I went to bed smiling that night, thoughts of James whirling around and around my head. It played on my mind like a spider in a cobweb. I felt like colour had been injected into my world; the colour of his lips, and his eyes and his skin. For so many years I had been encompassed in isolation – loveless, dejected, rejected.
Mirrors were a rare commodity in the base, but there was one in the changing rooms: a singular dingy full length mirror. Through the grime and rust; with it’s curled edges and scratched glass I would catch a look of myself: every now and then. The way I look, I’ve never liked it. The bags under my eyes that droop like a knapsack, the flab situated on my beefy thighs, my knobbly knees and ankles, the wide spacing of my eyes. My hair is always unruly, and I’ve always been too broad and plump around my chest and bottom. And that repulsive scar on my belly was just another article for a floor length list of flaws.
But James liked my flaws. He’d stroked the line of mutilated flesh like it was a divine mark of beauty. He worshipped every fault. He made me feel faultless.
It was that evening I realise I’d fallen for him. Head over heels, heart over mind. And it was doomed to fail. No one could know, no one could intrude, and every day it was a competition to stay alive.
But instead, I chased after fantasies; reliving the moments passed: lying awake in the dark, near-empty bunk room.
There's something peaceful about the dark. It's silencing. It encompasses you like a blanket. For once you don't have to see the world for the cesspit it is, the world beyond the darkness fades like white noise. It's that lack of sense, that lack of bearing, the way it dulls that disappointment of a world that your eyes provide so freely. They'd probably tell me I'm mad for revelling in it, they'd call me mental for enjoying the solace. It's hard to find quiet in a screaming world.
The next morning I woke up smiling. Smiling. My cheeks ached, I must’ve slept like it. I was a lovesick fool. Misguided, I was so misguided. As the cuffs were unlocked and I was set free for the day, I bounced off my bed full of zest, reinvigorated for the day; life breathed into me, positivity woven into my being. It was the springiness that was my undoing; I didn’t hear the flutter of the decaying delicate decades old paper flutter from my pillowcase.
I didn’t see the vulture of a girl swoop in and steal it as evidence to incriminate me. I sailed off down the corridor, half contemplating dancing or skipping. It took all of my self-restraint not to grin and bid good morning to passersby.
I flounced off to James’s quarters, still the sensation of his fingers on my lips echoing through my body. He had caused a ripple in my heart, and a tide of infatuation had swept in; engulfing all sense, drowning all patience and drenching all other emotions. I drummed my fingers merrily on the wooden door, trying to suppress the grin trying to break free.
He opened the door with a gloomy face, clearly having expected it to be one of his seniors. He was dressed down; black jeans, black t-shirt. His face sparked into a smile, cheeks glowing like a lightbulb when he saw me.
I couldn’t help but grin back; it was infectious.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” He crooned, his unwavering gaze pinned to me.
“Do I need a reason to come and visit?” I responded, lounging in the doorway, eyes begging for a ticket in.
“Never... I’d hate to deny such good company!” He stepped aside, looming close as I tottered in, and wandered close after me.
“What’s with the smile, dollface? I haven’t seen you this happy... Well, ever.” He guided me to sit on his bed, with lack of a better place to perch in his under furnished room.
“Yesterday, I suppose... I don’t mean the town massacre per-se, but...” His eyes were resonant with vivacity, and he had a heedful smile. “I don’t know...” I trailed off, losing myself in his steely eyes and his coral lips.
I could tell from the scrutinising way his lips were tight-pressed and his eyes scanned my features, that he’d deduced that I’d ran to see him. And I saw the spore of pride flash in his eyes.
“Well, it’s nice to see you with a smile on your face...” He stroked my flushed cheek sensuously, his flesh and blood hand glacial on my skin, a smile teased onto his lips. “You should try it more often...” His hand flopped away and I felt disappointment fork through me like a lightning bolt and locked our hands instead.
“Enough about me, how are you?” My smile died with dejection from rejection; my heart was yearning to recreate that divine moment shared in the snow yesterday. The one Yelena typically ruined.
“Happy you’re here. And early! I’m assuming you know we have a mission later today; nothing particularly exciting, but not pleasant either. Siege and collect mission: there are some documents that citizens in Bucharest, Romania have got hold of; apparently with the potential to start an uprising...” With all the work talk I felt the mood melt from sultry to official. He swung his legs and sprung from the bed, pottering over to the wardrobe and rummaging for his gear.
“Yeah, I know...” I droned, smile diffusing the moment he turned his back.
“But no killing. So, that’s something...” He gave a shrug as he gathered together his leather jacket, his belt and crammed weapons into his arms. “Right?” He flashed me a smile over his shoulder, then saw my shrivelled frown. “Where’s that smile?” He cooed, brows knitting at my expression.
I flashed him a disingenuous smile and sighed deep.
“Better.” He winked at me.
Clueless. He was clueless.
Small talk is a form of torture when you have internal dialogue. I could hear my devil nagging me in the back of my skull: ‘Say something to him!’ ‘Do something!’. Imagined scenarios whirled around and around where I brought up yesterday: but I bit my tongue, caged it behind my teeth like an untamed lion. I couldn’t trust myself not to blurt something sentimental, to say something too suggestive. Was that fleeting moment a thing of the past?
The mission would for sure give us more chance for intimacy, splitting off into a sub-team; high on adrenaline, fearlessness pulsing through our veins. You’d be amazed how a life and death situation can facilitate miracles.
If only I had gotten to the mission. I didn’t even make the changing rooms.
