An Act of Finality-Sylaire-Part 2

[black_hat]

She woke up to the steady hum of an engine and a darkness broken only by fluorescent lights drifting across the roof of a car. There was the sound of cars sailing past, moving together but each one alone, and she could see the line of thin streetlights, the perpetual watchmen.

 

She waited to remember who she was, where she was, anything, something. And there was nothing, and trying to dredge up a memory from absolutely nothing hurt. There was another set of noises clashing against the sound of the engine. The radio was being changed from station to station, voices running over into voices, and she had the sense that something was very wrong with a person who could stand to listen to it.

 

Sitting up slowly, she noticed that her clothes were stiff and crusty with a dark color. She touched her shirt, rubbing the material between her fingers. Try as she might, she couldn’t make out what the hell was all over her in the faint light. She peeked at the radio and saw that no one was touching the dial at all.

 

“So she finally decides to rejoin the land of the living.”

 

For one dizzying moment, she looked up and thought that there were eyes—just eyes in the rearview mirror—watching her. She screamed and threw herself against the back seats, hearing an echo of a clanging-banging metal sound in the back of her mind. Those eyes could dissect her, see the lines where she came apart dotted across her body, and now they made her feel inhuman.

 

“Now, is that any way to greet the man who put you back together again?”

 

She could see the shadow of his profile, and she didn’t know if the fact that the eyes weren’t floating alone in the damn mirror made her feel any better.

 

“I mean, you gave me quite a scare there, Claire,” the shadow man said. “It didn’t take all the king’s men or anything, but it was hell getting your spinal column detached from the steering wheel.”

 

Distantly, she thought she was going into shock, feeling like she was floating away. She wasn’t sure. 

“I…my spine…”

 

“Uh-huh,” he purred, his eyes curving into a smile. “There was some assembly required. But you healed up so nicely for me.”

 

Claire. Was that her name? It didn’t spark anything within her, and at best, it reminded her of an éclair.

 

“…my spine…”

 

He squinted at her. “Yes. Does Polly want a cracker?”

 

She looked at her hands and couldn’t help but wonder if Polly was her name, even though she knew he was being a bastard.

 

Then it hit her. She had been kidnapped, and he had done something to her, had to of, to make her lose her memory. She dug frantically into her pockets and threw a wad of bills at him. It hit him on the shoulder and bounced merrily onto the dashboard.

 

“Take it, just take it, that’s all I have!”

 

“Well, that’s a first,” he muttered. Then something changed in his eyes, in the mirror.  He looked like a child who just found out Christmas was coming early this year. “Beautiful.”

 

 Without warning, he swerved dangerously, lurching across two lanes of traffic to a volley of honking and skidding sounds. She let out a startled ‘oh’, and was thrown against the side of the car like an astronaut in a shuttle run, about to lose her lunch, about to tumble out the door to the waiting tires below.

 

He clipped the railing on the exit ramp, and she saw sparks ping against the window.  

 

“Okaypleasedrivebetternow,” she begged, thinking they were about to wind up as street pizza for sure.

 

He laughed, and he had a very deep laugh, and it infuriated her. “Hey, you could have gotten us both killed, ass---…” she trailed off. His eyes darted to hers once more, and there was something so consuming in his gaze that she thought, yep, I’m going to be devoured by this man, and I’ll hardly notice. “Hole?”

 

She looked away, and saw that he was carrying her away from the lights and into an area of dark houses with empty windows and mazes of back alleys. They traveled in silence, until he chose a small street to his liking and coasted to a stop. He cut the engine and turned to her, his face masked in shadows. She could read nothing from him. He was blank. Blank, and…there was that echo of frantic metallic clanging again.

 

She felt like she was nine years old, scared of the shapeless and merciless from the closet, and  something was perched on a shelf, ready to kill her if she moved, blinked, thought.

 

She pressed against the leather of the seat, wishing she could just phase out of the car or something. If only people could do that. The silence spiraled horribly. In it, she noticed a smell. An odd, sweet smell that was familiar but she couldn’t quite place it. All she knew was that it was making her sick.

 

“Look, I-I know it’s not a lot of money,” she began, the words falling out of her mouth like stones. Her heart pounded against her chest, and the force of it made her rock back and forth slightly. She imagined she resembled one of those Russian dolls with those empty layers you take apart until all you have is the bare minimum.

 

“And you can keep the car—the car is for free by the way, and I…please let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you, I just want to go home.”

 

“Oh sweetie, what have they done to you?”

 

She flinched at his change in tone. Oh, hell, his voice was different, as if it was coming from a whole new person. The illusion was similar to a leopard speaking with a voice of a mouse or something, and it would have been comical, had it not been so terrifying.

 

“Don’t you remember me, Claire? Me?”  He raised his hand to his chest as if he had been wounded. A mockery of being wounded, actually. Of this, she was sure.

 

“No.” She left it at that.

