My hand shot to my forearm, seeking a dagger, fingers curling at its bareness. “You have no right.” I scrambled to the bars, reached for the letter. He inched it back.
“It’s yours when you eat.” He nodded to the plate of food on the bed.
So began my sentence on Malta. Three times a day, the doctor bribed me to eat, taking away the letter when I wouldn’t. Every day, after midmorning prayer, the Drone brought an empty vial. And every day, he watched with hungry eyes as the doctor pricked my vein. When the vial was filled, he snatched it and rushed out without a word.
Between visiting hours, I fantasized about Annie and Aaron’s world. I knew it didn’t exist. Still, I would close my eyes and look for their smiling faces. I would look for Joel and Roark too. But it was always so dark. I’d stretch out my hands and feel nothing. Then I would call out for them, sinking deeper. I thought I came close sometimes. The tide would fade. The wind would still. The tightening in my chest would uncoil. And just when I thought I found them, the doctor would drag me back, forcing fluids down my throat or dropping me in the bath.
Every night, I curled in the corner and plugged my ears against the sea. I let my skirt bunch at my thighs and watched the spiders dine on my legs. Often, the doctor would show up and chase them away. Always, he arrived at dawn to nurse my bites and give me a bath.
I didn’t fight him. My fight died with Roark. I kept my gaze on the abyss. Until one night, I fell into restless sleep, and the abyss gazed back.
Grasshoppers chirped. Ice settled in my mint mojito. Perspiration teared on the glass lip and I caught it with my tongue. Something splashed in the pool, drenching the sun warmed towel beneath me.
I leaned over the coping. Annie cut across the crystal bottom with lithe strokes. Her blurry figure approached. My smile widened as she came up for breath.
Her face broke the surface and stared into mine with all-white eyes. Black gore drooled from her broken teeth. A pincer clamped my throat, cut my scream. Water burned my nose as she dragged me in.
The pool darkened. We spiraled down, farther and farther. A sea of ink, the bottom never came. The water began to spin and roar around me.
I stood in the center as it gravitated away. Gravel dug into the soles of my feet. Annie was gone.
Clank. Clank.
The darkness receded into the purple shade of twilight. The post in my father’s vineyard emerged. Chains suspended Joel’s body to it. Metal links hung from Joel’s waist, clanking on the post like a dinner bell. A glowing figure clung to his body.
The distance between us blurred. My hands closed over the aphid’s mandible. I yanked. The hole in Joel’s chest puked flesh and bone. The insectile mouth slipped in my hands. I tightened my grip, bowed it at a right angle.
The point snapped. I twisted my wrist and stabbed it through the gaping mouth. A spout of blood choked its shrieks.
I moved to the post in the next row, dragging the aphid behind me, and knocked my father’s viticulture tool from the hook. The muscles in my arms quivered as I raised the aphid by its head and pushed.
The hook’s rusted tip punched through the forehead. I jerked it free and repeated. The hook bobbed in and out of the head. Ribbons of black leaked from its pulped orbs. My arms gave out. The lifeless body slid to the ground.
Joel moaned from the other post. My heart pummeled as I knelt before him. His tiny pupils stared at me without seeing. My teeth sawed my lips. My numb fingers wrestled the chains.
His body fell in my lap. Vibrations pounded my chest. I held my hand over the chewed hole in his.
“Trust,” he gurgled.
I shook my head, voice caught. He twisted and bucked in my arms. My stomach did the same.
“Trust mind, body and soul.” His hand slapped my chest as if jerked by a string. A fever of compulsions magnetized me to his fingers.
Your guardians.
He said it, but his mouth never moved. His pupils dilated. For a brief moment, he appeared human. Then his hand dropped.
End it.
His command drifted through me, rode the wind, brushed through the tree canopy.
Tendons in his neck went taut. Lips pulled away from gums. Porcelain orbs bulged. He dug at the dirt, fingers spread in hardened kinks.
I gripped his jaw and screamed, “Joel.”
His hunger rippled through me. His head flopped around between my hands. Blood and spit flew. I strengthened my hold on his jaw. He told me once that after the mutation, the result wasn’t human, wasn’t the person it was before. Did he still believe that?
