Masochist: A Contemporary Young Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 4)

by Schow, Ryan

  I sleep from about three o’clock in the morning until I hear the passing noises of foot traffic. I open my eyes, cringe at the stiffness in my body, especially my neck, then absorb my surroundings.

  The clock on my cell phone says it’s six-thirty and already people are heading off to work. My body is shivering; I pull the blanket around me, cinch it tight. The fact that I can see my breath bothers me. I start the van, crank the heater, try not to curse myself for the absurdity of this plan.

  By the time I’m fully awake, an hour passes and I have to take a dump, which I refuse to even attempt in last night’s soup bowl slash portable toilet. Plus, my stomach hurts so bad from being empty it’s making me insane. That’s when, across the street, I see Arabelle and the girl leaving the apartment lobby and presumably heading for Arabelle’s Mercedes.

  Jumping out of the van, I cross the street with purpose, thrust all my irritation to the forefront of my mind. My anger is fuel. Rage makes it burn hotter. Like nitrous oxide or a nuclear bomb.

  A taxi rips up the hill straight for me, nearly hits me, but swerves just in time. I barely notice, that’s how focused I am.

  They don’t see me.

  I can’t take my eyes off the girl. Or Arabelle.

  I hit the sidewalk across the street, break into a jog. We’re rounding the corner where they left the Mercedes when I catch up to them. Arabelle turns and looks at me, startled. The little brown-haired girl beside her doesn’t even flinch. In that very instant—the one where the girl lays eyes on me and I lay eyes on her—something in me coils, protective. My mind thinks enemy. There’s a darkness about her I find indescribably scary. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s there. Then I blink and it’s gone.

  This blind rage, perhaps it has me imagining things.

  “Dr. Heim said he made you dead,” Arabelle says, breathless, unable to blink.

  “Clearly that freaking maniac is exaggerating,” I say, my face flushed with adrenaline.

  “Did Dr. Heim not pour gasoline through rubber hose into your heart?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  My hands are clenching and unclenching themselves, making angry little flexing fists.

  “Did he not set your fire from inside?” Arabelle is looking at me like it just can’t be. But it happened bitch, I’m thinking. I survived.

  The memory of that horrific assault darkens and pinches my features. Makes my face cruel, sickeningly inhuman.

  “He say you were burning when he taked back Rebecca.”

  “So he has Rebecca at the lab.”

  “Yes.”

  That’s when Nurse Arabelle does what I never in a million years expected her to do. She reaches out and hugs me. Like a good one. A really good one.

  “I hate to admit, but I cry for your death. Is stupid, yes?”

  “No, it’s sweet,” I say into her shoulder. And über surprising.

  “After your break and entering, and your electrocuting me, my hopes were that death had found you.”

  I pull back and say, “Okay, that’s not sweet.”

  “Then the more thought I have, the more I feel I miss you.”

  “I expected you to hate me,” I say.

  “I do hate you, but I like you, too. We are good frenemies, no?”

  I laugh and say, “Yes,” and that’s when she smacks me with the force of a man. It rocks my entire head backwards, cracking my neck, and I stumble backwards into the street. A car swerves to pass, laying on the horn a little too late. I hold my face, barely able to comprehend what just happened.

  Her purple eyes are ringed with flecks of gold. They always look like this when she’s enraged. It’s so sexy I can’t stand it. I miss having those eyes.

  “You concuss my head, put holes in my skin, make me burn from inside out from tazing gun,” she says, not friendly, but not as hostile as she could be for what I did to her.

  Alright, playtime’s over.

  “Let’s dispense with the games,” I say, my voice sounding tight and sharp. “I want Rebecca, and you’re going to help me get her.”

  Suddenly my insides start to cook. It’s the same kind of uncomfortable heat that comes during a massive healing, except that I’m not injured. My pride is wounded, and my jaw is sore, but not enough to warrant this. I look down at the girl and her skin looks nearly translucent. Even her eyeballs have an opalescent shine over the otherwise dark pupil. And the girl’s hand Arabelle isn’t holding, it’s reaching out toward me like some kind of gnarled, demonic claw.

