A Human Element (10 page)

In the end, they ruled out Laura as a suspect and told her she could go. Go where? Off to New Jersey to start a career Moe would never have? She returned to the apartment to pack her few belongings as fast as she could. Moe's mom and dad clung to her in their grief, but Laura struggled to comfort them. A deep emptiness overwhelmed her at being abandoned of the only safety she knew, again.

"Honey, come live with us." Moe's mother, Grace, pleaded with her the day they left. "You have no family. You can stay with us as long as you need to." Moe's father, Joe, nodded and smiled at her.

But Laura pulled away from them. She didn't want to be anyone's substitute daughter. Part of her wanted to be taken care of, but another part of her wanted to run. Run far away and forget. "Thank you, but I just can't. I'm starting my job soon and have to move into my apartment in New Jersey. I have to go."

"Are you sure? We've all been through such a terrible time here, are you going to be okay on your own?" Grace held her hand and looked at her with watery eyes.

Laura hugged her and blinked back her own tears. "I'll be okay. I've been on my own a long time. And you know part of me can hear Moe laughing and teasing me, as usual…about getting on with my life after four years here. I feel like she would want me to go."

"Will you call us and come visit? Promise?" Grace hugged her back.

"I will." But Laura couldn't bring herself to say she'd promise. In her heart, she knew she wouldn't see them again.

A few months afterwards, the nightmares began.

Laura sighed and dropped the curtain down over the window shutting out the street scene. She tried to dismiss the dream that gnawed at her. She crawled back in bed and curled around herself for comfort. Sleep finally dragged her away and she dreamt now of meadows and carnivals. This time the grinning man did not appear. He hid in the darkness of her mind, watching her from afar.

Bjord stepped into the small cage that faced another cage positioned in a square room large enough to house one person in studio-style comfort. The creature-man sat naked on the cage floor, cradling his head in his hands. The man sheltered here was not interested in comfort. He was interested in killing. He raised his head to stare at Bjord. Tormented, twisted images on canvas surrounded the man in crooked piles leaning against his prison walls. His works of art embraced his cell. Painting soothed his savage rages.

Doctor Bjord averted his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the sadistic evil fleshed out in oil. People in the throes of being burned, whipped, choked, stabbed, and crushed to death by the hands of beastly things. One woman in particular the creature man painted over and over. His obsession.

Bjord bent down and raised a latch that opened a small window near the cage's floor and placed the tray on the other side, into the large cage where the man sat. "Dinner X-10. It's meat. Just what you like."

X-10 eased himself off the floor and rose to his full height of 6'5''. Bjord felt the twinge of fear he always felt when his prisoner rose to his complete stature. He was a vicious god in his nakedness with muscles bulging out in every direction. His penis hung enormous even flaccid, a fierce protrusion. The man did not wear clothes for his skin was too sensitive to tolerate fabric.

X-10 could twist the cage apart in an instant and kill Bjord with his hands or enter his brain and induce a heart attack. He had killed many guards in such fashion already. Yet Bjord knew he would not harm him. For now. X-10 needed him to exist in the subservient routine created for him.

The scientist enjoyed redirecting X-10's rage away from him to the girl. Bjord didn't know who the girl was, but X-10 had talked about her for years, convinced she waited out there for him to come. Bjord thought it was just a fantasy, created to sustain imprisonment, and he enjoyed creating stories about the girl involving family, love, freedom, and happiness. Experiences X-10 would never have.

And Bjord's stories fueled his prisoner's anger toward the girl on the outside misdirecting X-10's hate for the doctor. Bjord feared X-10's powers and didn't seek death yet. The iron door had been constructed after one killing spree left thirteen men dead, half of their throats ripped open while the other half were found clutching their chests in a frozen grimace. X-10 had been seven years old at the time.

X-10 could not break through the door that now imprisoned him. He had tried many times and failed. If he could reach through the cage and kill him in one swift movement, he would not be able to open the iron slab as only Bjord's voice activated the door to open for his retreat.

Bjord had also devised a way to spray drugs through the ceiling vents and put X-10 to sleep within seconds. This was useful when Bjord needed to take blood for his experiments, although his heart raced when doing so. To be so close to his prisoner was nerve-wracking. But X-10 knew if he killed Bjord that he would starve to death with no witnesses or mourners, only perhaps after dining on Bjord. The scientist could see his prisoner licking his own bones clean after a good meal.

