Authors: Marie Hall
Snorting, I raised my brows.
He nodded. “She was told to go east, Priest. She came west. Deep down that girl is fighting. She may not know it, but she is. How well do you think you know her?”
“She’s the other half of my soul.”
“Then make her remember that.”
~*~
Pandora
My Re-indoctrination
Day 1
I woke up to find the brown-eyed man staring at me, and instantly I was triggered. Roaring, I jumped to my feet and slammed into the bars.
“Kill!” the demons inside me roared.
But no matter how hard I hit the bars, they did not yield, and the man just stood there, looking at me.
I slammed into the door. Over and over. I didn’t know how long I hit it, but I kept going, because I was compelled to grab him. To hurt him. To kill him.
My mind was nothing but violence and chaos. The demons inside my head chanted,
Maim. Torture. Kill. Maim. Torture. Kill
.
I reached through the bars, curling my claws at him, tasting my blood on my tongue from where I’d bitten down too hard.
He never moved.
I think I must have been going at it for hours before I finally exhausted myself. I slumped to my knees even as I continued to feebly reach out for him.
“What’s your name?” he asked in a calm voice.
I snarled, even though my energy was spent.
“Your name!” he demanded, louder.
“Ya-el.” I snapped my fangs at him.
“What is your purpose?”
“To kill. To maim. To hurt. To rage. To—”
“No!” He grabbed the bars and rattled them. “Your name is Pandora.”
“No.” I shook my head, wondering if I had the energy to rush and grab his fingers so that I could snap them off. My fingers curled into my knees.
“Yes.” He shook his head.
I’ve heard his voice before. It was dark and deep and seductive, and I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to kill him, I wanted to…touch him?
I grabbed my chest.
“Pandora. Say your name.”
“No,” I growled.
“Say your name!”
“Ya-el.”
“No. Pandora. Pandora. Pandora. That is your name.”
“Liar.” I shook my head, clamping my hands over my ears. “Ya-el.”
“Pandora.”
“Ya-el.”
“No.”
We went back and forth for hours. Twice I rushed him, and twice he stepped just out of reach. As the room darkened and the sun set outside, I wrapped my arms around my legs.
“My name is…Ya-el.”
I expected to hear him yell out Pandora again, but instead something heavy dropped loudly by my foot. It was my journal; he’d slipped it into the cage.
“Read your book.” Then he turned his back and walked out the door, and I screamed because he was gone and I couldn’t kill him.
~*~
Day 7
“What’s your name?” He was back again, and this time he held a plate of food and a cup.
I wasn’t hungry. But I was thirsty. My throat was raw from screaming, my hair matted, my dress stained with dirt and blood.
I coughed weakly. The fire of my hate still burned, but it grew weaker everyday.
“Wat…er.” I coughed again.
The brown-eyed man set the plate of fruit down on a box beside my cage and handed me the cup. I snatched it with desperate hands and drank it through the bars, dribbling most of it down the front of my dress. But it was cool, and it felt like healing waters on my abraded throat. He took the cup from my hand, and when his fingers grazed mine I made a weak swipe at him that he easily batted away.
“What is your name?” he asked again.
I was tired. My nights had been hounded by visions of death, of torture. Of me on a steel bed being ripped apart by evil hands, of fire flowing through my veins, and whispered words telling me dark and terrible secrets.
I clenched the bars. “Ya-el. My name is Ya-el.”
He reached out his hand toward me, as if he meant to touch me. I hissed and pulled back. He curled his hand by his thigh.
The brown-eyed man said nothing, but I could see the sadness that lingered tight around his eyes. Shaking his head, he turned to leave.
He was just about to walk out the door when a strange compulsion took me. “What is your name?” I asked him.
His look was shocked when he turned to me. He didn’t come back to my side, but he slowly whispered, “Asher. My name is Asher.”
~*~
Day 21
I’m laying on my back staring up at the fog-filled sky of a freezing South Dakota afternoon and watching as the first snowflake of the season slides gracefully through the breeze, landing on the palm of my hand. I stare at it with impossible hope. Every snowflake is different, every one unique. If someone went out of their way to create a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece of ice, then maybe I mattered too…
~*~
Day 31
“What’s your name?”
