Masochist: A Contemporary Young Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 4)
Page 20
My eyes see everything and nothing. My heart feels only pain. The world converges in on me, expands too wide, leaves me wheezing and alone. I glance up and in the doorway, a very silent Alice is staring at me. Like a child. Colorful eyes, porcelain skin.
Innocent.
At this point, if she were to fry me to death from the inside out, I’d be okay with that. Actually I might welcome it.
“Rebecca survived longer than all other girls,” Arabelle says. “She is hopeful for Heim.”
“How long until she delivers?” I say, barely able to comprehend my own words.
“Less than one month. Maybe earlier. Lots of births happen earlier than doctors have planned.”
“If I take her now, will this put her at risk or save her life?”
“Put her at risk,” Arabelle says without hesitation.
“I want to know about the doctor.”
“Dr. Heim?”
“Yes.”
Arabelle’s neutral expression changes the same way sunny days sometimes become overcast and stormy. “I want only to see him die. He is beast. Treats girls like vessels, not like human people.”
“Can she do it for us?” I ask, nodding toward Alice. “Can she kill him?”
“Only if he is threat to her.”
“Will he be a threat to her?” The hostility in Arabelle’s eyes drains, her expression unreadable once more. Slowly, she nods her head. No. Something in me jumps to life, my animosity renewed. I crawl out of this fog, gather up my bearings. “I don’t care if I kill him, I just want Rebecca.”
“To get her,” Arabelle says, “you will have to kill him.”
I don’t want to kill anyone, though. Not anymore. I hate thinking like this. Having plotted the shooting of Demetrius Giardino, having killed Gerhard’s war machine, having barely survived Heim’s death cocktail, I can say the stress should have aged me ten years. It’s made me not want to kill again. My God, my soul can’t survive another burden of this magnitude!
“There has to be some other way,” I mumble.
“He was meant by God to be dead already. He live only because Wolfgang has found ways to defy death. Killing that pig is righting wrong by science.”
“I’m a wrong by science,” I announce. “He was meant to be dead, and I was meant to be ugly, and only because of Gerhard’s science are we both the way we are. I won’t rely on that logic to justify murder.”
“You will justify it some way to get Rebecca back. If she lives.”
I feel my head nodding in agreement.
“I will help you,” Arabelle announces.
“Seriously?” I stammer.
“Seriously.”
“But…why now?”
“Men like Heim abuse children for experiments, for pleasure. He is monster, like my uncle who made me sell my body for sex to pay for life.”
My head is filled with images of Arabelle being whored out as a child, with images of Rebecca in a canister being used to grow children at an accelerated rate, with images of Heim in my bedroom in his fit of rage.
“He can’t be allowed to live,” I snarl.
“He needs killing.”
“Yes,” I hiss.
Arabelle just sits there, realization settling in, the contemplation a mighty weight upon her oh so beautiful face. She straightens her back. Something in those sparkling eyes clears. Turning to me with a steadfast resolve, she says, “It will be harder than you think.”
“Fortunately, I have experience in that area,” I tell her.
“Not enough.” Standing up, she says, “Before you are to leave, I have something for you.”
4
On the way home, I’m turning the single key Arabelle gave me in my fingers. It’s the key to Gerhard’s and Heim’s San Francisco lab. The last time I got a key to Gerhard’s Astor Academy lab, it was by way of B&E. It was a stealth operation. Completely illegal. Now, I have an ally. An “inside man,” but with tits and purple eyes.
The ringing of my cell phone through the Audi’s speakers startles me. The Audi’s caller ID says it’s Georgia. I pick up.
“Hey,” I say, happy.
“Hi,” she says. “I…I just wanted to call you. I think maybe I’m freaking my mother out.”
“You mean, beyond burning her plant?” I ask.
“Yes, and no. I mean, it’s kind of all connected. I’m…different now.”
