Innocence ch. 2
Damned if I do, damned if I don't. My choice was never the issue, nor was it the option. Sometimes I wondered if the collapse of choice in society would rend it apart, or coax something far too alien for it to comprehend. There were many possible answers to that--more than two, at the very least. From my experience, I found that on a lesser scale, the lack of choice... simply coaxes something far too alien for one person to comprehend.
I'll admit: my childhood had its ups and downs. Most childhoods did. It wasn't a scarred wasteland of sadness and crap really; for being adopted I'd say it was pretty generous to me, in fact. One thing I remember most prominently was being sent by Sally--my foster mother--to go collect a sprig of lavender from the garden every Sunday as a little husky pup. The raccoon was on the religious side of things and did try to coax me into being the same. She told me tales about how the plant bore the virtues of the Lord, such as hope and inner strength, and I always believed it. It was a load of fun, honestly. It felt like going on an adventure and coming back with a prize every time. At some point I even shared it as a game of sorts with a friend from elementary school. Gosh... I actually forget his name. He stuck with me through-and-through, then I stopped seeing him after a transfer in junior high.
'Course, that lavender-gathering thing stopped when I hit my early teens and Sally realized I wasn't sticking with any particular faith other than the virtues she told me about. That is to say, I wasn't big on believing in an all-powerful entity hanging out in the clouds. And she wasn't too glad that I was making it a game, no less.
School years at that point never went particularly well for reasons I can touch on later. Much later, however--that is to say a couple days before the incident at 3-Step when I became all huge--stuff happened that I don't think I'll be able to forget all that easily.
"Listen, honey," my 'mom' said. "We understand you're scared. But nothing's going to happen to you, I promise. It's just an internship, dear." The raccoon talked like an overly caring mother. That is, complete and utterly fabricated BS, nobody actually talks like that. Pardon the rudeness. Her legs were crossed like she had a good point to make, like she believed she was in the right. And knowing her, she probably did.
"It's not just an internship anymore," I said, sitting beside her on the sofa of the living room. I refused to look at her. "3-Step's paying you to let them rip open my stomach and give me funny pills and whatever else, and you didn't even ask me." I focused on a stupid crease in my jeans that was only adding to me being pissed off. "Look Sally, I'm quitting tomorrow. I don't care how much money you make!"
Sally uncrossed her legs. That meant business. "It's not like that... dear, call me mom--"
"Now Clarice." Great. Good ol' dad's always there to help. As much as I hated him joining in, it was better than Sally. Just listen to how uncoordinated they were; any other dad would wait first, I've seen my friends get chewed out in front of me. He basically killed her argument. "Where else are you going to find work? Look, just step back for a sec." Mhm. I never looked at the bigger picture, after all. "We're a lower middle-class family in a lower middle-class neighborhood, so we don't have all the money in the world, and you couldn't find a job until a month after college. Your mother and I had to pay off your tuition and--it was expensive. Really expensive."
"So what?" I growled, removing any hint of a hunch in my posture. "You think that parents aren't supposed to do that? You think I'm supposed to earn thousands of dollars within the first 18 years of me being alive? That's just freaking ridiculous!" I said, raising my voice.
But Joseph raised his higher. Even for a raccoon, he was a pretty huge man. "Don't you dare give me backtalk, young lady! You're in our house with our rules! We've fed you, given you a home, and sent you to school, and we never had to do any of that. Do you understand me?"
I cringed. Now I had to back off. I was used to being the timid one in arguments; I thought I could put my foot down for once, but that sure didn't last long. Hell, Joseph knew that about me; Sally, maybe not, but he more than made up for it.
And bringing up the fact that they adopted me sure was the easy way out.
I took a deep breath. "Yes, Joseph."
"Look at me."
I tried to glare, but the rage in his eyes doused mine; instead my expression went flat for fear of expressing anything. "Yes?"
"You're going to keep that job, Clarice. You need to."
Looking back on that, I can no longer believe what this conversation came to. What ended up happening because of it was just icing on the cake, really, because... well, this was a lot more personal. And frustrating. It's not that my new job didn't hurt me or affect me--it's just that the fact that it could have been so easily avoided, and the means themselves, hurt me more. These were my parents, goddamn it.
Joseph sighed. Deeply. Exasperated parent stuff... hoo boy. He let his fists fall onto the coffee table like an ape. Sally waved a hand, shook her head, and cradled her legs onto the couch... like she was no longer taking responsibility over the conversation. Letting dad take control over the thing she couldn't handle.
"Remember the bike accident near the grocery store?" He was staring dull daggers into me, like he was mad but didn't have the energy to be. "That's what happens when you're careless. It just costs us more and gives the opportunity to lose you. We don't want to lose you."
