The Beast In Me (The Beast And Me Book 2)

by D. S. Wrights

  “It wasn't meant for you to wake up", Valerie continued, and I still haven’t figured out entirely why she did say that.

  She had spoken in a way someone tells you that you have a terminal disease and it made me fear my situation was just as bad.

  Maybe even worse.

  Somewhere in the back of my head, I already knew what had happened to me. Because I could feel it. Even though I didn’t acknowledge it. I simply blamed it on being in a coma for four months and that this simply had confused my perception, and nothing more.

  “But don’t worry, we’re taking good care of you.”

  There wasn’t much emotion in Valerie’s voice as she told me this, maybe a hint of sympathy, and if I had had doubts about her being anything than my caretaker, this was when I believed her and when I willingly started to trust her.

  Now, remembering this, I have to ask myself: even if that had been the case, why giving me that information?

  To assess my reaction?

  To give me the feeling of being special?

  To make me trust and believe her?

  Probably all of it.

  Because, honestly, everything, even if it’s not initially meant to be one, everything that is said and done is a test.

  “I know you must have many questions and I wish I could answer all of them right now”; she continued, making my eyes focus back on her face, reading its tiny movements, as I suddenly felt her hand on mine.

  I would have flinched, if I hadn't been completely paralyzed. Just like the first time I had woken up, and maybe just like you. The instinct, however, was still there and for a second I swear I could feel my body tensing up, although just on the inside.

  Her gesture was one of a good caretaker. She obviously was one the patients talked about with a smile, I thought then.

  It was nice to feel her warm fingers against my cold hand and strange because I couldn’t do anything to react to that gesture. Not being able to follow your instinct is more than strange. It's surreal and it makes reality feel like a dream.

  “But we need to take things slowly”, Valerie spoke softly now, with a slight smile on her lips, conversantly.

  The last thing that was missing was her sitting down on the edge of my bed, but she didn’t, because that would have crossed the line between comforting and being invasive.

  She knew what she was doing.

  I did not.

  “Four months is a long time and your body has to adapt to its state”, Dr. Winters explained.

  As her words sunk into my mind, they pulled realization along with them like stones being thrown into a lake, causing spiral waves.

  I felt just the same. Or rather as if those stones had been put into my pockets as they threw me – paralyzed as I was – into very lake, which was the reality.

  The only reaction Winters was able to see stood in my eyes, because while my body stayed calm due to whatever tranquilizers they were pumping through my veins, on the inside of me everything was changing.

  My heart started speeding up again.

  And as she saw my panicked struggle in my eyes, I could see something similar in hers. She was scared.

  Yet, for whatever reason she still held my hand.

  “Jay, you need to calm down”, her voice trembled stronger than the last time she had spoken and I was able to feel her own pulse increasing against my wrist. “You need to calm down.”

  Her voice was everything else now, there was panic lurking in it, waiting to attack, crawling up her throat like something entirely different in mine. I could feel it mauling into my insides. The tube, which was still in my throat, was suffocating me, and I needed to breathe, desperately.

  There it had returned again, this pain, this agony that I could remember so well. And now panic has spread like a disease, clawing into me. It almost felt like being skinned alive, like my nails being pulled out, as if I was being turned inside out.

  This pinching sound of the monitor racing started to drive me mad. I couldn't control it and as I still was lying completely paralyzed.

  What was wrong with me?

  I already knew the answer.

  My vision blurred.

  My eyes burned.

  A heat rolled across my cheeks.

  "Jay, look at me", her hand was squeezing my fingers now and I did.

  She was terrified, and still, somehow, Valerie Winters managed to stay right there where she was, by my side, holding my hand.

  I caught myself wondering what horrible things she might have seen?

  Something like this?

  I knew, but I couldn't, I wouldn't form it into words.

  Yet I was wondering if I hadn’t been the first to wake up. As if this was important at all. But it reminded me that the devil’s deal hadn’t been solely about me.

  Were my comrades, my subordinates, those I had been responsible for, enduring the same I was?

  Although I could hear her heartbeat almost louder in my ears than my own, I could smell her cold sweat and sense her muscles tense, and feel the air she was breathing out into my direction.

  This pain inside of me, it was burning me alive and it roared in my head like an explosion.

  I knew.

  This wasn't just pain.

  It was more.

  So much more.

  I could see that distorted, warped thing as a reflection in her eyes, where mine should have been. I pressed my lids shut, sensing tears running down my temples.

  “Jay, please", Valerie whispered now and there was something utterly strange about the sound of her voice about her posture, about how she held my hand.

  Yet, somehow it made my heart rate slow down a little, while hers didn't. Not a bit.

  “You're hurting me”, she explained urgently.

  My eyelids flung open and my neck tensed as I forced open my hand, which felt like it wasn't my own, finger for finger. Again, my own breath sped up just like my heart. I sensed how she pulled away her hand and I felt the aching urge to apologize.

