Beauty and The Beasley

Chapter 23

Bree found herself spending more time with Beasley than she had with basically anyone else. She would visit him every day and even though he was reluctant about her frequency, she couldn't help her interest in him. She persuaded him into telling her everything about him. Well, not everything - just the juicy bits.

He explained that he did not know what kind of animal he was but that he was the only one of his kind. He also explained that the maps in his cave were places he'd been to and that he had the ability to jump from place to place through the forest as long as he knew where he was going.

He had arrived in Maine three weeks before Bree began working in the pen. He hadn't been able to find the pigs until Bree started working (there was no explanation for that).

"Gee, such great timing." Bree said dryly.

He confessed that he could only remember arriving in London and had stayed there for two years then moved to Pennsylvania where he stayed for only a year and half. After then, he stopped keeping track of how long he stayed in a place, he just moved.

"You've really been to Thailand?" Bree asked.

"I think so. I don't remember which one it is." Beasley said scratching the back of his neck.

He was named Beasley by a group of hunters he'd come across in Townsend. They spotted him when he was scavenging for food and had tried to capture him for a King Kong special. Bree admitted that he definitely would've given those hunters a run for their money - King Kong couldn't talk and did not have disappearing footprints.

"They said i was a beast of prey." Beasley explained.

"What does that mean?" Bree asked crossing one leg over the other.

"It means i eat vertebrates, anything with a backbone." He said. Bree had made a fire for him with her blowtorch seeing how cold the cave was and he hadn't stopped poking at it with a wooden stick from the pile next to him.

She subconsciously touched her back. She had backbones too. Beasley noticed her discomfort and corrected that he only ever ate pigs, wild rice, carp and rats.

"What? You eat rats?" Bree asked scrunching up her nose.

"In the past." He muttered but it sounded more like a loud grumble.

"So, you don't remember where you're from?" Bree asked.

"No." He replied still poking at the flames.

"It's probably a place where stop means continue because clearly you don't want to continue poking that fire."

Beasley let the stick drop for a count of six seconds then quickly picked it up as if on impulse and continued poking the fire.

Bree squinted her eyes to look at him. His claws were long and so sharp that they could pass as kitchen knives. He would constantly sway gently to the side as if dozing off then aggressively poke the fire again.

"Are you ADHD?" She asked.

"What?" He asked and looked up. He hadn't revealed his eyes since their snow fight which he kept on claiming he'd won.

"ADHD? Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, do you have that?"

"What is it? Some tool?" He asked shoving the burnt stick into the fire and then picked up a new one to poke it with.

"No, it's a disorder that makes people unable to pay attention and do stuff on impulse."

"I'm very attentive." Beasley said.

"Oh yeah, what's my name?"

He paused and looked up at her. She was staring at him with a hidden smile as if she knew everything in the world, including the fact that he had forgotten her name. She was calm, looking straight at him with large black eyeballs that looked like she was going to sleep off any minute.