I sighed. I couldn't argue. That incident was two years prior, but I still got a scar between my shoulder and neck from getting hit by a car on the way home from school. I wasn't looking on an intersection by the department store (which, as you may recall, I'm too tall to lean on now) and took a metal-blasting roadie jeep up the chin.
Well, at least, that's what I told them. Let's get back to the "school was less pleasant" part I mentioned earlier.
Truth was that having fake parents tends to get around the nooks of school, and happened to do so during my budding years in junior high. Some people thought the fact that one of their meekest classmates was without anyone to call mom or dad--and mean it--was funny. Those people happened to think lynching is funny, too. But, I was just a young girl and an easy target. I don't win fights.
There was the occasional bout mocking before and the rather rare threat, but that amounted the rest; that was the only time anything of the sort of extreme occurred. In fact, by the time high school kicked itself up, I'd grown to be over six feet in height--forget what everybody says, puberty is fucking awesome--and with a bit of a thicker skin. However, the attack did happen directly after school so no teacher caught it; and, like several girls my age who wouldn't know what to do, I kept it a secret for no reason other than to prevent it from happening again, and from underestimating their power in situations like these.
No, I totally got hit by a car. Hush-hush.
Here, my foster parents were bringing up a somewhat unrelated incident--but I understood the point. They wanted to comfort me, hold my hand, and make me feel more loved; when it came to the situation at hand, anyway, and in the end I'm willing to slap money on the table that it was for the sake of their argument and not much more. But I didn't really think about fighting it further at the time; the shallow possibility didn't strike me as plausible. Maybe they were right... maybe I was just overreacting, I assured myself. "Okay." I rested my hands on the couch arm and slouched onto them. "I'm sorry. I'll go."
And so I did.
****
...Gosh, I'm really sorry. I guess I'm still pretty mad at my parents. I'll change the subject, okay? But again, it's making me feel SO much better to have someone to vent to. I hope that doesn't come off as selfish.
So... that's that. That argument was two days before the incident in question. Let's fast forward a teeny bit, only three days past the experiment itself. By this point I hadn't actually been forced to eat or kill anybody, just for some context there.
I was plopped on my tush in the old gallows, the same place that served as my new home ever since my growth. They used some big vehicles like tractors and a wrecking crane to tear down a wall of the place. It was about noon; a really nice day to be honest. But they were beginning to block that all off again now that I was safely inside and compliant, this time with a giant steel plate, so that was the day the sun went away.
The scientist from 3-Step--the fox whose name was Darrian, or Professor Darrian--was there. At first I found him a rather forgettable, disposable waste of a person; but he wasn't overseeing the operation of the wall as much as he was overseeing me. I was... his property. His product. And that's what made me think, if incredibly briefly and for the tiniest of moments, that he was going to comprise a sizable chunk of what would be relevant to my life. But it hadn't struck me to any real measure yet. I had no reason to be upset; I was still like normal.
I crept over to the wall, still being built, and peeked over the edge. "Hey! Girl! Keep your hands off." Darrian's voice startled my hands away from the wall. "That's construction in progress." They were getting ready to hinge up the whole thing and attach it to external winches, like a gigantic drawbridge.
"S-sorry..." I backed off a little. "Why do you need the wall?" I asked. Oh, I had been told that executioner was going to be my new job, but I hadn't really believed it all that faithfully. I figured it was more of a backup suggestion than much else, and right now it wasn't at the forefront of my mind. I think that's the "denial" phase, right?
"Running away makes it a lot harder to keep you in one spot," he muttered. More to himself than to me. In fact, I think he was sorta hoping I didn't hear that. "We'll open it when you need to relieve base needs. Don't fret." I squinted and backed away from the wall, deciding then to recline as far away from him as possible.
That "letting me out" thing ended up being once every two days, mind you, not related to any schedule of mine; just off charts and graphs and averages based on what the experiments did to me and my digestive system. I don't have to clarify what I mean by that, right? And when they did, I was accompanied by a brigade of men carrying huge crackling sticks. High-acting stun weapons if I had to guess; me being who I was, it surprised nobody that I could be dangerous. I didn't have the guts to try anything.
In fact, speaking of those charts and graphs and averages, they had to get their information somehow. Cue the spark in the dark, Valicia Fetterburg, official 3-Step tester and local question-asker, who would stop by my cell to check up on me every now and again. Every... two days or so, hm. Coincidental. Garbed in an unassuming turtleneck sweater (I guess it was autumn? Wasn't that cold yet though), the black and white border collie was the most disarming person I'd met so far. And honestly, I'd come to briefly look forward to her visits. While clearly seasoned in her field, she couldn't be more than a decade older than myself, probably somewhere in her early thirties.
