Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

I woke small conference room, a long shiny desk ran down the middle with white padded chairs pushed in underneath. A movie projector was raised high and attached to the wall. There were no windows and the hard strip lighting was off so I had no idea what time it was, only that I had been asleep for a couple of hours. I had that vague awareness that I had had very little sleep, but still that significant time had past. My eyes felt sharp and prickly as I fought to keep them open.

Awful dead silence rang around me until my head started to thud dully. The silence made me anticipate something, I remembered where I was in the hazy waking process and I started to shiver. I was sleeping on the uncomfortable tiled floor in a sleeping bag. I had been too tired to care before, but now my back ached. I suppose the sum of all this was that I wasn’t in a good place, emotionally or physically, as I hung between sleep I imagined waking up in my little messy flat with regretful longing.

It was the first time I had thought about it, but Doctor Stewart was the only person I had seen since I got here. How did I know he was being honest, this could all be an elaborate trick to keep me from knowing the truth. Was Lisa really fine, being questioned somewhere, was she here at all? There was no way of knowing. I remembered Maria’s screams, the closed door in my face, could that all have been false? Something told me that this was really happening, the things I had been told were not lies. This something, this unexplained feeling, was numbing and chilling. I couldn’t keep my thoughts from becoming head aches, complicated and twisted as they were.

The door swung open. My heart beat furiously and quickly as insect wings as the door hit the opposite wall. There was no one there, the room still softly grey in the darkness. As my heart started to calm I lay back into my sleeping bag, until a black smudge raced across my eye line. I’ve never sat upright so quickly, I wasn’t foolish enough to call out, whatever was in here wasn’t human. I knew that from the speed at which I had registered that the black smudge was a creature. Maybe it was only a cat, even so, I retreated silently into the corner of the room, pushing my feet along the tiles with my hands.

I was sure that whatever was there had heard my heart already, it seemed to echo through the room. What if it was one of them? what would they imagine hearing my blood rushing through me? Then I remembered, it’s not just blood. I was overcome with cold panic when I realised I didn’t want to die, I didn’t want to be torn apart and spread across the flood like Robert Thompson. It seems like an obvious thought, but as I rolled my hands into fists my will to live pulsed through me.

Then I saw her, she blurred past my vision again, but this time I was sure it was a woman. She was crouched in the opposite end of the room now, curled up like a panther. Her skin was dark, so dark I could only make out curves and indistinct shapes, but she was definitely naked. I felt no shame or arousal in looking at her, the way she moved so quickly and the way she was holding herself, she was more an animal than a human and somehow it made sense.

She was deathly silent, not breathing, she didn’t even make a sound when she moved. I could see her hair was a wild matted tangle and her dark lips were slightly parted, but her eyes, were shimmering white and hungry. They glinted like light bulbs in the black room.

She moved towards me. She was still crouched, her shoulders arched, again like a wild cat. Slowly stalking towards me, her eyes fixed on the prize, her gaze unwavering and hungry. I saw her nostrils flare, she was smelling me, smelling the sweat sliding down my temples. I couldn’t run, I knew she would catch me if I tried, and I was fascinated by the way she moved. I was almost happy, that my last moments would be spent watching her and studying her.

I looked at her hands like paws making no sound or impression on the tiled floor, at the knees bending with a gymnast’s skill. I looked anywhere but those eyes, the only part of her not animal like and controlled, but too human, too much longing and need in them. I waited for ‘The Touch’ that’s what Doctor Stewart told me it was called, the moment when your mind goes blank and you’ll give in to anything. It would be better that way, if I was relaxed, ready to give in.

It never came. I waited but it didn’t come, I began to shake as she moved ever closer. I skipped a gaze and she was only a metre from me, the way she crawled was now grating on me, she was toying with me because she knew I wouldn’t run. I felt a dribble of saliva run over my lips and realised my mouth had been open and my throat closed ever since I had seen those white eyes.

Please let it come, I begged someone, anyone. Her hands closed around my feet, even through my sleeping bag I could feel how warm they were, so warm I almost thought it had come, The Touch. She pulled hard and my head slammed against the tiles, dizzying, instant pain spread through me and I felt sick. She was on top of me, she didn’t smell of anything, but I could smell my cold sweat seeping through my clothes.

Her naked body was pressed against mine, I could feel her hard nipples, her muscled thighs, her hands worked up my body and those horrible human eyes were inches away from mine. Her lips pressed against my cheek and her hands slid up my throat. I closed my eyes. My final thoughts before the blow were of Angelica, I wished I had seen her again, I wished I had got to touch her.

Phlorescent tubes burst into life over my head, though my closed eyes I could feel their warmth. The woman gave a horrible throaty cry and I no longer felt her weight on top of me. I gingerly opened my eyes to see three men holding her back.

In the bright light she was a terrible vision, her white eyes wide and straining from their sockets. The men were holding her upright and she seemed so strange that way, like a cat standing on its hind legs. Her arms were flailing at me and her hands were turned into claws, and she kept screaming a low rattling wail of frustration and disappointment.

The three men holding her were struggling against this one thin woman, sweat glistening on their heads, but their expressions were bored and tired, they had seen it all before. One of them took out a syringe with a cloudy white substance contained within. He drove it deep into her thrashing arm and almost instantly she was subdued. Her eyes were still open and her brain still functioning, but she had stopped moving, stopped caring about me. Her eyes drifted off into another corner of the room.

I grabbed my chest to try and calm the pain at my heart trying to escape.

One of the men snorted at me, I must’ve looked ridiculous to these jaded people.

He grunted in a thick French accent, ‘be careful, door unlocked.’