“I am, too,” I admit, thinking about all the things we used to have in common before she went away. She knew me as Savannah. I was another person in another body the last time she saw me. She doesn’t know I’ve changed nationalities. Gone from half Caucasian half Mexican to full Caucasian. “Some things have happened since you’ve been…wherever it is you’ve been.”
“Are you okay?” Georgia asks.
“You should come right away. Let me talk to Netty’s mother.”
There’s a bit of empty space followed by the sounds of rapid typing. Then: “There’s a flight in four hours,” she says. “I can be there by tonight.”
“Text me the details and I’ll pick you up at the airport.”
By the time I get to Netty’s, Georgia sends me a text with her flight information. I text back telling her I’ll be waiting at the gate. Gracefully I ask Netty’s mother if Georgia can come early and she’s like, “For sure.” Like it’s no big deal.
God, why can’t Margaret be this relaxed? She never goes with the flow.
Later that night, when Netty and I pick her up, Georgia looks different, but similar. She is but a ghost of her former self. A shadow of a shadow. Her eyes, mouth and bone structure have changed. She looks somewhat like her old self, but different. The new her and the old her could be cousins, or even sisters. I almost don’t go to her, but something says GO!
So I do.
I approach her and she looks past me. Then right back at me, a question in her eyes. It’s not me she recognizes. It’s the perfection. The stunning Kate Middleton look we both know isn’t a product of God as much as it’s a product of science, biology and genetics. And it’s my skin color throwing her off. She scrunches her brow, cocks her head the slightest bit. Like she can’t believe it.
“It’s me,” I tell her and she does this weird thing with her eyes as she makes the connection.
“But you’re white,” she says. She puts her hands to my face, then pulls back. Like a blind person trying to see. I pull her into a deep hug she barely responds to.
“Imagine my surprise when I woke up,” I say.
She finally lets herself hug me and it feels genuine. “But you were perfect then, too.” Pulling back, looking at me, she says, “Why in the world would you change skin color, too?”
“It wasn’t by choice. Seriously, it’s a long story that has to do with my body falling apart and me almost dying.”
Picking up her bags, she says, “Oh, okay,” then tells me she’s going to want to know exactly what happened sooner than later. “You look gorgeous, by the way.”
“Thanks, so do you.”
“I don’t feel it.”
She and Netty seem friendly toward each other, but I never thought it would be any other way. Georgia doesn’t talk much. At least not like she used to. I see the changes in her, the holding back, the hesitation, the loss of the empathy and attentiveness she used to have. On her thumb is a silver ring: her dead brother’s ring. I know the inside inscription says, “Life at all Costs.” She certainly paid the price to survive her cystic fibrosis, an early lung transplant and now this.
At least she’s alive.
We get to Netty’s place and though Georgia has been polite, and is polite to Irenka (who stayed up late waiting for us), there’s something amiss just below the surface. Something restive, and maybe a bit unsettling by the way Georgia keeps eluding to it. My smile falters and I try to conceal it.
I’m pretty sure Georgia still isn’t right. Perhaps this is what made her mother so uncomfortable that Georgia had to fly to San Francisco on a whim.
How am I supposed to go to sleep with all this swirling around in my head? Georgia, Rebecca, Dr. Heim, Professor Teller, Brayden, Netty? All I know is I have to sleep soon because in the morning, Sensei Naygel is going to kick my ass, again.
Ugh.
FML is the last thing I think to myself.
5
Sometime in the middle of the night my side flares with a stinging heat. I’m dreaming of Alice. Of that translucent face and those snake-like eyes. Of the fire she tried unleashing inside me. I’m dreaming of Heim and his gasoline and the chest cavity bonfire that practically engulfed my heart. I’m dreaming, but then I’m not. My side…it’s really burning. It’s searing through my dreams, biting at me, tearing me out of this terrible, restless slumber.
Already my body, both the dream body and—I’m starting to realize—my real body, are trying to squirm away from the source of the pain. The hazing of reality is pushing sleep away, making me aware of the puddle of my own sweat I’m laying in. There is a sweltering, aching heat at my side that pulls me into full awareness. My eyes flutter open; the dream is gone.
