by Schow, Ryan
Arabelle said it was unnatural.
“God’s ideas for being a mother are antiquated,” Heim reasoned. “He is nearly obsolete. The very nature of this experiment throws the validity of His existence into question. The real question is this: do we really need Him anymore?”
Arabelle couldn’t listen to what he was saying without having flashbacks of her youth.
“We don’t need God anymore. All you need is me, for I am the new God, an Aryan God, the God of expediency!”
Arabelle thought, if I had a dollar for every man who thought he could ruin a woman and call himself God, she’d never again want for material possessions.
“At this rate,” Heim said, “we can create babies by the dozen in only a few month’s time. Plus, we should be able to get multiple births out of the same host.”
“Woman,” Arabelle said, correcting him. “She is not host, she is woman.”
The idea of killing him was Arabelle’s version of winning the lottery. It had just been the two of them in the lab that day. Excluding the canisters holding the mostly lifeless Rebecca, Gerhard and the three male subjects Gerhard was using as his own genetic pool.
Heim had the wisdom to blush, still he was insensitive enough to say, “Host, woman, it is of no difference to me.”
3
Arabelle spent the days watching Gerhard’s body change. She didn’t have anything else to do, except tend to Alice. What a strange creature that girl was. Her ability to stand in one place and be silent for hours was uncanny. Five year olds are usually such squirmy things.
Not Alice.
Heim worked in his office and in his lab, and he would often study Rebecca, smiling at the fact that she was still alive. He picked up his phone, dialed a number, asked for Mike Porquino. Arabelle cringed. Alice looked up at her, as if she sensed something.
Lieutenant Michael Porquino was ex-military and a full fledged, self-proclaimed member of the Church of Satan. Now he ran a boys and girls home just outside the city. Plus he had contacts at CPS, and some excellent contacts inside the sick world of human trafficking, according to Heim.
To Arabelle, it was almost as if Heim worshiped the man.
“I need three girls, ages fifteen to nineteen would be acceptable,” Heim announced. He listened, nodded his head, then eventually said, “Thank you, Michael.”
When he hung up the phone, Arabelle—emotionally exhausted, chewing on her anger—said, “What are you needing to call him?” Thinking about the injustice the man would perpetrate on those young girls put a razor’s edge to her voice. Patience was something she had abandoned. Everything about her was nearly iced over and certainly brittle. She meant for it to be that way.
“Because if this works,” he explained, “and it’s looking like it will, we’ll need to test our formula on new hosts. Stability from host to host is critical to our success.”
Heim either didn’t register her tone, or he chose to ignore it. That’s how he was sometimes, lost in his own head. Scientists.
“And who will be girls’ donors?”
Dr. Heim pointed at Gerhard’s clones.
Arabelle glanced over at the three canisters holding the men from whom Gerhard had drawn his own samples.
Alice took her hand. It was small and warm. As much as the girl perplexed her, Arabelle was grateful for her right then.
Into his digital recorder where he kept his personal notes, Heim looked at Arabelle and said, “Have Arabelle collect semen samples for the hosts. If the first batch proves successful, contact both Michael Porquino and Monarch Enterprises and set up a more steady supply line.
“So that is your idea? To sell babies to corporation?”
He shut off his recorder. Smiled big. It was a chilling smile.
“Think bigger,” he said.
She refused to engage him, if only to defy him. Who was he to tell her what to think?! When Arabelle said nothing, Heim walked over to Wolfgang’s canister and observed the changes in the man. Through the pink gel, he watched the muscles strengthening under the skin and bones. He watched the constant, slow-motion re-shifting of his colleague’s body.
Any day there would be a bleed off, which was common at this stage, where a reddish-brown pudding substance would be excreted from the mouth, nose, ears and anus. Arabelle found it to be an ugly but necessary part of the transformation—the purging of old tissue and bone.
