Pentimento: a dystopian Beauty and the Beast

by Jace, Cameron

  Although the sun showed no empathy, still splaying its bright rays upon the scene, the Beasts' spaceship's unearthly light was even brighter. It had always been this way. Iris thought it was ironic how the Beasts hid behind the glaring light. Instead of wearing metal armors or using the latest hologram technologies, they hid behind a light brighter than the sun.

  "Someone should help her," Iris mumbled, Zoe still standing next to her. "Eva's crying so hard, she can't see." Iris wasn't yet sure how to feel about having wished Eva taken by the Beasts just minutes ago. It wasn't like she had telepathic powers or something. This was beyond her perception, and she wasn't swooning about Colton being single now. In fact, Iris knew that from this moment on she'd have to live with some kind of unreasonable guilt about Eva for the rest of her life.

  "My mother says that it's better to die before staring in the eyes of the Beast." Zoe commented, not taking her eyes off Eva.

  "Has your mother ever been taken by a Beast?" Iris glared at her. Zoe shrugged so loud, Iris could hear her. She just wished people would stop commenting on and making things up about things they had no idea about. How would Zoe's mother have known anything about the Beasts, when no one had ever seen one? In many ways, the Beasts were some kind of gods in The Second. People talked to them and they never talked back, yet they sent their orders to be followed somehow. Iris hated when elders told stories they couldn't back up with evidence.

  An elder teacher standing nearby shushed Iris and Zoe with a tense finger on her pursed lips. Speak of the Devil, Iris thought, and shut up, staring at the ceremony.

  None of the girls were allowed to talk in the Ceremony of the Beast. They stood on both sides of the red carpet leading to the ship, silently witnessing one of their own being sacrificed. The ceremony was a reminder for other girls, a torturing memory. Iris always wondered how the Beasts selected their Brides. Was it some kind of lottery? Did they follow a list with names? A prophecy maybe? Or did they choose the most beautiful? Iris was sure it wasn't the latter option. Last time, the girl wasn't as beautiful as Eva. Not even close. But who knew what beauty looked like in the eyes of the Beast?

  Eva was walking toward the Beasts' ship. She wasn't permitted a stop of any kind. Every reluctant step Eva took closer, the girls on both sides did their best to silence their screams. Some of them wiped the trickling teardrops from their ripe cheeks. The punishment of sympathizing with the Bride was as horrible as Eva's inevitable fate. To the Beasts, this was a happy day. To be celebrated, and almost holy. Which led many to think the Beasts actually married the Brides. A disturbing suggestion, Iris had always thought.

  A sudden cloud blocked the grinning sunlight, shading Eva's wedding dress with a gray stain. The girl chosen had to wear expensive, designer wedding dresses to meet the majestic Beasts. Just like any normal wedding, each girl wore their best make up and had their hair styled. It was a painful process, being groomed while knowing one's horrible fate. No one could protest. It was the Law of the Beasts.

  All girls were given a beautiful bouquet of roses, which were either synthetic or polyester, but smelled like real roses. For some reason, most things in The Second were artificial. The roses, as well as the grass in the local park, were as dead as the high metallic skyscrapers.

  Eva wiped the tears from her eyes and began throwing random gazes toward the girls on both sides. This was the same girl who was probably going to be the Prom Queen, the same girl that everyone envied in school, Colton’s girlfriend. Now her gaze was shattered, like splintered glass across the girls faces. She'd meet your eyes, but you'd think she wasn’t even there. She'd become hollow, a fading portrait, soon to disappear in the Beasts' light. And it wasn't funny. Even though Eva hadn't been kind to the average girls like Iris and Zoe, none of the girls loved to see her as a Bride. Any of them could be in her shoes next week.

  For a moment, Iris thought Eva was looking for Colton. Boys weren't supposed to stand in the front rows. Only the second and third. The ceremony was a girls’ thing. There was nothing for the human boys to do here.

  But each Bride had a father, a brother, or a boyfriend whose heart burned for her. But not even the strongest men in The Second defied the Beasts.

  Empowered by delusional wishful thinking, Eva stole a last glance into her phone, which she had been holding with shivering hands. She looked like she wished it hadn't been her ID showing on the screen. It was clearly hers.

