The Monsters Inside (Formerly Extract)

Gone

Four days. It had been four days without a single bite to eat from our captors. John had been pushing me to drink more and more of the sickly sweet red juice –I refused to think of it as blood; a portion of someone’s life taken from them. But I could see the toll it was taking on my protector. The bags under his eyes grew heavier and darker, looking like opaque bruises. His face had grown gaunt, having replaced its boyish roundness for the sharp look of a young man. Nimble fingers, which had once stitched me back up so sweetly, now shook and twisted with each movement. The dark shadow I once called a heart stirred in my chest, aching to help him out of this darkness.

The first thing was to feed him. He wouldn’t take the blood from the shelves, saying that they were for me. I was the one who lost the most blood in any encounter with them, and I needed to keep a supply of blood in stock. But John needed sustenance, nutrition, life. And only I could give it to him.

I forced John to sit up, leaning his cold body back against the hard white walls. His head slammed against the solid structure, and I winced at the sound, though he remained motionless. My eyes widened. No. No! I frantically shook him, my body reacting without consent of my mind. No, no, no! You can not die; you can not leave me here. Don’t go!  In my head, I was screaming these pleas at him. I was demanding that he wake up. I was fetching blood to force down his throat. I was performing CPR. Yet in reality, I wasn’t doing any of these things. I was just shaking him, urging him to wake up with my mind. But I wasn’t just sitting there. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there...

And neither was he.

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Three days had passed and still John didn’t move. He was too big for me to try and manipulate, so I left him slouched on the floor, feeding him bread and “juice”. I whispered things to him, imagining his reply, pretending he was still here with me.

The men had only entered once in these three days. Ice cold eyes had locked on my trembling frame, and then snaked their way over to John. No emotion had passed over their features; their stares remained cool and aloof. Anger flourished in my veins, my mind blanking to a primal instinct: protect. I crouched over John, putting a barrier between him and our captors. A feral sound ripped itself out of my throat and I realized I was growling at them like some kind of animal. But that’s what I was; reduced down to basic instinct, I did what I could to protect what was mine. The men just stared at me, almost surprised. Blondie stepped forward and smiled. “Worried little one?” A thick, heavy accent rolled off his tongue. His hand reached out to stroke my chin, and I jerked back. He laughed. “Don’t be. Your little friend will not die lest we say so.”

They had left immediately afterwards, and the food had started showing up again. My body grew thinner and thinner with each passing day, but I had to get John out of his comatose state. His skin retained a grey sheen over it, as though death were just about to snatch his life away. And for the first time in a long time, I prayed. Kneeling by his side, I clasped my hands, and prayed.

My eyes jerked open. I sat up, crouched over John, alert, although I didn’t sense any danger. I couldn’t tell what it was that had woken me up –in fact I couldn’t recall going to sleep at all- but something had roused me from my subconscious. Scratch. There it was again. I cocked my head to the side, listening. Scratch, scratch, scratch. It sounded like it was... it couldn’t be. My head whipped over in John’s direction. His eyes were wide open, staring at me but seeing nothing. He was clawing at the flooring, his face, his chest. Blood trickled from his body as he unknowingly inflicted pain upon himself. Acting on instinct, I jumped up and but myself right in front of him. I grasped hold of his face and penetrated his soul through his eyes. He stilled. Instantly his eyes cleared, and he saw me.

“Vi,” The word was croaked from a dry, dead throat. My head tilted at the familiar word. I never thought I’d hear it again. My throat, also dry from being neglected, didn’t even manage a croak, so I thought. I thought his name long and hard, screaming it in my head. John! John! He nodded, because he heard me. We didn’t need words to communicate with each other; our hearts and minds were connected through circumstance.

Slowly but surely John got better. He started getting stronger, and forced me to join him. I was still shy about fighting, but I needed to protect John. If he got hurt again... I needed to be able to watch over him. It was a painfully slow process, but I had to do this. For John...