The Beast And Me

by D. S. Wrights

  And then there is Peter.

  I don’t know why I write this. I think it helps me focus. I have to. I feel like I’m losing... everything.

  “Tell him about us”, Peter added and made my skin crawl as he brought a hand to my neck, stroking back my hair, faintly touching my skin, and I felt like I was freezing, because those fingertips were burning me.

  My eyes were glued to Jay, and tried to bring a little space between the bars and myself, but that also meant getting closer to Peter.

  I was repeating to myself that I had to accept he was one of them and yet my mind was able to come up with explanations.

  I couldn’t think straight, because all my mind was circling around was that I at least had learned that White wouldn’t do anything to me apart from the spanking. However, regarding Peter, I had no idea what to expect.

  My stomach was turning. Cold sweat appeared on my forehead and neck. My mouth was dry. And in my ears those four words kept echoing. I stared at Jay, who didn’t react a bit to that voice. So right then and there he became my anchor and I glued myself at him, trying to make sense of Peter’s behavior.

  Had he found out that I used his wristband? Was he angry about that? Because I had used him? And disappointed that Jay was the only one I kept thinking about? Had he read my diary and not White?

  He had slept next to me in my bed, drugged or not, but he had offered me comfort and I had betrayed him. Of course he would be mad at me. He must have read my diary. My insides were hollow thinking this. Realization was a brick wall Peter buried me with.

  “Come on, Lieutenant Flynn, wake-y, wake-y”, Peter suddenly said and I became as cold and stiff as the bars in front of me.

  “See? He’s totally out and that’s your fault”, I heard him talk lowly into my ear. “No reaction at all. If you were so special to him, wouldn’t he burst out if it no matter what? Wouldn’t he see me as a threat to you, being that close. Wouldn’t he want to protect you from me?”

  I swallowed again. I heard these words, but I didn’t understand them, all that was echoing in my mind was ‘Lieutenant Flynn’.

  “Why are you doing this?” I breathed out and tried to turn my head into his direction, but he was too close.

  I could smell his aftershave. Peter looked down at me, our noses almost touched, and that gaze made my bones resonate. That glance was far too familiar once again. Probably, I had just asked the stupidest question ever asked in the whole universe. I could see it on his face. I had known it right from the start.

  This was stuff written in terrible books. This was something girls dreamed of: to have two men crave for her, being stuck in some sort of odd love triangle. I hadn’t even asked for one.

  He didn’t kiss me, though I knew he wanted to. Apparently there was only one thing he wanted more than this, which was me to kiss him first. I probably stared back longer than I should have. Despite sounding so cruel and cold, the moment I looked at him, he wasn’t and I know I should have been even more terrified.

  I should have known.

  There was a metallic sound that tore me out of it, made me realize what I was doing, moved my head back to the front, back to Jay, and squeezed my heart in my chest. But it wasn’t him, he hadn’t moved. It must have been the door.

  “Peter”, someone spoke on the other side and my hands gripped those bars tight, as I felt panic crawl up my legs from the cold ground.

  I couldn’t tell if I knew that voice, I still can’t, but Peter – despite my torn wishes – didn’t leave.

  I hate myself for not wanting him to leave. How? Why? What even?!

  Jay still didn’t move and I was terrified of losing him. So much, I guess, that I clung to someone else to not lose myself too.

  I didn’t deserve better, I don’t.

  My head was spinning so wildly that, the blink of an eye later, I couldn’t recall the sound of that voice at all. I couldn’t tell if it had been demanding, warning, annoyed or pressing. Yet I know it had said Peter’s name and I, I really thought to remember that they would call themselves by family names, wouldn’t they? So this could only mean that this was someone who knew him more than a colleague. Gray? Or White maybe?

  I sensed Peter move. He had looked at the door and now I could feel his breath on my skin again.

  “Tell him why you are here”, he said lowly, whispering, so I wasn’t able to read the sound, to know if he was saying what he had to say or wanted to say. I had no idea. Why was I there? And again, I should have known.

  “To be punished?” I asked carefully and my eyes started burning when I looked up at him again, and away from Jay.

  Those eyes were so dark again and I felt like they would swallow me. So dark and deep.

  Jay’s eyes were so different, they too had a depth, and yet they were so soft and warm, like I would never go astray in them, even when they turned into that eerie mint color that makes me think of corroded copper.

  “You’re here to say goodbye”, Peter said and despite my paralysis I managed to untangle me and step away.

  All of a sudden the warmth of his body was gone and left me to cope with the words that had just left his mouth, dropping to the floor like dead pigeons that had been meant to soar into freedom.

  One could have heard a needle drop; my breath seemed to echo in that suddenly small cell.

  I didn’t turn around to Peter. My grip around that iron tightened, with the one hand that had reached out for it, so steady my stance as my knees turned weak.

  “Jay”, I whispered first, facing him again and repeated louder. “Jay. Please.”

  I heard Peter move behind me. It made me flinch, but I didn’t stop: “Jay, wake up.”

  I felt hands on my shoulders. His grip was soft, like he wanted to comfort me - so I thought - but then I realized that he was gently trying to pull me away. I shrugged him off and I could hear him inhale sharply.