  "How could you be so cruel to me?" she snapped, talking to the ship's blinding light, still walking forward. "I was about to go to college next year. I was going to be engaged to Colton Ray next month!"

  A number of girls let out short sighs. This was news to everyone. So their relationship was serious. Iris could feel Zoe's blaming eyes on her skin.

  "What?" Iris fisted an angry hand. She wasn't going to hit Zoe. She wanted to hit herself, for saying such a thing. The mere thought of her wish coming true was puzzling. "It's not like I'm a witch or something," she grumbled.

  "We planned to get married while in college," Eva continued, shouting at the light. That silent light that told her what to do, but never talked back to her. "We've been planning to have two children; a boy named Jeremiah, and a girl named Flower."

  Iris held a thin tear from being born in her eyes. No girl had talked to the Beasts this way before. Most of them sank to their knees, and pleaded that someone would help them and confront the Beasts. Some cried and fainted halfway through, until elders had to carry them as close as possible to the ship. And some prayed like in a chapel, brainwashed that this was their fate, and that they died as a sacrifice for the other girls to live--Iris wanted to kick-box those into the light.

  But none of them had spoken in such an emotional way like Eva did. Her words reminded everyone that someone's life and dreams were being killed today. The problem was that most elders thought of the Call of the Beasts like natural disasters. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanoes. Stuff like that happened all the time. And the Beasts, who ruled their world, must have a wisdom behind it.

  Iris, unusually vulnerable, pulled out Zoe's phone and took another peek. The screen didn't show Eva's name. The Beasts didn't believe in human names. It read: Beauty 57135LL; Eva's citizenship identification number in the United States of The Second.

  The horn roared again, buzzing into each girl’s bones. Instead of an answer to her question, the unseen Beasts were urging Eva to step closer toward her death. The silliest thought crossed Iris's mind. What if she just ran into the ship and at least peeked in, to see what they looked like? If they had the right to take one of them, didn't they have the right to know who they were?

  Before disappearing into the light, Eva took one last glance at the girls. She waved a weakened goodbye as the girls lowered their chins to their chest and laced their hands together. It was as if Eva, the school's queen bee, had turned into a contagious epidemic they preferred to avoid. Many girls were teary-eyed though. But most of them were glad they hadn’t been the one walking the red carpet.

  Out of respect, Iris didn't lower her eyes. It was the least she could do. She was still fisting her hand, mad at herself for not standing up for Eva. It wasn't just the guilt moving her, but the fact that she could simply be next. Why wasn't anyone doing anything about it?

  In an unexpected moment, Eva caught Iris's eyes, and nodded back, as if they had been lifelong friends and were now girl-coding each other. Iris glanced behind her for a second, not sure Eva meant her. Everyone else had their heads bowed to their chest. It was Iris Eva meant. Not only that. Eva mouthed something to Iris, something that gave her goosebumps on her skin, as Eva disappeared behind the light of the ship. Her darkest hour.

  A second later, Iris caught sight of Colton standing second row on the other side. His blue eyes had turned into puddles of blurry tears. In front of him, girls raised their heads, most of them glad this was over. The ship's drone was deafening as it howled back up toward the sky.

  Iris couldn't take her eyes off Colton, w
ondering if she should tell him what Eva mouthed to her. Who'd have thought that the queen bee, who treated her like shit, would ask this of her?

  4

  A week later, Iris sat in class, trying her best not to laugh at her history teacher, Mrs. Wormwood. When she wasn't able to contain herself, she had to pretend she was coughing, shielding her mouth with her hand.

  “What’s so funny?” Zoe whispered from the desk next to her. Sometimes Iris thought no one would have noticed all the crazy things she'd done if it weren't for her best friend following her like a shadow.

  “Can’t a girl even laugh without giving reasons in this school?” Iris sighed, not taking her eyes off of Mrs. Wormwood who, in spite of her old age, had fabulous pink hair like a twenty-year-old. It was a wig, which she would put on right before leaving her private office to go to the classroom. Iris had poured glue in the wig moments earlier, and wondered what Mrs. Wormwood's reaction would be once she realized she was stuck to her vice for life. She used a glue which was originally used to fix punctures in truck tires.

