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

by D. S. Wrights

  After being brought back to my cell, the sound of a door opening and closing, this squeaking noise, it returned the horror to me. You see, I have stopped being afraid of myself long time ago. All that was left was self-loathing and disgust. I hated and despised the creature that took possession of my body, twisted and turned my insides out. It never came to my mind that the Beast is a part of me, or rather: is me. It’s a physical appearance of my base instincts and needs. White knew this from an early stage on, maybe even from the beginning.

  Looking back now it makes sense that he’d send in Valerie to soothe the Beast. It was his mistake that made his initial plan stop working.

  His cruelty, his insanity, his need for this project to be successful, resulted in him needing to bring you in, someone that would address a different primal urge than loyalty to my kin, to my clan, or whatever he thinks it was that made me trust her.

  But I know what made me stop.

  I came in and out of consciousness for days, maybe weeks, but the time for me to become clear in my head grew shorter. It became more and more like waking up normally and I couldn’t understand why this worried Valerie, why she felt uneasy.

  After several times I was used to White showing up now and then. All of it, I just wrote off as my injuries being too severe for me getting better more quickly.

  Just as I thought that my senses were playing tricks on me as I was seemingly able to not hear her heartbeat when she was close by, but also her steps in the corridor when she came to check on me. And I am not speaking of the last few steps, I mean the whole corridor. You know how keen my senses are. All of them. I didn’t know then.

  So, I didn’t try to get up, believing that I was bedridden due to my bad condition. In fact, I did trust Valerie Winters blindly, who hinted at the very same wrong truth.

  Listening to her approaching was something I was used to, which was why I stopped opening my eyes, not even moving that one day. Not even my pulse heightened and I guess that is why no one noticed me being awake and listening. Maybe, until today, they have no explanation to what followed.

  Valerie Winters was stopped. By no one else but Clay Severin himself, this wasn’t something unusual either. Even though I didn’t see their facial expressions, as they weren’t in the same room with me, I could hear their breathing and heartbeats, which were heightened.

  I thought I was dreaming, making this up. Let’s be honest, I was bound to a bed. All I could do was just that.

  “This is not going to work much longer, Sir”, I heard her speak and her voice was lacking any fear, only concern: she was reporting to him. “Number Ten’s metabolism has become used to the tranquilizers. I cannot heighten the doses any more, but the slightest decrease of it and he wakes up. It will be a matter of days when it is not up to us anymore when he falls asleep.”

  It was the first time I heard someone say ‘ten’, but I had no idea she was referring to me.

  “Remarkable”, White answered. “His immune system, his metabolism is fighting off threads way faster than usual for a human. What an amazing side effect.”

  “We should put him to trial”, Winters responded, “physical ones, as in exercise, reflexes, senses, and see if his mind has evolved as well.”

  “There is no need to rush, Valerie”, White gave back. “The lab needs more of his blood, they still weren’t able to recreate his immunity artificially.”

  “Sir, the others soon will be wide awake as well, they need their leader to...,” Winters argued, and there was a part of me stirring, having a hunch.

  “They will have to wait”, White interrupted her. “None of them regenerates cells as quickly as him. I need to know why. I need to know why he is so special. And I think we both agree that it’s not because you’re petting his hand every time he wakes up and looks at you.”

  This was when I knew they were talking about me. Not only because of Severin’s words, but because he had been turning his head, speaking in the direction of my door when he said this. I could hear it. And I lost it.

  It felt like my organs and veins were cut open from the inside, as if burning acid crawled up to my intestines, lungs and heart up my throat until my face itself was eaten away by whatever this was.

  I heard myself scream, not just on the inside, but real, in my head and my ears. But then it wasn’t my voice anymore. My scream turned into a roar. It couldn’t be me, and yet I felt my vocal cords vibrating and being aflame.

  The heart monitor went off, sounding as if I had flat-lined, but in fact it was just not being able to keep up with my pulse. The pain was excruciating, so much worse than in my dreams, maybe because my body was burning through the tranquilizer, because I could move. My body tore at the bond holding it and I think I can remember breaking them, sitting up, and seeing the door of my room for the first time. It was made of bare, heavy metal with a tiny barred window. The very window through which Valerie Winters stared at me, eyes torn open wide, ridden with terror and awe. By the way her head wavered I could see that she was moving, hitting an emergency button.

  I started coughing just seconds later, as the room was filled with fog.

  Realizing that they were drawing off my blood and keeping me asleep to do tests with it as well as my body, that I what had ticked off the Beast. It had awoken to protect me. I know that now.

  Day 134

  Everything but the time I’m with you passes me in a blur. I almost feel as if I am lying in that bed again, being filled with tranquilizers up to the tips of my hair. It feels the same. And still I can’t shake off this foreboding of running out of time.

  They returned your diary to you today. It was White. Seeing him with you in that room, it makes me taste bile in the back of my throat. I don’t know why they had me seeing this. Or why Peter had to stand right next to me, grinding his molars, just like me. For a second there, next to my own set of eerie green eyes, I could see his.

  We were early to get there. Was this on purpose?

