It's Somewhere Beneath Us

Paper in the Rain

In a flash, the Curator was over the exhibit's wall and rushing toward us. That was all I took in before collapsing to the floor as I cried out through gritted teeth. Shivering through every bone was aching pain that seized my muscles and held me immobile. It only lasted a moment, however, and soon the agony melted down into a gentle vibration as my arm was once again reunited with its socket. As soon as I regained the function of my muscles, I looked up to assess the danger. The beast was towering directly over me but didn't seem interested. Instead, it stared down Alice with wild eyes.

"It's okay! Calm down!" She pleaded in a desperate tone. "I was just helping him, see? Helping. Not hurting. See?" She talked slow and gently, almost like a mother would speak to her child. I half expected the curator to ignore her in a ceaseless fit of anger, but oddly enough, it turned to me as if listening to the woman.

Doing my best to pick up on Alices queues, I nodded and forced a smile through the belt still in my teeth, then attempted to raise my arm. It certainly moved, but at the cost of another wave of searing pain through my body. I choked back the grunt and just focused the sting into my smile.

"See? Fixed. Helped." Alice said, flashing a warm smile.

The Curator cocked its head as if analyzing the information it had just received, then clacked its teeth twice before reaching forward to the woman. Ethan stepped forward, and I jumped to my feet, ready to do our best to intervene, but to our surprise, the creature didn't hurt her or try to snatch her up. Instead, it extended its long fingers to the sides of her cheeks and gently let them drag over a pair of hoop earrings that she was wearing. It played a tiny flourish of notes with its other hand before vaulting the wall and returning to its junk.

Ethan turned to Alice with a wide mouth and said the same thing I was thinking, "What on Earth was that?"

"It's very protective of its pets." Alice replied, "That includes when we hurt each other."

"I kind of gathered that part. I more meant that you just told it something, and it listened to you?"

Alice nodded, "I told you I've been down here with it for a while. I wouldn't say I have a connection with it, but I've started to understand how it thinks."

"I didn't realize it thought at all. It seems so... feral."

"It hardly does, but you can still see some sort of emotion in it. The way it takes care of us and likes to collect things. It's like a young infant trapped in a horrifically strong body."

"I wish I could say that helps me feel less repulsed by it."

"Don't worry. In all my time here, it hasn't helped me." Alice looked back to me, "How's your arm? Better?"

I nodded, "Much better."

"Good. Try to avoid moving it a lot. It will still need to heal."

"Will do. Thank you, Alice."

The woman looked shyly to the floor, dropping back into her awkward state, "Um, yeah. Yeah, no problem."

"So you've been all alone down here for six years?" Ethan asked. "How have you not gone insane."

Alice shrugged, "I can't say that I haven't. It often feels like it. But I wasn't always alone. There were others with me when we first arrived, then another showed up later. That was once I was alone again, though, and she managed to escape not long after arriving."

"Everyone left you?"

"No. Only the girl who came later made it out. Everyone else broke the rules." She said, barely glancing up to the 'BAD PET' exhibit.