by T M Caruana
“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked again to make sure that I meant my words, and this time with what seemed to be sincere concern.
He took a new grip of the wheel since the leather had begun to give off smoke from the heat of his hands. It was the first time I spotted the cuts on his right hand. The blood seeped out of three straight wounds. It was fresh and hadn’t coagulated fully. The blood seemed bubbly, as if it had boiled from the inside out. I dared not even ask why he had the wounds and assumed my concern would be in vain because he didn’t seem to be the type who would provide any answers.
“You have a small bag of crisps in the glove compartment, you need salt and it’s your favou…” he stopped his sentence without completing it.
He must have realised that I was staring his way and blushed with embarrassment. I reached into the glove compartment, not because I was hungry, but because I felt weak and salt has always increased my ability to concentrate. The crisps were cheese and onion flavour - my favourite, which the stranger seemed somehow to know. This situation felt completely surreal.
“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked slowly, immediately regretting my question since I didn’t really want to know the answer.
Either he would hurt me and then it would already be too late, or he was helping me and then the question was actually another. “Who are you? Where are you taking me? How did you…?” my questions all blurred together.
“Time will tell, Tarus – home - the Chameleon,” he replied.
He seemed irritated and had not appreciated the quizzing. It was as if I had no right to ask. I remained silent, pondering over the answers he had given. They didn’t clarity the situation at all. It didn’t help that I had also forgotten the order in which I had asked the questions. But what I gathered was that his name was either Tarus or the Chameleon. I wished he would explain a bit more. If his agenda was to help me, he could at least have been more talkative.
“My name is Susy.”
I tried some small talk and hoped it would catch on for him to return the same information about himself. To confirm his name, for example, would have been a good start.
“I know.”
Those were the only words I got in response as he kept his eyes focused on the road. I couldn’t understand why, but he sounded disappointed that I had introduced myself, maybe even angry. But it was also clear that he didn’t want to provide any information. If I wanted to know anything, I would have to drag it out of him. He glanced nervously at the side mirror and back again to the rear-view mirror.
A white van suddenly appeared at full pelt from a turning three streets behind us, complete with flashing orange lights and sirens. We turned abruptly down a side street to the left and then took a turn to the right to proceed in parallel with the main street. We were being followed. It must be my father who had come to save me. Or would he really save me? I would be locked up in the ward again. Even if father wouldn’t punish me for this defiant adventure, I still didn’t want to spend any more time in the hospital. No, I’d rather die than be taken back to the same bed with the same faded wallpaper and the same pitiful eyes on the nurses’ faces.
I kept a firm grip on the door handle and my left hand clenched onto the edge of the seat as the car swung between the traffic. The road signs that flew past had one common denominator, ‘Airport’.
“Airport! Are you taking me to the airport and out of the country?” my voice stammered in haste at the reluctance toward that thought.
I hadn’t planned every possible outcome for this evening, but even if I had, it would never have involved leaving the country. The idea had at most been to be on the run for a few days and then return to the ward to prove to father that he could trust me on the outside once in a while. If the escape proved successful, perhaps it could bring some other perks, but leaving the country was petrifying. Could he really take me out of the country? I had no passport and no money!
“You were never good at trusting me, ironic that this time you have no choice.”
The man’s sentence was brief and mysterious. Now I felt really uneasy. Did this mean that I had known this man previously? Who was he? What’s more, he said that I hadn’t trust him in the past, but I had no choice now. Was I kidnapped or rescued? The situation was absurd.
The car sped through the darkness and towards a sign on the roof of a large building that started to become visible from the car, ‘Crowne Plaza’ Hotel. The car didn’t change direction and went straight into the hotel’s private car park. Once there, and a few metres past the entrance, a garage door opened for the car to enter, almost as if it were programmed to do so. The door closed behind us and we were in darkness. The man opened the driver’s door, emitting a dim light and stepped out.
“How silly of me to think that we were going to the airport,” I admitted as I stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind me.
“Not tonight,” he retorted, smiling arrogantly and handed over a passport that he retrieved from the side compartment of the car door.
I flicked open the passport and, sure enough, there were all my details. My blue eyes, though they were actually leaning towards violet, my height, name and Swiss nationality. There was a picture that looked exactly like me, but I had never had he photo taken. A lump formed in my throat. Whoever it was that I had in front of me, he was clever. He knew what he was doing and made no mistakes. I was a puppet in his play, a hamster in a wheel that could only wait for the next instruction.
“Shouldn’t I have a fake name since you are kidnapping me?” I questioned, keeping my chin high to not seem scared and to try to gain respect by pointing out his mistake.
A brief release of air left his lungs from what seemed to be amusement.
