The Heart's Ashes

by A. M. Hudson

  I rocked my ankles, taking shallow breaths, tightening the muscles in my legs to stop my bladder spilling out all over the chair. Across the room, the white door I ran through was gone—or it was never there in the first place, and the urge to pee burned so bad I’d soon willingly relieve my bladder. But not yet. Not just yet.

  Even though the room was dark, I could still see the scary fixtures on the walls. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend it was just a friend’s basement, overstuffed with cheap decorations for Halloween. I’ll wake up tomorrow, go home, and think of this sometimes, cry about it, maybe, but mostly, believe it was a terrible nightmare; the kind that, when you wake up, you suddenly appreciate everything in your life—even the bad things.

  But the lonely skeletons of terrors past smiled down at me with gaping jaws, their hollow eyes sardonic, greeting me to the gateway of their eternal loneliness—infecting my hopes with truth…truth that this is no basement. This is it for me. This is my life now until I join them. I’ll lay here, alone, until Jason comes back to finish his list—then, he’ll hand me over to the Council and they will…they will…

  My brow folded tight in the middle, liquid pooling along the outer corners of my eyes.

  David must be so worried—then again, he probably thinks Jason saved me. He’ll never know what happened; he can only imagine what Jason’s done to me, and I know his mind, for all the masochistic things he’s done in his own life, will imagine much worse than has already happened.

  A sudden shock of electric panic rushed through my limbs, forcing my heart into my throat as footsteps scuffed down the steep, echoing staircase.

  I wish I could be small, invisible, so he’d come in and not be able to find me. What tool will he be carrying, what thoughts does he have in his mind right now for what he knows he’s about to do—how he knows I’ll cry when he does?

  “Ah, you’re awake.” Jason peered over me and sniffed thoughtfully. “Well, then we can begin.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  He walked across the room with a flaming torch in hand and spread light to another one on the wall. “I need to test your instinct for survival.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Light warmed my face when he set the torch down on a pillar near the table of tools. “It means I need to see if you can escape—when pushed to the limits.”

  “Escape?”

  He cupped the seat of the chair and pushed, rolling it up to sit. “Yes. When strong, the four guards I have standing at the entrance should be like ten-pins to you, but, given your current state of deterioration, I doubt you’ll have much fight left in you, but I need to test it anyway.”

  “Why? You’re going to kill me, what does it matter?”

  “Well, we still have a while to go before we kill you. The scientists need to know what methods of restraint to use. We can’t test that in the lab, or you might destroy expensive equipment. So—we do it here.”

  My head twitched, a tight trembling resonating from my neck. “How’re you gonna do that?”

  He stood in front of me and pushed his black sleeves up over his elbows. “Same as I would any other animal.”

  Animal? My fingers flexed when he reached for my arm. “What are you doing?”

  “Shh.” He rolled the fastening crank on the cuff, and one came loose; my hand flew to my lip, smearing the itchy blood away at last with the soothing, ice-cold of my fingertips, then scratched my head, my neck, my knees—like a flea-infested animal.

  Jason stared at me with one brow arched, his fingers hovering over the other cuff. “Feel better then, do we?”

  I nodded and watched him wind the crank. “Why are you doing that?” The cuff came loose; I rolled my scabbing wrist between my fingers.

  “Because I’m going to hit you, and you’ll need your hands to block, or fight back.”

  “Hit m—Ah!” The dull clap of flesh on bone thundered through my head as I flew back in the chair, pain turning to tears in my eyes. I bawled, wiping a shaking hand across my upper lip. My nose felt blocked, like I had a cold.

  “Break free!” he growled.

  I wriggled my toes. “How?”

  “Break free!”

  “I can’t.” I traced the walls with my gaze until I looked into his. “My feet are tied. How can I possibly—” Darkness consumed the room, forcing me into an imaginary black cave as my eyes shut tight with the crack of a deep blow across my brow. Crunching vibrations, like biting sand, resonated out through the back of my head—ringing in my ears.