The canine approached the day after my 'housewarming', green eyes glinting just behind her secretary glasses. "Hello, hello!" she gushed at me. "How are things with our Clarice, huh?"
I rubbed the back of my sore neck. This place wasn't exactly the most form-fitting room ever. "Heh, could be better, but thanks for asking. Just hoping to get back home as soon as possible." I forced a laugh like people do in these pseudo-formal conversations. "I'm thinking about heading to bed early. This whole thing's been a little startling."
Valicia nodded. "Yes, of course! Now--not to infringe on any personal boundaries here, but there are some questions I'd like to ask you." Producing a lead pencil, she held it at the ready above a slip of paper--the contents of which I tried more than once to spy upon, though of course it was too small to really read. And I was too big to do so unseen. "Only two for now, but later I should have more. That is, if I don't forget any! Let's see now..." I think she was trying to make me laugh. I think. Still, her eyes focused on the sheets in her hands, flipping from page to page and condemning any she deemed unhelpful to hang from the edge of her clipboard. "Any big mood swings lately? I mean, not just the initial surprise of our big ol' mistake."
"I don't think so, no."
"Okay, good!" Her tail wagging, she seemed quite pleased with the answer. "That's one unintended side effect of the experiment's initial usage, or so we've seen within the first couple days. The one that halves metabolism, that is to say. There's the possibility of it being a delayed reaction for you since you're bigger and all, but it's good to hear it hasn't crapped on you further!"
Okay, that time I laughed.
"Now, the next one," she continued. "Have you had any... say, bouts of intense anger, or excitement?"
My head tilted to the side. Really weird question. "Er, isn't that the same as a mood swing?"
Valicia giggled, shook her head, and put away her notes and pencil. "Not quite! But if you look at it that way, I suppose nothing along those lines has occurred." She extended her arm and held a hand out, posture back-breakingly straight. "That'll be it. Pleasure meeting you, Miss Lavender! I am very much looking forward to future visits!"
Was she...offering to shake my hand? At this size? My eyes flicked from the ends of her fingers to her gleeful, smiling face, and back again, and so it went. But she never took back her arm. Carefully, I reached over and gently plucked her wrist with two pinched fingers and shook up and down, feeling like an infant to a nanny the whole while. The action still jerked her from the ground a couple times.
"Thanks, Valicia. Er, Miss Fetterburg."
"Ha! Quite a grip there," she said while readjusting her glasses. Just before she turned to leave, tail still swaying back and forth with subtle exuberance as she began disappearing through the solid steel slab, I found that mine was doing the same thing. "Yes indeedy, that about sums it up for today. See you in a couple days! And by the bye," she began slyly, "do call me Val." I returned a shy wave that she didn't see.
A couple days. Now that's when the sun really went away. But you already know about that.
****
It seems too one-sided in terms of how I viewed it if I don't bring it up, but like I've said before, it never was simple. Apologies if I'm getting nervous again... I have to make myself say it because it might not make the most sense at first unless I try to elaborate, and I want it to make sense. It's just, like, between seeing those cameras in the corner of my eye and having the victim in my hand, ready to submit--maybe I have no spine, maybe I'm just a coward. Hell, I believe that.
But can you expect anybody just picked off the street and put in my situation to know what to do? Can you expect them _not_to be scared? No. You can't. I either kill a person I'd rather not kill, or... well who knew what they'd do to me for disobeying. Hell, they basically sold my soul for science and then forced me to act as an executioner. I had no idea what level of humanity to expect from anybody anymore after day two.
Then there's the fact that doing it was gratifying in an awful way I can only describe as predatory. It was all so... base, so strange, and yet so warmly familiar. On top of that, I still was blind to the reason for these people's sentences. I was supposed to take everything for granted and I could only go belly-up and accept it.
Why? Damned if I do, damned if I don't, you see. That's how my new life worked when it came to downing those on death row.
My first week rolled by, came and gone. Naturally it went slowly to a point of agony when it mattered, and quickly when I'd rather savor the moments of quiet. However, something happened to me on the first day of the second week. On day one, with the ocelot, I was helpless; on week two, I knew something had to change. I was not the right person for this sort of thing.
It was time to experiment a little.
The Doberman walked in just like the ocelot did, sort of sulking and reacting almost identically at the sight of a giant carnivorous husky. But I sat there, and I did nothing. "I can't do this," I said to him and to all who might have been watching. I tried to be firm. "I won't this time." Those four words went directly to the camera, right in its lens.
