by Kitty Thomas
The most darkness I could ever remember was shade from trees or buildings.
Simone peeled her sundress off to reveal a bikini and ran off in the other direction. I put the plate down and followed her.
“Hey, what about your dessert?” my mom shouted after me.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” I turned and looked at my parents for a long moment as if they might vanish. Where did such a strange thought come from? Of course they weren’t going anywhere.
Just over the hill was a waterfall that flowed into a pool of water so pure and blue it dazzled me. Simone was already swimming.
A deer stood next to the water, undisturbed by my sister’s splashing, and drank. It glanced at me, then returned its focus to drinking.
“Come swim with me,” Simone shouted from the water.
“I can’t, I don’t have my suit.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, Helene, you put it on under your clothes before we left the house. What is wrong with you today?”
Oh yeah. I did put my swimsuit on. I don’t know how I’d forgotten. I peeled the shorts and tank top off. I closed my eyes and turned my face up to the sky as the warm sun licked my belly. I don’t know what weird thing I’d been dreaming to disorient me, but the ease and comfort of life washed over me. And I was so glad to be awake where everything was easy and bright and warm and safe.
How had I not been safe? I tried to remember the dream under the tree. Where would I get an idea like that? As far as I knew, nothing bad had ever happened. Fear became a foreign concept. Where had I gotten the word night from? The mind was a funny thing. I dove into the cool water and began to swim laps with Simone.
Clouds rolled in. Thunder clapped in the distance. The sky grew dark. “What’s happening?” Simone said. “This isn’t right! This doesn’t happen here.” She got out of the water and ran back in the direction of the picnic, panicked.
I pulled myself out of the pool. The wildlife had gone. Everything grew still. I ran up the hill after her, but when I reached the summit, my parents were gone. Simone was gone.
“Mom? Dad? Simone?”
The howling wind answered back.
The darkness grew; the storm intensified. The trees went bare as the blossoms and buds seemed to be singed into oblivion from within. The grass withered and left a dry, cracked, barren earth beneath my feet. One of the cracks opened wide, and I fell.
A hand grabbed onto mine, pulling me back from the abyss.
“Helene, everything is okay. Open your eyes. You’re safe.”
Safe. That word could only exist in a world that was anything but.
I opened my eyes. I was naked in a bed. Patches with wires were beside me crumpled in with the bedding. The room was chilly but otherwise normal. Gabriel held me against him. And everything came back in a rush.
The real world.
The tears streamed down my cheeks and wouldn’t stop.
“Why did you take that away from me? Why?”
“It wasn’t real,” Gabriel said, trying to soothe me.
“I don’t care. It was good. Why can’t there be anything truly good?”
“You would have died.” His wrist was suddenly at my mouth. “Drink so you can heal.”
I turned away. I didn’t want to drink. I didn’t want to heal. I wanted the sun and the breeze and blue sky and birds and my family. I wanted things to be easy and bright and happy and warm. I wanted to return even knowing what was really happening to me. It was cruel to bring me back here after moments of such pure happiness.
“I don’t care. I’m going to die anyway. It doesn’t matter. Who cares if it’s today or fifty years from now? I’m marching toward it anyway with no slow down in sight. This was the best ending I could have hoped for, and you ripped it away from me!”
“You don’t have to die. I can keep you with me. You’re mine. I told you. I’ll keep you safe. You don’t ever have to die.”
I didn’t have to get sick or age or anything else, but why would I want to stay forever in this place even if Gabriel theoretically could protect me and even my sister? Would the option of living forever extend to her? Or would I lose her like my parents?
I was angry at myself for chasing Simone in the fake reality down to the waterfall. I’d seen and spoken with my parents only briefly. I should have stayed and had the pie. I should have soaked up every second with them I could get while I’d had the chance.
“Look at me!” Gabriel said. “None of that was real! You want some fake illusion messing with your mind? It wasn’t real. You couldn’t keep it anyway.”
“Oh, you mean like everyone’s life? Whether good or bad, you can’t keep it anyway. Why couldn’t you let me have that brief bliss and then be gone?”
He seemed genuinely distressed that everything he’d done and our time in the cell had been undone by just one potent dream.
“And when you get bored with me?” I asked. “I’ll age and die. And it won’t be like this. You stole this ending from me!”
He shook me like some rag doll. “I won’t get bored. I understand this. I understand what you’re going through more than you could possibly know.”
Bullshit. He didn’t suffer. Nothing bad ever happened to him. He had all the power and control over everything. He could play games with the lives of my lesser species. We were nothing but pleasurable objects to him until we became inconvenient and were disposed of like so much garbage. It didn’t matter how the game was set up, whether by Gabriel’s rules or Amari’s.
“Helene!”
I turned toward him, not bothering to disguise my contempt.
“I won’t get bored, but if I do, I promise I will give you a good death first. Like this. You can have all this again.”
“So you’re going to put me in a chamber like this and hook me up to a machine and put whatever that gas was in here? Do you even have any of this stuff?”
He shook his head. “It’s a death sleep. The machines and the smoke are just a shortcut. We can choose to do this if we kill when we feed.”
