A/N: Hey peoples! Long time no update! So this update is still really short but please believe me when I say that my schedule has been more than full. Hopefully this chapter will have one more part before it is over. I'm sorry that it has taken me SO long to update.
Chapter 41: Part 2:
After the visitors left the day progressed at a very painfully slow pace.
Chey had decided just to stay in sulk in her room the rest of the afternoon and the Monster had taken to watching reruns of old human shows on the television. I had resumed my baking madness in a blind attempt to make it appear as if everything were just as it was. Occasionally the Monster would get up during a commercial and come into the kitchen to steal a cookie or a piece of pie. He never looked at me when he came in.
Nor did he try to speak to me.
It wasn't until around seven o'clock that night that the Monster came into the kitchen and wordlessly started cooking dinner around my baking mess. At first I didn't know how to take the way he moved soundlessly around the kitchen, never once invading my space as he started browning meat in a skillet to make what I guessed was spaghetti sauce. Eventually though I decided that if all he was going to do was ignore me I might as well do the same. So I baked more meringue cookies while the Monster cooked, sharing the silence.
I was too busy thinking of how I was going to tell Chey what had happened...how I was going to tell her how I lied and what she was now to really worry about the elephant in the room. I didn't even know where to begin telling her.
I was pretty sure that "hey litte sis, you know how you always wanted one of those sick hairy bastards to be your very own? We'll guess what; it's your lucky day," would not go over well.
What could I tell her? How could I even begin to tell her what she was and what I had done without her passing out or just about having a panic attack. I didn't want her to be afraid. I didn't want to introduce this fear to her. But I had to.
I had to.
I had no choice.
"Shit." I cursed when I accidentally tried to take a hot cookie sheet out of the oven without oven mitts. I had been so lost in thought that I didn't even think about the damn thing burning me. I opened my hand to see a perfect red imprint of the side of the pan across my palm and fingers.
Before I could react any further the Monster appeared beside me and grabbed my wrist. I jumped at the sudden contact and tried to pull my hand back only to have him tighten his grip, looking up into my face briefly and keeping eye contact with me for what seemed like the first time in weeks. While I was sure my expression was startled and frightened at his sudden unannounced touch he didn't seem to have any reaction to what he was seeing. He just looked back at me with a blank expression that was almost numbly calm.
He dropped his gaze as I stilled at examined the burnt palm of my hand carefully with a scowl on his face. He then pulled me over to the sink and shoved my palm under a stream of cool water. The water felt soothing to the throbbing burn but it was awkward the way the Monster continued to hold my hand under the water, standing so close to me that both our chests were touching. I had felt his body up against mine many times before but it felt strange for him to be touching me in such a casual away when he hadn't in such a long time.
I had to hold my breath to keep my heart from jumping out of my throat with the spike of fear that always gripped me when he was near. I could feel the hairs begining to stand up on the back of my neck at the prolonged contact and my stomach began to hurt as I had to push images out of my mind that I would never forget.
He pulled my hand back out of the water after a couple of minutes and stared at the less red burn mark that still was angrily glaring back at him on my hand.
"You should be more careful." He stated, still examining my hand as if there were more wrong with it than just a burn.
"It's just a singe. I've had worse." I muttered, thinking of all the other injuries that I had sustained since the cursed afternoon when the Monster showed up in my kitchen. The Monster's grip loosened at my words and he eventually let go of my hand completely.
"Stay." He mumbled the command to me like I was some sort of house dog while he walked over to the cabinet next to the fridge and pulled out what looked like a first aid kit.
It was brand new.
He even had to remove the plastic that covered the outside of the box. He must not have bought it that long ago.
Werewolves didn't need first aid kits. Their mutant side made them able to heal themselves from minor Band-Aid injuries within seconds.
A biology student that I had tutored in physics had described to me once that it was their shape shifting ability that allowed the cells to regenerate so quickly. It had to do with some sort of rapid protien synthesis within the cell. I still remember the look on the boy's face as he talked about the process.
His eyes gleamed as he spoke of the specialty of the mutant cells like he was talking about something divine, as if the monsters were gods compared to us mere mortals.
