A Human Element

by Donna Galanti

  She heard the man behind her rip open the entrance door to the tunnel as easy as a candy wrapper. She shoved the door shut behind her. It would be only a minute before he would reach her. She frantically pushed a panel of lit buttons on the door desperate for one of the buttons to lock it.

  The man slammed against the door, throwing her off her feet. Death was here. But then the door handle lit up in a neon yellow glow. She knelt and prayed it stayed locked. The man slammed against the door again and it held. He didn't utter a word in his workings. He just kept pounding over and over in a steady silent mission.

  Laura's vision adjusted to the light and she stood and stared in wonder at the colossal oval room pulsating with vibrant aliveness. The light emanated from walls in undulating waves. She pressed her hand onto the moving wall. Supple warmth enveloped her. She became the wall and moved in beat with its timeless rocking energy.

  She peered into its elastic smoothness and saw the face of another. It was round with tufts of white hair framing its head. Its eyes gazed at her with a yellow shine. A strange face. She couldn't bear to look at its strangeness yet she couldn't take her hand away. Sadness overwhelmed her. We are connected. He had been hurt and was so far away from home. He was the creature that had crashed at the lake all those years ago.

  And there stood the girl turned away, facing the creature. He reached out to touch the girl, pod-like fingers stretching wide. Light glowed luminescent from his fingertips. Laura was mesmerized. The girl reached her hand out to meet the creature's pulsing hand in welcome.

  But the spell was broken when Laura heard the man pounding in erratic frenzy. She pulled back from the wall. He would break through soon. His strength, animalistic and frenzied, surpassed any human. She rushed around the room seeking a way out. There! A tunnel, hidden in the shadows, led out of the room. She ran toward it when the man broke through the door and lunged at her in one swift pounce.

  That's when Laura awoke from her enemy. She had been having this nightmare for months now and was powerless from stopping it. It controlled her when the night came and the safety of the waking world disappeared.

  The creature-man sat on the concrete floor, his bulbous legs splayed out in front of him. His head sunk on his chest. He appeared to be sleeping. Yet he did not sleep. He reached his brain outward into the night air probing for satisfaction. He had come so close many times. Then the vision always faded away, no longer in his grasp. What he sought either had traveled too far a distance for his mind to grab or his senses were too dull to attack.

  The man knew his limitations. His mind probing skills worked within a few hundred miles. He had killed many times in the outside world while his body stayed imprisoned underground. He was not always successful because they kept him drugged and this weakened his powers. It was difficult for him to push through the drugs and use his abilities, but when he succeeded it delivered intense satisfaction. Sweetly orgasmic. And the girl. She had become his top prey.

  Bjord taunted him with her and said a monster like him could never have a normal life like her. But the man found ways to punish the girl for living a normal life. One time he created a raging windstorm and pulled her mother out of the barn door to die. But the girl saved her. Another time he found the girl in the orchard with the old man. He sensed he was special to her and sent hundreds of wasps to take him down. But she saved him too. Bitch.

  But he had succeeded at last when he sent his probing eye into her house. Filled with a crazed fury, he shot out a burning streak from his mind's eye and sent the old house into a crackling display of violent flames. He shivered with pleasure as he watched her mother and father burn. He wanted to make her feel as bad and angry as he did. And someday he would kill her with pain.

  The man gloated over the deaths he had invoked, yet he had to be careful in his choosing. They knew when he killed because they recognized his style of murder. He had killed many random people on the streets. They had a researcher for the sole purpose to investigate murders nationwide to see if they resembled his method of murder. Even when he varied it somehow they found out. But not always.

  He would wait in fear to see if they discovered his kills. If they did, they would gas him and shoot him up with drugs. Sometimes the doctor would add something special to the cocktail injection to send spiraling waves of pain through his deformed body. It was how they controlled him. The pain was intense and he was not immune to it.

