Girl Enchanted (Book 2 of The Girl Trilogy) (10 page)

Though it was probably only ten
minutes or so, it felt like ten hours had passed without any sign
of anyone. I decided to swim into the warehouse through the back
double doors.

Hesitantly, I inspected the dimly lit
large room. I didn’t see anyone inside. There were many aquariums
inside much like the ones outside.

The first large aquarium looked empty
aside from a big black boulder and a steel windmill set on a silver
pole. I stared through the glass trying to figure out what the
habitat was for. But, suddenly a red light flashed from behind the
rock. I flinched and hurtled backwards from fright—a turtle with a
human head swam out from behind the boulder.

The being looked at me fiercely for a
moment. It had long blond hair and blue piercing eyes. Then it
turned to the windmill and started spinning it with the claws of
its webbed green feet.

It spun the apparatus faster and
faster. The water began to swirl, gaining momentum. The creature
looked at me. Its hair was wild in the water. Its shell was lifting
up from the newly created force and flow. A sort of twister started
forming.

I didn’t know what to think. The
mystery of it was frightening.

But, nothing beyond that happened. The
human-headed turtle merely stopped spinning the windmill and the
water calmed. A brine shrimp swam out from behind the rock and the
creature ate it in one swallow, sucking it into its mouth in the
manner of a fish.

After my body relaxed for a moment, I
noticed a small XZX attached to the side of the aquarium. Out of
curiosity, I lifted the cover. The screen lit. It listed all the
information about the being before me.

There was a lot of technical language
that I didn’t understand, but from what I read, the creature was a
genetic crossbreed between a female human dwarf and a prehistoric
sea turtle.

Nervously, I looked around the
warehouse for human presence, but saw none. Because there were so
many aquariums and cages placed and stacked throughout the large
room, someone could easily be out of view and behind
one.

The dwarf headed turtle was so bazaar
to me that I hardly knew what I thought of it. I did wonder if it
could talk, but from the way it acted, it seemed dense with a
turtle brain.

I should have left the vicinity, but
my curiosity was even stronger now. Quickly I swam to the next
aquariums. There were two tanks stacked up on top of each other
here.

The upper tank had a maze in it made
out of a clear winding tube that overlaid in twists and turns.
Large cockroaches with mice heads were swimming through the
apparatus. They were gruesome sights.

Below that tank were teeny tiny
swimming horses with duck heads. Though they were odd indeed, they
were actually kind of cute. Their white feathered heads blended
seamlessly with the white horse hair and manes on their lower
bodies.

The next huge aquarium faced away and
was darkened on the sides, so I had to swim around to its front to
view its contents through the clear glass. When I approached, I
nearly fainted. A huge barbaric giant with gills on the sides of
his face was shackled inside. The man, dressed in an animal pelt,
was sleeping in a chair with his wrists secured to the back of the
aquarium.

He was huge. His body was hairy and
each leg was bigger than my entire being. He had an overgrown beard
that was brown and speckled with grey. Certainly, he looked mean
and scary, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him trapped
inside such confines.

What was this place I had found? It
must be top secret. If the U.S. was still in power, I would suspect
that it was government run. Then it occurred to me that maybe Mazen
Tratzel might have known about it or could even possibly be
involved with it. Maybe the secret nature of these facilities is
the reason the community is forbidden to cross the boundary line
that separates the lake from the woods.

My mind reeled with various
contemplations and scenarios, but I didn’t have time to figure it
out now. I wanted to explore more and I wanted to move quickly
before I got caught. If I was to be discovered in such a place, I
imagined the involved would have to kill me for fear that I might
reveal their secret.

Each aquarium had some sort of
crossbreed. Quickly, I viewed the contents of as many as I could.
There were dolphins with bird wings, crocodiles with human legs,
water dogs with cheetah spots… I was so perplexed and fascinated—I
wanted to study these creatures more closely, but there wasn’t
enough time. I had to get out before I was discovered.

The rabbits with pig snouts were
strange looking and they were able to change from the physical to
the ethereal in shadowy figures like the goat cat that had attacked
me in the willows. But odder than that were the huge phosphorescent
eggs that were in large incubators. I wondered what were going to
hatch from those.

Now that I was in the back of the
warehouse, I saw another doorway. So far I hadn’t been caught.
Maybe if I just peeked inside, I might find something to explain
this facility. Maybe I would find a clue or maybe the company name
would be displayed somewhere so that I could figure out who was
running such a lab.

I pushed the door and peeked in. It
was dark. Surely nobody was in there considering the lights were
off. I swam in hesitantly and listened. Nothing. No sounds at all.
I was pretty certain, I was alone in the room, so I felt around the
wall for a light switch. It wasn’t there so a checked the next
wall.

Something grabbed my arm. I screamed
as it pulled me to it. How stupid I had been. How
stupid.

10

“
Help me,” a masculine
voice said as some unknown creature pulled me up against the metal
bars of its cage forcefully.

I thought I was going to die from
fright. What had I done? How stupid I had been to go into this
room. Wasn’t it enough just exploring the warehouse?

To my utter shock, the music in my
mind burst out of my body and was playing a wondrous, magical song
like I had never experienced before. I struggled to get away, but
the creature was so strong and it managed to grab my other wrist
too and pulled me right up against it. I could feel its heart beat
against mine.

I felt the strongest sensation of love
that I had ever felt. Music was everywhere. It was like an
electrical storm in the heavens. This was crazy. What was
happening? I wanted to get away. I wanted normalcy, a regular
life.

Lyrics came into the music. The words
were in Hebrew—what my mother called the holy language of God. The
words of the bible flowed through me. I could hear the creatures in
the other room thrashing around from the excitement.

