Liquid Death (The Edinön Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

              “Let's just take him to the benches. He'll probably recover in a few minutes.”

---

              “We're losing him, we're losing him!”

              “Doctor, it's over. We can't sustain him.”

              “Doctor, there has been a tremendous spike in epinephrine. We're ready for the blood.”

              I opened my eyes to lights and blurred faces. My wrists broke through the straps automatically, and I turned my head. In a bed adjacent to mine, the body of a girl covered from head to toe in blood convulsed violently.

              “Hold him down! Hold him down!”

              I felt no resistance against me, though I knew they were exerting every effort to pin me to the bed. My skin tingled as electricity danced across it. I was coming to life.

              Roaring, I flung myself from the bed and plunged to the ground, blood seeping from every pore in my body.

              “He's not going to make it,” a woman murmured apprehensively.

              “Oh, he'll make it,” a man assured darkly. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, addressing the room, “We have finally found the perfect subject.”

              Applause and cheers erupted. My face met the cement, and all lights flickered out.

              I conceive the one method to disclose Blue Skys’ secrets is to penetrate the heart of it. The answers are not here at Sunny Days. Kandi is not here, either. The answers lie within the Patients, Doctors, and Nurses. With Kandi’s assistance, I believe we can achieve the impossible.

              My eyes rove the cafeteria, idly observing the bubbly conversations among teens, the chewing and chomping and swallowing of detestable government-regulated food, the stares that occasionally find me and disperse before I notice… I yawn. I have two options: remain in Sunny Days, graduate, lose track of Kandi and the truth, and perhaps attend a secret, imaginary university somehow founded by Doctor Hendricks called Blue Days, Sunny Skys, or Periwinkle Butterflys. Or, I can do this…

              I abruptly hop to my feet and grip under the table, summoning every drop of strength I contain. Biceps and abdominals flexing, I roar and toss the table across the room, aiming for an unoccupied area. Tim and Mac dive from their seats and somersault out of the table’s path. It launches over several students’ heads before crashing against the opposite wall. A few girls scream, many people gasp, and all gape at me.

              I don’t stop there. Before my aides have a chance to get up, I yank the two by their suit jackets and bash their heads together like watermelons.

              A siren blares from the school speakers, and five security guards march my way, armed with tranquilizers.

              “You’ll never get away with this!” I shout dramatically.

              I hear the command to fire before several darts puncture my neck, chest, and arms. My final thought is of Kandi before my legs give out beneath me and my head contacts the dirty floor.

***

The Twentieth

              Apr. 18, 2017

                           
I wake up soaked in sweat, shivering
; nightgown clinging to my skin, hair sticking to my face.

              I slide off the bed and squeeze my head between my fists as the throbbing ache intensifies within my skull. The world is a bowl of Jell-O – solid, but never still. My mouth is parched and filmy, and my nose is bleeding.

              A sob rips through me as the world tilts, my side absorbing the impact to the cold cement. I land on my new stitches and silently scream, visualizing death.

              I haven't contemplated death as much as I used to before readmission, which may be due to the small glimmer of hope I’ve been weakly grasping since Juan appeared.

              I have been dwelling in the shadows my entire life, concerned solely by my own physical and emotional discomforts. I have always despised physical contact; the touch of another human used to irk me. After my mother and sister died, touching has not been an option. A hand on my skin is a brief brush with a hot stove. The pain lingers, even after the contact is over. When I was younger, I was able to brush the pain away like a mere itch. Now, there is no relief.

              Juan is the boy my father dubbed the “perfect subject.” I remember his face, his bedraggled dark hair. I know he must remember me because of the way he looked at me during class and therapy… and because of the note he left in my hand:

             
I’ll get you out.

              I believe he will, even after three months confined in a torture facility lawfully cloaked as a juvenile mental health center by a caring federal government. Juan may not be able to protect me from my father, but he can protect me from the Doctors. He simply has not realized his full potential yet. Not even daily overdoses of Theratocin could contain him for long, thanks to my father’s controversial genetic experimentation.

              Before Juan, I was utterly alone. With him in the picture, I actually have someone to care about. Somehow this knowledge ebbs my own torment – I can look past it and strive to ease his.

              Miss Eddington cheerfully carts breakfast into the room, wearing a white coat over the female Doctor uniform: white blouse, gray pencil skirt. She is Doctor A, and has been working with me since my father was arrested. She was an old college friend of my mother’s before she met my father. My father convinced her to join his genetic research project, no doubt promising glory and enough money to purchase Africa to sweeten the deal. I know he fulfilled one of his promises: Doctor A hasn’t aged a day since my birth. She is in her late forties and could pass as a college student.

