‘’It’s me. I am the beast.’’
Silence. Zayn was giving me a hopeful look, but I was stunned. I felt as if I had turned to stone, all warmth leaving my body and my thoughts blown out of my head like leaves in the wind. A high ringing noise echoing through my empty mind, as if an emergency lever had been pulled, stopping the train. Slowly, the wheels started turning again. My head was pounding, all my thoughts crashing together. What was I supposed to do? If Zayn was right, he was the one to brutally murder my friends. But what if he couldn’t help it, what if he was a victim as much as they were? I took a stuttering breath, pinching the bridge of my nose. I came here to help him, that’s what I’d do.
‘’How? What happened?’’ I asked shakily. The only response I received was a shrug. Did that mean he didn’t know? I shifted on the bed, tucking my feet under me and drumming my fingers on my knees.
‘’So you didn’t investigate? Tried to find out what happened?’’
‘’I… no.’’
‘’And you’re calling me an idiot?’’
He scoffed and rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. His tough act didn’t work: I could see the slight widening of his eyes and the nervous twitch of his mouth. Perhaps he was too afraid of what he might find. I tilted my head, eyeing him curiously.
‘’Do you even remember anything? What you do when you’re… turned?’’ He was chewing on his full bottom lip, shaking his head slightly. His arms slumped to his sides and his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
‘’I don’t. But I have woken up to dead bodies, blood, scratches. I always seem to be unharmed. Sometimes I wake up in the forest, with some kind of dead animal. I have lived this way for so long I already kind of accepted it.’’
I wasn’t expecting such a long, disturbing answer. How could he accept to live this way? How old did that make him? I was trying my hardest to understand him, but I didn’t know much about him. Just his first name, and that he happened to turn into a monster at night.
‘’I don’t mean to pry, honestly. But, if I want to help you, I’ll need to know a few things.’’
‘’Help me? How on earth do you want to do that? Why would you do that?’’ This time it was my turn to shrug. To be fair, I didn’t know why he drew me in so much. How I almost literally got pulled into this room by some magnetic force. Why something stirs in me every time he looks me in the eye. Why I just won’t leave.
‘’Someone needs to do it. Plus, school won’t start for a long time and I don’t have anything to do,’’ I explained. It was the lamest excuse in the universe, granted, but it seemed to be enough for Zayn. My eyes followed him as he got off his bed to push open the curtains, allowing the sunlight to flow into the room. There was something symbolic about it: him opening up to allow in the light. I could only hope we were headed in the right direction.
‘’Alright, what do you want to know?’’ I had to stop the questions from flooding out of my mouth in a jumbled mess, sorting them in my head. He was finally willing to co-operate, and I should be careful not to scare him back into his fortress of isolation.