  My mouth opened, but only saliva came out, gathering in the corners of my mouth, mixing with blood as it dribbled down my chin; I pressed both hands to my head, howling silently with raging agony.

  “Come on, Ara,” he said, “I’m giving you a fair chance here. Get up. Fight.”

  The gaping cut on my lip flapped when I shook my head. Cringing, I touched my fingertips against it, drawing them away when I felt the wide gash.

  “Open your eyes,” he ordered. “Now! Or I will hit you again.”

  Fighting against the pulsing tightness in my temples, I forced my eyes open; everything was blurry, and though I could only hear a rushing of white noise, like wind through a seashell, I knew I was crying aloud—really loud.

  “Stop whining.” Jason’s voice reverberated through my ears. “Fight!”

  “No.” My eyes slammed shut, my head whipping away from his sudden movement—but he didn’t strike.

  Cautiously, I inched one eye open. Where did he go?

  Cold hands fumbled around my ankles before Jason stood and grabbed my wrist, shouting “Get up” as he swung me to the wall beside the stairs.

  My weak legs failed and I stumbled, catching the wall, but the oozy slime attacked my grip and sent me sliding down, jolting my head back as my nose grated a brick. Blood burst out over my chin and slithered behind my teeth as I hit the floor.

  “Get up. Escape.” Jason stood over me. “Show my guards how strong you are.”

  Holding my forearm to the smarmy wall, I managed to clamber to my knees, pressing two fingers over my severed lip, folding the flesh back into place.

  Please, Jason. They’ll hurt me if I go out there.

  “I’ll hurt you if you don’t.” He ripped my wrist away from the wall, forcing my shoulders into a spin, my back hitting the ground, then, dragged me behind him, my lungs tight with the position of my arm above me, my breath restricted. Jagged pieces of rock under loose dirt ground into my hips and spine until Jason ditched my arm forcibly, sending me face first to the dirt floor. I cried out, pressing up on my hands, rolling the soil from my throat with my tongue, then coughing it out. My mouth dried so bad I couldn’t even make enough saliva to spit, and the gash on my lip could only bleed away the dirt jammed deep within the cavity.

  Jason grabbed my arm and lifted me again.

  “Please—don’t.” I hid behind my hand. “Please, just stop hurting me.”

  “Not until you attempt escape.” He threw me, spine against the wall, then stood up and grabbed the flame torch from the mount.

  “I can’t, Jason. I never knew I had the power before. I don’t know how to call on that now.” My lip stung with each word—especially the ‘p’.

  “Then you are not only weak of body, but of mind.” He smiled down at me, then grabbed my ankle and pulled, landing on my chest, my arms pinned under his shins, his knees holding my temples in place. “Do you know how hot the oil in this torch is, Ara?” He rested his thumb to my brow, forcing my eye open under the heat of the nearby flames.

  “Oh, God! Please, please don’t.” As I spoke, my lips brushed his crotch—just one more inch and I could bite him and run. I tried to wriggle down, but he was too heavy.

  “I’m going to give you one last chance, Ara.” The heat came closer; its hot light glowed orange against his face, and moisture broke out across my brow.

  “I’m trying.” I kicked my feet, forcing my thumbs through the lace on the sides of my dress
as the scent of smoke and kerosene choked me, reminding me of a camping shop.

  Jason sighed, tipping a few droplets of hot, sizzling oil onto the dirt beside my cheek. My eyes followed it. “Last chance.”

  I screamed out, a rolling growl, the only fight I could offer. I have no power. I can’t break free. I’m useless, stupid and weak. I can’t do it.

  I thrashed about savagely, like a child throwing a tantrum. If I could just get my thumbs up, I could stab him in the groin—but he was too heavy, and my puny, pathetic arms couldn’t shift his weight.

  “Time’s up, Ara,” he said and moved his hand so his thumb rested at the base of my eye, the other one spreading it open from just below my brow. The heat burned my icy cheeks while my corneas shifted nervously.

  No. Not the eye. Anything but the eye.

  I screamed—my desperate cry cutting the air like acid on metal.

  Get off me. Let me go. Let me go.

