Authors: Lynnie Purcell
I started tugging at my chains, searching for a way to get my hands free. My wrists ached painfully with each tug, but I kept tugging; my hands were my way to freedom. The pain in my wrists changed intensity as I pulled harder against the metal handcuffs. It was the sharp pain of skin tearing away from my body.
“Ow. Ow. Ow,” I said to the black-hole of the mask as I tugged harder, despite the pain.
I wasn’t sure if I had somehow lost weight when I had been lost in dreamland or if the accumulated sweat from the lack of air conditioning was my savior. All I knew was the feeling of hope when I finally managed to free myself. The right hand slipped out of the manacles first, leaving a good portion of my skin behind. I ignored the pain and started forcing my left hand free. After another minute, the left hand slipped out as well.
My hands now free, I started working on the mask. My hands moved to the hinges, and then on to the lock Master Limp had placed to keep it shut. I felt the lock, to see what my options were. It was a smaller lock, not heavy duty. Master Limp probably trusted the chains to keep curious hands away from it. Trusting that the silver chains were a heavier metal than the lock, I found the cuffs again and picked them up. I raised the chains above my head and aimed for the lock.
The first strike was off, hitting the mask with a solid ‘thump!’ My head rang with the strike. The ringing lasted for a long moment. When the sound stopped, I tried again. This time, I hit the lock straight on. It took two more hits, before the lock broke away. I pushed the bolt back through the hole and, gratefully, thankfully, pushed the metal mask off my face. I sucked in a deep breath of air, glad to be free…sort of. I still had the chains around my feet and a locked door to get through.
I started working at the chains around my feet. They were difficult, because of my bulky boots. I couldn’t slip my feet out of the chains, like I had with my wrists. I was still working on them when Master Limp found me.
The door was thrown back, and he appeared in its place. I jumped when I saw him staring down at me. He was surprised, but not for the reason I thought.
“Lost the bet to Mama Dot again. I would have thought you’d go crazy for sure,” he said.
“Sorry…” I said. “I was close, though, if it makes you feel any better. I totally got ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made of This’ by the Eurythmics stuck in my head. But only the chorus. It kept repeating over and over again. Way annoying. You know it?”
“I don’t listen to music,” Master Limp said.
“That’s really quite depressing.”
“How did you get your hands free of the chains?” he demanded, ignoring me.
“Magic,” I said.
“You have a talent that resists the silver?” he asked curiously.
“No. I pulled until there wasn’t resistance. It’s the magic of physics.”
“Are you human?” he asked.
“Aren’t we all?” I asked back.
“Anna brought us a human? She didn’t make mention of that….it changes everything…longer training…different testing methods…I should mention this to Mama Dot….How old are you?”
“Old enough to know you shouldn’t ask a lady that question,” I said.
He slapped me. “Answer a question when it is asked of you,” he demanded.
“Sixteen,” I said, holding my cheek.
“When is your birthday?”
“Halloween.”
“Hm. Well, I will have to take that under consideration. You’ve passed your first test, anyway. Most break within a day. You lasted three.”
Three days? I had been in that thing for three days? Is that how long I had been lost in dreams?
“Today is my favorite day. It’s branding day,” Master Limp added.
“Branding?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun. Mama Dot enjoys explaining.”
“Great!” I said, pretending to be excited even though my stomach was in knots.
Master Limp unlocked the chains around my feet. He forced me to stand by grabbing the back of my shirt with his rough hands. I winced as my feet touched the ground; every bone in my body hurt. It was pain beyond anything I had ever experienced. He dragged me out of the silver cell and down the door-lined hallway. He kept a firm grip on my shirt, but refused to touch my skin. Though he knew I was human, he was obviously perplexed by the fact he couldn’t hear my thoughts…or why I was so blasé about my ordeal. It threw him off. He was obviously not used to sarcasm.
My destination was not a happy one.
I was taken to a large room full of cells that were barred, instead of closed off, as mine had been. People were crowded in to the cells. Many had a helpless look in their eyes; others were full of crazed passion. In the center of the room was a chair. Around that chair was a variety of tools and horrible-looking devices I couldn’t figure out the point to. Mama Dot, her hair curled perfectly and her face serene, was at the foot of the chair. I started fighting Master Limp’s touch, as he pulled me inexorably closer to the chair. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I knew better than to think it would be something pleasant. The chair and the bindings on it were too strong an indicator of the future.
“Don’t be afraid, my dear, we won’t hurt you,” Mama Dot said as Master Limp was forced to kick my legs out, so he could pull me closer to the chair.
“I think we might have differing opinions about the definition of the word ‘hurt,’” I told her, still fighting against Master Limp’s touch.
Master Limp threw me into the heavy-duty chair. Breathing heavily from his attempts to subdue me, he started securing metal restraints over my head, my shoulders, my wrists, my waist, my thighs, and finally my feet. His last act was to take off my boot from my left foot.
“Thank you,” Mama Dot said to Master Limp, once the boot was off.
He nodded and backed away, giving Mama Dot the spotlight. She clasped her hands behind her back and started pacing in front of me. She was careful to stay in my limited range of vision.
“Today is a very important day. Today you will begin your journey in joining our family. You will learn to love Lorian as we love him – as father and provider. You will learn to serve your family and serve them well. You will gladly give your life to the cause, if the cause should need it, and you will learn that the life you have led to this point has been meaningless,” Mama Dot said.
Her words were terrifying. They made me even more determined to rebel. Being hurt was better than giving in to the madness of her words.
“I will not eat any applesauce offered to me if Hale-Bopp passes over,” I said.
“Silence!” Master Limp scolded.
Mama Dot continued speaking with that same serene smile. “Now, you will get a number. It will be your identifier, until you gain access to our family and gain back your name.”