I bowed my head and closed my eyes. “Pandora. My name is Pandora.”
He said nothing. When I turned to look at him, I saw something different glimmering in his brown eyes.
Hope.
~*~
Day 47
They’ve put a demon back inside me. But it’s not Lust. I don’t know who it is, but it tastes foul to my skin. The doctor looked at me and smiled. “Today we’re going to try something a little different,” he said. I smiled. I couldn’t believe I smiled, but I did. Because for just a second I believed that maybe the pain would be over. I had a demon back inside me, I felt somewhat whole. Maybe now they’d release me. Instead they’d laid me down on that table and a shifter had walked into the room wearing a strange- looking metal flack vest. I’d looked at the doctor with a question in my eyes. “All you need to do today, Pandora, is trace, that’s it.” I couldn’t believe it. They were letting me go. Really letting me go.
But that wasn’t what they were doing at all. Because the second I shifted, became particles of me, the shifter with the vest grabbed me. Reached right into the mist of me and forced me back to myself, forced me to become human again. The touch of that metal burned the demon right out of me, and I didn’t stop screaming for hours…
~*~
Day 52
They’ve begun telling me things I know aren’t true. Things like I’m all alone. But I’m not alone. I have my family. I think. But if they cared, wouldn’t they have found me by now? They say that Asher isn’t who he says he is. I keep telling him that I didn’t know that man. But I do. I think. God, I’m so confused. The doctor asked me to tell him a memory. I told him about Kemen. I don’t know why I chose Kem, maybe because I miss him so much. But as I was talking, doc gave me a strange look and said that Kemen never actually existed. That he was just the product of my fractured mind. My need to feel loved. I think he’s lying. It couldn’t be true. I couldn’t have just imagined him, right? Luc, I think I’m going out of my mind. I remember him so vividly, my sloth. He was always yawning, always telling me that I was safe with him.
Safe.
I want that so badly. I hate how weak I feel. But they’ve stripped me of the demons. I don’t know how they can continue to hurt me the way they do without my ability to heal. I don’t know why I haven’t died yet, but they keep telling me it’s not time. I have a purpose. A mission. I’m supposed to save the world.
I’m a demon, I should be stronger than I am. But every night all I can do is cry. I want my Priest to hold me one more time, I want to not be so scared to tell him how I feel. But maybe the doctor is right, maybe the Priest and Kem aren’t who I’ve created them to be. Maybe I really am sick.
~*~
Day 56
Asher was staring at me again. I felt his look like a brand. I tried to pretend like I didn’t, like my body wasn’t flaring to life under his gaze. He was the enemy, the deceiver. The liar. And yet…
“Who are you, Pandora?”
I shook my head. “Evil.” The single word dropped from my tongue.
“Do you want to kill me?”
“Yes.” Maybe?
His eyes narrowed. I liked his eyes. I shouldn’t have liked his eyes. He was a villain. I was the savior. But I couldn’t seem to help myself. Last night I’d had a dream about him. A wicked dream.
He was touching me all over and I was holding him, kissing him, running my tongue along his spine, and I liked it. God, I loved it. I woke up panting, clenching at my heart as my thighs trembled with want and need.
He must have known, because he’d sat up on the cot and looked at me. Just looked at me with a raw, animal hunger burning in his eyes. I’d had to look away because I’d known if I continued looking he would have come in here with me and I would have hurt him. And for some reason, that idea bothered me.
He held up his hands, and in them was something I hadn’t noticed before. It was a baby doll. She was beautiful, with faint pink stains on her porcelain skin. Her eyes were a cerulean blue, and she was dressed in a white sleeping gown. A riotous mass of golden curls framed her face.
“What is this, Pandora?”
I cocked my head, confused by his question. “A doll.”
He shook his head. “It’s a child. Do you remember children?”
Of course I remembered children. But I didn’t say anything. The doll was small, and skinny. Skinny enough that when he turned it sideways, he could slip it through the bars.