Colors lit up before my eyes. I saw an
opening above my head split the darkness and explode with the most
intense heavenly light. In this vision, I saw a cave within the
brightness. My consciousness travelled through it.

There was the biblical patriarch and
matriarch, Abraham and Sarah. How glorious! They lifted in perfect
form and grandeur from their graves. I saw myself rise from another
grave, shining with light and shocking beauty like I had never
seen. How could such a woman be me? And at my side, a man of great
height and physical perfection and light rose up from his grave
beside mine. He took my hand. The music lifted to the Godly, to
perfect unity.

I looked at the creature pulling me up
against the cage. He was lit from the light above now. He was me. I
was him. We were one.

“
Eve,” He said. “Eve.” His
voice was soft.

I cried. The history of the world
rushed through me in Hebrew song with visions of clarity. I loved
him. “I deceived you. I deceived God,” I said. “I brought death to
the world.”

He wrapped his arms around me through
the bars. I felt so ashamed and naked. “Adam,” I called this
glorious being holding me against his chest. “I am of your flesh,
created from your rib.”

The boy before me also had a fish
tale, but his skin was made of the flexible, but strong material
that fingernails are made of. He had eyes of every color and dark
hair that shined in heavenly light from the vision that waded above
us. He was the most beautiful being in the world. And he was
good.

But, then I felt a hard blow to my
head from behind and I passed out.

When I awoke, I was trapped inside a
cage about seven feet high and four feet wide. To my right was
another cage of the same. It contained a human girl with a zebra
body. Her skin was black and her hair was long and red. She was
pretty with light blue eyes, full lips, and fine features. To my
left was a tall aquarium containing a tiger with a tropical fish
body of bright colors. And in a huge cage before me, just several
feet away was a giant man even bigger than the other giant I saw
prior.

“
Finally, you are awake,”
the zebra girl said.

Startled, my head jutted back. I
wasn’t expecting her to be able to speak. I didn’t think any of
these creatures could talk. “Uh, yeah—I’m conscious.” I was in a
different room than the other two rooms I had explored earlier. I
looked around.

“
You’re surprised to be
here?” her beautiful eyes narrowed as she looked at me. I noticed
her tale swatted away a small fish that swam inside her cage
through the bars.

“
Yes, I am surprised,” I
said as I looked around the dim room. Though I was very interested
in speaking with her, I was anxiously surveying my surroundings.
“Where are we?”

This room was smaller than the main
room in the warehouse where I had entered. It appeared as if the
three creatures I mentioned and I were the only living beings
within. There was a work desk and a metal cabinet against a far
wall with a few empty medical beds with straps and shackles set up
in a row to the side.

“
We are in hell,” The giant
said in a thunderous voice. He was sitting inside his cage, slumped
over in a chair. His expression was melancholy.

I couldn’t help but feel frightened
when I looked at him. He was probably nine feet tall and his body
was so thick and wide. Like the other giant, he had a beard, but
his was solid brown as was his thick head of hair.

I looked over at the tiger with the
fish body. It swam around this way and that as it tilted its head
back in what looked like a “roar,” but I couldn’t hear any noise
through the glass.

“
That thing doesn’t talk,”
the zebra girl laughed.

The giant looked at her sternly and
for a minute her body stiffened. In her stillness she almost looked
like a statue. “If it can talk, we wouldn’t know…” the giant
grumbled as he continued to stare at the zebra girl, “…because the
aquarium glass mutes the sound waves.”

I noticed the giant had many red welts
up and down his arms. Some were in the process of healing and
pinkish in color, but others were bubbled up with puss oozing out.
Oddly, the welts looked like burn marks. I couldn’t figure out
where he could have gotten such wounds.

The zebra girl hunched forward
suddenly as she coughed and gasped for air. “You wretched fool!”
she hissed at the giant as she stared back at him with her intense
blue eyes. “Stupid! You think I won’t get you back for turning me
into a statue?”

Suddenly, the giant flinched and
hollered in agony as he pulled his right arm away from her harsh
gaze. “Evil beast,” he grunted. “If I could get out of this cage I
would eat you up and burn your bones!”

A small circle of skin on his arm was
lit with fire. Twisting in his chair, he patted the flames out. I
was surprised how fire could light under water. Apparently these
creatures had unusual powers.

Their banter frightened me. I didn’t
want to be subjected to the wrath of their powers. It appeared as
if I was in a horrible bind once again—trapped between two
vindictive creatures with nothing to do but torture each other. I
had so many questions, but I wasn’t sure if I should continue
talking for fear of directing their machinations toward
me.

“
I’m sure you are very
curious about your situation, sweetheart,” the zebra girl said.
“You don’t have to worry—I won’t hurt you. I’m thrilled to have a
female companion. This place is lonely.”

I was relieved that she had no plans
of evil intent toward me, but I didn’t trust her. I swam around my
cage feeling around and shaking the bars to see if I could free
myself.

“
Wouldn’t that be nice if
you could simply break open the bars,” she said as she tied her
long red hair in a knot on her head. “I wouldn’t even know what to
do with myself if I were to get away. My entire life has been in
this cage in one room or another or on the leaders’ experimental
cots.” She pointed to the medical beds lined up against the
wall.

“
We were born here,” the
giant said as he held his wounded arm. “The leaders created us and
all the other cross breeds. They must have made you too—half girl,
half fish. Are you a stray from Azkelon?”

The zebra girl interjected, “Of course
she is! We can tell you were not raised in the facilities in a cage
because you have a wild look in your eyes. You are from the
outside.”