“Joel,” I shouted.
White eyes glazed over with single-minded focus.
Feed.
The tip of my dagger touched his forehead. My palm cupped the hilt, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. I pushed hard and fast.
I woke, jack-knifing in the bed. A sweet, earthy flavor stroked the air, an ilk of sandalwood. It did little to soothe the splintering pain in my chest as my memories rushed in. I squeezed my fist. The dagger was so heavy when I pulled it from Joel’s skull. I left it there, in my father’s vineyard, where I set the fire. The withered grapevines sparked and popped as the flames engulfed Joel’s body. I had only minutes to retrieve clothes from the house before the blaze devoured it too.
My eyes stung. Warm flesh flexed against my face. Arms wrapped around me.
I blinked heavy lashes, tilting my head up. The shadows didn’t conceal the flawless skin and almond shaped eyes of the man who held me.
Oh, fuck no. I shoved the doctor off me and fell with a thud from the bed.
Back on my feet, I swiped my face. My hand came away wet. My failure glistened on his bare chest.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” I choked, backing away.
He stood with the bed between us, arms relaxed at his side. “I’m your doctor, whether you want that or not.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “I’m doing my best to ensure your physical well-being, but it’s moot if your mental health fails.”
I turned away. My feet moved to the corner, to its numbing depths.
“Your nightmares,” he said, “and weeks without talking or making eye contact. You value a tattered letter more than your music player, yet you cover your ears at night. And your changing physiology…”
I tuned out his diagnosis. He chatted on as if he hadn’t played a part in imprisoning me and filleting my heart.
He was suddenly behind me, his breath brushing my hair. “Come back from this madness.”
I had finally remembered Joel’s death. Faced what I’d done. But it wasn’t enough to mend the hole Roark left behind. Stages of denial, anger and bargaining had come and gone in the prior weeks. Yet, as I spun around, it sure felt like I was back to stage one. “I’ll come back when you bring back Roark.”
Creases appeared in his forehead and his eyes darted through the dark as if searching for a response. After a roam over the open rafters, his gaze settled on mine. “Then abandon all your senses but the sixth one.”
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Joseph Campbell
“My sixth sense? Intuition tells me you’re a liar and a murderer.”
A muscle jogged in the doctor’s cheek. “So you say. Yet, you’ve seen me do neither. Can’t say the same for you.”
My thoughts skipped to my first night on Malta. Okay, so I had a lethal knack for throwing scissors. My fists clenched and unclenched at my sides, thrumming for a repeat. “Spoken by the man responsible for billions of murders, for Roark’s murder, that barb has no teeth.”
His hand shot through a column of moonlight and squeezed my throat. “He lives.”
I swallowed around his fist, didn’t pretend to misunderstand who. “I watched him get eaten.”
He stared down at me. “No, you didn’t. You commanded the aphids acoustically. Just like Aiman does.” His hand dropped, head cocked, vertical lines separating his brows. “They responded to you. But the effort made you sick.”
I shook my head and backed up. “They didn’t respond. He was covered—”
“When I put my hand on your face, I felt a…you stabilized. You stopped them before the first mouth broke skin. And when you lost consciousness, Aiman held them back.”
I cupped my mouth and slid down the wall. “I have no reason to believe you.”
He squatted next to me and angled his chin toward the night sky. “Like the moon, the truth doesn’t hide for long.”
“Get the fuck out of my face.”
He dropped his head and looked at me through lowered lids. “Give me a question only the priest can answer.”
My muscles contracted against the longing in my chest. I couldn’t give into hope. Why would the Drone let him live? And what was Dr. Nealy’s motivation? He’d taken care of me, kept me alive. Such was a scientist’s relationship with his rats. Until the tests began. I couldn’t trust him, but I could call his bluff.
“The priest received a sign. What was it?” The memory of that night latched onto my heart. I’d never forget Roark’s wonderment as he knelt over me, the depths of his eyes tracking the ladybugs on my body.
The doctor set an apple on the floor at my hip. “I do this at my own peril. Aiman and Siraj wouldn’t agree to my methods.”
At my shaky nod, he left.