  “Whatever the hell she’s doing, make her stop,” I say to Nurse Arabelle, not even looking at her anymore.

  Arabelle says to the girl, “It’s okay, Alice. Do not burn our frenemies just yet.”

  “Who is this wondrous thing?” I say, feeling the heat inside me dissipating. The color in her eyes slowly bleeds back to normal and she relaxes her hand.

  “She is none of my business.”

  “Your business,” I correct. This grade school mutant, Alice, pulls closer to Arabelle, a deep resolution in her eyes. Like she wouldn’t care one way or the other if I burst into flames and die. “She is none of your business is how you say it.”

  “Your eyes must pretend never to have seen.”

  “Seen what?” I say, irritated that she still cannot speak the language. Irenka would have a field day with this one.

  People are walking by, looking at us, not looking at us, and sometimes looking back at us after they’ve walked by and gained safe distance.

  “Her.”

  “I can see whomever I want to see, especially a creepy little girl.” The defiance in my tone is now a regular thing. Still, in the back of my mind I’m thinking, what in the hell kind of rotten genetic freakazoid is this?!

  The girl’s hand becomes a fist at her side, catching my attention. I glare at her, witness her beautiful eyes flood with black, then glaze over a translucent white. Then, inside my chest, my organs begin to roast. Her stare is hypnotic. Hateful. I clutch my chest.

  “Whatever it is you’re doing, little girl,” I say, my voice breaking, “I suggest you stop.”

  Arabelle pulls the girl close, into a maternal hug, then in her ear says, “This girl is okay, my sweet Alice, just some of the times annoying.”

  Once more the heat fades, and thank God because I was having a hell of a time not showing the pain. It was like the fire ants, but way hotter. Like my entire body was infested with them. The girl’s eyes flick up at me and her hand unfurls. Her eyes are turning the color of pitch, super black, the pupil dilated so wide it’s nearly her entire eye. A chill wraps me entirely.

  Holy shit.

  The smile she gives isn’t a smile at all. It’s the childlike joy of knowing she is invincible.

  “Quite a weapon you have there, Arabelle. Like a baby Darth Vader.”

  “She is not mine.”

  “Whose is she then? Gerhard’s? The asshole who attacked me? Did you say his name was Dr. Heim?” She opens her mouth to speak, but I don’t let her. “Where is Rebecca?”

  “I tell you already. She is at the lab.”

  “What are you doing to her?”

  “Not me.”

  “Is she okay?” I ask. The hostility in my voice is turning to weakness, pleading. I’ve been terrified for my friend, obsessing about her nearly every waking minute of every single day.

  “I am thinking so, but not for certain.”

  “Well you had better find out,” I snap. The leftover heat in my guts feels like the worst case of indigestion.

  “Forget her,” Arabelle says. “Forget you ever have known of her.”

  “Is the doctor experimenting on her?” I ask, this time much louder, much more hostile. Now people are definitely looking at us. It’s practically rush hour traffic on the sidewalk as well as in the street.

  “Yes.”

  My body hardens with hostility. The color in the little girl’s eyes starts to change again and I say, “Your little rodent’s about to burn me again.�
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  “And what shall you want me to do about her?”

  I feel my chest blistering. Arabelle’s doing nothing, so I launch forward and punch the little girl in the chin so hard she falls backwards in a knocked-out heap. Arabelle gasps and I cradle what is most likely a sprained wrist. I step back, shaking out my wrist. Arabelle leans down, looks at the fallen child.

  Some lady says, “Did you just hit that little girl?” to which I say, “That’s no ordinary girl, lady.” The woman sort of slows her pace, like she wants to do something but she’s afraid of me.

  She should be.

  “Keep walking,” I say. And she does.

  “Violence is not a kind thing,” Arabelle says, clearly working hard on the arrangement of her words.

  “Of course it’s not,” I growl.

  “You are becoming bad person,” she says, picking up the girl’s slumped over body. The way she lifts Alice into her arms, Arabelle must be much stronger than she looks.