As the three of them stood in awe of what Gerhard was becoming, Arabelle wondered what was going to happen to the man they once knew. At the last minute, they had taken a sample of Alice’s DNA, extracted a specific chain with Alice’s unusual protein sequence, then mixed it into his cocktail. The strain held stable. Inside, however, Arabelle was terrified to know how Alice’s DNA would effect him, and who he would become.
She struggled to remember the loving, gentle side of him. But that was a hard fight. She let her gaze fall to Alice who was all eyes on her. The memory of the child’s insidious history gathered in her mind. Then the even more brutal and murderous history of the former version of Dr. Wolfgang Gerhard rose to mind and that’s when she realized everything was wrong. The new DNA was a mistake.
“He will be perfect looking monster,” Arabelle said, her heart teaming with fear.
Neither Alice nor Heim responded.
Frosted Steel
1
My dreams are nightmares, and my nightmares are something worse. I wake up in a bed that isn’t mine. In a room that isn’t mine. I wake up sweating. Screaming. Crying. My body rails against the horrors in my head. The covers don’t stand a chance. They’re half on the bed, half kicked on the floor, and my sheets are blotted wet with sweat angels. How I feel is weary, haunted. My mouth, in my sleep, won’t stop the stream of obscenities. FML.
Seriously.
Several times throughout the night, I sit up and look around, half stuck inside my nightmares, half dragged into the real world. Bleary eyed, my head feeling stuffed with cotton, I look around and Rebecca is not here and this painful realization finally pulls me into full awareness.
She’s gone.
To say the horrors of my past haunt me is a gross understatement of the truth. They plague me. Fear is a permanent part of my being. After almost dying at the hands of Gerhard’s genetic monster, the pedophile music producer rapist, and Dr. Heim, my mind is a battlefield of doubt.
It’s an horrific wreck.
Honestly, it’s worse than Lindsay Lohan’s life, more dysfunctional than Amanda Bynes, more in deep, deep shit than Mel Gibson’s nearly non-existent career.
I question everything: my relationship with my parents, my friendships and relationships with the boys and men in my life, all the reckless violence, the reckless chances I’ve taken, the fights I’ve started and ended.
My head suppurates trying to rationalize it all. Did I really do those things? I often wonder. I feel so far removed from so much of my life that anymore I have to wonder, was it even me in charge? Before it was easy to blame my clones. To blame the DNA. But as Netty so aptly pointed out, this is my DNA now. One person, not many. Me.
Running off to stay with Netty, this seemed like a chance for me to get back to my roots, to the people I knew before I became the psycho-girl I am today. Life was far simpler when I was not…this version of me. Self-loathing was my safety blanket. Hate was a vice. I didn’t have to fear, plot or scheme because it was all bad. Killing, however, wasn’t part of any equation. Neither was sex or popularity or managing what felt like the multiple personalities of me.
The chaos in my brain, the fear cycle, the depression, it won’t stop. Then there’s Rebecca…this perfect girl who never leaves my thoughts. What is happening to her?
Days pass in a blur. In a wash of grief and sadness and misery. In a haze of self-recrimination. I feel lazy, spiteful, uninspired to do anything other than obsess over Rebecca.
After a few days of this, Netty finally drags me out of bed for coffee and scones. We talk about this and that, and all the
sudden I get this strange feeling that our roles have finally been reversed. When I brought Maggie home from Astor Academy, I took her out trying to cheer her up. We went to Oren’s Hummus and she was a motherfreaking disasterpiece. All storm clouds and blotted sunshine. A straight up black hole.
That’s me now: toxic.
In the living room, looking outside the large picture window for something happy, a song bird or something, I force a smile. It’s all clear skies outside. Down on the street below, on the sidewalk across from Netty’s apartment building, is an older couple with swollen, withering bodies and hair the puffed-up color of summer clouds. They’re walking in slow motion, hand in hand. From up here, they are the snail equivalent of human beings. Take the normal pace, divide it by four and that’s how slow the two of them are moving. The old guy, he’s half hobbled over and his wife slips her hand into his armpit to steady him. They stop, she says some words of encouragement, and then they resume their walk, albeit a little slower.