“Kidnapping you say?” he asked me and I could tell he felt hurt by my choice of word.
Why did I get the feeling that his good and bad demons struggled to remain under control, a ticking bomb of emotions that could explode at any second?
“Aye, kidnapping I say.”
I verified the status I had given this mission with a stern pirate-like voice that I had learned from Vic’s storytelling.
“I would never…you are free to go if you please,” he declared and pointed at the garage door.
I viewed the solid door and realised I would have to bring out my big boots to be able to push it open. As my hand gripped firmly around the metal handle at the bottom of the door I saw him squat down and he stared at me with his suffering gaze, which made me fall to my knees in surrender. This time he didn’t touch me.
“I can’t let you go yet,” he whispered regretfully and pointed to a door on the other side of the garage before he himself started to make his way there.
The man’s confusing actions didn’t help make my understanding of the situation any clearer.
“A fake name is pointless. Isaac would never report you as kidnapped since you don’t exist,” he finally answered and without further explanation he opened the door from the garage leading to the hotel’s reception.
There were two young women, sitting in the rear room, who came rushing towards us with excited smiles and only had eyes for my mysterious kidnapper.
“Good evening Tarus, what adventure have you been up to this night?” inquired one, holding on to a key in her right hand.
Unusually, the key was a traditional key instead of the plastic card that hotels normally used nowadays. The second girl stood right behind the other where I could only catch a glimpse of her. When she had come over I had thought she looked like a Goth. I managed to count up to seven piercings around her ears, mouth and nose alone and she was dressed entirely in black. In the next second, the first woman looked at me and I saw her eyes widen and her smile turn to a sour frown. It didn’t suit her blonde soft face at all. It made her look like a spoilt ‘Daddy’s Girl’, used to getting her own way. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, revealing all her pearl jewellery on both ears and around her neck.
I found i
t hard to concentrate on the girls’ behaviour, even though it amused me somewhat, because I was excited to finally know my kidnapper’s name. Tarus was his name. Furthermore it was difficult to determine what relationship he had with the blonde as he gave her a charming glare that made her smile from one ear to the other, as he held his hand up over the till for her to drop the key in it. Was I jealous? No. That was a ridiculous thought. I didn’t know him, yet it felt like he was MY kidnapper. It was he and I. When I looked at him I surely felt overwhelmed with…something. And it wasn’t he who flirted with the receptionist. He couldn’t help his adorable eyes and my gut instinct made me believe that he really was indifferent towards the woman and simply wanted to claim the key.
Without a word he looked at me for confirmation and we went along a corridor to the lift. He ushered me in with a polite hand gesture and pressed the button for the top floor.
“An old flame?” I asked playfully, not knowing if I was talking outside the boundaries of the social code that existed between us, and hoping again that it would lead to some small talk. Besides, I was probably a little bit jealous, even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I had by then concluded that this man was actually trying to help me in some twisted way since he had made no attempt to hurt me yet. Also, if I trusted my instincts, I could feel an electric tension between us, indicating that we shared deeper feelings.
“No,” he answered sharply, obviously not wanting any intrusions into his personal life.
He looked at me and waited for my reaction to his response and maybe even assurance that I had believed him. I remained quiet until we saw the lift door open. He held out his hand in a gesture to indicate that I should go first. I stepped out and waited for him to catch up. We walked side by side along the carpeted hallway towards a dark brown wooden door numbered 607, which he opened it with the old key and let me go in ahead of him.
“Welcome to my humble abode.”
I wasn’t sure if this lighter tone was indicative of a change of mood or not. His mood swings had been unsettling so far.
The room was simple, but full of scattered personal items. I got the impression that he wasn’t expecting company.
“How long have you stayed here?” I asked, to open the conversation with something general.
Surely that question couldn’t be offensive.
“Twenty-five years,” he replied shortly.
“But then you must be…”
I trailed off, more because of my mathematical calculations, than through surprise that the answer was in years and not days.
“Older than you assumed? Believe me, don’t worry your pretty head with that calculation,” he said quietly, as he tossed his key onto the mahogany desk beneath the window.
The hotel room was furnished in much the same way as I had seen hotel rooms furnished on TV. However, as for my expectations for this evening - there was only one bed.
“It is true then, you can’t remember anything that happened prior to twenty-five years ago?” he griped.
I didn’t respond.
His question was outrageous. I didn’t even remember what happened last year let alone what happened twenty-five years ago and besides, I would only have been about four years old, so instead of answering his silly question I replied with a counter-question.
“What is it you want me to remember?” I murmured in an attempt to make my voice interesting and mysterious to match his.