This is real.
My hand finds Georgia’s arm draped over me and it’s hot. Really hot. I shove it off me, wincing from the movement, the singe of pain feeling more permanent, like a curling iron burn. Georgia doesn’t stir as her hand flops on the sheet.
“Jesus Christ,” I mumble, registering the pain.
My cell phone.
The minute I have it on, I access the flashlight app, turn it on and gingerly examine my side. My white t-shirt is blackened in the crispy, shadowed outline of Georgia’s arm. Beneath my shirt is a burn that looks the same. It’s blistering red, the skin raised.
What the hell?
The fire ants are moving slowly, a simmering heat glowing just beneath the surface of the burn. It’s healing.
My eyes are wide as I stare at the sleeping form that is Georgia. I shine my cell phone flashlight on her face and scramble backwards, completely off the bed.
Holy cow, her skin’s translucent! Like Alice’s!
OMG, it’s almost see through, the veins and nerves sitting like bluish snakes and reddish coral under a veil of thin, transparent skin. I stagger backwards a step or two, unable to catch my breath.
If she’s that hot, I’m thinking, my God, she just might set the sheets on fire!
Leaning in, uncertain of what she might do if startled awake, I poke her shoulder, coil back fast. She doesn’t wake. I grab and shake her shoulder hard.
She finally stirs.
Opening her eyes frightens me further. Her eyes are inky black, her pupils consumed, as if eaten by darkness. I can’t breathe. Then they slowly begin to change back to normal.
“What?” she mumbles, her voice bogged down by sleep.
“You…you burned me.”
She sits up, the color now returning to her eyes and face. I flip on the light, look at her. She is appearing more and more normal by the second.
“What in the hell…are you?” I ask, the words just sort of tumbling out of my mouth. In the back of my mind I’m thinking she’s like Alice.
“What do you mean?” Georgia asks, eyes narrowed, but now full of color.
“You know what I mean. My skin is burnt, Georgia!” I lift my shirt and show her the red welt on my side. Even though it’s going away, it’s still pretty bad. She reels, surprised at first, then she is disappointed.
“I’m still learning to control it,” she mutters.
“Whatever ‘it’ is, you’re not doing such a good job in your sleep. You could’ve set the bed on fire, Georgia. You could have set me on fire!”
“I’m sorry,” she says, small. I can see it in her eyes she feels bad. That she feels embarrassed and perhaps a little helpless. She doesn’t know I heal at an alarming rate. But this probably isn’t the time to tell her either. This isn’t about me. It’s about her.
“So answer the question,” I say.
“What question?”
“What are you?” I ask, less forceful but still direct.
“A firestarter, I think. I mean, I can burn things with my hands, and with my mind.”
Whoa. Holy Toledo, now I really can’t breathe.
A firestarter!?
“How is this possible, Georgia?”
“There’s a girl,” she says. “She can burn people to death with her mind. I’ve watched it happen. She is so young, and sweet looking, but she just thought about burning this…this boy who tried to kill me, and then he burst into flames.”
“She killed him?”
“No,” Georgia says, her eyes now shining. “She burned him, but only after I killed him. But not because I wanted to. I think Dr. Gerhard put some of her DNA in me. That’s why I can do these things with fire that I’m learning to do. Why I burned my mother’s plant, and why she’s afraid of me.”
6
When I feel it’s safe, I return to the bed, carefully sitting down beside her. My hesitation lasts a second and no longer. Screw it, I tell myself. I take her hand in mine, intertwine our fingers. The truth is, I’m a little scared of her. Scared of what she is and who she might become. Also I’m scared for her. For what was done to her, for how she has to cope, for how alone she must feel right now.
“You killed…a boy?”
She nods her head, sad, ashamed. Now she refuses to let me see her eyes. I don’t blame her. I would want to hide from everyone I cared about.