  “That’s on Gerhard, not me,” I say. God I wish Arabelle wasn’t so damn hot and so freaking cold. One day friends, one day enemies. Gosh damn Russians. “Oh, and by the way, Arabelle, I’m coming for Rebecca and Dr. Heim. You’d do best to either help me, or stay out of the way.”

  Vessel

  1

  Dr. Heim drained the fluids in the circular coffin-like glass canister holding Rebecca. The girl hung motionless, suspended in stasis. With another push of a button, the canister swung slowly on its axis from vertical to horizontal. After a moment, Heim opened the sealed door, stared at the dripping wet, unconscious girl.

  With a special towel, he carefully wiped the pink jelly residue from her body, then applied the ointment on her belly necessary to perform the ultra high-speed 4D ultrasound. The first image of the three fetuses lit the screen. After a moment’s study, the doctor opened a hard plastic casing and removed a needle. The custom designed needle used specifically for this experiment was not small. More like something you’d use on a Budweiser horse.

  Heim wiped the injection spot with an alcohol swab, then injected the needle, slowly, firmly, and without hesitation into Rebecca’s belly.

  On the large, high definition monitor, he saw the needle enter the womb. He directed it to the nearest fetus perfectly. Next, he took a much smaller feeder-needle and an accompanying micro line-camera and he directed the mated pair through the hollow inside of the larger needle. When the needle and tube camera appeared on the ultrasound’s viewing monitor, Heim put on the nearly microscopic camera’s viewing glasses and directed the feeder-needle into the arm of the nearest fetus. Slowly, very slowly, he entered the median basilica vein in the fetus’s arm.

  The fetus twitched, but the needle held.

  Heim flipped the switch on, giving the fetus the appropriate dosage of his and Wolfgang’s patented growth accelerant gel. He waited two seconds then flipped the switch off. He slowly removed the needle.

  Heim then waited breathlessly for the next few minutes as he watched the first fetus for signs of rejection. A moment passed and nothing happened. Then the fetus reacted. Not much, but as much as it could for what it was.

  Heim smiled. It wasn’t dying like the others had.

  “It’s going to work,” he heard himself say in an excited whisper. “It’s going to work.”

  When five uneventful minutes passed, he went to work on the next two fetuses. Within an hour, all three fetuses were nourished. None of them were dying. An hour after that, Rebecca was once again upright and floating unconscious in a canister full of the watery pink fluid. Even though he artificially inseminated her with what he planned would be triplets only a month ago, her belly these last few weeks resembled that of a woman three months pregnant. He stared at her bump, marveled at the resilience of this vessel.

  His Rebecca.

  The host mother of his future miracle-babies. The kind of babies he had been trying for decades to produce.

  Within weeks, he hoped the triplets had the equivalent development of seven month old fetuses, and two weeks after that, if everything worked, the host should be ready for delivery.

  If this version of his and Wolfgang’s formula worked, and Rebecca and her children didn’t die, they would have to give the solution (named Fetal Growth Accelerant #4254) a more attractive title.

  More than anything, Heim prayed it would work. Having so many girls and babies dying on him was exhausting.

  The disposal alone taxed his patience.

  2

  Arabelle stood inside the lab watching through a wall of windows as Dr. Heim worked on Rebecca. The hate she harbored for that man could incinerate the world. She turned away from him, went to the lab’s main door, then found herself standing in front of Wolfgang’s canister.

  Looking at him now, she felt her spirit stir, then wane. All the energy she had seemed to drain at once. This…thing…before her, he was not the man she remembered, not the man she was so fond of. His body was changing by the hour, and this was the middle stage. The grotesque nature of this point in transition left her with a deep and lasting sickness.

  “He is not gone,” she whispered to herself. A reassurance she tried to embody. But still, she was losing her anchor. Her savior.

  If not for him, she would have had no one.

  His body shifted at a barely detectable rate toward its beautiful evolution. The thing about watching him change was, if you didn’t look right at him, you’d see the subtleties of his body evolving ever so slightly. Like a ghostly apparition that appeared, but only in your peripheral vision.

  That is, if you could stomach the sight.