Unexpectedly, he sat quietly for some seconds. Then, all of a sudden, he stood up abruptly. He seemed angry again and stormed into the small bathroom without closing the door. Embarrassed, I tried to look the other way and sat down on the edge of the bed with my back to the door. The normally ever-present noise in my ears had resumed after having been absent since the sirens at the institute. The crisps had maintained my concentration, but my bones had become sore again. I hadn’t taken my evening medication and so I retrieved the bag from the chair. Tarus had dumped it there after having carried it from the car.
“How do you suggest we sleep? If we sleep opposite each other I want my head furthest away from the door!” I demanded, trying to sound tough rather than helpless.
“You need not worry. There is a full moon tonight so you won’t be able to sleep anyway. I suggest that you continue to take your anticoagulation medication until we meet up with the other members of the Order, and have a soothing bath,” he ordered back irritably, seemingly impatient that he had to tell me how the world best suited me.
But he was right again, or so I thought anyway. I sometimes had trouble sleeping, but hadn’t understood until then that it must have been due to the moon, which the stranger had just pointed out. Keep taking my medication? I had never contemplated stopping, wasn’t it vital for me? Vic was the only one who had the authority to prescribe more of the drugs when they ran out and had given me a month’s supply before he left. I hadn’t previously had any idea what effect the drugs had. How would the anticoagulation help my pain? It sounded rather as if it would have the opposite effect.
Before I decided to acknowledge his advice to take a bath, I heard Tarus starting to run the water in the bathtub. His perfect face, followed by his bare torso, appeared from the bathroom doorway as a supernatural being with no reason for improvement. My eyes tried their best to look down at the floor whilst he wiped his hands on his t-shirt as he approached me.
“The bathroom is yours whenever you want,” he gestured, towards the door.
It was impossible to hesitate and it was no use trying to protest. Inside the bathroom he had folded what must have been one of his t-shirts on the toilet lid.
“You can use my toothbr…” growled his half sentence from the bedroom before he came in with a purple toothbrush and placed it on top of the t-shirt before he disappeared again.
My heart felt sore. Purple was my favourite colour. His next gesture was even stranger: a lit candle gleamed on the edge of the bathtub giving a romantic glow. I had seen another tea-light holder on the desk and ran out to retrieve it. With two candles, I could turn the light off and still see clearly.
“May I borrow your lighter?” I asked politely without having to explain myself when he saw that I was holding the candle in my hand.
“No,” he replied briefly as always.
He approached me with his majestic body, where even a quick peek would clearly catch sight of the eight-pack on his sandy toned skin. He stood close enough for me to smell his cologne, arousing my senses. I closed my eyes to inhale his scent held my breath, not because I wanted to, but because I wasn’t sure I could control myself otherwise. I felt his hot hand against mine when he took the glass holder for the tea-light and our eyes met. I had forgotten his beautiful emerald eyes. Without breaking his gaze, he wrapped his fingers over the wick and at the same moment a flame arose from nowhere. It wasn’t normal, it wasn’t human. Who was he? This explained his burning body heat. This whole evening had been so unreal, so insane that I couldn’t bring myself to be either scared or impressed. I had a feeling in my gut that I couldn’t abandon. We must have shared a special connection. I had to know the truth.
“Who are you…really? Have you and I…I mean…are we special to each other?” I asked earnestly.
I could feel my eyebrows folded down over my eyes into a V-shape in intense concentration. My eyes tried to penetrate even deeper into his. His answer took far too long. His eyes still locked onto mine as time stood still. Not a movement was made, nor a sound.
“No,” he answered after a while, so low that I almost couldn’t hear him. “I am here out of duty to take you home safely, that’s all.”
The sound was like a broken record on repeat, as if that was his programmed answer. He grabbed his phone from the desktop and before I had time to say a word, he left and slammed the door behind him. His mood swings didn’t distress me anymore, but I felt hurt by his answer. I turned to go back into the bathroom, but remained next to the door when I heard Tarus’s voice in the corridor. He was s
peaking softly with someone on the phone. My hearing had improved considerably though since the morning, and I could hear nearly all of the conversation.
“We are at the safe house. When has the Order been summoned for?” he asked.
From his voice, it seemed he was in a hurry to get rid of me. “Someone needs to release me because I don’t know how long I can be close to her without burning something to the ground.”
His voice was more protective now. It sounded like he wanted to fulfil his duty without mistakes. “Something isn’t right. She is weak and has forgotten everything that happened twenty-five years ago and yet my strength has increased since she came near me. I think she must be wearing one of the power stones.”
His voice was confident and it was apparent he was talking to someone he could trust. His superior must either have great power or a lot of money to control a man like Tarus, a man who didn’t seem to take orders from anyone if it wasn’t important.
“No, I haven’t forgotten my duty Hunter,” he replied irritably and then there was silence.