was yet stronger. And then the sound became color: orange, red and white, as if I was staring at the sun with my eyes closed.
I could hear my racing heartbeat and my breathing from the inside. And then, abruptly a jolt, a shock, killing everything, every re-born sense that was tantalizing me, just for a second, as if I had been pulled underwater.
Just like that, something dragged me up again with my heart racing just like my breath, pumping acid and fire through my body.
Another jolt, another shock, but with that, everything turned soft.
That was when I realized that I was being reanimated.
I was still in pain, and most of all sore, but in comparison to how I had first awoken it was nothing. Like a scratch compared to a shattered spine.
Instinctively, I wanted to move, but again, it was impossible. At least it was better now.
I felt how my body was calming down slowly. Yet, I wasn't back to how I had been. Still, I could hear myself and all the sounds that made it perfectly clear that I was somewhat alive.
Everything appeared to me as if I was floating underwater. There was a faint light and – which was most terrifying – sound.
I wasn't able to distinguish all of it. Yet, there was no doubt about it, and I didn't know what was worse: absolute silence and darkness, or these hints of the opposite.
One thing, however, I was sure of: if something like Hell did really exist: it would be just like this.
Now with the pain only being a numb ache I was alone with my thoughts again, with my memories, pictures flashing in front of my inner eyes.
They say you can see your life rush backwards in your mind when you die, but that didn’t happen.
And now everything that appeared in my mind was nothing else but my final moments, my final errors along with my worst one and all my regrets.
It repeated itself over and over again. I was trapped in reliving all of my mistakes, all of my regrets and I caught myself wishing that I would go through that physical pain again, or that I would wake up.
But there was this silent horror in the back of my head. I was terrified of coming back to life, because – no matter if Hell was real or not, if the Devil I remembered was real or not – I somehow knew that this deal, which had been offered to me, was real, and I was paralyzed of not knowing what would happen if I woke up.
The thought of you going through all of this right now... it paralyzes me just the same.
I can’t imagine how you must feel, even though I know what it is like to be there, between being awake and asleep, between life and death, in this black hole of nothingness.
I hope and pray that you are simply dreaming.
Day 113
All of this is just so overwhelming.
I am not used to handle that amount of emotions anymore. It’s like I have to learn this again, anew.
Seeing you there, asleep, due to chemicals or not, it was just too much for me.
It is too much for me.
All I can do is worry and ask, worry and question, worry and crawl up the walls of my cell.
At least, at this point, the Beast and I are aligned. For maybe the first time I know we want the same thing: protecting you, keeping you safe, getting you out of here.
Even if that’s the last thing we do.
Day 114
I don’t know when or if I’m going to see you again, when or if they take me to you again.
There was no explanation for your state, for me being taken to you, or for Peter being there as well.
So that, I guess, is just the new kind of torture, tormenting me with not knowing, with wondering.
It would be so much easier to just let frustration take over, grow into anger and rage, than to compose myself, than to fight the Beast down, than to take control, no matter what pain or agony I am in.
I wish I could put into words what it feels like, trying to remain in control over my body, over myself.
Doing this, the lines between me and the Beast inside just blur, smear, eventually fade, and it’s getting harder and harder to be aware of where I do end and where it starts.
I ask myself if there ever even was a difference.
I am not so sure anymore if there ever was.
That thought alone is more terrifying: that this Beast, this crude, vile creature has always been a primitive part of me, has been given a form.
* * *
This is just another test.
I know that.
Yet, I just grow tired of it. I don’t know what more I have to prove to this man.
Then again, I forget that he’s just plain nuts.
You’ve realized that even before I did, way before I did. And I am sure that Peter will never do that. He will never see the true colors of his own brother. And somehow I feel sorry for him. He is just so consumed by the idea of living up to whatever ideal that man has drawn out, of proving himself to him that he probably has forgotten who he is.
I can’t even picture what meaning you have to him. It has to be some warped image. Probably he believes that if you love him, if he gets you, if you were on his side, it would prove something to his brother.
Maybe Peter is even more insane than White.
Maybe he just knows that you can save him, the way you saved me.
I just don’t know.
Day 115
I keep thinking about Peter, so I don’t have to think about you. I speak to him, because I can’t talk to you.
I just cannot continue wondering if you are dreaming, and, if you are, what you are dreaming about, if you do remember those meetings – our meetings, your meetings with me, when I was nothing but that creature, residing beneath my skin.
It just drives me mad.