The monsters here simply didn’t want to drink expired milk. And they didn’t want to defile themselves by sharing blood with a human. So they made it neat and sterile and separated out from everything else.
He helped me back into my clothes and led me from the room and down the reflective hallway.
When we returned to the larger room, Luna cowered on the ground, crying. “Please, Your Majesty, I didn’t know. The scanner didn’t work.” She looked up at me, pleading for me to maintain the lie that might spare her.
Why hadn’t she run? I glanced at the desk and didn’t see the key box. Gabriel must have it.
“Please,” Luna whimpered.
“Is this true?” Gabriel asked. “Was it an innocent mistake? I know you’re hurting right now, Helene, but if you lie to me, I will punish you.”
I was so shell-shocked from having the real world rush back in all its darkness and pain that I couldn’t decide if the idea of the whip was the worst horror imaginable or if I hoped there was still some catharsis and peace to be squeezed out of the experience.
I looked from Gabriel to Luna. She was desperate, and despite what she’d done, I wanted to save her. But he would find out if I lied, and I didn’t think I could deal with the dungeon right now.
“No, Master, it’s not true.”
Luna looked stricken, but she pushed past it to allow her fury to break the surface. “She shouldn’t have even been down here!” she screamed.
Gabriel turned to me. “Why were you down here? I told you to go find the rebel camp.”
My self-pity receded as the last effects of whatever had been done to me in that room wore off. After a mere few minutes outside the chamber and its mind-altering effects, it was nothing more than a faded dream—nice, but not particularly worth revisiting or dwelling on.
I wanted to tell him I still wanted to be here. I didn’t…but I did. What he’d done with me in his dungeon hadn’t been undone, I
’d just needed to wait for the effects of that room to wear off. But I was too angry.
“I was trying!” I said. “A girl upstairs was pronounced expired. She panicked and tried to fight them. I thought she must know what happened in the retirement center, so she might be part of the rebel faction. I was trying to find her and get information so I’d at least know where to start looking.”
Gabriel turned to the still cowering Luna. “Where is she? The girl that was brought down here?”
“It’s too late for her,” Luna said.
“She’s dead?”
“No, but…nearly. She’s too far gone. She can’t be saved at this point.” Luna’s gaze went to the wall behind the desk with rows of red numbers flashing down. They were timers for the death sleep chambers.
“Which one?” Gabriel demanded.
“N-number three.”
Only five minutes left for the girl. I looked at the timer for the room I’d been in. It had stopped with almost an hour still on the clock.
“She can’t be saved,” Luna said again.
“Yes, she can.”
Luna realized how Gabriel planned to heal the girl and made a disgusted face. “I can’t believe the queen wanted you so much. You’d truly give a human your blood? That’s sick.”
“Helene, come with me. I don’t want you alone with this malcontent.”
I followed Gabriel to the death sleep chambers. He opened the third door.
“Stay back so the smoke doesn’t affect you again.”
I waited in the hallway and watched him through the window. The room was filled with a thick, misty fog. I could barely see the girl lying in the bed, her clothing neatly folded on a chair nearby.
I wondered if Luna had taken advantage of this girl before putting her in the death sleep. Maybe she considered it a perk of the job. I wondered if she just went for the ladies, or if she played with men as well.
Through the smoky mist, the girl’s features were peaceful as the machine beside her beeped away. I wasn’t sure how it manufactured the illusion or why the smoke took so long to do its job. Perhaps it took that long to be painless, and the induced dream state was to remove the fear. On the surface, it seemed like they were trying to be humane. And yet the whole thing left a sick feeling in my stomach—especially since she’d still had so much life left in her.
Gabriel pulled down a heavy metal lever, and the smoke began to recede and clear, sucked in by the same vents in the wall it had come out of. He ripped the electrodes off her and bit his wrist. He held her mouth open and pressed his arm against it. After a few seconds, she latched on.
When she realized where she was, what she was with, that her arms were strapped down to the bed, she started to struggle. It was as awful watching her come from her blissful state back to the real world as it had been experiencing it directly.
I could see Gabriel speaking softly with her. Once the room cleared of smoke, he motioned me to come inside.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Ivy,” the girl said.
“Helene, tell Ivy that I keep my promises.”
I raised a brow in question. The girl, still strapped to the bed and terrified, craned her neck to look at me.
“Helene is human like you. We do things differently in my city,” he said.
Different. Not necessarily better. Maybe I’d been away from the direct horror of it for a while now, but I couldn’t forget how bad it had been. It was just a different flavor of terrible.
“He keeps his promises,” I said. At least he had so far to me. Everything he’d promised, he’d fulfilled honorably.
Ivy looked at Gabriel. “Will you please uncuff me?”
He took the clear key box from his pocket and pressed one of the buttons. The cuffs sprang open, and she sat up, keeping covered with the blankets as she rubbed her wrists.
She looked at me. “H-he said I’d live out my natural life if I tell him where the rebels are.”
“Then you will.”
Gabriel could make her tell him, either through torture or mind control. Maybe this way was easier if she’d comply.