It landed by my feet. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from it. Its rosebud lips were opened on a silent coo.
“Pick it up,” he said, but I couldn’t.
I was scared.
My hands shook and my heart raced, and I scooted back on my butt, trying to kick it away from me. It was a doll, just a doll. It couldn’t hurt me.
“Pick it up, little demon. It just wants to be loved.”
“Love.” I whispered the word, and that was the impetus I needed to pick it up. At first I felt awkward, but as the minutes ticked by, I felt better, more comfortable holding it in my arms.
I heard him talking to me, whispering comforting words, but my attention was solely on the doll. It was like my body knew what my mind couldn’t remember. I started rocking the baby and crooning to it, touching its cheek.
Then a memory came, of a little girl dying of influenza. Of me rocking her under the stars and singing lullabies until she closed her eyes. My arms tightened. She’d been abandoned on the side of the road. My claws lengthened. Covered in sores, she’d barely been able to take decent breaths.
I snapped, and with a muffled cry squeezed the doll until the porcelain head popped off in my hand. I ground the face into dust and whirled on Asher, snarling as the demons took me.
His jaw clenched, and I knew he was unhappy. I jumped to my feet and rushed to the bars. “Kill you!” I screamed, and pounded futilely to get at him.
Asher’s look was haunted as he turned on his heel and walked away from me.
~*~
Day 61
Is what we call love simply little more than lust disguised? I’ve lived with lust my entire life. I know what it feels like to need someone to the point that you can’t breath for want of him. But that is not love. That is obsession masked as something noble. Love is the cruelest myth of all...
I remember writing those words and feeling how true they were, and then I met Asher and I thought I may have been wrong. But now I wonder. I know he’s still keeping secrets from me. He’s under a geas, someone holds a lien on his soul. I wonder why. The more I think about the enigma that is the death priest, the more I wonder what I really know about him at all. Every day doc tells me that Asher is out to get me. That he is not who I think he is.
Truth is, I don’t really know what I think he is. He’s my obsession, my desire, or at least he was. But I’m beginning to think he fooled me just like doc says. Because if he really loved me like I thought he did, he would never stop searching for me, he would do whatever it took to find me. It’s what I would have done for him. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been abandoned by everyone. Which I guess is par for the course. I mean, who could really love something like me, right?
I think I’m done with thinking about Asher. Every time I do, it hurts too much…
~*~
Day 70
He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt today. Asher’s skin looked so pale, I hardly recognized him. Dark shadows sat under his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in years.
I’d been reading my journal, and something wasn’t adding up. The doctor told me Asher was evil and cruel, that he’d abandoned me. That he’d left me to die, that that had been his plan all along. That I’d been nothing but a pawn in his game.
And yet…
“Pandora?” His voice was soft. So soft it made my heart ache.
I wanted to touch him. I’d decided that the night before after I’d woken up from yet another dream. I’d scooted over on the floor of my cage and gazed at him throughout the night, watching as his chest rose and fell, wondering if the scars I kept dreaming about that lined every inch of his body were actually real, or if they were just my imagination playing tricks on me.
I thought that maybe if he came in now I wouldn’t hurt him. I wanted to find out if he was real. Who had been lying to me? The doctor, or Asher?
“Ash?”
I didn’t know why I’d shortened his name that way, but when I did a visible tremor coursed through him and his eyes slammed shut.
It took him a moment before he looked at me again. But there was no softness in his gaze now, only steely determination. I cocked my head.
“It’s time to hold the baby.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to hold the baby. I’ll kill it.” Just like I’d killed the last nine he’d brought to me.
“Come on, Pandora.” He gripped the cage, staring down at me. “You have to remember how much you love them. You’ve sacrificed yourself for them over and over, throughout the centuries. You have to remember that.”
I swallowed hard because somewhere deep down inside I thought I did remember it. I remembered a little girl in South Dakota. I couldn’t recall her name anymore, but she was so pretty. Dressed in pink and smiling up at me.
Then he was shoving another doll through my cage. I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared at it.