"Hello, Doctor. Have fun playing with the animals today?" X-10's mouth turned upward in a smirk. He ran his gnarled hand through his thick hair as if standing relaxed on a golf course contemplating a shot on the ninth hole. His flattened nose spread across his oval face in a widening mound of flesh and enlarged nostrils. Bjord forced himself to look away from the ugly creature standing before him.

"Now X-10, you know I'm a scientist. I don't play with animals." Bjord turned toward the massive man again. "I use them to further the cause of science. And what I will use your genes for will be brilliant."

X-10 laughed long and then growled. "My name is Charlie, you imbecile."

"Charlie is a name for humans. A name for a likeable fellow. You are neither of those. You will never be a Charlie. Your number is X-10 and that's all you will ever be called by. And let's not forget how I've helped you, X-10."

The creature stopped laughing and his eyes gleamed into Bjord's with an intense hatred. "And how would that be, Doctor?"

"You eat well and spend your time painting and reading. But you'll never have the freedom to do anything you want, like the girl. She isn't a freak, like you. And you need to remember your small freedoms are at my doing. And I can take them away in a heartbeat."

"It would be at the expense of your heartbeat ending, I'm afraid, Doctor—and the girl's. I will find her." X-10 laughed and then grunted. "And if you'd never taken me I wouldn't be here as your experiment. If you'd never imprisoned me I wouldn't be suffering this life of abstinence." His voice rose in a sharp fervor. "If you'd never brought me here to live in this dungeon I'd be out killing all of you stupid pigs!"

X-10 edged nearer to the cage that held Bjord safe. The scientist trembled and stepped back closer to the door ready to activate his escape. He felt a piercing in his brain as X-10 probed him. A stabbing pain enveloped his head.

"And the first one I would rip to pieces would be you, Doctor Bjord!" The monstrous man swung his arms and lunged at the cage, crashing over his civilized dinner, and shrieked in a demon wail while clutching the bars. "
You
, Doctor. I would rip open your throat inch by inch and suck your blood out. Then I'd chew on you for a while and contemplate your worthiness as a meal! Not worthy, I'm guessing, you filthy old man!"

Bjord crouched by the door and screamed out for the door to open. He ran through the opening before it had fully swung out. The last words he heard from his experiment gone awry were, "You'll beg for death soon, Doctor! And my name is Charlie!"

Bjord pushed the door shut behind him with all the strength he could muster. The stench of sour sweat rose up from him. He reached up to slide open again the viewing window, his heart still beating fast. X-10 had resumed his floor position and once again cradled his head. It appeared as if the entire incident had never happened, except for the smashed tray before the cage, dripping ooze of 'some kind of meat thing'.

Laura's fingers tapped across her keyboard in a race to finish. She had ten minutes to write the executive memo to all employees from the CEO about the company buyout. She sighed and stretched her neck, tired from working fifteen-hour days with the intensity of the buyout going on.

As communications specialist for the corporate communications team, she was on call twenty-four hours during the negotiations and contract phase. Tensions throughout the company ran high. The whisperings around the company strained with fear and guessing which departments would have layoffs and who would be the first to go. Laura would have a job until the end. Someone needed to crank out the word to eighty-thousand employees across the country.

She didn't care. After four years of working for one of the nation's largest healthcare companies, she was burned out at twenty-six and had no desire to climb the corporate ladder. She took the job here after college although she had dreamed of becoming a reporter and communicating the injustices of the world. It sounded so naïve when she thought of it.

The reality, she found out when interviewing for reporter positions during her last semester of college, was that she couldn't live on the pay. Not with student loans, car repairs, insurance, and rent. So when this job came along at a high entry-level salary she grabbed it. And she regretted it.

Since the beginning, unease filled her as she sat in on conference calls and met deadlines under executive orders. She felt as if she appeared on stage every day giving a terrible performance until it hit her—she wasn't meant to do this. She had enough money saved up between bonuses and raises. She could afford to take a pay cut and start over at another job.

When this buyout craze finally came she promised herself she would look to get out. She could go anywhere. She loved being independent and free to make a change, but missed having a family to run to when she needed a shoulder to cry on. She had drifted away from Moe's family over time. It was too hard knowing them. After a while their phone calls stopped and she felt relieved. She just wanted to forget and start over. Would she ever make her own family someday? A family she would want to hold onto no matter what terrible things happened? She hoped.

She forced herself to focus on the work at hand and read the memo again for the third time. It looked good and the clock was ticking. She had to email it to the CEO for approval to send out over mass email.

"Laura, how are you doing on the memo? Need help?" Renee, her boss, leaned over her cubicle. She was the communications manager and on the fast track to director. A rotund woman of thirty, she dressed in attractive garb and asserted herself to compensate. She maneuvered her many rolls of fat in designer clothes and colorful scarves down the hallways into meetings with style and grace. She didn't seem bothered by her large girth or want to change it.

