The Degenerate (TO BE REWRITTEN...SOON)

CHAPTER 26: Boom Baby

The reproducing didn't stop. Couldn't really call it sex, but couldn't call it rape either. Or was it rape? The humiliating motions that endured, our naked bodies clanging clumsily. We were both pumped full of fertility drugs, Pete and I. It was an odd thing to crave someone's touch yet be so utterly repulsed by it. I was conditioned to hate him.

I was the modern Prometheus, punished for my very existence. I'd never hated my body nor felt so much shame in my life. Rage burned through my veins like heroin through an old junkie's veins. Felt was my ultimate target, and I knew as long as I was still breathing my purpose was to have his head on a pike. Oh, it would feel so good to slice through his muscles and tendons, watch his blood spill on these dingy white tiles. I spat on him once, hoping my acidic body fluid would burn his strange brown-gold skin. It was too smooth, too perfect- begging to be marred. Of course, my spit just pissed him off and got me taised with those probes.

"Don't you know we are from the same tree, just a different branch?" He said in a condescending tone, as if telling a child something it should have already known. The thought made me shudder violently.

My wall was always transparent; Pete was always in my sight. He was always looking at me. I tried to keep my eyes closed. But sometimes, I was just too damn lonely. Being separated by wall was comforting, in a way. Oddly, Pete being there made me miss Rick. Rick's great humor would have survived somehow. Looking at Pete, his eyes only mirrored my own anger and desperation.

"How did you start the fire?" I asked, hating the deafening silence.

Pete slowly opened his eyes, the flint-irises dull. "It was easy. There was a wire just outside a tent, close to my cage, so I ripped it and it caught fire. There was a blade trying to load some of us in a van, but I caught his hand and basically twisted the hell out of it, bit off a few fingers," the ghost of a smile drifted across Pete's face. "He shot me like ten times, but by then he dropped the gun and went to the ground. So I rolled my cage and got the gun, shot off the lock, and did the same with the others. The wire wasn't enough to make a big fire, so I got everyone running while the blades were still squabbling about the smaller fire and shot the gas tank. It exploded, and the whole camp going up in flames. It was beautiful."

I smiled at this memory. I wished I had been there to kick Felt's ass into the flames. I didn't care if I was consumed too.

"I thought you were going to be in Vegas," he whispered one day. It was odd that I could hear him through the wall, but I knew my ears were capable. "I thought you'd be there, and we could just live...and then I saw Isabelle. Scared the hell out of me. I was in this dinner with her...and blades came, busted the windows and took me in the van. I don't know what happened to Isabelle. I don't think they got her though. Which is good, because if there's anyone that's going to get us out of here, it's her."

I smiled faintly. Didn't he know there was no escape? "I saw Rick, you know," I sighed, thinking of happier times. I could hear the waterfall like white noise in the distance, see the sunlight flittering through broad leaves. Rick's thick laugh. A lump caught in my throat. There was no telling what happened to him.

Pete cracked a smile. "Really? Where? Where is he?"

I spoke fondly of the place, the best I'd sounded in months, "I was going towards Las Vegas and all, and he sort of saved me. I was about to die and he brought me back to this big oasis type place. It had a waterfall, and tons of fruit. Fish. It was nice," then I remembered how it got there and my tone darkened, "but it was a trap. The blades set it up so I would come to it and took me after some time. I don't know what happened to Rick."

I decided I was tired. I angled my body away from the clear wall, as much as I could with restraints. I wanted sleep. Knowing half the time it meant nightmares of violent shapes and light invading my head, causing migraines when I woke that lead to a nurse or whatever coming in and forcing a horse pill down my throat that made me sleep like the dead.