They could be ninety. They could be one hundred.
My mind starts wondering about their lives. Do they love each other, or is their companionship a necessity? How long have they been together? What kind of a life do they live? Did they meet in their teens, or in college? Did they have a fairytale romance before descending into old, old age?
I’m imagining the Nicholas Sparks version of their lives and inside it makes me want true love. That would make me happy.
“Hey,” Netty, says, pulling me from my reverie. “Where are you?”
“Thinking about those old people down there, wondering what it would be like to be in love and not be all manic about it.”
“If you want true love,” she says, “then we’ll need fake ID’s.”
I snap out of it. Suddenly alert.
“What?”
“The hottest guys don’t go to eighteen and over bars. They’re at twenty-one and over bars, and that’s why we need fake ID’s.”
“Do you know someone?”
“I do. Do your hair and makeup because we’re going to see him today.”
“How do you know this person?”
“He’s where Chloe went to get her first fake ID.”
After a cup of coffee, a shower and me doing my hair and makeup the way I want to see it on my new ID, we head to Richmond and see this guy at this sketchy looking hovel just south of the city dump. The thing about Richmond is on warm days the air can have a pooish-smelling quality to it.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask, trying to breathe through my mouth only because the air is particularly ripe today.
The security door opens and a hefty looking Mexican guy with shiny black hair and a sloth-like mid-section steps out. He has a friendly face.
“Hola, bonita,” he says to Netty. Then to me: “Mi Dios! Que es esta?”
Netty says, “This is my friend, Abby. Abs, this is Esteban.”
He reaches out to shake my hand, but when he gets it, he kisses it and says, “De todas las muchachas hermosas en el mundo, cómo terminó aquí?”
Netty translates. “He said, ‘Of all the beautiful girls in the world, how did you end up here?’”
“Good luck, I guess,” I say. I didn’t know Netty understood Spanish.
I’m getting used to being complimented by men, but inside, I still wonder if they’re all just being polite. My brain tells me I’m so much better looking than I feel, so I smile and pretend I’m as pretty as they say.
Esteban leads us inside his home, which is an average house with uninspiring décor, old carpet, oak cabinets, single-pane windows and tile countertops that look stained. The grout is almost black in spots. The smile I plaster on my face, it’s so I don’t look as judgmental as I feel. I’m thinking, what a freaking dump! But whatevs. We’re not here from House Beautiful or anything.
We’re here for illegal ID’s.
In the back of the house, one of the rooms has been converted to a photo lab and work area. Esteban gets our information, takes our pictures. All the while I can’t help thinking this is how horror movies start. This is how girls end up getting raped. Or laid out on a table, injected with a paralyzing agent and having their organs harvested while they watch, awake, awash in horror, unable to do squat about it but cry in silence for the camera.
But in the end, Esteban tells us our ID’s will be ready in two days, so we return to the Audi and head back to the city.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Netty says as we’re leaving Richmond’s version of the hood.
“Depends on how the ID’s turn out, I guess.”
“They’re good, Abby,” she says with a knowing grin. “Trust me, they’ll be really good.”
2
Back at Netty’s we watch TV for a bit, then I get bored and wander back into my bedroom, which is not nearly as nice as my room at my Palo Alto home, but I don’t care. At least here, no one tied me up and tried to burn me alive.
Lying here, I think of Rebecca, and then I think of Maggie in the days before she killed herself. I will never kill myself, that I vow. There’s no way I could do that to my family, to my friends, to Netty. Suicide to me is the ultimate act of selfishness.
