by Schow, Ryan
“When we’re done with this murderous butthole,” I told her, referring to Dr. Heim, “I’m going to call you and have you look after Rebecca.”
“She will be fine,” Arabelle said. “She is not needing daily attention. Only her shots three times per week for two more weeks.”
“And you can administer them?”
“She is fine, Abby.”
“But you can do them,” I said.
Looking back on that conversation, I don’t know why I kept pressing for this kind of assurance, but I did. She already gave it to me and at some point my line of questioning just felt manic, and perhaps a bit rude.
Arabelle blew an irritated sigh over the phone. “I already am telling you this.”
“Good.”
“You are annoying girl,” Arabelle told me.
I laughed. But only because it was probably true. “I love you, too,” is what I had said. Before hanging up, she made me promise her something.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Make him suffer.”
“Oh, I will,” I assured her. “I most certainly will.”
That conversation took place hours ago. My anxiety is now flaring, the nervousness in me an ebb and flow of emotions. With the setting sun, it seems my nerves are here to stay. I feel like crapping my pants. Or throwing up. I’m not sure which, all I know is my stomach is beyond butterflies and well into a sloshy spin cycle.
The sun finally dips below the skyline and temperatures sink five degrees. Daylight is officially leaving. It’s time.
“Let’s go,” I say.
“Now?” Brayden replies, not like he’s surprised. He’s as nervous as me.
“Yes, Brayden. Now.”
4
The three of us walk up the stoop to Gerhard’s lab, the front door looking like any other front door on the block. The foot traffic is moderate, and I discretely hand Brayden the hammer before fishing the key Arabelle gave me out of my pocket. Brayden puts it into the duffel bag we’ve affectionately dubbed the murder bag.
I slide the key in the lock and there’s no resistance.
WTF? It’s already open?
I slowly twist the handle and it opens. Turning to my partners in crime, I say, “He’s most likely back in the lab, so stay quiet and alert. Right now we have the element of surprise. We can’t lose that.”
Brayden nods. The weary stare he wears, the blanched pallor of his skin, it’s so easy to see he’s scared. Terrified, actually. Not that I blame him.
I’m scared, too.
“Stay with me,” I say, establishing my bravado in a fake-it-‘till-you-make-it sort of way. “Understand?”
My eyes shift to Georgia. She gives the most menial of nods. The look on her face, it’s the epitome of “stone cold.”
The minute I open the door and move inside, he’s there, his own bag in hand, wide eyed with surprise. Dr. Heim. Blonde hair slicked back, face looking unshaven since this morning, ice blue eyes and an air of violent arrogance…this is the bastard who tried to kill me.
“You!” he snarls.
I kick him square in the uprights. We’re talking my foot, his nuts. His body bends in pain, his face pinched tight in a groan. I drive my elbow in a downward arc, right onto the bridge of his nose the way Sensei taught me. The pop and crush, the extreme flattening of soft bone and cartilage, brings me immense satisfaction.
I’m thinking, holy cow, this martial arts shit works!
He’s grabs his nose, which is gushing blood, then holds his head up. He’s trying to staunch the bleeding.
With every strike, Sensei says, comes a fresh opportunity. In this case, Heim gives me the one target you always want to smash the living crap out of if your life depends on it: the Adam’s apple.
Sudden, guaranteed death.
My curled right hand becomes an iron fist. A block of steel. This fist, I tell myself, is lethal. His end.
Only a second passes, but in a fight, seconds might as well be hours. Stepping in fast and low, I torque my hips, then wind up the most brutal punch I’ve ever thrown. This is the culmination of all my training wrapped into one, singular moment. When I drive it up and in, my iron first goes straight and true, my two top knuckles connecting with the ridged center of the maniac’s Adam’s apple. The minute I connect, the minute it collapses, I know Heim’s done. I know this is the shot that’s going to kill him.
He’s going to die.
He starts to gag and gurgle right away. Stumbling backwards, he can’t hardly stand and he can’t seem to wipe that surprised look off his bloody face.