  I should have been more watchful.

  Then again, you didn’t react. You didn’t lift your hand to take your old diary, didn’t flinch as he placed it next to you on your bed.

  You probably hadn’t even sat up on your own.

  Nothing on your face gave a sign that you had noticed him, placing a new notebook on your old.

  I couldn’t hear what he was saying to you. Whatever it was, no matter the content, it would have made me furious either way. It made me realize that he can spend time with you whenever he wants. And I...

  I have to be well-behaved and patient. I am, but only so that I get a chance to get you out of here, as hopeless as it seems. You’re the positive spirit, the star in a pit of darkness, not me. And when I look at Peter I know he’s just as lost as me.

  * * *

  After that unforgettable blackout, I hoped it had been just another phantom of a nightmare. Once you trust in a way as if your life depends on it, it’s so very, painfully hard to let it go, to accept that you have been lied to. And if there is one person perfectly capable to deceive you it’s yourself. Hope and desperation is a dangerous cocktail. I know you are perfectly aware of that.

  The first thing that came back to me was my hearing, although what I heard seemed rather like memories. It was almost like being back, imprisoned in darkness, in my own personal hell, with nothing left but myself, despite my hearing. And yet, what I heard would have been something I would have never related to myself, if it hadn't been for the altered circumstances I had been trapped in.

  These sounds, which were almost deafening, these very first noises were roars and snarls, followed by something like ripping and tearing. I expected to remember screams and the sound of a person choking on its own blood. But it wasn't that. It was Valerie Winters shouting my name as clear as a bell and this single memory terrified me beyond my own imagination.

  What was confusing was that there sang no fear of life in it? I wasn't sure, I couldn't tell, because I didn't trust my own judgment. And for a v
ery long time I would never again. However, Valerie Winters had shouted my name and what followed was a door being slammed shut and her yelling: "No!"

  Again, there didn’t seem to be fear or panic in her voice, no matter how much I insisted on wanting. At least for now. And that was confusing.

  It was even worse.

  I still couldn’t see, only hear.

  My heart was already racing so fast that it couldn't possibly sped up any further. A rush of memory made me shudder, but it merged with the present. What happened right now demanded my entire mind. I couldn’t go back and investigate.

  Panic was stronger.

  Rage was stronger

  Whatever had taken me over was stronger.

  As I managed to ask myself how this could become any worse, it was Valerie again who said my name. Her voice trembling and much too close.

  In my head I saw myself again, taking cover behind a boulder, while the world around my comrades and me was exploding.

  Once again, I heard my name and I realized that this right now was reality. I wasn’t on the battlefield. I was here, in a hospital room, with Dr. Winters next to me.

  “Jay, please”; she barely whispered and yet she was so close that I could feel her breath on my skin.

  She was far too close.

  Her perfume was choking me, the heat of her skin was burning me, and something else about her made my insides cook, disintegrate into acid, boiling an emotion that I knew was rage, fueled by something I chose to deny: hurt and betrayal.

  There was no way I would give into that emotion again. It had taken me to the very place I was now. Rage had brought me to war, and the war had taken me to this. So, despite the intensity, I concentrated on my sense of scent.

  I could smell her, the soap she had been using this morning, even a trail of the toothpaste, and all these scents invading my brain, became information for me. Despite her voice she smelled of fear, hidden behind nervousness. I could sense her heat shiver against my skin.

  Valerie was almost terrified, but there was something that seemed to make her be able to keep herself together.

  The darkness was sucked away like masses by a black hole and the room I had been lying in for four months took form and color.

  I wasn't in my bed anymore.

  In fact, I was standing.

  I could feel how I was baring my teeth, how my muscled flexed, the tension in my shoulders, my neck craned, my claws – CLAWS – crushed into the wall I was facing. But there was something right between me and that stonework: It was not quite as tall as me, and it had long reddish hair and big blue eyes staring up at me almost petrified, and most importantly, it had her voice, speaking to me, softly and trembling: “Jay... please.”

  I blinked as I recognized her, instantly knowing that we were alone and the smashing door, I recalled, had been someone else leaving Valerie at my mercy. The big lump in my throat almost cracked it as I swallowed down.

  My eyes fled her face just to see out of the corner that her expression changed. There was no way of moving right now. Somehow I had gotten out of my bed, and changed. There was nothing else I could remember – at least I made myself believe – and now I had ended up hustling the only person I had trusted against the wall, threatening her like an animal. A monster that I was now.

  I had claws. Staring at them in disbelief, turning my hands as I watched them slowly retract into my nail beds, I wanted to speak, but I couldn't. The only noise that came from my throat sounded oddly like a purr.

  Still, Winters looked at me as if she was able to comprehend that sound and gave me an insecure smile, maybe in truth it was plainly fake.

  I tried to ease, but I couldn't, yet, she didn't move either. Rethinking my position, I wasn't sure anymore if I really had been threatening her, or solely doing this, since my arms hadn’t been entirely stretched out to the farthest distance. So it rather seemed like intimidating her.

  I wanted to believe that.