And ironically, the only person I can talk to is him. Even though I know I can’t trust him, and he doesn’t trust me. And that is lingering in the shadows, weighing on the air between us as we talk.
Still, the worry for you is something that connects us, even though we never asked for it.
For what is worth he told me things he had never told me before, about the first time he met you, the first time he guarded your door. And somehow I believe that he was being honest with me.
Maybe for the first time.
You were all matter of fact, and rational, only asking for your schedule, not drooling over him at all. Not that I ever imagined that. Maybe I did, being exaggeratedly jealous. One of my rare talents.
So, yes, he was overly excited to meet you, but you weren’t. Even though you smiled at him, for whatever reason, he told me that you did that because he was being friendly.
I know he would do anything to switch places with me.
I can hear it in his voice, see it on his face, and sense it in his behavior. And for the first time I am not jealous of him. I really don’t want to be in his shoes. And I feel bad about it.
In the end White just planted him there to torment you and me, to throw us into chaos. I doubt that he did care at all about his brother’s feelings and for Peter it probably was another futile straw.
>
I can imagine that White was sure his little half-brother would everything he would ask for. So he was simply the best candidate for this job. He probably wouldn’t care about the possibility of me killing Peter, if I ever had the chance after what had happened.
So, thinking this, the two of us being stuck with each other is just another test if I can control my emotions. You know I have thought about killing Peter.
I still do.
* * *
I feel bad. It feels wrong.
Everything Peter tells me just makes me feel stronger than him, makes me pity him, and bad about myself, because it makes me feel so confident about you.
Is this right? I mean, how I feel about it.
Why am I so conflicted about this?
Maybe because I know that he doesn’t deserve all of this, even though he chose it.
It wasn’t a free choice, was it?
He did this to gain his brother’s approval, not because he wanted this for himself.
Did you know that?
Did you sense this?
Was this the reason why you trusted him, because somehow you know, inside, he was a good guy, once?
Was it the same instinct that made you trust me that made you trust him?
Somehow, it makes sense to me. Because when I think of how I felt, by what I was driven, when I enlisted, got trained and went overseas to do my job, I can somehow relate to Peter. I don’t know what happened to him, that he became that fixated on pleasing his brother. But I know that I was obsessed to avenge my family, and that I needed to feel like I had control over everything.
I thought that, becoming a soldier, I would be able to stop bad things from happening again, and that somehow the loss I felt, would hurt less. It never did.
I wonder what loss Peter is trying to fix.
Day 116
Finally, I got to see you again.
It’s killing me to see you like this: so lifeless, so helpless, so unaware of everything, stripped from your senses when you are too perceptive of everything and everyone around you, like you are the one with the super senses and not me.
I, not breaking through that bullet proof glass to touch you, must have surprised White just as it did myself, or Peter. Yet, I wonder if my restraint is more painful than his, or maybe that’s the smoldering jealousy speaking.
All I did was press my nose and forehead against that invisible, cold wall between us, and nothing more. And I don’t care what everyone thinks. I left that behind me even before I was able to think clearly again.
When I added my palms, all I cared for was sensing the cool surface against my skin, like it was able to help me stay in control.
Somewhat I did.
Valerie was there with you. Valerie... Winters. She has been part of White’s staff right from the start, meaning that she was with my comrades and me along with Peter.
I don’t know what she thinks about all of this, and I really don’t care.
In my eyes no one is trustworthy anymore.
Understandable, right?
I don’t know about her relationship to Peter. They were colleagues, and many of my people thought that they had been more. Then again, there were also rumors about her having something going on with me.
If you ask me, she has to be involved with White in a way, maybe in all ways. I really don’t want my thoughts go even the tiniest bit in that direction.
Long story short: I don’t trust her being in a room alone with you. But then again, I wouldn’t trust anyone with you, not even myself. You know that.
The last time I saw you, all I could do was watch you lying there with your eyes closed, but this time Valerie distracted me.
All I wanted was to see you, watch you, give in to the illusion that I was watching over you and not helplessly witnessing something that was out of my control, knowing that it would still be like that even if I lost control over myself and gave the reigns back to that creature inside of me.
* * *
It is a different kind of helplessness, and I really don’t know if it’s worse to feel like that. How can I compare not being in control over your own body, watching your hands transform into something like claws, mauling through flesh, not even clearly remembering everything what your body has done without your consent, to this?
All this raw, violent strength, this unnatural speed, the greater stamina, all this power and I cannot even use it.
