A Human Element (9 page)

She wiped her bloody hands on the rug. Scrub. Scrub. She couldn't get it all off. She banged her head on the floor and tore at the blanket in a mad craze when something fluttered down off the bed. A piece of paper. She clutched it in her blood-encrusted fingers. Words scattered across it.

One day this will be you. He is toying with those you love but it's you he seeks to destroy in the end. He won't stop coming. Remember your powers and use them. You must survive. Be true to what you are and you can stop him.

A fury grew inside her and she shoved the note into her front shorts pocket.

"Stop who? Who is he? What do you want from me?"

But he was right. She had to try and use her powers. She had forced herself not to use them over the past four years, and the thoughts of others around her became softer until their sounds faded out altogether. She had saved her mother and Mr. B once with her healing powers. Could she save Moe?

The gruesome thought of putting her hands back onto Moe's bloody, ripped open neck forced her to push the vomit back down her throat. But she had to try. She staggered to her knees, and looking up at the ceiling, placed her hands on her friend's body. Her fingers moved over her chest and slid across her shredded neck. Laura forced her hands still.

"Come back, Moe. Please."

She imagined pouring her life energy into Moe through her fingertips. She imagined her neck stitching up and the blood pumping once again through her body. She imagined her alive and laughing. But she felt nothing. Either her powers had truly left her or Moe was too far gone to bring back.

Laura fell back on the rug and crawled out of the room. A bloody trail of handprints followed her.
Red. Blood is so red
. She stared down at her stained hands.

"Come get me, you asshole. Whoever you are. If it's me you want." She cried, as she hobbled on hands and knees.

She was tired of being strong and overcoming tragedy. She didn't want to be strong again. Pain shot through her head like a mechanical arm stabbing her over and over with an ice pick. Dizziness engulfed her. She welcomed blissful darkness to rescue her from this nightmare. She didn't want to remember Moe as a gruesome, shredded thing.

She kept crawling. She had to get to the phone. Then the shaking took over and she rocked on her knees on the musty shag rug. She had to call the police. It was the sane thing to do. But instead, she curled up into herself and just lay on the floor, praying for her own death.

The man in black stood in the parking lot hidden by a bush and watched Laura's apartment. He looked at his watch and decided he had to call the police now. He had seen her go in fifteen minutes ago holding her head. He wondered if she could handle the scene she found. He wished he could protect her from it, but she would survive it and it was the desired outcome.

He walked over to the pay phone on the street corner and dialed 911. He pretended to be jogging when he heard screams and saw a suspicious character in bloody clothes run out of apartment twenty-two. He hung up when the operator asked for his name and address. He sighed and walked away. It was all he could do. He should not get involved. But he already was. If he wanted his kind to go on the girl had to survive.

Doctor Bjord lived every day knowing he wasn't considered a serious scientist by his peers any longer. As a promising geneticist in the 1960s and 1970s he once had the entire international science community at his ear. When his last triumphant project proved to be a disaster, he was shunned by the government and stuck down in this government facility basement to rot out his existence on animal testing.

The President of the United States did not even know of the work done here in this windowless building in Arlington, Virginia. But Bjord did. He knew too much for them to give him his walking papers. They wanted to keep him safe and imprisoned under their watchful eye, and give him enough menial work and a huge paycheck to keep him satisfied. But most of all they wanted him to keep an eye on the bungled results of his final project.

At seventy-five years old he wouldn't be around much longer to be of any trouble and yet, there was the slim chance he could still create something of value from his pet project. Bjord hadn't given up. If his experiments worked he would be triumphant again. He would be crowned brilliant and brought back to the world on a pedestal for all to hail. He would transform the world with his genius and make America's military unstoppable.

If
his experiments worked.
If
. His brain worked over the details of his recent failure and how he could make it work next time. He had to make it work. What was he missing?

A knock at the door halted Bjord from writing in his daily log. He shuffled over to it, passing nattering, caged animals in his path. He unlocked the door with trembling, aged hands and opened it to see Bruce, one of the building's many security guards, standing there with a covered tray in his hands.

"Hi, Doc. Got his meal tonight as usual. Some kind of meat thing."