  There was still the tube in my throat.

  My eyes moved towards them before I even consciously perceived the steps in the corridor that was behind the door lying beyond my feet.

  And Valerie saw it.

  “Don't move”, she whispered, letting go of her hurt hand to hide it behind her back as someone entered.

  At first I was confused about what she had said, but then I remembered that I had apparently clenched my fingers around hers.

  So now, I didn’t dare to move even though the paralysis seemed to wear off, even though I wanted nothing more than to see the person who had stormed into my sickroom – if this was one at all.

  I realized that I didn’t need my eyes.

  “What is going on”, Severin said, and his scent invaded my nose, my mouth, through my respiratory system.

  I tried not to bite through the tube.

  “Just a minor outbreak”, Valerie said after a long pause, and if I had thought that she was quite a good actress, not showing her fear, I now know that she wasn’t.

  They were pulling off an act. For me.

  “Have you told him?” his tone was cool.

  “No, I haven’t”, she shook her head and avoided White’s glance, standing still within my eye’s reach. “Sir, he’s awake, we shouldn’t make him uncomfortable.”

  “That’s interesting”, I could feel his gaze etching my skin. “If there is any change, report it immediately.”

  It must have been an act to make sure that I would think that she was on my side. Or maybe White just had been too excited to see me waking up.

  Did he feel the same about you?

  Just as the door fell into its lock Winters turned back towards me bringing up that hand she held gripped, placing the fingers of her other hand around it, as if she needed to protect it.

  I wanted to swallow. I couldn't. Not because of my paralysis, but because of that tube in my throat.

  My breath was uneven again.

  “I c
an't”, Valerie started searching for words everywhere, but in my face. “I cannot help you. You need to calm down. I know it’s hard”, her head and shoulders moved along with the syllables showing her effort to reach my reason.

  Something about that made me angry and this wasn’t like me. The whole reaction to this wasn’t like me.

  Why was I so furious all of a sudden?

  I didn’t want to feel that way, I wanted to breathe evenly, to be calm again.

  “Yes”, I heard her voice almost in my head now.

  It sounded easier and I noticed that the monitor was beeping less annoyingly.

  “Yes, good”, but Valerie sounded like she had no idea what to say, yet knew that she had to say something.

  Somehow, right then at the beginning, it seemingly was so easy to return to myself. I already started to forget that creature I had seen in the reflection of her eyes.

  I still could tell myself that none of this was real.

  My skin didn't feel like it was being scratched and ripped from my bones anymore. My insides weren’t burning anymore. Breathing was easier.

  That was when I sensed her hand on my lower arm, stroking it actually. Even though, I had hurt her just before. There were three faster beeps from that monitor again as I looked up at her in confusion finding her smiling at me.

  A different one as before.

  “You're sorry, I know”, she said softly now. “I guess we both didn't see that coming.”

  Her hand stopped and I didn’t like that.

  “But you're good now. You're...”

  Valerie cut herself off and I figured that she had been about to say something typical like that I was going to be okay.

  She didn’t.

  As a matter of fact, she kept silent, looking at me, her thumb started stroking again.

  Once. Twice.

  And I was grateful that she did just that and kept looking at me, gently. Still, I was able to see a reflection in her blue eyes. This time, however, I recognized it.

  When you’re not able to move and you slip in and out consciousness, it doesn’t really matter how often that happens and for how long, simply because you don’t have any perception of time.

  And this makes it feel like an eternity.

  My time in darkness was a fraction compared to this.

  The only thing that helped me endure it, was when Valerie was with me, talked to me and for a long time I didn’t care that she always carried her pad around, scribbling notes now and then, while we were talking.

  She quickly became my anchor.

  And I believe that this was her job concerning me: helping me to stay human, and in control.

  I can’t really recall how often I needed her help on that, how many times she told me to calm down, saying my name. She was the last one to address me like that.

  It seemed to worsen the longer I was in this helpless state, even after the tube had been removed.

  And it was she, who pulled the tube out while I was having a panic attack.

  I’m not telling you this, because I want to make you jealous. I just want you to know how it all started.

  Valerie Winters did her best to make me feel we were friends, that she was trustworthy, on my side. And her behavior... this plan is just the same as the one centered on you.

  They ruined my trust in her.

  They lost control over me.

  And that’s why they brought you.

  When that happened – my very first panic attack – I had drifted too far gone from reality, was sucked into my own mind, that I lost perception of it once again. My thought had been traveling to the moments of my death, to the moment of choice, realizing that it hadn’t been one. They had tricked me into this. And Valerie was one of them. I was wondering if I could trust her.

  Hearing someone enter my room pulled me back into the reality I was now living in, being restrained to a bed, a tube in my throat, and even though my senses were fully switched on, I couldn’t move apart from my fingers and toes.

  It shocked me, terrified me even, made me incapable of breathing, as if the air itself had turned to dust.