  He leaned closer and peeled my eyelid a little further open.

  No. I rubbed the base of my skull sideways against the dirt. I have to get free, I have to…

  The light of the torch moved away and my skin tightened with the sudden cool. Slowly, I opened my eye—the other one rolling back from its absence behind the socket. Jason glared down at me; his green gaze focused, then, he took a quick glance over his shoulder.

  Is that it—is he going to do it, or is this just another horrible, tortuous anticipation?

  He dropped the flame pole to the ground and rested both thumbs to the inside of my eye—cupping my temples with his fingers.

  What are you doing?

  My eyes closed again as his thumbnail angled against the inner corner of my nose—right beside the tear-duct. A sharp, quick sting ripped through the skin. “Ow!”

  “Get up.” Jason jumped off my chest.

  I sat bolt upright, covered my eye and rested my head against my knee, watching the torch of terror still rolling around on the ground. “Why did you do that?”

  The vampire grabbed a handful of my dress and before the tension spread through my legs, he ripped a wad of lace from the base and offered it to me. “Put this over your eye.”

  I looked up at him; he stared back, then rolled his eyes.

  “No.” I shrank away as he shoved the lace into my palm, releasing it into a tight spring back to the safety of my body.

  “Put it on your eye,” he ordered again.

  With shaking hands, I cupped the soft fabric over the nip. The lace was cool enough to soothe the sting a little, at least. “Why didn’t you do it?”

  He released a breath of impatience as he placed the torch back in the mount on the wall. “Because, Ara, there are some things even I’m not capable of.”

  “So you…you…”

  “Enough.” He grabbed my arm and hoisted me off the ground. “We need to hurry. The council will return to the viewing room soon and they will want to see this next test.”

  I stumbled feebly to the chair, by guide of his hand on my arm, and fell heavily into it, holding my severed lip in place with my top teeth. A heady wave of nausea rippled my insides; I closed my eyes and let the world spin. “Jason?”

  The thick metal clamp wrapped my wrist again, warm and tight. “Yes.”

  “My throat’s really dry.”

  “And I should care?”

  “Please.” A crackle constricted my throat, forcing me to cough—the tight cuff tugging my wrist, ripping the skin further as my body convulsed.

  He stood, waiting until I caught my breath again, my eyes watering, my gut heaving.

  “Put your other hand in place.”

  The chair felt moist and sticky under my elbow with the sweat, blood and probably tears eternally belonging to the wood. “Where’s that music coming from?” I asked.

  “What music?”

  I strained to hear it then, blinking tightly. “It’s—can’t you hear it?”

  He paused a long moment. “No.”

  “It sounds like that song—the one in the box.”

  “The box?”

  I nodded, feeling heavy, exhausted. He rolled the chair back and I closed my eyes, the gentle hum of that melody taking me to my room, to the night before I married David. “Yeah, the box.”

  “Ara?” He appeared over me, his hand on my brow. “Ara?”

  I opened my eyes to his insistent tone. A tense version of Jason stared back at me, reading my face, I think, his thumb resting just between my brows.

  “What?” I said, closing my eyes again.

  “Yes,” he said, and space followed. “I think she might be sinking down.”

  Sinking down? I turned my head to look at him—on his phone, across the room.

  “I’m not sure how much longer she’ll last. She’s delusional.”

  Delusional?

  “Yes. She mentioned him a few times while sleeping. I’m not sure, but I don’t think we have time for that. I’ll see what I can do. Just make it quick.” He rubbed his brow. “I said make it quick! She’s…yes, I’ll be handing her over soon. Just hurry up.”

  A soft, nearly hysterical laugh jiggled through me; I almost felt like I was sitting on the teacup ride at a fair, rocking in a circular motion. It felt nice, soothing, while the music made my hairs stand on end, surrounding me, as if a musical ghost was making rings around the chair.

  “Ara, why are you laughing?”

  “I—” I burst out again, the torturer’s concerned eyes hilarious. “Y—you’re so serious.” I sobered and put on my best ‘Joker’ face, delivering a line from the last Batman movie I saw.