“What will happen to them?” she asked. “There aren’t that many of us.”
“The offer on the table is your life or death. It is not your concern how I rule. If I have to pull it out of you through torture or mind control, you won’t be spared.”
“He doesn’t kill humans in our city,” I said. I don’t know why I encouraged her, but I believed Gabriel would be fair and just. It was foolish for her to lose her life for lack of that knowledge.
Ivy was convinced by my sincerity and told us where to find those who opposed the queen.
Gabriel helped the girl get dressed, and we left the cramped room. Luna was still on her knees as if her begging had been put on pause. Gabriel walked over to her, grasped her head, and ripped it off her body without even a beat of hesitation.
I gasped at the brutal display, but he ignored my sensitivity. He carried the head down the hall and locked it in one of the rooms. I heard the metal lever lock down and the gas come on. Meanwhile, the body still moved in a macabre display in front of me.
Gabriel returned, his face giving away no emotion. I was too afraid to ask what he’d done. I’d never seen him kill. I didn’t think he sullied his own hands. In my mind he was a civilized monster. But could such a thing exist?
“Even decapitated, my kind can survive for several hours. Her head needs to be separated from her body long enough to die. I reversed the program. No sense giving her pleasant dreams.”
As if on cue, Luna’s screams reached our ears.
“Bring the rebels to the palace, Helene.”
I glanced in the direction of Luna’s head and back at Gabriel, uncertain. Because of how he’d dealt with me, it hadn’t occurred to me before just how ruthless he could be. We didn’t have much time before day. If I didn’t do as he asked, would we be stuck here until night fell again? Simone would worry—if she survived.
“It’s not a request. Bring them to the palace.”
Chapter Ten: 37 hours until day
Convincing the rebels to come with me wasn’t easy. They’d been holed up in an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the city. The only reason they agreed to come was that Gabriel had Ivy. They’d known she was nearing expiration, but her number had come up to be scanned and fed on. She’d had to go to the palace in order not to raise suspicion.
There were only about thirty of them, and none were particularly impressive. These were the humans the queen feared? This ragtag group of social misfits? She’d made it sound like the city swarmed with defiance. Instead, I’d found a mediocre band of frightened subjects without a real plan. They had ideas and dreams of escape, but it seemed more like a support group than anything.
More than twice on the way back to the palace, I considered telling them to just go. Run. Hide. But I was afraid of what Gabriel would do if I defied him. I still couldn’t get Luna’s headless body out of my mind…writhing in the large, open room while her head screamed like a tortured wraith from behind another door. I wondered what horrible thing she’d dreamed in her final hours to make her shriek that way.
The guards were ready for our arrival and let us pass without question. The common area was crowded with both monster and human alike. Gabriel sat on a gilded chair on an elevated platform at the far end. Ivy stood beside him.
When she saw us, she called out, “Evan!”, and rushed forward. Gabriel motioned, and a guard restrained her. I turned to find more guards closing in, blocking the exits, moving in a circle around us.
“Helene, come here.”
A path was cleared for me.
“You lied to us!” one of the rebels shouted at my back. Evan, maybe? None of us were on a first name basis.
I glared at Gabriel. “You said you’d spare them.”
He shook his head. “I never said that. You assumed.” He extended a hand. “Come here, Helene. Don’t embarrass yourself in fro
nt of everyone.”
Still, I stood. The defiance embraced me like an old friend. But I feared my rebellion might bring retribution on Simone. He knew what I couldn’t stand to lose or see hurt. But he didn’t offer that threat. Instead, he nodded, and one of the guards stepped in and picked me up, carrying me through the crowd up to the waiting king.
He held me firmly on his lap.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the second city, your queen has not only broken the Treaty of the Division of the Kingdoms, she has committed treason against you by installing a rebel force to get my attention. Well, she got it. You will no longer be answering to the queen. Amari is dead.”
I wondered if he’d gotten inside Ivy’s head to learn the rebels’ secrets while I’d been out collecting them.
Murmurs rose from the gathered subjects. Gabriel continued. “I am your sovereign now. Many of you know Amari wanted to rule both of our cities with me. Unfortunately, you will only be getting me in this deal, but you will be free to carry on as you have with little interference. I will appoint someone to manage things in my absence and return to my own home.”
More murmurs. How quickly they seemed to fall in line behind him. Had they cared so little for Amari? Did they have no strong leader to fill her shoes?
Gabriel waited for the whispers to die down. “These are the human rebels. Kill them. Show no mercy. Let the other humans watch so we will not have this problem again.”
Ivy sobbed and struggled, but the guard held her tight.
The guards trapping the rebels, fanned out, allowing the other monsters in to attack. Then they moved back into position. I couldn’t see the slaughter from my vantage point. But I heard it.
It was bloody and brutal and quick—like a pride of lions running down a gazelle. Shouts of vicious glee filled the hall with unbridled joy at the violence they’d been allowed.
Blood pooled and flowed from under the feet of the statue-still guards.
I would never forget the screams of those I’d led into Gabriel’s trap. Their desperate cries turned to whimpers, then strangled gurgles as I imagined them choking on their own blood.