Laura liked her immediately, and even though Renee was only a few years older, she took Laura under her wing. Laura became her first staff member as manager and she took the role as mentor very seriously. Laura respected her and hid the fact she did not take her role as the mentored so seriously.

"All done," Laura called back. Renee came around the cubicle and skimmed the memo.

"Looks good. Send it on its way."

"On its way…now. That was an easy one. Now let's hope he'll approve it right away and we can cross it off the list."

"Yep, but they'll get harder to send as we get down to the wire with the buyout and see who loses their jobs."

"I know." Laura shook her head. "I'm here until the end though."

"Me too." Renee grinned. "Hey, want to hit the café for lunch? On me."

"Sure thing, boss."

Laura grabbed her purse when a loud cracking noise shot from the hallway.

"What the hell was that?" Renee looked at Laura.

More cracks rang out and then screaming.

"Oh my God, someone is shooting!" Laura pulled Renee down with her under her desk in the corner of the cubicle.

Six thousand employees worked at their company headquarters in three buildings. The floor Renee and Laura worked on housed four hundred of them in a sea of cubicles. Laura had always hated cubicles and now found relief hiding in one.

"Can you get under here more?" Laura whispered and pulled the chair toward them as far as it would go. She thanked God she wore her long coat today as it hung from her chair, a curtain hiding them.

"No, I don't think so." Renee let out a tiny sob and bit her lip. "How can this be happening?"

The screams tapered off and silence remained. Laura heard crying from down the hall. Then another gun shot. Then silence again. The phone on her desk rang. Its blaring ring startled them both.

Laura gripped Renee's hand and put her fingers to her lips with her other hand.

"It's not me," a man's voice shouted out. "Someone is making me do it. It's not me!" The man began to sob. His sobbing grew louder. He moved noisily into their area. Laura forced herself to breathe slow and silent. Renee shook as tears ran down her chubby cheeks and dripped onto her silk scarf. Sharp pains shot through Laura's chest, but she had to focus now on surviving.

Renee's leg twitched. "I can't stay like this much longer," she whispered. "Charley horse."

"You've got to," Laura mouthed back.

Renee's twitch got bigger. Her leg shot out and hit the chair with a bang.

The man's sobbing stopped. They heard him crashing alongside cubicle walls toward them. Renee gripped Laura's hand harder. They clung to each other.

"I'm sorry. It's not me!" He pulled out the chair they hid behind, exposing Renee's large body. "Stop it! Let me stop!"

He looked familiar to Laura. She tried to think of his name. He was skinny and about forty. His hair stood up in hand-pulled points and tears ran down his cheeks. Sweat stains spread from under his arms. He pointed a revolver at Renee. It shook in his hands.

"Please, please, don't shoot us," Renee begged with her head down.

"Fat, stupid bitch," he yelled at her in a deeper voice. "You don't deserve to live. No one will ever fuck you."

Laura shrunk further back under the desk. She hated herself for thinking she might be lucky Renee was so fat. It could stop the bullets from traveling through her and into Laura.

"Jack? Is that your name?" Laura looked at the man.

He looked at her with wild eyes and nodded. "I didn't mean to call her a fat bitch. I'm so sorry but
he
is making me do it."

"Who?"

"I don't know. But he hates you."

"Please let us go."

Renee's leg twitched again. It shot out and hit the man's foot.

"Stupid bitch!"

He shot. Once. Twice. Three times.

The back of Renee's head exploded and covered Laura in a spray of blood and brains. She screamed and tried to push Renee off but she was too heavy. Her body slumped over and pinned Laura down. Her head fell to the side, dead eyes staring at Laura.

The man lowered his gun. His hands steady now. "Not you. He told me it's not your time yet."

He dropped the gun and turned. She watched him walk away and then heard more gunshots. He crumpled to the floor facing her. His dead eyes stared at her too. Blood oozed from one perfect red hole in his forehead.

Laura felt faint. The room spun with noise and light. Then the police rushed in and pulled Renee off her. All she could do was stare at bits of Renee stuck to her hands and arms. Another friend's blood on her hands. She laughed in hysteria, but then it twisted into sobbing she couldn't stop. It was Moe all over again. And her parents. Who would be next? She wished it was her.

X-10 rocked with laughter, holding his sides. He was triumphant as the ultimate puppet-master. It had been his first time entering a human's body and forcing it to do as he wanted. How wonderful. It was comical to pick the skinny, pathetic man to be the one to shoot up the girl's office. Who would ever think such a harmless pig would do it?