  And so he had been reduced to mostly sucking the blood of small animals he came across in the nearby plentiful woods through his mind powers. These creatures gave him a mere flash of pleasure, but their brief squealing ended too soon from his death jaws.

  The man placed his hands on his deformed head and soared outside of his prison walls, into the cool night air. Soon he spotted a stray mutt roaming the lamp lit streets. He sent his mind's eye in for a closer look and swooped in to begin the ripping and tearing of canine flesh.

  Laura got out of bed and moved toward the window overlooking the street in the New Jersey suburb that sprawled a few miles from New York City. She wondered about this man who chased her at night while she slept. She peered out onto the street as if to see him down there. I'm looking for a man who doesn't exist. I don't even know what his face looks like.

  At twenty-six, Laura prided herself on practicality and organization of thought. Working in corporate communications for a large New Jersey-based national healthcare organization, she had to be. Her twelve-hour days consisted of writing company newsletters and executive memos, meeting ever-changing deadlines, and catering to executives who could scrap whatever communications project she had just completed. She hated it, but the hectic atmosphere and overtime kept her so busy she didn't have time to think about her life, or the nonexistence of it.

  When Moe died four years before, Laura spent a week in the local hotel with Moe's family. They clung to each other to make it through the funeral services. She also had to remain in town as the investigation in Moe's brutal death was conducted. She took the questioning well. Campus officials pushed the police for answers as parents, in town for graduation, demanded answers from them.

  Graduation went on the next day but Laura did not attend. In shock, she took refuge with Moe's parents. Investigators were baffled by the attack, as they could find no signs of how it happened. Laura never told anyone about the note she found. It wouldn't lead to answers. No prints, no fibers, no DNA. Just like there had been no cause found for the fire that destroyed her home and killed her parents. Moe's death remained a mystery and families remained uneasy at the idea of a crazed killer out there in their town. Drugs, they whispered, must have been drugs.

  In the end, they ruled out Laura as a suspect and told her she could go. Go where? Off to New Jersey to start a career Moe would never have? She returned to the apartment to pack her few belongings as fast as she could. Moe's mom and dad clung to her in their grief, but Laura struggled to comfort them. A deep emptiness overwhelmed her at being abandoned of the only safety she knew, again.

  "Honey, come live with us." Moe's mother, Grace, pleaded with her the day they left. "You have no family. You can stay with us as long as you need to." Moe's father, Joe, nodded and smiled at her.

  But Laura pulled away from them. She didn't want to be anyone's substitute daughter. Part of her wanted to be taken care of, but another part of her wanted to run. Run far away and forget. "Thank you, but I just can't. I'm starting my job soon and have to move into my apartment in New Jersey. I have to go."

  "Are you sure? We've all been through such a terrible time here, are you going to be okay on your own?" Grace held her hand and looked at her with watery eyes.

  Laura hugged her and blinked back her own tears. "I'll be okay. I've been on my own a long time. And you know part of me can hear Moe laughing and teasing me, as usual…about getting on with my life after four years here. I feel like she would want me to go."

  "Will you call us and come visit? Promise?" Grace hugged her back.

&nb
sp; "I will." But Laura couldn't bring herself to say she'd promise. In her heart, she knew she wouldn't see them again.

  A few months afterwards, the nightmares began.

  Laura sighed and dropped the curtain down over the window shutting out the street scene. She tried to dismiss the dream that gnawed at her. She crawled back in bed and curled around herself for comfort. Sleep finally dragged her away and she dreamt now of meadows and carnivals. This time the grinning man did not appear. He hid in the darkness of her mind, watching her from afar.

  Bjord stepped into the small cage that faced another cage positioned in a square room large enough to house one person in studio-style comfort. The creature-man sat naked on the cage floor, cradling his head in his hands. The man sheltered here was not interested in comfort. He was interested in killing. He raised his head to stare at Bjord. Tormented, twisted images on canvas surrounded the man in crooked piles leaning against his prison walls. His works of art embraced his cell. Painting soothed his savage rages.