  Iris straightened her back in her chair and mustered a serious face. It was a mystery to her why she pulled such pranks on her teachers. It just felt so revolutionarily good, as if her misbehavior was her camouflaged screaming at all elder people in The Second for not doing something about the Call of the Beast. In truth, almost everything in The Second bothered Iris. Now after Eva's mouthed words, it was harder to live in this place.

  Iris focused her eyes on her teacher, pretending to be most attentive while her mind wandered away. It was a mind trick she’d learned lately to use with boring people everywhere. Instead of excusing herself or making faces, she’d stare at them while thinking about something else entirely. People, in general, never seemed to get it. All she had to do was nod at the end of the conversation, and wave goodbye. Surely it sometimes got her in trouble when someone was asking her to do something for them, but trouble should have been her middle name anyway.

  At the moment, still pretending to be listening in class, her mind wandered to a place about the Beasts. She could not help wondering why the Beasts took the girls. And why only girls? Were the Beasts a male-only species? And what was their criteria in choosing the girls?

  “Are you paying attention, Miss Beaumont?” her teacher snapped.

  “I’m looking at you, aren’t I, Mrs. Wormwood?” Iris flipped her mind’s eye open, and came back to the real world.

  “But you haven’t answered my question,” Mrs. Wormwood demanded, flipping back a strand of her hair.

  “Oh,” Iris shrugged. That was the trickiest part of her mind trick, when someone demanded an answer. What was she going to do now?

  “So?” Mrs. Wormwood rose an eyebrow. Zoe was already mouthing the answer next to her, but Iris couldn’t read her lips from her peripheral vision.

  “Yes,” Iris stood up and sighed, staring down at her fidgeting feet. It was the only word that popped up in her head. In a school that demanded students to strictly follow the rules, “yes” seemed like the easiest word to spit out. Iris thought it'd buy her time, until she could sneak a glance at Zoe's answer-mouthing lips.

  Mrs. Wormwood's face had already reddened with anger. A bit over-reacting, Iris thought. What would she do when she discovered the wig problem? Last month, Mrs. Wormwood had sent Iris for four hours of psychiatry analysis due to her misbehavior. The month before, Iris had to write other students’ essays as punishment for drawing what she thought the Beasts looked like on the margin of her exam paper. Two months prior to that, she had her phone confiscated for using it for unauthorized searches on the internet—she’d been searching the history of the civilization inhabiting the Earth before the Arrival of the Beasts. Stuff they weren't supposed to ask about in school.

  Iris wondered what kind of punishment would be bestowed upon her once Mrs. Wormwood discovered the glued wig. But before that, she had to deal with not knowing the answer to some stupid question in her class.

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Wormwood said, looking a bit confused. “You can sit down, Miss Beaumont,” she said, giving her permission.

  Iris tilted her head slightly, not getting it. She stared back at Zoe with inquisitive eyes. Zoe seemed happy her friend had finally paid attention in class.

  “Sit down,” Zoe whispered. “You got the right answer. Do you have a grounding wish, or what?”

  Iris sat down with a crooked smile on her face. So the answer was simply a “yes?” Never mind what the question was, it was moments like these that proved her theory: that human beings were dumb and weak, and maybe, just maybe, they really deserved to be ruled by the Beasts.

  5

  “Are you attending Vera's birthday party on Saturday?” Zoe strode next to Iris in the hallway after class. She was clutching her books to her chest, trying to keep up with her pace. Iris always wondered why other girls plodded so lazily in school when there were like a million new things to explore in this world. Especially in a world as vague as theirs.

  “No, I'm not," Iris hurried toward her locker. "I don’t feel like it. It’s the same old, same old, and I am fed up.”

  “How could you say that?” Zoe frowned. “Vera is going to be eighteen. That's every girl's best day of her life. It's rude not to share in the celebration.”

