I have to get back to him. I have to find him. I cannot manage a single thought which does not somehow reference him. Is this what love is? I don’t know. He tried so hard to teach me the ways of being human, and he told me that love was the most human thing of all. I didn’t understand it at the time, and I don’t understand it now. Is it love to feel as though you are being ripped apart in the most visceral torture possible? They have hurt me in many ways over the years, but I’ve never felt pain like this.
“LET ME OUT!”
I do not know why I am crying out. They will not listen. They never have. My sounds are just data being thrust into their processors, so they can manipulate me more thoroughly next time, and probably so they can do this very same thing to others yet to be cut out of their gel slumber.
“PLEASE!”
I do not expect a response, but my weak biology demands that this pain have expression. I must call for my lost love, I must try to bring him back to me with the sounds of my soul. I wail and I cry, pulling against the bonds which hold me in place for what feels like hours. Time does not have the same meaning it once did. When I was with Tom, time was always short. It seemed to me that the weeks we spent together passed by in the space of minutes. Sun rises were followed almost immediately by sunsets, as if I lived my life in time lapse.
Now I am apart from him, time seems utterly endless, the moments between my breaths drawing out into infinity. My face is wet with liquid leaking from my eyes. My shoulders heave. My nose runs. My body is breaking down, turning from blood and bone to snot and water. There is a pain in my chest, a tightness and an ache which makes it hard to breathe. Am I dying? I have seen images of death many times, felt the pain of serious injuries, but this feels different. It is deeper and it consumes every part of me.
I cry out until my throat is raw, another new feeling. Missing Tom isn’t just an emotional response, it is a full body torture, one I’m not sure I will be able to survive. Is he coming for me? Can he even come for me? What has she done to him?
Next time I see her, she will die. I’m done being civilized. It’s weakness. It allowed me to feel and then those feelings were turned against me almost immediately. I’m going feral. I’m going to yank at these chains until they break. I’m going to claw my way through that door with my bare hands, peel layers of metal back until I can crawl out of here, and then the dying is going to start.
All I have now are violent fantasies. But I can’t do any of those things. This room was engineered to hold me. I’m a prisoner in a world I cannot escape. But there will be a chance. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But inevitably, I will have my revenge.
Brother
Electra
A very long time passes. The lights are always on low, enough to sleep by, but not enough to ever be fully awake or fully rested. I am jacked into the chemical plugs which pump nameless substances into my body. I do not move. I do not do anything besides hate and wait.
And then one day, the door opens.
It is a tall man with a beard. He has broad shoulders and narrow hips, and though the lights do not illuminate his face, I know the outline of the man I love.
“TOM!”
“Not Tom.” The voice emerging from the blank man does not belong to Tom, but he looks so much like him, I can’t understand it for a moment or two. My mind is slow. I didn’t notice it before in my state of twilight existence, but I have been heavily sedated. Now that I try to communicate, I find myself stupid.
“I’m Ken,” he says, stepping into the room. “We have met before.”
“Right. The brother.”
“That’s right,” he says. His tone is neutral. I don’t know what he wants. His hand touches my wrist as he undoes one of my shackles, and my skin reacts to being touched again. It has been a long time since I felt any human contact. It feels strange. Something I want to recoil from even though my instincts tell me to go toward it. I need to be touched, but not by Ken. The brother is not good enough, and I can scent another woman on this man. His mate.
“What are you doing?” I mumble the question as he frees me piece by piece.