  Wolfgang once told her the same way it is darkest before the light, a body is the ugliest it will ever be just before it becomes beautiful.

  Even in his own case, he was right.

  The body before her, it was all lumps and knots. How the bones didn’t line up right or the lopsidedness of the face made her synapses twitch, she tried not to think of the word abomination, or creature.

  Still, those were the types of words infecting her mind. She felt her brain unraveling. She might go insane. Finally she tore her eyes away from the scene, and found herself looking at Rebecca and her now expanding belly. Seeing this girl, seeing her being used as a vessel for Dr. Heim’s experiment, this took everything vile and ruined inside her and drew it fresh into her mind, into the forefront of her thoughts.

  Men like Dr. Heim should be killed. He was the real fiend. The real abortion of humanity.

  This is what Abby wanted to save Rebecca from. This is why there was so much fight in the girl because to Abby, Rebecca was human. Not a clone.

  Not some vessel.

  Her hand went to her own belly. She felt like screaming. She felt like crying. Then Dr. Heim turned and looked at her and she fought the urge to dab away the moisture building in her eyes.

  Dr. Heim looked at her then at Rebecca and he said, “You know what really makes me cry is that we’re about to become Gods.” The way his German accent was guttural and less refined sounding than Wolfgang’s made her despise the man all the more. If she could shoot him in the face, she would.

  “This variant will work, yes?” Arabelle managed to say.

  “I hope so.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Arabelle said, looking at Rebecca, seeing her through Abby’s eyes and not her own.

  “The perfect vessel,” Heim said.

  Vessel. Not a girl, not human. Not capable of love or hurt; never a girl or a woman or a mother. Just a piece of meat used to house his experiment. Just a piece of meat. Like her once, a long time ago.

  She hated the word vessel.

  When he turned away, when the monster who purported to have roasted Abby Swann—the late Savannah Van Duyn—returned his incest-like focus to Rebecca, Arabelle slayed him with wicked eyes, eyes smoked with the blackest of hatred. He turned to say something, but when he saw her expression, his words got lost somewhere in the back of his throat.

  “What?” he finally m
anaged to croak out.

  She stormed from the lab, unable to spend one more moment eyeing that soulless pig, that foul sadist. What kind of a person dreamt of bringing a handful of babies to term in less than three months? Heim, the voice in her head snarled. What kind of a man didn’t care how many women and children died doing it? In truth, Wolfgang was part of this procedure. Yes, he was only involved when certain genetic solutions puzzled Dr. Heim, but he was involved never-the-less.

  She didn’t want to hate Wolfgang, but he allowed this. Who he was intruded on her thoughts, the things he allowed Heim to do. How could he be her savior and be as sadistic a beast as Dr. Heim? The weight of these thoughts alone felt torturous.

  She closed her eyes, tried to shut out the thoughts. What an impossible chore, she thought, to try to forget such things!

  Heim, the monster, the sociopath, had been gazing down upon Rebecca and her babies with love. His eyes saw the girl and the unborn children, but the love he felt, Arabelle knew, was not for them. It was love for his experiment.

  Dozens of women and children died by his hand. All failed experiments. Why should this one work? she wondered. Because he told her it would? He said if the girl and the babies survived outside the lab, Rebecca might be his most stable host. His Madonna. His Mother Mary.

  Tears boiled in her eyes.

  If God was Jesus Christ’s savior, Dr. Heim once said, then Rebecca was his Mary and these three children, they would be this world’s second, third and fourth coming of Christ. Heim thought Christian, Christopher, and Christine would be wonderful names, if only the litter consisted of two boys and a girl. That’s exactly what the son of a bitch had said.

  When she told him playing God was still playing and it didn’t excuse the deaths he caused, he told Arabelle he was creating a variant of accelerated growth hormones that were safe for a fetus.

  Safe? Arabelle thought. Hah!

  “Forget the mother,” Heim had said, “we take our formula to the child and the child grows. Can you imagine? You’re a woman wanting to be a mother, but the idea of nine months of incubation sours your will. Now you can do it in just under three months!”