  “Jay, calm down”, Valerie reached me again and not until now I hadn’t heard the fast beeping of my heart monitor.

  This was not me.

  Everything I sensed and perceived, the very sensation of it, was wrong. And I had been awake often enough that it couldn’t be the drugs they were giving me.

  They were trying to keep me paralyzed.

  Why would they do that?

  And then I remembered what I had done to her hand.

  I was not myself anymore.

  There was no way of calming down. I couldn't even move, get rid of what took over my sanity, like a fire claiming a building that’s supposed to be invincible.

  I couldn't even tell Valerie that I wasn't able to calm myself down.

  A sole reasonable thought flashed through my mind, a part of my old self telling me that I was having a panic attack. So, while my body followed my instincts I tried to follow that thought, I focused on the symptoms and it was obvious that my mind had been right.

  The downside was: along with this, I could feel that fire, which had been planted inside of me, which I had first sensed in the darkness with me, and it was eating me alive. I had no idea how to stop it.

  Now I know that this fire was the Beast and as my body appeared to feel lethal danger, it fought to get free, so it could protect the very body that was hosting it.

  Valerie stopped it, yelling at me to breathe in and then out. And as I was following her order, she pulled out the tube. I didn’t care that it hurt, because the fire died.

  I remember telling myself that, but I knew that I was lying to myself, because I still could feel it lingering inside of me, like a demonic creature, waiting for me to get weak again, so it could try to break free.

  You know that eventually it did.

  Day 133

  I’m afraid to return to you, but I want to see you so badly. I need to. But still, I’m terrified of the mere thought of seeing you lying there, being paralyzed.

  It just feeds my assumption, my fear of what they might have done to you. And even though my sense is trying to convince my heart that it might just be the coma, and not the transformation, that it is not the same as with me, I just can’t shake off the dread of imagination.

  As silly as the comparison might be, but it’s just the same when you’re about to rip off a band aid. You know you have to, but still you don’t seem to be able to bring yourself to do it. Usually the imagination is worse than reality. But will it be this time?

  I can’t even tell if my memory is right, if my senses were right that day we were separated. It’s not like I actually could see if your belly has grown... the thought alone. I will have to face it when I know for a fact.

  You need me sane and restrained.

  No matter what.

  But honestly, right now, I can’t think about the past and write it down for you, I cannot go back to those times we had without starting to pace up and down my new, shiny, tokenistic room.

  I need to be restrained, to be sane and focused.

  There’s a schedule to follow.

  * * *

  Focus.

  Such a little word for such a hard thing and yet it can make things so simple, unless you break it. Like glass.

  Fragile on certain points with enough pressure or carelessness, but if handled correctly, it’s useful, clear, sharp, and perfect.

  That’s what I will try to think about, whenever the Beast in me is not in agreement with what I am doing, or how I am behaving, when it threatens to break free, through that very same glass that separates us.

  I need to be exactly like this window: smooth, cool, strong, and impenetrable.

  Focus.

  This brought me through today, and made me pull myself together even after I had entered the room next to yours, made me silently stare through that window, watching you still lying there, motionles
s.

  At least for a few minutes.

  Eventually, I needed to touch that glass, to remind and steady myself, because looking at you staring at the ceiling, blinking now and then as if it’s only your body that is still here... it’s not simply killing me, it’s tearing me apart.

  I think we feel the most helpless when we are incapable of helping someone we care more about than ourselves. And I have never felt this helpless before, not even when I heard about my siblings being killed. Not that it’s comparable to each other. My brother and sister knew what they were getting into, although I refused to believe that for a while, but you didn’t. I feel responsible for you.

  It’s not that I might think you are a damsel in distress and I am your hero. Quite the opposite: you came here, unknowingly to save me, and now you are stuck in Hell alongside with me.

  What I am now and who I am now is my own doing. If I hadn’t chosen the path of wrath and vengeance I wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t be here as well. It’s my responsibility. And getting you out of here may be my way, the only way, to get redemption for my wrong choices.

  That’s what I was thinking, what I am still thinking, while watching over you.

  Just like you didn’t move – the only movement of yours was you blinking – I didn’t move either. All I did, was looking at you, watching you, waiting for you to do more than just stare at the ceiling.

  The glass beneath my hands... it warmed up against my palms until it was only a resistance, and my breath didn’t even mist the surface. My skin would have merged with the material if I didn’t have to move, if I hadn’t been ordered to leave.

  This cannot petrify me. I have to do what I am supposed, what they expect me to do. I have to be strong. And still, there is that tiny voice that asks whether they would help you more, if I was dysfunctional.

  It wouldn’t be necessary for me to act like it, because honestly; seeing you like this is like living a nightmare and reliving my own. Remembering the time of me waking up from the coma and what lead up to me losing it... it’s right there behind my eyes, in the back of my head, a pulsating pain.

  As strange as it sounds – because I believe that they never wanted me to rediscover these events – they kind of helping me find myself.