He sat there blubbering, but tried to remain as calm as he could. I did my best to comfort him, stroking his head with a finger and trying to shush him with quiet words; however he was rather averse to it, nothing showing it was helping him any. Strangely, it was like he knew who I was and didn't like it, and that arose some kind of fear in me that wondered if what I had become was public knowledge.
Actually, was it? Who knew what was happening to me right now? I--
Before I could figure that out, the small metal door burst open with three armed men then laying claim to the situation. All three were mice. Two were dressed identically, one of which hanging back, but the third looked like he was of a higher rank of some kind. I'd heard of him; Marcus Dean, the newest chief of police. He'd been appointed hardly two months prior, but he was by no means a novice.
"What in the world are you doing? Kill him." He seemed quite appalled, and... he waited for an answer for a solid seven seconds as I averted my gaze like a pouting child. Was he curious? "He was given a sentence by the judge, you've gotta carry it out. That's your job, Clarice."
"What if I don't?" Frankly, that was a question I was asking myself just as much as him. But I layered the whole thing with a scoff and a 'pfft'. "I'm bigger than you. You can't make me!"
Oh, but I suppose they didn't totally have to. The officer sighed--and hesitated--before cocking his handgun and shoving it right against the quivering canine's temple, eliciting many whimpers. "You don't, I will. I'd recommend following orders, girl, or else you might starve," he said, voice turning somewhat ominous. An attempt at sternness.
"Why are you even doing this?" I asked, desperation suddenly growing in my voice. I was realizing hints of defeat already, like my attempt at sternness had already been toppled. Instinctively making an attempt at drawing closer to the Doberman, I was driven back by a whimper from him, directed at the movement. Confused, my gaze alternated focuses between him and Marcus, waiting for something to get explained.
Marcus Dean did not draw the gun away, instead bringing his free hand up to wipe away sweat off his ears. "Come on... let me tell you who this man is." The brown mouse reached into his coat pocket and pulled a report from its depths. The tint of his glasses thickened as he focused, reading directly from the sheet. "Jean Tully. Struggled with bullying his peers in elementary and junior high years. He has been charged three cases of first-degree murder within the past two months, and is suspected to have taken part in several similar cases within the same area." He put it away again. "You're going to sit here and tell me he deserves to go free?" He waited for an answer again, but there wasn't one. So he shook his head. "I'll let you make your decision."
What he didn't realize was that I hadn't been paying attention--I even ignored the implication that I had any sort of option here. I was damned one way or another, remember?
But the thing was... now, all of a sudden, I recognized him. I recognized Jean Tully. And I recognized why he feared me even in the face of my attempted kindness: because he recognized _me_first. The sharp features, the permanent scowl, and the defective short tail... all belonged to the perpetrator of the scar on my neck, from the "car accident" over five years ago. I yanked my hand away from Jean, looking almost disgusted, and he seemed to understand why just as immediately.
"You...!" I started. But my throat clenched; there wasn't much more to say.
It was true, then. He was a criminal. He was, by my very own standards and even experience, the scum of the earth that shouldn't be on this world. I wasn't being lied to... at least, not here. My eyes were widening and I could seriously feel it. I didn't think finally meeting him again would hurt me so much--but you would not believe the kinds of torment I felt. I wished I hadn't recognized who he was. Having earned himself a sweet, cushy spot in a room with me, I could assume what he'd done to me was the least troubling thing about him. At least, if the report of murder was anything to go off of.
He never denied those claims, mind you.
"Please--I was just a kid, I didn't know any better!" His pleadings and begging fell on deaf, flattened, unamused ears that could only hear my thoughts crossing between them, not so much his words.
The thing was that I'd forgotten the pain he brought me by then; I didn't want to hold a grudge, to continue hating him, and following through with his demise would do little more than prove that I still harbored hatred. Yet at the same time, now that I remembered that pain, _how_I wanted to get comeuppance for the worst years of my life; it was a battle in my head. A little scar's... just a scar, right? I was being told to kill a man I once knew, someone who I was just as ready to forget about as I was to dump anger at. But it was anger I no longer had.
"I'm not concerned with what you did to me as a kid," I said. "Marcus is right: the murder is what matters. You've become something much worse than a simple bully." My uncertain eyes found the Doberman again. Jean Tully. His pleading was now wordless and limited to being projected by the wrinkling of his scarred, ugly face. However, for what it was worth, I decided to put my foot down. "But... I won't. I will not kill you."
Marcus Dean shot me a narrow look. A really strong, powerful look, the meaning of which, if I had to describe, bore the thoughts of something along the lines of, "I don't want to do this at all, but he has to die somehow. That's the order."