Bjord took the tray from him. It shook in his weak fingers. "I didn't realize it was time already."

"Hey, you know what they say, time flies when you're having fun." Bruce smiled and turned away. Bjord glared at the security guard's retreating back down the dark hallway. What an idiot. He will go home, eat meat and potatoes, make love to his sagging wife, and have a satisfying night's sleep with no thought in his head but which game is on television this weekend.

Bruce stopped at the elevators and gave Bjord a wave before he stepped through the doors and shot up to a lighted world where people lived in real time. Time for Bjord remained the same. His concept of reality included permanent darkness that enveloped him in these concrete walls as his own clock ticked away, stealing each minute.

Bjord never left these walls. He slept in a cot in an old connecting storage room with a dribbling shower and a fridge stocked once a week with groceries delivered to him. He couldn't stand the building's cafeteria-style mush. He had his paycheck deposited into his bank account that had grown substantially over the years. He couldn't wait to spend it on himself in lavish style when his brilliant project succeeded. Then he could deliver the most amazing weapon the U.S. government would ever possess. He just hoped to succeed soon before age took over his body.

Bjord shambled back to his work area carrying the tray and turned a corner leading to a back area of the expansive basement. The dark cavern that spread outward sat below a large complex of rooms housing five-hundred government employees. Bjord preferred to contain his work in the largest main room. There was one other room and he headed there now.

Bjord reached the back of the dim corridor and placed the tray on the floor. He slid open the viewing window of the iron door before him and seeing nothing disturbing slid it shut. He pulled a set of keys from his pants pocket and fit it in the keyhole. The iron door lay three feet thick, protecting the world from the soundproof room beyond it. Bjord slipped the key in the lock and turned it clockwise. He then removed the keys, placed them on the floor, and proceeded to slide three heavy bolts out of their placement that covered the width of the door. This ritual finished, he picked up the tray and pushed the heavy slab open.

Laura woke in darkness and confusion. The nightmare pulled at her in waves of fear and she sat up, focusing on the streaks of moon filtering through her bedroom. She switched on the bedside lamp and drew her covers up around her shoulders. Her alarm clock blinked a repetitive florescent green and she stared at it as flashes of her nightmare came back.

She had been running through dark woods by her lake back home. An evil man chased her in the silent shadows of trees and moonlight. She could not hear the man chasing her as she dodged around trees and rocks. She did not know who he was, only that he stood taller than the average man. She glimpsed a frozen leer every time she saw him not far behind her in the brush.

Was it a game of cat and mouse and she was the prey? To survive she had to find a hole to hide in. If the tall man found her he would slash her throat open with his monstrous hands, all the while grinning as her lifeblood pumped into the wet earth. He would then carry her drained corpse up the mountain and bury her deep where no wild animal could dig up her remains and feast on her flesh.

She stopped as she came out of the woods to find herself teetering on the edge of an enormous pit. She scrambled down the slope of the hole, scraping herself on dirt and pebbles. She reached the bottom and threw herself on the ground clawing at stubby grass. She flung dirt to the side, tearing her hands and nails. She peered up at the pit's edge to see the man standing above her in a dark silhouette. They were connected. But how? The clouds raced behind the man. He stood with arms crossed, mocking her meager attempt at escape.

She couldn't stop now and resumed her digging when her hands hit something hard. She cleared away the dirt to reveal a small black metal door. She pushed away the moist muck on it and pulled down on the handle.

She looked once again to the top of the pit. The man had stopped grinning. He unfolded his arms and strode down the crater's steep walls. An evil scowl shadowed his face. His descent would be her death.

She tugged down on the handle and with one strong push cracked the door open and squeezed through the opening. She found herself in complete darkness so solid she lost her balance and leaned to feel for something to brace upon. Her hands came in contact with smooth, cold walls. She ran her hands along the walls as she lurched forward through the tunnel.

Her head knocked against the narrow sides as she stumbled along, when her body smacked into a wall of cold metal. Terrified of the blackness surrounding her, she threw herself on the metal wall looking for a way out when she felt a handle. She yanked it down fast and pushed, then shielded her eyes as she entered a room infused with an emerald green glow.

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.