              “
Where should I make you bleed first, my little fountain of youth?”

              I do not have the will to move on my own.

              “Patient 1, how are you healing up?” Miss Eddington chirps as she pushes the cart toward my cot in the corner. Outside of Blue Skys, I am Kandi. Within the walls of this Hell, names do not exist. Perhaps it is easier to treat people like rats when they are nameless.

              I do not satisfy her apathetic inquiry with so much as a groan. I don’t even lift my head.

              The Doctor bends over to inspect the stitches along my stomach and left hip. My left kidney was removed yesterday. That was fun. I am the goose who laid the golden egg. These humans are becoming greedy.

              She hoists me onto the cot and props me against the wall. There is enough Theratocin in my system to drown a blue whale. I am limp as a wet noodle.

              I stare blankly at the back wall while Doctor A nudges pancakes and sausage nuggets into my mouth like I’m her paralyzed infant. After breakfast, she removes my nightgown and gives me a delightful sponge bath. Though quiescent, I shiver unceasingly. I am chilled to the marrow in this stagnant, frosty air. My room is a freezer, and I am a frozen hunk of forsaken peas.

              Miss Eddington tugs a fresh nightgown down over my head and gathers three fresh samples of blood from my right forearm. She then works delicately to remove the stitches from my stomach and replace the counterproductive bandage. Honestly, they could rip me in half and feed me to dogs, and I would still magically heal…. Although I’d prefer they
not
do that.

              I wonder what my mother would say if she saw me in this situation. Would she amend her insistence that I conceal my identity? Should I incinerate Doctor A on the spot? Would that be too messy?

              I wonder where Juan is right now. Why am I still here?

              Like clockwork, the Theratocin effect fades by Miss Eddington’s second visitation. Without Theratocin, I
feel
things… and as a result my face is drenched in tears. I have no control over this. I’m sure my cries can be heard miles away, and I don’t care.

              “Patient 1, you must be calm,” she says, stuffing bits of crustless bread between my chapped lips. Fortunately, the bread is tainted, so the drugging effect is almost immediate. My emotions burrow into the dark recesses of my brain where they belong.

              “There. Chew and swallow. That’s good.”

              Ha! Don’t make me laugh, Doctor A! My side is splitting!

              Sometimes, especially in situations like this, I am glad Traci is gone. She will never experience the pain of mortality as I have. I know she is happy wherever she is, or, at the very least, does not miss life. Death must be so sweet. My curse is I can never attain it.

              When I am left alone again, the world becomes much grayer. I see shapes in the mist, including outlines of my mother, sister, and father. My mother is gardening by the door, Traci is practicing her dance recital routine, and my father is glowering at me with his grass-green eyes from the opposite side of the room.

              “You can’t hide forever,” he says. “One day, you will speak.”

             
Your mind games cannot affect me, Dad. Or have you forgotten?

             
“Where are you going, Kandi?” he asked from the shadows of the living room.

              I ignored him, passing through. He appeared like a ghost in front of me. I rolled my eyes. “I am going to the kitchen. I can’t sleep.”

              He cocked an eyebrow. “You miss the pain, don’t you? Losing your blood for another is pleasurable to you.”

              I pressed forward. “In your darkest fantasy, perhaps.”

              “You can talk to me, Kandi. You can tell me what ails you.”

              The house was dim and tranquil at night when Mom and Traci were asleep. I never could rest when Dad was in the house. The powerful presence of his mind haunted my nightmares. I shook my head and inspected the refrigerator’s interior.

              “You are not alone in your pain.”

              I whammed the fridge shut and glared icily. “My greatest pain is that I
am
alone, Dad.” I closed my blistering eyes and sighed heavily. “I am tired. Let me rest.”

              “I love you, Kandi. You know that, right?”

              Weary of his telepathic meddling, I emitted a psychic pulse that could obliterate the electrical output for several blocks. He withered to the tile floor. I bit into the apple I obtained from the fridge and stepped over his tremoring form. “I love you too, Daddy.”