  “Jay”, I spoke now, insisting gently, like I knew that this was what it was all about, that I had to make him come back, make him turn back into his human form.

  He was important, more important to me.

  I thought that Jay, their Ten, was the most promising of all of their subjects.

  “Come back to...” I wanted to end that sentence, but I shrieked as I felt Peter pulling at my shoulders more roughly, so strongly that I felt my fingers slipping from the bars.

  That moment I knew that he didn’t want me to try bringing Jay back. I just hadn’t known how important this might have been for him.

  “16, step back, that’s an order”, the voice hummed loudly from beyond the door and I... I tensed so strongly that I was close to cramping.

  “Peter?” I heard myself whisper highly as I turned around, pressing my back against the bars now, watching the world crumble around me.

  He was just the same. He didn’t look different, though he breathed heavily.

  I just stared at him, hurling in a wake of terror, confusion and something that was close to empathy, because it explained so much. The way he had behaved in the beginning, and even now. But then I realized. Again, my own stupidity. White must have known that I had heard him, that I heard that there were others. I was so dumb never to think of a possibility that there was maybe another Beast even more composed, or just the same, just not that qualified. And I, I of course had never expected that there might be one of them able to walk around, carry a weapon and guard my door.

  16. P was the 16th letter of the alphabet. Was this a foul play again? I asked. And then, just in that moment, I could watch the circle around his pupils glowing with an eerie green, slowly claiming the dark color of his eyes.

  How I wished at that moment that I was able to slip through those bars. How I wished that Jay would wake up, that I would hear a snarl or a huff, but the room stayed silent. Even worse, pressing myself against the metal behind me, I watched Peter react to me being shocked, and how it angered him. I knew it hurt him. My reaction and being ordered to step back from me. I could read it on
his face, that question, why it was Jay and not him. As if I ever had a choice.

  And then it dawned on me that there had been a point I could have made that choice and I had chosen Jay without hesitation. I knew that even if I had been aware, I probably wouldn’t have chosen differently. And he knew. Peter knew.

  “Peter”, I said his name and suddenly it sounded so strange, so foreign in my mouth like I had never said it out aloud before.

  He blinked, and I knew he fought.

  I am still asking myself if there had been any hints at all, if I could have known. And I... I really think he had been awake that night, the sleeping powder didn’t work. He just tasted it and went along with it. That he left that hastily because he didn’t want me to see his reaction, to see this. He probably hadn’t read my diary. All he had done was give me a little bit of free will, I wasn’t even aware of.

  I was torn. I had no idea what to do. And I ended up feeling like all of this really was my fault. That he was struggling. Yet, I know it wasn’t. I didn’t make him like this, or Jay. I didn’t bring any of us here.

  Still, as I watched him change in front of me, slowly, as if he was able to control it, so differently from Jay’s Beast bursting out, taking over, I was beyond terrified. Peter scared me, frightened me, and telling from his eyes, he knew. And this was the worst.

  “Why?” he growled lowly through his growing fangs and I honestly had no answer.

  I spend hours sitting here and asking myself and the only explanation I have is that he wasn’t honest, never had been. No one was. Only Jay.

  Right from the start he had been what and who he was, only hid himself, being ashamed of what he was. But there was no lying. He always is honest.

  His features had changed quickly and somehow he looked similar and different to Jay’s Beast. Not quite like a cougar. And his eyes weren’t even that bright green. I think he grew impatient as I failed to answer and as he moved towards me there was no way for me to retreat, even though I pressed my back against the bars, I still wouldn’t fit through them.

  “Isn’t that what you want?” Peter asked, but it wasn’t anger in his voice; it was something else, hurt, and yet it sounded like a growl and he didn’t stop approaching me, slowly, like a predator he was.

  “16, stand back”, the voice from the door resonated into the room.

  Still, I believe that I heard it sound like the person didn’t really mean it, and Peter behaved just like that. He ended up towering over me and I shivered, trembled, shook, like dead leaves of a tree in a winter storm - I don’t know how else to describe it. I thought I should hear my bones clank, until Peter’s eyes moved from mine to behind my back and I realized that Jay was moving.

  If my heart could have beat any faster, it would have, if it had been able to make a jump without crashing it would have, but instead it crashed. It felt like exploding in my chest as I heard him wake.

  Jay, my Jay.

  And I can’t remember if I had given up hope until that moment, because everything was washed out of my head that second he growled behind me. First lowly but ever growing, ending up in a snarl that was accompanied by his body throwing itself against the chains that had held him up until now. I couldn’t move my head because Peter was too close to me. Though invading my personal space, this time, he showed enough respect not to touch me, while he was glaring across my head baring his fangs towards Jay.

  Now I wonder why he behaved like that.

  So possessive. He took me there to say goodbye.

  I still feel that icy sting grasping me thinking of it. And I knew that it either meant they would kill me or give me to another Beast.

  What if they told him that... what if he thought that they would give me to him? The way he behaved, baring his fangs and then... then he simply turned back like it was nothing, like it didn’t take any effort for him to change his appearance, like it was simply a switch, while Jay was still growling behind me.