“Identifier?” I asked.
“Mhmm…” She said noncommittally. “Eugene? If you would?”
Master Limp came toward me. With my head strapped down, it was difficult to see him, but I could tell he had something in his hands now; something small and pointy. I strained against the metal strap, as the people around me settled down into a stillness that was eerie. Their stares increased in intensity. I wasn’t sure if it was pleasure or fear that had them watching me so acutely.
Master Limp waited until I caught his eye again, and held up a needle. It was the sort of needle tattoo artists used. It was something I would have normally been all for…had I picked out the design.
“Identifier 73892,” Master Limp said. “This is your new life.”
He lowered the needle to my bare foot and started inscribing those numbers on the center of my foot, near my arch. I clenched my teeth at the pain, but refused to cry out. I struggled to free myself, angry at them for trying to take away my name. Ellen had given me my name. She had said it had come to her in a dream. It was important to her…it was important to me. They had no right to try and erase that.
As Master Limp worked on my foot, Mama Dot circled me, whispering words of propaganda.
“Lorian is your father…Lorian will protect you…Serve with dignity…Serve with pride…”
I hated her words.
The metal bars binding me in place started to pop and groan in protest as the hate funneled through my body. I wanted to hurt Master Limp; I wanted to wipe that serene look of Mama Dot’s face. I wanted to make those people stop looking at me.
Master Limp finished with his work, my foot burning from where the needle had pierced flesh, but I wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot. The bars buckled as I found rage I had never known before. It was rage I had kept tempered, even the night I had killed the three. It was a rage brought on by pain and anger, instead of fear for Daniel’s life. Master Limp’s smug expression shifted as the bars cracked and fell away. Mama Dot stepped forward, her face alarmed.
“I thought you said it was human?” she asked Master Limp, reaching out to capture me again.
“It is…” Master Limp replied, looking shaken.
I growled at her, literally. It was a deep tearing sound that rattled my brain and tore into my throat. I jumped toward Master Limp, my anger focused on him and the needle he held in his hand. It was the wrong thing to do.
As I leapt at him, Mama Dot reached for me. In a touch I was able to understand her talent. It was agony. Waves of pain, of thousands of years of pain, washed through my body. I saw faces associated with the pain, making it worse. She was a collector of pain – the perfect person for torture. I dropped to the ground as the pain wracked my body. She kept her hand on my arm, forcing me to look; she showed me the penalty for disobeying. It felt like dying.
Mama Dot finally released her hold on me, just as I was thinking it was too much. I lay on the floor, breathing heavily. The echoes of the visions circled my head; pain raced through my veins.
“This one needs the fire taken out of her. Normal methods just won’t work. She’s had other Watchers training her. She knows too much. She needs a hard reprogramming. Seclusion, erasure, surprise… you know the drill. Let me know when she’s ready to start listening…” Mama Dot’s face grew serene again. “I can tell she’ll be a great asset to us. Anna was right.” She waved her hand to where I was debilitated on the floor. “Go on and take her…unless you need help?”
“I’ve got it,” Master Limp said in a low tone, embarrassed by Mama Dot’s words.
He set his needle on a small table and pulled me up by my hair. He forced me forward, causing me to stumble and trip over the rough floor. He didn’t take me back to the silver cell. He took me somewhere far worse.
Growling, snuffling, and other dog-like sounds filled the air the closer we got to our destination. The decayed stench of death circled my nose. Around the pain in my body, I pulled away from the sounds and the smell. I knew what they meant. Nightstalkers were near.
Master Limp stopped in front of a metal grate embedded in the floor. The grate was also made of silver and was massive enough to prevent escape. He kicked it open with his good leg. Without any smug words or oily confidence, he picked me up by the convenient handle of my hair again and pushed me into the hole. I fell and landed hard on to a dirt floor.
Gasping for air, I sat up to see what kind of fresh hell he had forced me into. The room was circular, roughly made, as if someone had dug it out of the ground by hand. It was circled on all sides by large silver gates similar to the one Master Limp had opened to throw me down here.
The silver gates wouldn’t have deterred from escape, but the Nightstalkers behind them did. The only way through the gates was through them. When they heard me hit the ground they padded to their respective gates to get a better look. The lustful growling – lust for my death – didn’t take long to start. Their red eyes peered out from the shadows of their cells; shadows that stretched too far for comfort.
I found my feet again, not interested in the same things the Nightstalkers were. I looked up in time to see Master Limp shut and lock the gate again. Even if I jumped I would never reach the gate. It was a good fifteen feet above me – fifteen feet too far. That didn’t stop me from trying. I kept jumping, until it was obvious I was only wasting my time and energy.
I sat down again, my body hurting too much from Mama Dot’s pain treatment to keep my feet. I made sure to stay exactly in the center of the room. It was the only place the dim light from above reached. It was the only place that felt ‘safe.’ The shadows circled me. The growling of the Nightstalkers overrode the sounds of terror from different prisons further down the hall.
Were they going to release the Nightstalkers on me? Or was this a part of their terror program? To let me sit near terror incarnate, until I was scared out of my mind?
I curled my knees to my chest, realizing I was still missing a shoe. The missing shoe reminded me of my throbbing foot and my new tattoo. I was afraid to look, to see my existence boiled down to a number, but dark curiosity got the better of me.
There it was – 73892. The black numbers were surrounded by red skin, the needle’s touch still remembered by the fragile skin. If anything, the red skin made the numbers appear even more vivid. It was a number carved in black but remembered by red.
Disgusted and more afraid than ever, I turned my foot over and pressed it into the dirt, hoping the dirt would cover the number. I took my other boot off treating that foot to the same dirt bath, wanting to forget which foot had the tattoo. I knew I would never forget.