I cannot even give in freely to the monster that ripped humans into shreds, killed probably people I had once known.
In order to help you, to get you out of here, to spare you all of this.
All I can do is watch.
I have never felt so weak.
I have never felt so hollow.
So lifeless. Just what you looked like.
It’s not that you were pale, or like your chest wasn’t moving, or your heart monitor wasn’t showing your pulse, beeping lowly, not that I couldn’t hear your heart beating steadily through that thick glass.
Still, it felt like you were not there, just like you aren’t here with me. Maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks, because I cannot cope with this situation.
Now, it’s as if you’re the test subject, and not only me. I cannot shrug off this awful, freezing feeling clinging to my spine, clawing into my vertebrae.
That they allow me to monitor Valerie Winters examine you, checking your reflexes, if your pupils react to light, looking at your case sheet, seems so unreal, as if they are trying to either mock me or trigger an uncontrolled reaction.
Knowing White, it’s probably both and at least one more reason I haven’t thought of, maybe one I cannot even imagine.
I’m asking myself if he’s not only trying to show me who is still in charge, who’s still the boss and more powerful, but if he’s also trying to push me and Peter into forming an alliance.
I refuse to believe that he’s not aware of the possibility of that happening. I’m sure that he’s counting on it and maybe Peter isn’t even aware of that, probably not even filled into that plan.
Knowing that his younger brother will do anything to please him, knowing that White has to be aware of that, it has to be within that man’s calculation.
I just know that I cannot trust Peter.
I can’t risk making the same mistake twice.
When it comes to him, family always comes before everything: friends, loyalty, honesty, morality, sanity.
I wonder if Peter is even more insane than his older brother. I wonder if that is the only true explanation for his behavior.
I don’t understand how I am capable of standing next to him without even feeling a tiny itch for wanting to tear him into rags.
I don’t.
I’m hollow.
I’m exactly how White wants me to be.
I know that and still I can’t change it, because of you lying there, lifeless, spark-less.
* * *
And you should know that it was Valerie Winters, who was with me when I woke up for the first time after the transition.
Her face was the first I saw and it’s one of the few things I can remember.
As the Beast, which was me, first perceived artificial light, it didn’t think of opening my eyes – our eyes.
We were anticipating for the tormenting pain to strike again, for the fire to boil up the blood in my veins.
How I wish that I still could draw a thick, fat line between the Beast and myself... but I can’t.
These memories are mine, no matter how strange, warped and foreign they may seem...
Sometimes the silence that follows a storm is so disturbing that you keep wondering if the storm isn't still ahead and you keep waiting for it to eventually hit you, although it has already passed.
It's because the sky hasn't cleared and the dark clouds are still hiding the sun.
Everything seems surreal, as if the world has turned upside down, as if it rewinds instead of playing forward.
Still, you sit t
here, hiding, and waiting in tensed anticipation until that first ray of golden light cuts through the dim veil, until the ceiling of clouds is torn open and the world drowns in all colors imaginable.
It was exactly like that. And worse.
After what seemed to be an eon of darkness I felt as if I was seeing for the first time. In a way, I did. I was seeing everything for the first time with my new senses, with the eyes of the Beast.
Even though it did hurt like a thousand glowing needles piercing into my eyeballs, I couldn’t help but take it all in: the light, the brightness, and the different shades of it.
A part of me knew that a typical physical reaction to this overdose of visual impressions would have been to inhale quickly, to tense or flinch and definitely to shut my eyes tightly.
Yet, I didn't.
A part of me knew that, instinctively, I would have sat up to look around, moving my head. I remember that my body surely tried to, yet it didn't happen.
That was when the other senses kicked in.
I was definitely able to feel the clothing, covering my skin and the fabric of the sheets I was tucked into, as well as the needle in my left hand and most certainly the tube in my throat.
This was when I panicked.
How rare to be able to remember everything, when you put your thoughts down word for word. How many things I remember, and how much of it is just a blur. The first clear word that raced through my mind was White.
Can you see the irony?
Everything surrounding me was completely white. And it was even more terrifying than the darkness before, than the question if I was dead or not. Because a tube in my throat, a needle in the back of my hand and that increasing, annoying deafening sound of my heart monitor told me that I wasn't dead, but worse.
Severin had brought me back and I wasn’t human anymore. But this wasn't the reason why I panicked. Not entirely, at least.
It was the fact that my senses worked, overly well, but I wasn't able to move.
The Beast In Me (The Beast And Me Book 2) Page 5