  Jason didn’t find it funny. He closed his eyes for a second, then glanced over his shoulder. I looked too, seeing the little red blinking light of the camera the coward king used to watch his dirty work be done for him.

  “Why do you keep looking at that?” I asked. “Who else is watching us?”

  He looked back at me and leaned closer, a small white flashlight in hand. “No one—not right now, anyway.”

  “Then why is it so fascinating?” I didn’t even flinch when he shone the light right in my eyes, as if I couldn’t even see light anymore—like my eyes were dead.

  “When it’s green,” he whispered so lowly I almost didn’t hear.

  “When it’s green what?”

  “It means the council are—”

  “It’s green,” I said and he stood back, stiffening. I burst into laughter again. “O. M. G.,” I said, like a teenager. “You are so funny. You look like a deer in the line of headlights.”

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop laughing.”

  “Why?” I said, laughing louder.

  “Because as soon as the Council decides you’ve lost your mind, they will transfer you to the lab.”

  “The lab?” I rolled my shoulder, heaving with giggles. “Vampires have a lab?”

  He looked like an agitated kitty, tired of the string, about to attack the hand. “The lab, Ara—” he grabbed my face in one hand; I stopped laughing, “—is a white room, steel bed, no clothes, strapped down, several men towering over your conscious body, cutting, probing, removing organs.”

  I gasped, the air catching my dry throat, making me cough again.

  He released my cheeks. “You think what I’ve done is brutal—wait until you’re transferred to the upper council and their scientists, Ara. You won’t know suffering until you’ve spent an hour with them.”

  I swallowed. “Why do they need to do that—you’re already conducting tests?”

  He ditched a tool on the table beside my chair. “These medieval experiments don’t tell us much. They need a full examination.”

  “Examination?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will I be dead?”

  “No.” He pressed a straw to my mouth, but I couldn’t sip.

  “Ara, drink.”

  “No.”

  “Drink.”

  “No.”

  The cup came away and he shook his he
ad as the light on the camera went from the red I hadn’t noticed, back to green. “You are your own worst enemy, Miss Thompson.”

  “Kill me?”

  “If I do that, I will sit where you do.”

  “God!” I huffed, feeling giggles rise again. “This is so fucked up.”

  “Language please, Ara.”

  “Oh, right, sorry, Dad. Didn’t realise my manners were relevant in this situation.”

  “Manners always are.”

  “Good, then, please, will you release me so I don’t have to be cut open and pulled apart while still breathing?”

  His phone buzzed. He lifted it only an inch from his pocket then sighed. “Come on.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Looking up from cuffing my feet, he said, “We should’ve had most of this done by now. I have to hurry.”

  “Will they let you keep me if you haven’t finished the tests?”

  “No.” He stood again with his arms folded. “Did you really not know?”

  “Know what?”

  “What you are.”

  I shook my head. David didn’t either.

  “I’m not surprised. You don’t taste or smell any different to a human, and you clearly don’t have any powers yet.”

  We stared at each other for an intense, wordless breath, then, he drew back with a sigh and reached out to the table, grabbing a black, rectangle clipboard. “Now—” he flipped the paper, “—next on the list is…”

  I waited, my breath warm in my stomach, my chin itching from blood, and my eye stinging where sweat dripped from my brow. “Jase?”

  “What?” He looked up from his notes.

  “Can you…can you please scratch my eyebrow. It’s really itchy.”

  His eyes narrowed; he scratched his head then slowly reached across and eased my itchy spot—exactly where I wanted him to.

  Oh, blissful mind readers.

  He chuckled, then sobered. “Okay, regeneration time.”

  “Re-what?”

  “I need to see how long it takes you to heal cuts.”

  “Heal cuts?”

  “Yes.” He placed the clipboard on the table again. “You’re a vampire, Ara, you heal fast. Well—” he tilted his head and looked at my eye, then my gaping lip, “—not so fast now, because you’ve had no blood or food for thirteen days. But if you were full strength, you wouldn’t have even bruised.”