  “First of all, I think Vera is an airhead. Beautiful, but an airhead,” Iris snapped her locker open. She did it with coolness and style, only to entertain herself. Boredom in The Second was just about the norm. She rummaged through and picked up some drawing tools, canvases, papers, and pencils. She was one of the rare people who still used a pencil, as they were only sold in auctions. “Second thing is, I don’t understand all this celebrating being eighteen thing. It’s a birthday, like any other.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Zoe's eyes followed the pencil in Iris's hand, as if she were embarrassed her friend still owned one. “Eighteen means you skipped the Call of the Beast. They only call seventeen-year-olds like you and me. You should be happy for Vera, and all eighteen-year-olds, for that matter.”

  Iris pulled out two small bottles filled with green liquid, and a strange device that looked like a metallic flashlight. She tucked both in her backpack. "Happy for her?" she slammed the locker shut. “Vera is arrogant and a bully, and everyone around her is a hypocrite because her father is a member of the Council. And what is the Council, Zoe? The elite humans who claim they communicate with the Beasts. The Beasts, Zoe. The ones who take one of us. Do you think I am supposed to celebrate my own eighteenth birthday and just be happy I escaped the Beasts’ wrath? What about all those girls taken, Zoe?"

  Zoe took a reluctant step away from Iris, whose voice had peaked enough for everyone around them to hear. She scanned the hallways with her eyes, worried that some teacher had heard Iris's rant. No one was supposed to insult the Beasts, or the Council.

  “The Beasts must have a great wisdom for choosing the girls,” Zoe said, straightening her back, and making sure others heard her clearly. Zoe always did her best to fit in. Iris didn't hate her for that. Zoe seemed like she couldn't deal with punishment and humiliation, like her. “My mother says the Beasts work in mysterious ways, and we shall not oppose them, for what they do, although seemingly harmful, is for the best of mankind.”

  “Crap.” Iris grimaced, strapping her bag on her back. She was by no means affected by the students’ piercing eyes. She'd been labeled an outcast long ago. “Do you even listen to yourself when you say this gibberish? Don’t you really want to know the truth? Don’t you wonder why the Beasts only take girls, never boys? Why seventeen? On what basis? And more curiously, don’t you ever wonder what is done to those girls? Are they dead, humiliated, or what the heck is going on?”

  “Enough! Miss Beaumont,” Mrs. Wormwood appeared out of nowhere.

  “But of course,” Zoe lowered her head, answering on behalf of her friend. “She's very sorry.”

  Mrs. Wormwood took a moment, staring at Iris, who did her best not to laugh again.
Seriously, she didn't want to miss the moment Mrs. Wormwood tried to pull off her wig.

  "If you hadn’t been grounded enough already, I would make you do more psychiatry hours," Mrs. Wormwood said. "But I am generous today. So, no more of that bad talking here. Understood?"

  Iris nodded, partially to hide her smiling mouth. Mrs. Wormwood pulled her chin up and walked away.

  “Look, I think it’s better if we don’t talk about this,” Iris whispered to Zoe. “I just have all these questions in my head that no one wants to answer. And I can’t help it. It’s just me. I need to get answers.”

  “You should know that your questions are dangerous,” Zoe lowered head. “Even the government doesn’t ask such questions.”

  “Which is mind boggling, isn't it?” Iris let out a surrendering laugh. She’d decided her relationship with her best friend had come to a point where it was better to keep things shallow. It wasn’t a bad thing. Her relationship with almost everyone else had come to this point. Either she talked about cute boys, birthdays and liked the same music everyone else liked, or she was considered weird.

  All of this didn't matter, really. As long as Iris was capable of practicing her secret hobby, she was still happy. Now she had to go practice her secret. She patted Zoe on her shoulder and waved goodbye.

  "Are you going where I think you're going?" Zoe asked helplessly.

  Iris nodded, her thumbs tucked between her bag's straps and her shoulders.

  "I assume I can't stop you," Zoe said.

  Iris shook her head. She didn't like to talk about her secret hobby. It was a dangerous one, so she thought silence would help her skip the fear of doing it. "I have to go now," Iris turned around and walked away. It occurred to her that she hadn't practiced her secret hobby for three weeks. So why now?

  Because of what Eva mouthed to me, she thought. That's why now!