Sometime in the middle of me daydreaming about being a better, happier person, I drift off to sleep. My dreams include Rebecca. They include Maggie. And then Netty wakes me for dinner and the air smells meaty, with the heavily starched smell of potatoes, which makes me think of my father and his newfound passion for cooking. God, I miss him. The way he’s now dressing, how he’s talking like a white gangster and sneaking behind my back to talk to the monster, it makes me feel awful abandoning him the way I did.
I text him telling him I miss him, that I love him. Maybe I should call, but I think if I hear his voice, if I tell him I love him for everything he’s done for me, I’ll start crying. The idea of knowing he’s in the house where Maggie died, where Rebecca was kidnapped and where I was beaten and practically murdered by that prick Heim…God, it just feels like too much for my weary soul to handle.
After dinner, around six, I return to my room and read a book I bought last year that I’ve been wanting to read. I’m twenty-two pages into this amazing novel by Brandon Tetz called Out of Touch, when Netty comes in my room and plops down on the bed next to me.
“I’m going out tonight, and I was wondering if you’d want to come with me.”
“I’m kind of tired, Nettles, plus, I’m not in the social frame of mind.”
“It’s not what you think.”
I close my book, sit up, cross my legs. “Are you going to a club or something?”
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and, without looking at me, says, “When those boys tried…when they tried to get with me against my will, I was so scared. I was terrified.”
She looks up at me with haunting, magnetic eyes. The way she looks at me, I feel pinned down, powerless.
“Afterwards,” she says, “I was scared all the time, and having nightmares. My mother pried the truth out of me, then enrolled me in self-defense classes at a dojo up the street.”
“What’s a dojo?”
“In karate, a place of learning is called a dojo.”
“So you want me to come and watch you do karate?” I say. My mood brightens. In a million years, I wouldn’t have guessed she would be asking me this.
“Yeah. It’s actually helping me a lot. I’m not scared anymore. And I think if it happened again, I could defend myself, which makes me feel better. More confident. Anyway, I have class tonight, and so I’m thinking maybe you should come.”
Rather than being lonely and spending another night in bed, alone—just like Maggie did before she took that fatal bath—I decide to go. I need to feel different, so therefore I must be different, and in this case, different is me getting my lazy butt out of my funk and into something new. Even if it’s just me watching someone else crawl out of their own tragic past.
“That sounds fun,” I say.
3
J
ust before seven that night, Netty and I enter a small dojo where I see about ten students in their white uniforms (which Netty says are gi’s) warming up on what looks like gymnastic-style floor mats. They look like a tight bunch. I sit in the second row of guests’ chairs, crossing my arms, watching with low eyes as the adults interact with each other. They all seem happy which makes me jealous.
It makes me feel like a tourist in a life not my own.
A couple of the students look at me and smile. My mouth smiles back, but not my eyes. I hate my life right now.
One of the older girls does a move with a male partner where the male partner simulates a frontal chokehold and she defends against it. Something inside me jolts to a start. My body reacts, revulsion churning like butter low in my stomach. Like my soul has indigestion, or food poisoning, but worse. Sweat builds along my lower back, gathers in my armpits, slicks my forehead.
WTF is this?
Memories of Demetrius coming after me, beating the shit out of me, trying to choke me to death, they kick my brain around with weight and force. My feet lift onto the chair; my arms circle my legs. Suddenly I want pure darkness. I want to hide. Suddenly I’m sucking in half-breaths, breathing high in my chest and trying not to let out the sob building in the back of my throat. Everything I survived that day, it’s like I’m suffering it all over again.
Stay calm, I tell myself.
Breathe.
The lucid part of my brain not spiraling out of control tells me to watch the students. See how the victim becomes the attacker. But the other part says I need to get the hell out of here and fast. My body knows what’s best. I stand and head into the cool evening air. All choked up, eyes swimming, I look for someplace to go and cry. Then the dojo’s front door opens and Netty’s teacher—her sensei—joins me. Great, my meltdown now has an audience. Trembling hands, wobbly legs, my eyes refuse to meet his. Jeez, is this really what I’ve become?