Lukin was stomping straight at me, the storm in his step; thunder on his face. Blood red fury was in his eyes and I lowered my gaze. He was marching straight at me, I was his target and his glare was like the heat of a crosshair resting on my forehead. I could feel fate closing in on me like the walls of a crusher in a junkyard.
From behind, I was savagely gripped by either arm: two muscular men either side restraining me. They wrestled my arms into an immobilised position and halted me, stock still.
I didn’t even bother fighting it. If Lukin had me in his sights, combating him was going to be ineffective and punishment worthy.
A metal cuff was snapped onto either wrist, a chain binding them at close range.
With the clank of Lukin’s footfalls getting louder on the metal flooring, I tilted my ashamed face up; wincing just knowing he was coming.
Wrong decision.
He was within striking proximity. He took his beloved walking cane to my face, the glossy ebony wood striking me to the cheek. I felt my jaw bust, the bone indenting and cracking and I was pelted to one side. Before I collapsed to the floor, I was coshed to one side and my forehead met with the wall. I slid down like splattered road kill and lay limp. Sticky warmth drizzled from my cheek and I drooled into the gridded metal flooring, my hearing dulled.
Pain was flaring in my cheek; I could feel the skin bubbling where a bruise was already erupting; a line in purple colouring my pale face. The rest of my body felt numb, a background count to the agony radiating from my cheek. My eye was throbbing and I was momentarily deafened by the strike.
With a sharp stabbing pain in my scalp, I was made to lift my head, dozily dangling from my hair. Concussion was ringing out like a shotgun in my head.
Lukin was saying something, but it was as if my ears were clogged up with cotton wool. My sight was fuzzy, and something was being flapped in my face. As I blinked my eyes into focus, I read his lips.
‘What do you call this?!’ ‘Where did you get this?!’
It was a wrinkled scrap of newspaper: crusty with age, compressed under the weight of my head and pillow and tinged yellow. ‘WAR IS OVER. IS THERE PLACE FOR THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS? WHAT THIS MEANS FOR EUROPE?’ It read.
I let out a depressed sob, tears springing from my eyes and trickling down my cheeks. They slid down over my fat throbbing lip and purple cheek, where a mound of bruise was inflating. I hadn’t the coherency of mind to string together any excuses or lies. I just wept.
‘Send her to Faustus.’ I saw his lips speak.
By my collar I was dragged, my lifeless limbs being mangled by the metal flooring I was being dragged over. It was like being trawled over a bed of sandpaper; and the material at my knees scuffed open, slashing my knees open. My fingers trailed along, getting caught on the gridding and cutting up on the sharp edges. I gagged around the collar enclosed around my throat as I was dragged to my doom.
People parted ways to let the guards drag me through. I could do nothing but squint up at them from where I was trailing along, grappling with consciousness. As we made a turning towards the lab, I saw a girl; a smug smirk, bouncing blonde curls and icy blue eyes. Yelena.
“You...” I rasped, around the choking hold of the collar. She smiled and turned away.
The flapping doors of the lab were parted and I was thrown in onto the floor. Again, my head made contact with the surface: glancing off it and I skidded on my front.
I craned my neck, peered at the room I became familiar with a lifetime ago; merely as a child. It had aged, mould making the roof sag at the corners and creeping across the white ceiling. More of those lime green tiles had cracked, and the floor was awash with more stains than before. The only things that looked sterilised were surgeon’s utensils in the glass cabinet – a modern furnishing in the ancient room.
“Why have you brought this girl to me?” Said the balding old doctor, swaddled in his putrid blood-stained labcoat. He was wiping his hands off with an oil-blackened rag.
“Natalia, here has decided to be particularly naughty. She appears to be clinging to memories. Without meaning to dismiss your revolutionary work, doctor; it appears that she is in dire need of an overhaul...” I couldn’t see Lukin, but I could sense him standing behind me, his voice echoing in such a way in the unhygienic lab they excused as a medical chamber.
“How... Dire, are we talking?” The doctor uttered, an almost excited smile on his old chapped lips.
“Clean slate protocol. Oh, and this time; don’t fuck it up Faustus. I’m not having another girl ending up with a brain like a sieve – no fighting ability, no language skills, sometimes even a lack of motor skills. I want an obedient brain, clean of identity, not clean of anything...” I heard the rhythm of his feet as he turned away and the clack of the doors as they shut behind him.
“Gentlemen, if you could help strap her down to the chair...” He invited to guards to help lift me to the chair.
Using the cuffs as leverage, they strung me up to my feet and shoved me towards the chair. The manacles were undone and I was shoved backwards into the seat. Too lethargic to protest, I squirmed a little, pawed at the air, trying to slither free.
“Now, now, Natalia...” He pinned my left wrist to the arm of the chair and a metal cuff rose and locked me into place. “Just stay still...” And then my other wrist. “It will hurt less if you stay still.” Then both ankles, effectively pinning me still to the chair. More metal loops ascended and clipped me down.
Then a device was lowered around my head, and everything whited out.
A/N - In celebration of me throwing away my GCSE graphics grade (a.k.a finishing my coursework - which is really shitty tbh; but it's too late to turn it around or do any better because I'm useless) this evening, I thought I'd give you wonderful people an update (and destress in the process)!
I'm aware it's somewhat deviating from my "no-promises-but-I'll-probably-update-on-a-Sunday" schedule, but I thought I'd finally get back to doing what I really love doing in life; which - if you haven't already twigged - isn't doing GCSE coursework; but hey-fucking-ho: it's done and dusted. I've only got a little more music coursework to go; then it's all wrapped up and immense studying begins.
Dedication goes to daisyming! x