Ever since I killed Gerhard’s monster—a genetic freak, as in inhuman—I’ve been telling myself his death wasn’t technically murder since he wasn’t anything created by God. And Bryn Giardino killed her husband when I couldn’t, so still, my slate remained clean, albeit by a subtle technicality. But now, watching the psychotic Nazi doctor stand on wobbly knees, gurgling, his eyes bulging, his face turning blue as he claws at his throat for breath, it’s about to become official.
I’m about to be a God’s honest murderer and this scares the crap out of me. Like I’ve crossed a line I’ve never crossed before. For some strange reason, this suddenly seems all wrong. How is it that I’m going to have killed a real human being before I’ve even lost my virginity?
Oh well, I tell myself.
It is what it is.
Heim drops to his knees, the fight waning. My eyes never leave his. I kneel before him, looking with hatred into his handsome, malevolent face. Blood and pink-tinted saliva bubble out of his nose and mouth. His skin is so blue it’s nearly purple.
“Why don’t you just die already you Nazi prick?” I ask.
And then it happens.
His eyes roll back, his breathing stops and I move out of the way as he falls face first onto the hardwood floor. And bang, just like that…the son of a bitch is dead.
“Well that was easy,” I say, turning to face my friends. My bravado, it’s currently boiling in my gut, making me feel a little stunned and woozy.
Brayden’s like, “Uh…” and Georgia is entirely without emotion. I wasn’t expecting cartwheels or backslapping, but I wasn’t expecting this either. Didn’t they realize this man tried to kill me?
“We’ve got to find Rebecca,” I say, but mostly just to say something because their traumatized looks and long silence is deafening, and I’m afraid of them saying something judgmental any moment.
“Jesus Christ that was fast, the way he died,” Brayden finally said, almost reverently. Almost like he was just starting to process things.
“I promised Arabelle he would suffer more,” I say.
Why did I just say that?
I’m about to venture in back to find Rebecca when I hear it: the slight wheezing. What the hell? I look down and it’s the doctor. He’s moving, breathing.
Okay, that’s not possible!
I roll him over and his eyes are open, his face is not so purple, and his smashed Adam’s apple is correcting itself, clicking back into place in nearly microscopic movements before my very eyes!
That’s when I realize he’s like me: superhuman.
He must have taken the serum, too. Why wouldn’t he? With the kind of brutal efficiency taught to me by Sensei, I raise my knee high in the air, then stomp my heel down directly on his Adam’s apple once more.
It’s like crushing a hard-boiled egg the way it breaks under my foot.
“Heal that you sorry son of a bitch,” I growl.
I roll him over and call out for zip-ties. Georgia and Brayden break their stricken, WTF state and jump into action. Hands come together; wrists get zip-tied. Feet come together; pant legs get pulled up; socks get yanked down to expose bare ankles. Zip-ties circle the ankles, and honestly, I don’t care how bad they bite into Heim’s skin, I just yank those f*ckers tight. Glancing up at Georgia and Brayden, it’s clear they’re still startled by this paranormal turn of events. The truth is, I’m a little shaken up, too.
&nbs
p; It seems I’m no original.
Even though he can’t breathe, Heim was technically dead when he started coming back to life. Will it be the same a second time? Does his body have what it needs to regenerate itself again? From our murder bag, I grab the gag cloth, stuff it in his mouth. Quickly, almost violently, I punch it as low and as tight as I can down into his throat. He isn’t breathing. No surprise here. Taking extra measures (because holy cow this guy just came back to life!), I tear off a strip of duct tape, fasten it over the rag in his mouth. There’s no way he’s spitting this thing out. No way he can be allowed to even breathe, but through his nose…maybe.
I almost strap his nose with duct tape.
If left starved for oxygen long enough, I wonder, will his brain die? And if it does, will his body live on? All these questions I’ve been wondering after learning I have the superhuman ability to heal myself. All these questions I just might get the answers to by trying to kill this homicidal turd.