  Doctor Bjord averted his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the sadistic evil fleshed out in oil. People in the throes of being burned, whipped, choked, stabbed, and crushed to death by the hands of beastly things. One woman in particular the creature man painted over and over. His obsession.

  Bjord bent down and raised a latch that opened a small window near the cage's floor and placed the tray on the other side, into the large cage where the man sat. "Dinner X-10. It's meat. Just what you like."

  X-10 eased himself off the floor and rose to his full height of 6'5''. Bjord felt the twinge of fear he always felt when his prisoner rose to his complete stature. He was a vicious god in his nakedness with muscles bulging out in every direction. His penis hung enormous even flaccid, a fierce protrusion. The man did not wear clothes for his skin was too sensitive to tolerate fabric.

  X-10 could twist the cage apart in an instant and kill Bjord with his hands or enter his brain and induce a heart attack. He had killed many guards in such fashion already. Yet Bjord knew he would not harm him. For now. X-10 needed him to exist in the subservient routine created for him.

  The scientist enjoyed redirecting X-10's rage away from him to the girl. Bjord didn't know who the girl was, but X-10 had talked about her for years, convinced she waited out there for him to come. Bjord thought it was just a fantasy, created to sustain imprisonment, and he enjoyed creating stories about the girl involving family, love, freedom, and happiness. Experiences X-10 would never have.

  And Bjord's stories fueled his prisoner's anger toward the girl on the outside misdirecting X-10's hate for the doctor. Bjord feared X-10's powers and didn't seek death yet. The iron door had been constructed after one killing spree left thirteen men dead, half of their throats ripped open while the other half were found clutching their chests in a frozen grimace. X-10 had been seven years old at the time.

  X-10 could not break through the door that now imprisoned him. He had tried many times and failed. If he could reach through the cage and kill him in one swift movement, he would not be able to open the iron slab as only Bjord's voice activated the door to open for his retreat.

  Bjord had also devised a way to spray drugs through the ceiling vents and put X-10 to sleep within seconds. This was useful when Bjord needed to take blood for his experiments, although his heart raced when doing so. To be so close to his prisoner was nerve-wracking. But X-10 knew if he killed Bjord that he would starve to death with no witnesses or mourners, only perhaps after dining on Bjord. The scientist could see his prisoner licking his own bones clean after a good meal.

  "Hello, Doctor. Have fun playing with the animals today?" X-10's mouth turned upward in a smirk. He ran his gnarled hand through his thick hair as if standing relaxed on a golf course contemplating a shot on the ninth hole. His flattened nose spread across his oval face in a widening mound of flesh and enlarged nostrils. Bjord forced himself to look away from the ugly creature standing before him.

  "Now X-10, you know I'm a scientist. I don't play with animals." Bjord turned toward the massive man again. "I use them to further the cause of science. And what I will use your genes for will be brilliant."

  X-10 laughed long and then growled. "My name is Charlie, you imbecile."

  "Charlie is a name for humans. A name for a likeable fellow. You are neither of those. You will never be a Charlie. Your number is X-10 and that's all you will ever be called by. And let's not forget how I've helped you, X-10."

  The creature stopped laughing and his eyes gleamed into Bjord's with an intense hatred. "And how would that be, Doctor?"

  "You eat well and spend your time painting and reading. But you'll never have the freedom to do anything you want, like the girl. She isn't a freak, like you. And you need to remember your small freedoms are at my doing. And I can take them away in a heartbeat."

  "It would be at the expense of your heartbeat ending, I'm afraid, Doctor—and the girl's. I will find her." X-10 laughed and then grunted. "And if you'd never taken me I wouldn't be here as your experiment. If you'd never imprisoned me I wouldn't be suffering this life of abstinence." His voice rose in a sharp fervor. "If you'd never brought me here to live in this dungeon I'd be out killing all of you stupid pigs!"