It was better than the time he enraged the wasps to sting the old man, and the time he set the girl's home on fire. He gloated over those, but this held the grandest triumph. He now could plan his escape, again. He had conquered the full spectrum of his powers and could use them to live free amongst the humans, unnoticed. If he succeeded this time in escaping and they found him, they would kill him.

X-10's nostrils flared, widening his flattened nose further across his face, stretching from ear to ear. He breathed deep with his recent success and felt power surging through his massive, muscled body. His veins pulsed and throbbed, pushing up through his milky white skin. The blue veins cut across his naked body, carving ropes across his translucent skin. Having no nails, X-10 looked unfinished. His fingers and toes were fluid extensions of his body, they widened at the tips with connected webbing. He flexed his pod hands and feet now, congratulating himself on his victory.

X-10 had starved himself for two days to carry out this planned experiment to take over the man's body and use him as a weapon. Eating the drugged food kept his powers stunted and he needed his powers to be in full mode, plus he hated the drugged feeling. Powerless and weak, almost a human. How disgusting.

He had a short window of time before the idiot doctor would turn on the gas spray in his cell to knock him out and pump him full of drugs against his will. It became a standoff they had when he boycotted food. The doctor feared his powers. If he only knew X-10 waited for the right time to eliminate the good doctor. But X-10 had to plan his escape just right. If he failed, he wouldn't get a second chance.

He was seven when he discovered he would never be allowed outside. His doctors and teachers gathered together one day in his room to tell him he could not go outside to play—ever. He couldn't go anywhere at all. It was too risky. They said he wasn't human and could not live among humans. America's enemies could discover X-10 and steal him away to use him against them. They could not allow this. Surely, X-10 must understand this.

When he asked if he could meet the girl, they shook their heads, not understanding him. What girl? He couldn't explain. He just knew she was part of him and she was out there growing up with a family. He hated her for that. He wanted a family.

But he also knew Doctor Bjord led the project to duplicate his genes to use on soldiers in war. If it worked, they would have X-10's immense powers as advantages to win any battle. It would mean America could use these powers to rule the world in any way it chose. And X-10's life would remain one of exhibition in a cell. He would be on display ordered to amaze them with his powers of telepathy, telekinesis, and strength. X-10 was a freak show and nothing else.

In a rage, he killed all thirteen men there that day. All the doctors and teachers present. All except Bjord. He wanted him to live so he could torture him and someday kill him with intense pain. Some of his victims dropped dead of heart attacks. Some, he enjoyed ripping open their throats from his mind powers as he watched them flail at their wounds, blood pumping out with each scream, until their screams stopped.

When his rage left him the dead lay strewn across the floor and the doctor's project had been canceled. And X-10 was to be eliminated. However, the doctor pleaded with the government to keep him in the small chance he could succeed in his project. Success could mean world domination and it was too enticing to ignore.

And so X-10 was left with the doctor, both forgotten in a world that existed on the outside. A world X-10 planned to make his escape into. A world where he could have a name, not just a number. He could escape to mountains somewhere and live in remote woods. Unfound. Free. But, he needed the rare opportunity to have his full powers and not be drugged.

He used this last time to see if he could indeed take over a human's body and use it as a puppet. It worked and how glorious it felt! But his body grew weak from not eating. At three-hundred pounds he needed constant food. So now he had to bide his time again, fuel up on food, and kill the doctor before he could escape.

"Charlie," he grunted. "My name will be Charlie. A hero who escapes his prison and kills all these pigs."

But first he would kill the doctor in a long and suffering way. Then he would find the girl and kill her too. X-10 hated the girl with intensity. Thinking of her threw him into violent rages when he tormented himself thinking of her life out there in the world. She got to live a life he never had. A life with a name.

"Laura," he seethed through his steam shovel mouth, his bulbous forehead pulsing outward in grotesque waves.

X-10 breathed deep to calm himself and turned his mind back to his other kill today. What power to kill from his cell. He had ripped out the throat of a homeless man on the street. The man had screamed, clutching at his neck as his blood pumped thick. Killing was always erotic for X-10 and his penis sprang hard from his groin. He fantasized about plunging his erection into the warm wetness of a woman.

He had done so, just once. A paid gift from the doctor. She gave him a pure joy he'd never known. Her name had been Sabrina and her touch had opened up a well of love he never knew he had. And when the doctor killed her, X-10 discovered a new well of sorrow so deep he swore he'd never feel again.