“Brayden, you and Georgia gift wrap the body,” I say, looking at the infamous, once again dead, Dr. Death. “I’m going to check on Rebecca.”
On the way back to the lab, I call Arabelle and say, “You can come down now. It’s done. Sort of.”
“What are you meaning, sort of?”
“I mean, Heim isn’t dying. He’s like me. He can regenerate himself.”
“That is terrible news,” she says.
“For him.”
There’s a certain bitterness in my voice that can be mistaken for strength. Or conviction, rather. It’s a monumental relief, me not having to be a murderer to get Heim out of the way, permanently. It’s like I’ve been blessed or something. In the cosmic battle of good versus evil, I’m thinking with a grin, this sexy bitch is running three and oh. And here I was resigned to thinking of myself as a murderer.
“I am not understanding,” Arabelle says.
“Where he’s going, he’ll be brought back to life only to suffocate, die and come back to life over and over and over again. You wanted him to suffer. He’s going to suffer an eternity.”
“Oh,” she says, understanding. “This is very good.”
“And Arabelle?”
“Yes?”
“When you come down here, why don’t you leave that circus freak sideshow of a girl at home, please.”
“She is sleeping.”
“Good, don’t wake her.”
5
I find Rebecca naked, pregnant and floating in a glass canister filled with the pink gel. Well, a lighter version of the pink gel than I’m used to anyway. The relief in me is nearly euphoric. My eyes drift from her lifeless face down the landscape of her body, right down to her swollen belly. I can’t help wondering about the children inside. Gerhard’s and Heim’s experimental children.
The pain of seeing her like this is crushing.
Turning away, stifling a cry, emotion courses through me, a sort of manic nervousness rushing like drugs through my veins. My eyes take in a lab filled with various glass canisters holding in stasis only grown men. Good looking men. All naked. All floating in a darker pink gel.
Girls like me could never dream such dreams, but here I am, all shy and wanting no part of the nudity. Blushing, not used to seeing so many male…parts, I return my eyes to my stolen friend.
This sadness in my heart is bottomless, agonizing. The way it holds me, I can’t imagine it ever letting go. It cripples me. Paints all the light in my brain black. For all the things Rebecca has endured, all the horrible white trash tragedies, as well as losing half her life to the doctors and their experiments, my heart won’t stop breaking. At this point, my own legs are forsaking me. I sit down on the floor in front of her canister, and before I know it, I’m falling apart.
The tough girl is so very, very soft inside, I think. A thin-skinned child. Tears drain warm and plentiful down my cheeks and I’m thinking, the tough girl’s heart is too big for this ugly, unjust world.
I place my palm on the glass canister holding my friend and though I am desperate to feel some connection to her, all I feel is the cold, smooth glass.
I’ve failed her.
She was my friend, my sister, and I was in charge of her and I lost her. Now I can’t wake her. Now all I can do is hope she doesn’t die in childbirth. And what will become of her delicate mind after this? Will she understand what’s happened to her? Will she want her science babies back? If I was in the same position, I would want to be a mother to my children, genetic anomalies or not.
I could never survive such a monumental betrayal.
My restless mind shifts gears. It’s seeing the future, trying to work things out through Rebecca’s eyes. The thing about trying to see someone else’s future, though, is you’re almost always wrong.
Still…
When the babies are stripped from her body—stolen from her the way she was stolen from me—will she yearn for them? My bleak imagination fears she might. And will she forever feel the profound emptiness that comes from lost children? I can’t imagine the burden, the emotional weight of it. I can’t imagine any of it and that leaves me paralyzed on the lab floor with no safe harbor.
I didn’t expect this pain, any of it.
I just want her back.
Fluffy Orange Massacre
1
The tracking beacon hadn’t moved in hours. Shelton Gotlieb had traced Savannah’s journey from the Fairmont backwards, accessing cameras and scrolling through digital history, until he found surveillance video of her. He found her at an apartment high-rise on King Street: the luxury apartments Avalon at Mission Bay.