  X-10 edged nearer to the cage that held Bjord safe. The scientist trembled and stepped back closer to the door ready to activate his escape. He felt a piercing in his brain as X-10 probed him. A stabbing pain enveloped his head.

  "And the first one I would rip to pieces would be you, Doctor Bjord!" The monstrous man swung his arms and lunged at the cage, crashing over his civilized dinner, and shrieked in a demon wail while clutching the bars. "You, Doctor. I would rip open your throat inch by inch and suck your blood out. Then I'd chew on you for a while and contemplate your worthiness as a meal! Not worthy, I'm guessing, you filthy old man!"

  Bjord crouched by the door and screamed out for the door to open. He ran through the opening before it had fully swung out. The last words he heard from his experiment gone awry were, "You'll beg for death soon, Doctor! And my name is Charlie!"

  Bjord pushed the door shut behind him with all the strength he could muster. The stench of sour sweat rose up from him. He reached up to slide open again the viewing window, his heart still beating fast. X-10 had resumed his floor position and once again cradled his head. It appeared as if the entire incident had never happened, except for the smashed tray before the cage, dripping ooze of 'some kind of meat thing'.

  CHAPTER 13: 2006

  Laura's fingers tapped across her keyboard in a race to finish. She had ten minutes to write the executive memo to all employees from the CEO about the company buyout. She sighed and stretched her neck, tired from working fifteen-hour days with the intensity of the buyout going on.

  As communications specialist for the corporate communications team, she was on call twenty-four hours during the negotiations and contract phase. Tensions throughout the company ran high. The whisperings around the company strained with fear and guessing which departments would have layoffs and who would be the first to go. Laura would have a job until the end. Someone needed to crank out the word to eighty-thousand employees across the country.

  She didn't care. After four years of working for one of the nation's largest healthcare companies, she was burned out at twenty-six and had no desire to climb the corporate ladder. She took the job here after college although she had dreamed of becoming a reporter and communicating the injustices of the world. It sounded so naïve when she thought of it.

  The reality, she found out when interviewing for reporter positions during her last semester of college, was that she couldn't live on the pay. Not with student loans, car repairs, insurance, and rent. So when this job came along at a high entry-level salary she grabbed it. And she regretted it.

  Since the beginning, unease filled her as she sat in on conference calls and met deadlines under executive orders. She felt as if she appeared on stage every day giving a terrible performance until it hit her—she wasn'
t meant to do this. She had enough money saved up between bonuses and raises. She could afford to take a pay cut and start over at another job.

  When this buyout craze finally came she promised herself she would look to get out. She could go anywhere. She loved being independent and free to make a change, but missed having a family to run to when she needed a shoulder to cry on. She had drifted away from Moe's family over time. It was too hard knowing them. After a while their phone calls stopped and she felt relieved. She just wanted to forget and start over. Would she ever make her own family someday? A family she would want to hold onto no matter what terrible things happened? She hoped.

  She forced herself to focus on the work at hand and read the memo again for the third time. It looked good and the clock was ticking. She had to email it to the CEO for approval to send out over mass email.

  "Laura, how are you doing on the memo? Need help?" Renee, her boss, leaned over her cubicle. She was the communications manager and on the fast track to director. A rotund woman of thirty, she dressed in attractive garb and asserted herself to compensate. She maneuvered her many rolls of fat in designer clothes and colorful scarves down the hallways into meetings with style and grace. She didn't seem bothered by her large girth or want to change it.

  Laura liked her immediately, and even though Renee was only a few years older, she took Laura under her wing. Laura became her first staff member as manager and she took the role as mentor very seriously. Laura respected her and hid the fact she did not take her role as the mentored so seriously.

  "All done," Laura called back. Renee came around the cubicle and skimmed the memo.

  "Looks good. Send it on its way."

  "On its way…now. That was an easy one. Now let's hope he'll approve it right away and we can cross it off the list."