  I needed to believe that these emotions I had felt were not the very same that had made me enlist.

  Trying to read myself, as if I was being a stranger was more than odd, but this wasn't me. This couldn’t be me.

  And that was the very moment I started to believe that I was possessed by a vile creature. A monster. A Beast.

  It was then that I realized that despite being aware, I still wasn't in charge, or rather my reason wasn't. And that was something I could not admit right then. The way I behaved and perceived appeared to be pure instinct. And right then I stayed where I was, glancing down at her, watching her every move, like claiming my terrain.

  I didn't dare to follow the question, which was hiding in the dark corner of my mind. But Valerie Winters looked back at me. Her pulse and breathing still heightened, her skin clammy, pressing herself against the wall along with her palms looking back up, giving me that smile, that uncertain smile, that fake smile. It wasn't the uncertainty about whether I would hurt her or not, but rather what I would do next. More like: if she would fail or not.

  “It’s okay”, she said softly, keeping up that tiny smile on her lips. “No one’s here but me. No one is going to harm you right now.”

  I could sense how she moved and how she brought up one hand slowly before I was able to see it, because all my other senses were distracting me. I was distracting myself, fighting for dominance in my own body. Yet, it was more confusing to know that whatever reigned my body right now was slowly being able to move again as if a cramp lessened, but it didn't.

  I wanted to move. I needed to move. This wasn't me. I was desperate to make sure that I wouldn't hurt her. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry and still I had to stand by and sense how she carefully touched my face.

  What followed was something I believe no one could see but her.

  Two forces were colliding within me: One burning red and one icy dark blue. It felt like rage and desperation were taking up war against each other and the battlefield was my body with me wearing blue and whatever this creature was wearing red.

  I wanted to nudge my face into her palm, needed to relax, yearned to speak and ask for forgiveness. I needed to know what had just happened. Confusion and fear made me stronger, so I could hold my body back.

  The Beast was pure anger and pain, screaming for my hands to tear this woman in front of me apart, demanding blood for a betrayal I did not know of, that I denied.

  It felt so strange, so torn, that I was sure I had lost my mind, that I was insane. I wasn't sure anymore what was this monster and what was me, if I was the monster or the monster was me, or if I was both.

  I felt dizzy and my legs started to shake, because memory returned to me, and it was too much.

  This time they didn’t need gas to knock me out.

  * * *

  Today, I look differently onto my first collision with the Beast in me. I know now that I can trust it, my instincts, although it doesn’t mean that I should always allow it to take over the lead.

  That second, the Beast knew that Valerie Winters was betraying me. And it was the very event White probably knew that he needed someone else to tame me, that he needed someone ‘neutral’ to do the job.

  As for my past ME: I hadn’t given up denial yet. You see, denial likes to cloak itself in something that resembles hope. It’s such a thin line. I think, as I realized that I was lying to myself about Valerie Winters, that was the moment the Beast took over. Because once you lose hope, even if denial and ignorance fuels it, you give up on yourself.

  It’s an irony that the Beast they planted inside of me, that they created inside of me, refused to give up the fight.

  Day 135

  I’ll try to write as much as I can before I go and see you again. It’s not like I really have that much time and staying up late at night, trying to write down everything, has been wearing me down. Honestly, remembering has. Which makes it even stranger that despite living through the moments of how everything began the Beast isn’t taking me over. This doesn’t m
ean that it doesn’t try to but I manage to keep it restrained, and it becomes easier.

  However, it’s something that hasn’t gone unnoticed, so I have started to act, to pretend that I am having issues. Not sleeping well is helping. But, if I want to see you again, as in face to face, I will continue keeping my cool, without pretending that it’s hard. Or maybe I just write this, so that whoever is reading these lines believes that I’m not struggling with a murderous creature inside of me. So, maybe, me threatening Peter is just as real, or unreal.

  Being alone is helpful. Being with my ‘kind’ is strangely soothing. I believe being with you would be even more so.

  Whatever, I try to be the soldier they want me to be, but I never will be as restrained and in control unless they return you to me. I try to make this very certain.

  I just hope that my staring at you though a mirrored window will not be forever.

  * * *

  After my breakdown, I was lost. I felt like floating in darkness again, like losing myself once more, once again. But this darkness wasn't pitch-black, it wasn't even gray, it was red, blood red, and I was drowning in it. Seeing that, I knew the Beast had won the fight, and I believed the war, because that was its color.

  I could feel myself choke and panic, my pulse vibrating in every vein of my body, my muscles clenching painfully, cramping as if I was having a seizure. And still, everything I saw was red, and everything I felt was wet and gooey and all I could taste was rust.

  Blood.

  It flashed through my thoughts and all I could see was me tearing Valerie Winters apart, me, the monster, ripping her into pieces, coloring that white, clean room in stains of red, scattering drop patterns across the walls as if I was a student of Jackson Pollock.

  I could even hear her scream my name, yet it wasn't screaming. In my mind, because she wasn't able to, due to her ripped throat, and still, she managed to say my name, pleading, whispering, over and over again, like a prayer.