The Elementals [Watty Awards 2012 Action Winner]

Chapter 17

*WARNING* There’s a bit of gore so just warning you all in advance =)

Chapter seventeen:

[Val’s POV]

I hung slack against the shackles with sweat dampening every inch of my skin. My clothes stuck to me from the perspiration and I was heaving in breath after breath.

“You will give in to me Valerie!” The hooded man shrieked at me. For hours he had been forcing his voice into my head and when I tried to force him out I was punished with excruciating pain, like bolts of lightning that thundered into every cell of my body and brain. He was torturing me and I didn’t even know why.

I stifled a sob that escaped my grimacing mouth and screamed at him, “Why are you doing this! What do you want with me!” He stepped back and stared at me from behind his hood that shaded his eyes. I was thankful for a few seconds without pain and I gulped in fresh air to ready myself for another dose of agony. He seemed to be thinking and turned to walk around me with his decaying hands clasped behind his back.

“Fair enough Valerie. You have shown enough strength to ask questions... what would you like to know?” he hissed as he circled me like a vulture circling a carcass.

“Who are you?” I sighed. I managed to see a ghost of a smile on his rotting mouth that showed his yellowed teeth.

“Why, I’m Malum, high member Stinger and inventor” My eyes widened and a gasp escaped my mouth. Malum, the man I’d been studying in history.

“But-but you’re dead! All Stingers were killed!” I retorted wincing at the soreness in my body as I my spine spasmed. He chuckled and tutted continuing his circling.

“You may be half right, Valerie. I am alive but I am nothing but a decaying corpse until I can finish what I have brought you here for” I gulped.

“Which is...?”

“To bring down the Abled” replied with a sharp hiss. If the atmosphere wasn’t already dark and tense it was now. “For years The Control refused my ideas for punishment and control. For years they stood me down and turned a blind eye to what I knew was right! Now, they will see how wrong they were at their and every Abled’s expense.”

“What are you doing to do and why do you need me?” I whispered, my eyes bulging at everything I was hearing.

“I need you Valerie because you are special. You are a different breed of Abled and valuable to my experiment” he said matter-of-factly.

“What experiment?” 

He turned to face me and slowly his rotted hands reached for his torn and matted hood. I held my breath as he grasped it and slowly pulled it back. As he pulled his hood off I took in every new bit of his face and cringed, holding back my urge to gag. He skin was as horrid as the skin surrounding his mouth. It was pale sickly off-white, which showed the tiny blue veins underneath. His nose seemed to have decayed back and looked as though it was half missing.

What shocked me were his eyes. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t the black eyes with blood red irises that stared directly at me. His eyes had no white to them like that of a normal person, they were rotted black as coal. His entire face gave an image of someone caught between life and death but refused to die.

“My experiment, dear Valerie, is creating a new species of Abled. Mixing abilities and DNA to create what I call The Elementals. No more of this pathetic, weak excuse of single abilities that The Control were so ardent in keeping. You see... I’ve already started creating them but I need your DNA to create much, much more” Malum’s eyes were crazed and his insanity was clear on his face, “Your parents defied The Control you see. As you know, the Abled couple with their own ability or with a human, this was to keep abilities strong and singular. But no more... with The Elementals I will annihilate all Abled!”