“I killed someone, too,” I admit, thinking this might help. “A monster.”
Now she looks up at me and her eyes are glistening with tears.
“It was Gerhard’s monster.” I say. “A genetic beast. A thing Gerhard created to be a war model for military application.”
“I killed a boy,” she echoed, now sounding more sad and lost than ever. What I said, it went in one ear and out the other. “Gerhard’s little girl, his new monster, she showed me how to use my mind to start fires. Gerhard forced the boy at gunpoint to attack me. He said he could get his freedom, but only if he killed me. He tried. He beat me up really, really badly. He wouldn’t stop. He just kept going and going and going. I burned him to death, just by touching him, and by being scared.”
I don’t care if she sets me on fire, I pull her into a hug, draw her so close I smell the heaviness of her hair, the moist scents of her skin. I hug her the way I would want to be hugged if I was turned into something paranormal in a science experiment used not for the good of mankind, but for more nefarious purposes.
This has me thinking, why else would Gerhard do this but to make her a weapon? What did he hope to gain anyway? And most important, the question that won’t stop nagging at me: why did he let her go?
Then it dawns on me, like a lightbulb illuminating the darkness: the little girl.
“This girl,” I say, a swooping sense of foreboding moving like hot caramel through my insides, “how old is she and what does she look like? Does she have a name?”
“She is about five, very quiet—”
“Is her name Alice?” I ask, my voice as shaky as my hands have become.
Georgia’s widening eyes tell me it is.
“F*ck,” I hear myself say.
“Yeah,” Georgia says, her head nodding. As if she’s finally satisfied that I understand it all.
Which I don’t.
“That little bitch tried to cook my guts,” I say.
“How did you stop her?”
A sort of sly smile creeps onto my face. “I knocked her out.”
“How—”
“Punched her in the jaw. She’s here now, in San Francisco. Staying
with Arabelle.”
Georgia’s eyes flare at first with disbelief, then they narrow, but with what emotion I cannot be sure of. “Why did she try to burn you?” she asks.
“Because in so many words, I threatened to kill Arabelle.”
“Oh,” she says, like it’s nothing.
After hearing her story of how she was forced into slavery, the abuse she suffered, the torturous road that led her to Dr. Gerhard—who is actually the most notorious Nazi war criminal ever—my heart softened a little for her.
“She’s not who you think,” I say. “There’s life in there. A woman. A survivor. A real live human being, if you can imagine.”
Is it weird I find myself thinking of Arabelle this way when all I’ve ever thought is that she’s an icy Russian scab? Perhaps. Then again, everything with me is topsy-turvy these days.
Might as well just roll with the motherfreaking punches.
The Swings
1
Vegas had a shelf life of exactly dick. Brayden just wanted to leave the lights and the party and all the gorgeous, slutty, unlovable women behind. Romeo called them “the talent” but Brayden looked in their unfocused eyes and saw the emptiness, the desperation, the need to immerse themselves in something, anything, that resembled nothing of their real lives. He was there for the same thing.
To get lost.
To forge a new identity in the void.
Then he got the call from Abby, and instead of continuing to rot in the Vegas fold, he was dying to leave. As in crawling the walls.
He couldn’t smile away his agitation anymore, couldn’t have an intelligent conversation beyond a few weak threads, couldn’t run his half-assed game when his heart was in San Francisco. He was just like, what’s the goddamn point of all this debauchery anyway?
For him, there ceased to be a point. So he packed his stuff, said his good-byes, then fueled up the matte black hearse and hit the highway. He would miss those guys, and the warmth and caring of Aniela—whom he had come to appreciate—but right now what he missed most was Abby.
He was in love with her, and he hated it mostly because it snuck up on him, took him completely by surprise, then shoved him into a prison of unwanted emotion. Love was crippling. It was manic. It was an onslaught of feeling he couldn’t understand, couldn’t tame, couldn’t begin to control.