Writer Games | Death Wish & 51

Task Five: The Dear Departed /QF - Amari Fairland [4]

Amari Fairland stood  alone, her flutter of a heartbeat faint as it palpitated within her  chest. Despite the fear that kept her sitting bolt upright, her  breathing was slow and steady. She was beyond a state of panic. Her mind  was full with death, tainted by what she had seen, controlled  completely by the overwhelming to escape the area in which she was  trapped and now she could not form a thought beyond the confines of Area  Fifty-One.

She had stopped dreaming  of home. The safety of her city flat seemed so far out of reach that it  was like a castle in the sky, and the joy that Tegan had once brought  her had long faded. The reality of Area Fifty-One had originally  appeared to be like a nightmare, but now it was the outside world that  was becoming nothing more than a dream. There were so many people who  were dead that it was no longer a case of trying to survive; it was  becoming of deciding who as next.

The mood in the room was  sombre. It was no longer their bedroom, instead transformed into some  sort of central camp for all of the remaining participants to wait for  what was going to take them. They had barricaded the door with as many  supplies as they could, and there was nothing to do but wait and hope  that they were rescued before the creature - whatever monster was  roaming the corridors of the facility -found them.

It was impossible to  tell exactly what sort of death awaited them. Those who had been laid to  rest in a nearby abandoned laboratory had all been killed in a variety  of ways: some were left with deep gashes in their chest, whilst others  had been found with their throats torn completely out. People were  beginning to call it an alien, but no one left had seen what form it  took except Amari.

It was obvious to anyone  that Amari had seen the creature. She had returned to the room after  her walk with a pounding heart, short of breath and trembling as she  shouted as loud as she could to get the door closed, locked and  barricaded before whatever was pursuing her could find them. Beyond  that, however, she had spoken of nothing. She had barely even left her  bed, forcing herself to feel protected under its thin covers like she  was a child hiding from whatever lurked in her cupboard.

No amount of questioning  would encourage Amari to speak of what she had seen. It was far beyond  traumatising; she had seen herself, broken and monstrous as she lurked  the corridors looking for her latest victim. It was far from who she  was, but the connection remained like it did when she saw her own  reflection in a mirror. It was her - it was distant, broken and beyond  human, but it was her.

She had nothing to do  with the people who had been killed. She had even grown to like some of  them; even Calypso, who had seemed to go out of her way to annoy Amari,  was becoming missed and forgotten. The continuing silence of the room  was just an endless reminder that she was not there. After seeing  herself within the confines of Area Fifty-One, there was the slightest  tinge of a thought that, somehow, she was responsible.

Despite every strain of  logical thought which should have made her reconsider her own thoughts,  Amari could not help feel that she was behind the murders. There had to  be some connection, whether she was aware of it or not, between her and  whatever creature was wandering around the corridors dressed in her  identity. There seemed to be no viable alternative to the thoughts which  filled and flooded Amari's mind, especially after seeing all that she  had been exposed to whilst being trapped in Area Fifty-One. There were  too many things that humankind did not comprehend, objects and theories  that lived their lives behind closed doors. There was a reason they were  never released to the public.

If they were, this was the exact scenario that would happen.

Whatever had caused it,  the monster had taken Amari's shape. It seemed to be the only reason for  anyone to be let inside of Area Fifty-One, to see how the monster  reacted to the same race that it had begun to copy. The scientists would  not be able to contain it, not if it was running around and taking down  anyone it could find like it was now. This was not a publicity stunt  for Area Fifty-One; it was a human experiment.

Inwardly, Amari cursed  the name of the man who had told her to sign up. It was far too much of a  coincidence for her to just turn up here and for the creature to have  her face; it was engineered, planned, designed specifically without  considering the value of the human life which had been lost in the  process of trying to work out what exactly the monster was there to do.  This was not a ridiculous strain of coincidences; she was meant to be  there. She was meant to be away from Tegan, fighting for her life,  scared beyond even the human emotion of fear.

She was meant to be the monster.