The Beast Within (#Wattys2016)

A Broken Mirror

The darkness was illuminated by a blinding, pulsating light. Images and sounds flitted through my head, strange music dancing across my mind. The memories came in a torrential flood.

Autumn leaves fluttering across the sidewak. The gentle stag. My pained screams. The graceful fox and her frolicking kits. Robin's joyful laugh and brilliant smile. The clock ticking, echoing off the walls of the classroom. The fearful faces of my friends, the hatred and disgust in their voices. The emptiness in Asher's eyes. The voice of the faceless, nameless man who had brought me here. The Asher who wasn't Asher. The beeping and humming of the machines. The feeling of the needles and the burning sensation of the serum.

Everything that had happened, all that I had seen and heard and felt, it washed over me like a great wave of overwhelming sensations. I couldn't breathe, falling through the memories that had shattered and were now a jumbled mess of broken glass and crushed hopes in my mind.

Then it was gone, and I was alone among the towering redwoods once more.

Am I dead? I wondered. I looked around, taking in the ancient trees and quiet shadows. The stag was nowhere to be seen.

The forest was unmoving, as if death had stilled its heartbeat and smothered its pulsating rhythm. Sunlight spilled from above, dripping through the branches and splashing upon the leaf-littered floor. The silence echoed in my ears, reverberating through my mind.

I ran.

I wove my way through the trees, sprinting out of the clearing and into the dense, thick foliage. Twigs snapped and leaves crackled beneath my feet, tiny plants brushing against my legs as I ran, a deer being pursued by a relentless and hungry wolf. A invisible enemy trailed me through the forest as I shoved aside saplings and leaped over logs. My heart was racing.

I came to a pool, its waters calm and still, like glass. Reeds grew along its banks, waving and whispering in the breeze. I stopped my flight, my terrified flight from nobody and nothing at all, and approached the pond. I stood at its edge and peered in at my reflection.

The girl staring back at me was a stranger. She was fluid, ever changing, in perpetual motion; she seemed to take no solid form as she changed and melted away into something new. Her eyes flickered from blue to green, then they faded to gold and melted into brown. Her hair seemed to be on fire, flames of brown and black and red and yellow dancing up and down its strands. Facial features shifted and moved; her figure never stayed the same, and I stared, awestruck, as she went from tall to short, from lanky to muscular, from a sturdy build to one that was fragile and bony.

This couldn't be me.

She was the churning and frothing surface of the sea, rising and falling like the tides; she was liquid mercury beading and rolling down invisible hands. She was fire, with no shape or form, fluttering in the wind; she was gold melting away into something new. She was like clay that some restless sculptor shaped into a unique masterpiece before crushing the soft material in his fists and beginning again.

The surface of the pond shattered into millions of tiny shards, like a breaking mirror. The dream faded into blackness.

I wasn't dead.

"She's stable," Tessa breathed, sighing in relief. "Thank God." Her voice was hoarse and unsteady.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway, and the door was thrown open.

"What happened?" the man from the speakers roared, storming into the room.

"Sir, we gave her another round of injections... and she... she started failing," Tessa gulped, her voice still shaky. "But she's stabilized now!"

"What did I tell you about taking things slowly?" he hissed.

"We were, sir! We were taking things slowly!" she exclaimed. "I don't know what went wrong!"

"You'd better figure it out," he threatened. "Don't underestimate the things I will do to you if you fail me again."

"Let me look, I'm sure there must be something to indicate what happened," Tessa said, and I heard the sounds of typing and clicking as she pulled up statistics and data.

"It went wrong right there," Daniel said, likely pointing to a place on the on the screen. "Right after the injection."

"Daniel, how much serum did you give her?" Tessa asked worriedly.

"Only fifteen milliliters," the young man replied.

"Then why did she start shutting down?" The man from the speakers growled. There was a lingering and heavy silence.

"Because it worked," Tessa whispered, her disbelief and awe evident in the tiny breeze, the three simple words that had fallen sofltly from her lips. "Just look, her genes have already rearranged themselves and her cells have been altered."

She and the two men seemed to be clustered around the computer monitor, because their voices all sounded like they were coming from the same spot.

"Are you saying...? the man asked, but he stopped himself.

"Daniel, take a blood sample and a tissue sample."

"Do you mean...?" the man breathed, his voice filled with awe.

"Yes. She's survived step one," Tessa said proudly. "Test subject number 355 has survived step one."