  When Peter’s face had changed back to normal the glance he gave Jay was almost mocking. No, it was. That was the look of someone who knew he was better. And then I realized: Lieutenant. This was military! And the two of them probably had been comrades. Comrades... Both of them Beasts! Others more like them. This wasn’t... this isn’t some sort of illegal gene manipulation lab. This is something official. Some Black Ops funded by the government even?

  But when Peter looked at me, his expression changed. Entirely. As if he was just waiting for me to react to his superiority, almost pleading. He looked at me like there wasn’t a furious man warped into a creature of wrath behind me pulling at shackles and chains.

  They must have told him he would get me and obviously there was nothing in the world he wanted more.

  Now I can see that.

  He could have done anything in that moment. That door was still locked and Jay was still caught and somehow I – with my hair standing up straight at that moment – I knew that whoever was out there just wanted to know what would happen next. I was completely at Peter’s mercy.

  Even if Jay would have been fully in control there still were bars parting us. At that very moment one could have said I really was his, Peter’s, unwillingly or not.

  And I knew, I just knew he waited for me. He could have done anything. Anything. And he waited for my reaction, for my anything.

  And I... I didn’t do anything.

  I just looked back at him, not knowing what to feel. It was too much. My mind quit until I heard something we both hadn’t expected, maybe even the three of us, Peter, that guy behind the door and me: “Peter.”

  Jay’s voice was distorted, low, inhuman, and still I could comprehend what he said and so did 16. I... I can’t describe that look on his face when Jay said his name. It was like these five letters had been bullets to his heart, every single one of them, and they had just killed him.

  Honestly, I expected that Peter would just grab me and... I don’t know... take what he thought he deserved, maybe? But he didn’t.

  Instead, he tensed, muscles flexing, jaw clenching. I could see the muscles in his neck tauten, I could see the color of his eyes turn again and he flinched, like he needed to hold himself back from doing something and he looked at me. His head slightly lowered, not even an inch and for less than a second, and I knew what he wanted to do.

  He didn’t.

  I had never witnessed Peter moving that fast. I just blinked and he was gone, standing next to the door with his back to me and his head almost hanging down.

  And I... I couldn’t move.

  “Get her back.”

  And that was it. That was what made Peter turn around with his face nothing but a blank mask.

  I realized it when he moved what these words meant.

  There was someone else.

  I was sure right then and there it was White, who had watched us, maybe he was, but it had been someone else.

  Again, I have to think about what Severin once had said to me: that Jay was even more important than him. Maybe, just maybe, his last punishment had gone too far and someone else had taken his place.

  Still, I don’t have enough strength to really hope for this. I only caught a glimpse of Jay when Peter reached out his arm so I would move. He looked back at me. Still the Beast he was and I think, when I stepped through that door again, I heard him whisper my name.

  Day 84

  I slept through the night, dead like a stone. After yesterday I thought I would never be able to sleep again. But as the lights went out and I closed my eyes, I was out as well. At least I managed to move my tools into the vent, even though I probably will never really use them.

  So, what are my chances? My choices? Can I endure this place long enough to gain this new guy’s trust? Or did I mistake that sound and it was still Severin? There is no way that I will ever talk to Peter again. I just... I just can’t. I think I will never get over it. Even though... knowing that he... what he feels for me... I could use that, but this wouldn’t be playing with fire, t
his would be playing with fire while being covered with gasoline.

  I liked him so much, I really did. I felt so bad for using him, and he... he said too much but didn’t tell me anything. This was never friendship.

  I have to get my mind off of this. There is no way that I will get out here by accident. So tonight I will take the big risk and I’ll break into the janitor room, taking the ventilation system once again.

  Anything to keep my mind off what I have learned.

  This means I will work out like hell today that I’ll get tired after Lunch and get some sleep and then tonight... I wish I could visit him, but he won’t be there.

  I wish I could talk to him. We’ll have enough time when we’re out of here. Though... do I know him well enough?

  I’ll go back to Tai Chi now. I never imagined how much writing helps me focus, or makes me lose it.

  Everything worked out as planned, until after Lunch. Yes, I did get some sleep, just to be ripped out of it by Gray... and Peter.

  I woke up during the walk down the corridor, still believing that this was a nightmare, that yesterday had been a nightmare, and Peter still was the nice guy I thought he had been.

  I think I would have been scared as hell if I had been fully conscious and probably expected the worst: like I was being taken to have a ‘session’ with Peter; not even that they might have found out that I took his access wristband for breaking into the storage room. But I knew they didn’t, because I still had my tools. If Peter really knew, really had been awake, he hadn’t spilled a word.

  They brought me into that small chamber, which I barely recognized, because White stood in front of me grinning all smugly. With just a gesture he told the others to leave and I tried my best to find my way back into the role he wanted me to play, knowing what Peter was, knowing that he followed orders so willingly, so obediently. Were they all Beasts? Gray as well?

  “You were sleeping? I apologize”, he said in a manner that I had problems swallowing down my rage and spiteful remarks, because he didn’t even try to conceal the lie.