Raison D'être - Chapter 1

Raison D'être - Chapter 3

“Do you know how long I've waited for this moment, Jadis?” His smile lingers on his full lips, and the wretched glinting in his eyes rivals that of even Broyles.

I do not dignify him with a response; partly because I do not want to even look at him let alone speak with him, mostly because I cannot. My mouth has gone dry, my tongue feels as though it has doubled in size, my mind has been jarred way too many times and this meeting has just stunned me into a silence. Eric stops his wriggling and turns to face Kelly; even though he was impossibly young when we escaped nearly two years ago, I almost thought I could see some sort of recognition in my baby's eyes. He knew Kelly.

God, Kelly looked awful. Not just as in his unpleasantly turned up face in my direction, but his overall well-being. I do not remember him even being in a wheelchair. When I knew him, he was admittedly rugged and slightly unkempt, but his former grace towers over what he has become. There is a burn across the left hand side of his face, wrapping around to the back of his head from just beside his nose, only just missing his eye; his hair is, resultantly, patchy on that side. From what I can see of his arms and the remainder of his face, there is an assortment of deep jagged cuts, with more burns on his arms. There also looked to be one long, surgical cut in his upper right arm.

His clothes are nothing like that of the soldiers or the computer people in the room. I did not pick him for designer labels, but he is wearing some of the most expensive things I've seen. Not as in gangster clothes or up market business suits, but carefully measured and fitted clothes that made him look less shrunken and wilted than he was. Likes to indulge himself, then, I think to myself. What I wouldn't do for a new bra.

“You seem...intrigued,” he says. “What about me seems to be catching your attention?”

I cleared my throat, looking behind me to see if I would not be interrupted, then turned back to him.

“The fact that you look worse than me even after all this time.”

He chuckled, shaking his head and looking back up to me. He is not as outwardly violent as Broyles; he knows brute force is not the way to break people. He has a much more sinister attitude towards his captives, this I know only too well. It is the reason I have bags under my eyes.

“I thought you would've known, dear, you were the one who did this to me.”

I see him watching me critically as he said this, waiting to gauge my reaction. Honestly, I wanted to be sick. I did this? I mean, I had harmed people, killed them, but I always did my best to make sure they did not suffer. And I never stayed around too long to see the aftermath of what others and myself had done, because those others all had me in the centre of their bulls-eyes. I know I wrought havoc in my escape, but the sight of Kelly was my first real evidence; my memory of what happened in my escape is almost completely shot to pieces.

“No matter, no matter. We'll have plenty of time to reminisce later.” The hint of menace and foreboding in his voice was worse than anything that could be brought out by Broyles; every hair on my body stood on end.

Eric whimpers in my arms and clutches my jacket, and I pull him in even closer. It feels like I am smothering him, but right now I know he needs me almost as much as I need him

“And dear little Eric! How could I have missed seeing you there in mama's arms? My my my, you were only just a baby when you...” he pauses to choose his next word, “escaped me.”

As he finishes this sentence, he leans forward with a grimace of pain on his face – pain even two years after my escape? - and grabs the wheels to move towards us. One of the computer people turns around and stops him.