The video showed two girls helping a very weak looking brunette out of the two door Audi and in through massive glass doors leading into what he presumed was a lobby. The kid driving the car, a boy who looked to be about Savannah’s age, parked the Audi several blocks away. Surveillance video showed him returning to the apartment building minutes later.
Back at Monarch, the handler put the boy in his box, left him there for the night, then transferred him to the water chamber in the morning. Several hours ago, he was reset, ready. Shelton then sent the boy to the apartment to end her once and for all.
2
Delta 1A sat in the car, barely old enough to legally drive, barely clear headed enough to understand what was happening. But he didn’t understand. There was more he wanted to know, even though it wasn’t his job to know anything. He was only to obey orders.
To not get caught.
To kill.
The hours of sitting in the silver car he knew to be a Chevy Cruze were wearing down the walls and defenses in his brain. Clarity was fast eroding. He watched the people through his mirrored aviator sunglasses, through the tinted car windows. Some of these people looked back at him, but he registered nothing. And they registered nothing.
The voice in his head said, “Watch the apartment building,” but he watched a lot of things. It soon became late afternoon, nearly five o’clock. Foot traffic picked up. If he could feel anything, it would be the charge of excitement. Or nothing at all. If given the chance to make choices, would he make any choices at all? Would he know how? For some reason, he wanted to know the answers to these questions, even though he was not supposed to want or question anything at all.
Delta 1A spent so much time alone that day that seeing other people gave him perspective on his servitude. Where were these people’s handlers? They all couldn’t be acting alone, could they? No, that would be impossible. Yet it wasn’t. Some of these people seemed alive with emotion while others were certainly slaves to someone. The boy’s eyes could see it on their slack, expressionless faces.
“They are not targets,” the voice in his head told him, even though he thought of shooting them just to see what they would do. He wasn’t supposed to give anyone a moment’s consideration, except to figure out how to not get caught. Each person walking down the street could be a future witness, so he was not to draw attention to himself.
But his head was h
urting again. Like he had flies on his brain. Just buzzing around, tickling the soft grey folds of it, making him itch in places he couldn’t possibly scratch. With the butt of his gun, he knocked a spot on his head enough to make it swell and still the flies crawled around, their little feet just tick-tick-ticking around inside, agitating all the places he couldn’t quite reach.
Then came the voices inside. First just one, then many. It became an incessant murmuring. He listened hard to the space in the boy’s head, trying to figure out what they were saying, but they weren’t clear and that annoyed him. Made him want to scream.
He shifted in his seat, couldn’t get comfortable. It was stuffy, it was too hot, nothing mattered. It all mattered.
The murmuring wouldn’t stop!
If he could detach his head, if his body could leave it behind like an old shirt or a broken watch or a gun, he would just leave it and go.
This head he was controlling—the boy’s head—it was the problem. He hated it. Tried to find a way around it. But he was perplexed. With himself. With the girl who wouldn’t die.
“Close your eyes,” a voice inside his head said.
He closed them.
Eyes shut, he could see his hand holding his favorite karambit knife, the hooked blade he used to kill the girl (she’s not dead) the other night. This time would be different. He could see himself sliding the blade all the way around the neck, just cutting and slicing through muscle, sinew and bone until the entire thing came off. And then he would be free.
“Stop!” the woman’s voice in his head boomed. His eyes startled open. This was Control. He knew her as Gem.
“Focus,” Gem said.
“Focus,” his mouth echoed. Things in his brain rearranged themselves, made him less interested in anything but the mission. He had to stay the course. But then the structure faltered the slightest little bit and he found his curiosity peaking in through the slivers again.
He rolled down his window, bathed in the fresh air. He wasn’t used to this. The breach of the cabin, however, sent the voices in his head into a scraping, audible frenzy. The boy’s body jerked hard for a second, like an impulse or a rough spasm. Beneath the space in his head, deeper into the darkness than even he could imagine, things stirred: entities, souls, disembodied emotions.