His name was David.
I never tutored David again.
"I would use my blood but..." The Monster mumbled as he took my hand again and smoothed what looked like triple antibiotic ointment onto the surface of the burn. "You might...I wouldn't know what to do if...my blood...you had another reaction." He finally got out as he hesitantly fished gauze out of the small box and proceeded to wrap up my hand.
He was talking about me going into anaphylactic shock from ingesting too much of his blood. According to Kyrie I was allergic to the cellular portion of his blood, being exposed to whole werewolf blood through ingestion or contact with my blood stream could make me have another reaction and without immediate treatment I could die.
At least it gave me an excuse to refuse some parts of the Monster from being forced upon me.
The Monster fumbled with the elastic wrapping, almost dropping the roll and cursing a little under his breath.
"Give it to me." I mumbled, taking the roll from his hands and wrapping it around my damaged palm, first by holding the corner down with my fingers on the burnt hand and then releasing once I got the first throw on.
"You've done this before." The Monster stated, his dark eyes watching as I finished wrapping up my numb hand with a furrowed brow.
"Well some of us don't have freaky shape shifting cell lines." I grumbled, my mind still thinking about what the boy named David had told me so long ago.
I guess it wasn't that long ago.
It had only been a year and a half since I was forced to drop out of college by the werewolf regime.
God it felt like a lifetime ago.
Another life.
Not this hell I was in now.
"Did Kyrie explain that to you?" The Monster asked, seeming slightly confused by my statement. I shook my head.
"No, a classmate I tutored in college." I mumbled, looking down at my hand pensively. He hadn't moved away from where he had been holding my hand and it felt awkward how he was still lingering near me.
"You went to college?" he asked in a shocked tone.
My eyes involuntarily looked up at his face in irritation at his disbelieving tone. The look on his face and the tone of his voice made me angry.
His voice and his face said that he had never thought about me as a thinking being.
All werewolves thought that humans were no more intelligent than pond scum.
Why would he be any different?
The bitter words that I swallowed practically burned my throat.
"What did you study?" he asked me, tilting his head to the side and examining me like he was trying to figure what kind of exceptional lab rat I was.
I stepped away from him with a scowl on my face and grabbed the oven mitts to get the now ultra-crispy meringue cookies out of the oven, forcing myself not to slam them down on the counter in anger.
"Didn't get to finish." I muttered, shutting the oven door a little harder than necessary with that statement.
This conversation was bringing to the surface all of the broken dreams of my past. Everything that I thought I would be able to achieve, everything that I had ever wanted to do was ripped out of my hands. I still remembered the letter that I received from the National Center on Human Education at the end of my second year of college.
I had memorized the entire prose the morning it arrived and never had forgotten a word of it since.
"Dear Pupil Number H00104594, due to new legislation passed by the National Department of Human Control you are currently exceeding the education limit placed upon your kind. You are hereby dropped from all course work in progress and will be asked to be ready for transport back to your home region in twenty-four hours where you will be placed into employment better suited for your mental capability. If you need assistance reading or understanding these instructions please consult the human control patrol placed to your quadrant."
The bastards.
They took away everything. They had taken away my father, my future and any opprotunity for any human to learn or think outside the reading level required to operate a peice of factory equipment. They wanted humans to become stupid and stay that way. All they wanted from us was a work force that they could grind down through abuse until there was nothing of us left.
"That still doesn't answer my question." The Monster commented, turning my attention back to his questioning gaze.
It wasn't supposed to asshole.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath to keep myself from throwing something breakable across the room.
"Physics." I mumbled, barely even loud enough for my own ears to hear. I knew he would hear it though.
He was a creepy bastard that way.
"That has a lot of math in it doesn't it?" he asked, sounding like he was talking about some washed up jelly fish that should be poked with a stick several times before touching.
The irony of it.
I had ben ripped away from what I had wanted to study since when my father explained to me how an airplane stays in the air when I was seven and the Monster that could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted didn't even know what it was.
It made me want to cry out in hysterical angry and bitter laughter.
So I did.