"Listen. I'm a strong believer in the law and I'm firm about what I stand for. That's why I'm doing this. But I respect your decision," he said aloud, and slowly. "And so I'm sorry." He looked down. Macabre moments passed before a fierce crack echoed through the room. The sound of something being dragged along the floor, though docile and unassumingly dark, shocked me awake despite my apparent, and false, complacency.
That's when it hit me. These were results that I'd been waiting for on part of my miniature rebellion, but not quite what I expected. What about the old death penalty? The painless methods? They disallowed those, and I understood a little bit what with me being in my situation and needing to use me, but they allowed guns? They allowed Marcus Dean to shoot him because I didn't want to eat?
Things were not like they appeared. Not at all, and it was making me angrier than ever.
"Tell me what's going on!" I yelled. It was a useless set of words that had no purpose, formed from primal ambition alone. This man might have been the only person that could help me here, and I realized that the second he started to walk away.
"What?" Marcus Dean turned around, gloved hands refusing to let go of the corpse by the neck of its shirt. He had absolutely no idea what I meant. He seemed so solemn, so... bent by what he was doing. Like his every move and word was being commanded, but he never fought back. It reminded me a little bit of myself.
"Tell me what's going on," I repeated again, this time softer. My ambition suddenly found proper words, my mind now able to channel its ardent thoughts. "What are my parents doing? How long will I be here?" I stopped to swallow, which proved difficult because the lump in my throat was probably bigger than him. "Tell me when the cure will be done."
I waited. I was so full of hope and passion, yet my voice wavered like fresh glass, ready to shatter.
"They... told you they have a cure? A cure for what?"
The feeling of my eyes trying to pop from their sockets and strangle him with a bundle of nerves overwhelmed me. That was not at all what I wanted to hear. Was I going to stay like this forever? How long had I been lied to? The one idea keeping me doing what I had to do, that made me think my whole job as executioner was ephemeral, may not have been true. With all the stress built on me over the past week, I was surprised that what I did next didn't happen sooner.
I snapped.
Releasing a pressured howl of rage, my fist found an area of the floor closest to him, rushing through the air before a thunderous clamor of cracked stone followed. Only the nagging voice of my common sense--and a quick leap by him--inched it just from squashing him directly; the force sent him staggering backwards, but he remained unharmed. Dirtied by clouds of stone-dust and coated in sparse pebbles, but unharmed. Instead, prone and inches away from the door, he reached for a speaker at his belt and held the trigger. His lips moved uneasily, but no words escaped him.
I hastily shook my head like a broken merry-go-round. His awkward yet awed choking continued as I realized right then the consequences; the last thing I wanted was to be seen as the monster that my victims saw. "I... crap, I'm sorry!" I attempted to coax him to put the thing down, hands held out like patting the wool of a live sheep. _Please, no backup!_I thought. "Please--yes, they did tell me they have something in the works. This is just a temporary thing." I hurriedly added. "I-I can handle it, really. I can handle it. I can deal with it until the cure is done. Just--don't call for anybody."
Marcus gave me a forlorn look. I was entirely uncertain as to what it could mean. There was no doubt about it--he was hiding something within this whole operation, and, one way or another, was just as mysterious as Darrian himself. Perhaps he was simply listening to me. Observing. But that didn't make him feel all that much better.
"You're insane! You could have killed me!"
I was wavering on the inside, but no longer on the outside; that's the exact response I expected. Calmly hostile, I bit, "I would never."
He couldn't think of a retort, let alone decipher the extent of my sarcasm without making himself look presumptuous. "Maybe there's information I haven't caught," he reluctantly admitted. The very words cast a calming veil over my quickened heart. There was still a chance. "I..." He stopped.
What was going through his head? "Yes?" I asked, hope returning to my voice.
Marcus finally looked me in the face. He then shut his eyes, becalmed perhaps, and drew his head away, hoisting the body of his a few inches higher. "It's nothing."
"No," I started, voice stern as it could be. I was trying quite hard to keep the sinews of my will intact. "You can't tell me 'nothing'. That isn't an option. The death penalty came back recently because of my state, that's all--and instead you walk up and blast a guy's brains out? How does that make any sense?"
"Because." A new, yet somehow familiar voice now echoed over that of the nervous mouse. I hadn't heard its owner enter due to the door being left wide open by Marcus. "You refused to do your job, now he has to do his. In all honesty, Clarice, respect and obedience are two concepts I would have expected you to master by now." What I saw managed to simultaneously inspire anxiety and just plain piss me off.
The fox in the labcoat finally decided to show himself again.