              To divert my thoughts from my deceased family, I envision my first encounter with Juan. He was fifteen, and I was sixteen. Dad had escaped prison the first time and “convinced” Leyla Hendricks to permit him and a modest crew of Doctors to fly to San Diego for a “business trip.” He had met Juan before throughout his dealings with Juan’s father, the notorious meth dealer/millionaire/lawyer. His mind-warping, prophetic abilities led him to believe Juan would be the ideal weapon once my blood was in his system – the “perfect subject” the Doctors had been searching for since the project’s conception.

              I recall lying on a cold, stainless steel pallet beside Juan. He was unconscious and hooked to a machine that transferred my blood directly into his veins. This was in the midst of my “zombie years” when I shed not a tear nor felt pain or sorrow. I was in such a shock for the first four years following the initial indictment of my father that I couldn’t think or do anything for myself. The Doctors were forced to frequently check whether I was breathing because I was as close to death as I would ever come.

              Juan’s face reminded me there was a world beyond Blue Skys, and people besides Blue Skys’ Doctors and disturbed Patients. Juan reminded me normal people existed.

              It was during this moment of clarity that I began to feel again. I felt my mother’s and sister’s loss. I felt Dad’s betrayal. I felt the knife against my throat and in my chest. I grasped Juan’s slack hand in my numb fingers and cried.

             
“I just want to have friends,” I sobbed. “I just want to be normal.”

             
“You will never be normal.”

              “You will always be a grotesque anomaly.”

              “Your mother never loved you. She only loved what you were.”

              “You are a Nobody. You don’t exist.”

              “You are alone and will always be alone.”

              “You are never going home.”

              “Hey, Kandi.”

              In the thick of the mist, Kyle Smith materializes, dressed in a black suit and tie like all male Blue Skys employees. He chases the voices abroad and smiles pensively. He pulls up a chair and plops into it, scratching the back of his neck and obnoxiously breathing.

              “I’m sorry about the... you know.”

              Huh. So Kyle is not a figment of my imagination. No way would I hallucinate a statement so ludicrous. The lights above my head flicker. My family vanishes.

              “I… uh…” He shrugs. “I meant to visit you sooner, but Doctor L has been pulling all the strings she can to keep me away from you. I suppose she has good reason. Anyway… since you’re twenty today, I thought I should probably pay you the long-overdue visit to warn you. The Doctors are growing anxious, L especially. She believes twenty is a magical number that will somehow awaken your powers and turn her plans upside down.” He hangs his head. “They are coming today. L plans to interrogate you before she proceeds with the final dissection. She granted me access to your room before their arrival.” Kyle combs his fingers through my hair. “This is my last chance to experience the rush…” He exhales and shudders. “Your skin is like silk,” he whispers huskily as he caresses my skin.

             
Ah, Theratocin
. The fantastic drug that makes reality hurt a little less.

              His calescent mouth explores my neck – I feel the knife.

              His hands probe under my gown – I feel Ms. Hendricks’ merciless gaze as she straps me to the metal table.

              “The heart today, Leyla.”

              The saw. Cracking ribs. Blood. Always so much blood.

              Jim carves an ‘X’ into my chest. “’X’ marks the spot,” he says gleefully.

             
Boom. Boom. Boom.

              Suddenly, Kyle’s body is yanked from mine, and I open my eyes to behold a tall figure dressed in white.

              “Get away from her!”

              Though my vision is shrouded in tears, I can make out black hair, tan skin, and a Patient’s jumpsuit. My heart soars.

              The alarm peals, and guards march into my room. Juan! Even after all this time, he has not forgotten me.

              “Kandi!” Juan kneels at my bedside, his eyes as teary as my own. “I’m so sorry!”

              “Shoot him!”

              I watch in horror as his body is riddled with darts. I am so stunned that my defenses refuse to respond. I scream, louder as Miss Eddington replaces Juan by my side with another dose of Theratocin.

***

              “Don't listen to him, Kandi!” Alice pleaded. She was in the corner, hiding behind the couch on hands and knees. Her long blond hair was pulled up in a loose ponytail, and she was wearing the same clothes she wore the night we met. “You don't have to listen to him!”

              “Shut up, Alice!” my uncle yelled. Suddenly he had a pistol in his hand, and he pointed it at me. I froze.

              “Kandi! Run!”

              “You're ruining my life, Kandi,” Jim sobbed through gritted teeth, tightening his hold of the weapon. “Jeremy promised he would take you back, but he lied. He always lies.”

              “Jim! Please, don't! It's not her fault! Kandi's innocent!”

              “She is not innocent. I have been through
hell
because of her! She poisoned you with her lies! She is just like her father!”