Would the Drone and the Imago kill the doctor before I had the chance? The idea shoved in an ache deep inside me, which should’ve twinged my conscience. But losing my moral principles was nothing compared to what the past year had taken from me.
I crawled into the bed and sorted through my new memories of Joel. His final words ate at me. Why couldn’t he have just told me he loved me? Even amidst transformation, he counseled.
Trust mind, body and soul. Your guardians.
I eventually trusted my soul. It didn’t guard me. Instead, it weakened me and took my mind with it. My body would have followed, had the doctor not intervened. Was there another meaning? It wasn’t like Joel to speak in riddles. But in the throes of death, maybe he saw things or understood things I couldn’t.
Vulnerability settled around my heart. To chase it away, I practiced Roark’s boxing exercises, aiming each jab at the slivers of moonlight spearing the room. When the door groaned opened, I was stretched, energized and ready to pound the doctor’s lying mouth.
The Imago swaggered toward the gate. His gaze prowled over my body.
I squared my shoulders, fighting the compulsion to back into the corner. Fabric stretched over my chest, inviting his ogle while I catalogued his weapons.
The dart gun slung across his back. A gold Desert Eagle .50 cal seated in his thigh holster. His belt flaunted a Jambiya dagger in a
J
shaped sheath.
“Looking for Dr. Nealy?” The Imago never came alone.
He unsheathed the knife and dialed the combination on the lock. Then he locked himself—and his weapons—in with me. Stupid douche. Even the Drone wasn’t arrogant enough to put weapons in my reach.
“I passed him on the stairs and decided to pay you a visit.” His eyes continued their greedy perusal.
My pulse was an erratic thrum in my ears. “And so you have. Now you can go.”
He scratched his chin with the blade. “I’m a man of opportunity. It’s not often Michio leaves you alone. Undress. Or shall I do it for you?” He teased the blade down my sternum. His other hand palmed the butt of the pistol.
I suppressed the telltale bob of my throat. “What’s the Qur’an say about that? Big brother likes me covered.”
“Quickly.” He stomped his boot.
I clutched the hem of my top, prepared to brook any action that would get me closer to one of his weapons.
Heat burned in his eyes when I pulled it over my head, taking the headscarf with it. His lashes dropped with the garments’ descent to the floor. Then he was on me, mouth assaulting mine, stabbing with a tongue as stiff and foul as his cigar. I let him back me into the wall and waited for the moment he was caroused on lust.
It didn’t take long. He sheathed the dagger. His trembling hand groped my bared breast. His other fumbled with the buckle on his pants.
I tried to endure the next few moments, but my stomach rolled, preparing to blow chunks over the slimy invader in my mouth. I yanked my face back. “Do you like your tongue?”
He grinned, waggling the offensive organ bubbled in spit.
“Put it in my mouth again and you won’t get it back.”
“I’ll take my chances.” And he did.
I transferred my attention away from it to the belt under my exploring fingers. I ached to castrate him. He was moments from handing it to me. My thumb bumped the dagger’s hilt.
The final button yielded. His trousers sagged to the floor. I held onto the dagger and sank my teeth into the foul flesh between them. Hard.
His eyes bulged. “Ewwaaah.”
I spat. Blood sprayed from his mouth and mine.
The Imago threw back his head and screamed. His tongue hung by a strip.
I angled the blade over his softening dick.
A hand circled my wrist. I snapped my gaze up and met the doctor’s. Where the hell did he come from?
I tightened my fingers around the hilt. A depression of his thumb forced my hand open. The blade clanked to the floor.
“Ew do?” The Imago cried.
Hands tucked in elbows, the doctor leaned against the wall. “Saved your life.”
I looked into the Imago’s tear streaked eyes. “Saved his dick, actually. I’m afraid it’s too late to save his larger organ.”
He pawed at his mouth and ripped the flopping flesh all the way off. “Aaaah. Ew itch.”
The doctor remained unmoved. “Get out, Siraj, before you have to explain to your brother what you were doing in here.”
A shadow passed over his screwed up expression. He gathered his pants and weapons and shouldered past the doctor. When the chamber door slammed behind him, I found myself locked behind bars with another monster. Unfortunately, the doctor wasn’t stupid enough to bring in weapons.