 

“It’s me. Peter.”

 

That name was like being home. She reached out a hand towards him but stopped short.

 

“Peter?”

 

“You remember that name at least. I’m so glad.” Only he didn’t sound glad at all.

 

 “You’re lying.”

 

“Well, you may not remember after your little ordeal, but I’m telling you, it-”

 

“It doesn’t suit you, that name,” she said, glaring as fiercely as she could.

 

He chuckled, and just like that, bled back into his old self.  “Okay. Fair enough. If you don’t wish for me to be Peter, then I won’t be. But I wouldn’t give out my real name to just anyone, especially to a girl like you.”

 

“Like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Good boys and girls don’t wear those colors.” He motioned to her shirt. At her confusion, he reached for the lights. “Let’s shed some light on this, shall we?”

 

“No!” she said quickly, not wanting to see him because that would make him real. “No, I’ve seen it already. My clothes.”

 

“And not a mark on you. What does that mean, pray tell?”

 

“You hurt me. You did something to me.”

 

“I didn’t have to lift a finger. You did that all by your lonesome. So what are our options here, Claire?”

 

“I…what, I don’t know.”

 

“A girl without a past means all I can do is look at the present,” he mused, and he did look. She felt his gaze along her body, and she crossed her arms. Perhaps it was the way that he was looking at he with that sort of look. But something touched her, through her clothes, under her bra—brush of a fingertip across her breasts. She flinched and looked down quickly, raising her hand to bat that touch away. There was nothing there.

 

“What’s the matter, Claire? You look flustered.” He savored the last word, playing with it in the way it left his lips. If anything, it was served like hot chocolate with a dash of arsenic.

 

“Where are we right now?” she asked.

 

“Oh, the usual. I’m presumed dead. You’re god-knows-where. Looks like we have some time to kill. Tell me…dogs or cats?”

 

“Excuse me?” Her fingers brushed the edge of the door handle, and she tried her luck. Locked tight.

 

“Are you a dog person or a cat person? Do you like cats or dogs? Like a really fat cat, or maybe one of those Mexican jumping bean, fluffy kind of dogs? It’s a simple question.”

 

“None of your business.”

 

“I’ll trade you your last name for an answer,” he cajoled, as if this was a reasonable statement.

 

“Fine. Cat person.”

 

He smiled to himself. “Poor fluffy. No shades of gray there.”

 

“Okay, your turn.”

 

“Oh, please, it’s Gray. Your last name is Gray.”

 

“Gray?” she repeated, her brow furrowing. Claire Gray. What an oxymoron. But it did sound like it should mean something to her.

 

“Don’t strain yourself trying to think. You’ll have an aneurism. Can’t have that.” He paused, tilting his head and considering. “Let me have a look at you.”

 

To her horror, the shadow man got out of the car. He was—okay, he was really, really tall. Claire cringed away from the door, and oh, dear God, he was coming around to the backseat. She lunged across the armrest, sliding into the front seat in a record amount of time, and laid her hand on the horn as hard as she could. She spared a look towards the houses, and they remained dark.

 

The keys, though! They were still in the ignition, and she started the car, only to have the engine turn on itself like a dying animal. She tried again, and this time, she couldn’t move the keys an inch. It was as if they had been stuck in concrete blocks while she hadn’t been paying attention.

 

“What the hell?” she hissed.

 

There was a rap-tap-tap on the window. Claire gripped the steering wheel tightly, frozen. The car door opened and the interior lights turned her shirt brown-rust. That wasn’t the only thing it illuminated. She saw that there were rust smears coating the dashboard, the upholstery, and the windows. The window was the worst. There were fingerprints littered everywhere, as if someone had been trying to claw their way out, or maybe just hoping someone other than him would notice their death. In the center of the seat, there was a syringe.

 

“This isn’t happening,” she heard herself whisper. That handprint had belonged to someone with small hands, petite hands. Another girl, another time. In the end, with him, it was always the same girl. She was that girl.

 

“You’re right. That happened. And this is about to happen.” He leaned against the door casually. “Get out of the car, Claire.”

 

She hated her hands. They trembled uncontrollably. The rest of her was fine, shake-free, and she managed to get out of the car and stand on the pavement below. Claire figured that she had been in the sun during the day ride for a long time because she was still flushed from it, and it made the outside chilly. He gave her no time to think, trapping her small frame with his body against the door. The cold from the metal seeped into her clothes, and she steadied her hands for what they were about to do.

 

The streetlights cleared up some of the shadows on his face. She gritted her teeth and looked her attacker full in the face. His eyes were deep, endless in their darkness and taking her apart with their intensity. Eating her alive. His mouth was voracious, curved in a smirk, and his features were accented with Italian inky darkness.

 

She found herself openly staring at him, her lips parted in surprise.

 

“That wasn’t so bad, was it? The hard part is over. Now, it’s time to check out the merchandize.”