Chapter 8 – Chap 8

–

Silence lingers in the room as I stare back at my uncle who wears a subtle grin. The aged skin around his eyes crease into a pattern, surrounding his haunting gaze.

“Well? What’ll it be?” He prompts once more.

Time passes slowly as I ponder what to ask him. Whilst only seconds go by, it feels like minutes, hours. It feels as if 16 days have passed since he first asked me what I wanted to know, as if time had stopped just like an author who stops moving his pen.

My mind races, mimicked by my jumbled answer as I try to decide what to ask.

“My hair… my nails are – are gone,” I begin, “Am I – Am I me? Or am I one of those things?”

Before he can answer, I speak again.

“Or have you taken them – my hair and my nails, to create one of those creatures?”

He opens his mouth to speak once more, but I interrupt.

“Are you going to kill me and Tasha?”

He stares at me, still smiling. My gaze remains firmly locked into his, and he finally opens his mouth once more to speak.

“I’ll answer… I’ll answer them all.” As he says this, Orianne glances at him suspiciously from over his shoulder. He continues, “You are still you, Emily. Until you know that you are no longer you, you are still you. But, yes. We are… perfecting you.”

My stomach churns as he speaks; cold chills run down my spine like water down a wall.

“And that should answer your final question,” he says, “we are not killing you. We are… saving you. Correcting you.”

He turns to Orianne and says something that I cannot hear. She nods and turns to exit the room. The door closes behind her with a thud.

“Wh – where is she going?” I ask.

No sooner than as I finish my sentence, the door opens once more. Orianne returns, a tight grip around the arm of Natasha as she pulls her into the room. Natasha grunts and has obviously been recently crying. She wears a white hospital gown and no shoes.

“TASHA!” I shout as I scramble to the edge of my cage, pushing my face between the bars, “Tasha! Are you okay? Are you… what did they do to you?”
Natasha stops squirming and stares at me. She looks confused at the sight of me, angry even. The grip around her arm loosens; Natasha continues to stare at me in a strange manner.

“Tasha? Tash? It’s me – it’s… it’s Emily,” I whimper. What’s wrong with her?

Natasha takes a step toward me, slowly tilting her head to the side as she does so.

“T- Tash…?” I turn my attention to my uncle, who stands idly aside, staring at my sister, smiling.

“What have you done to her?” I whimper to him.

He does not react. He continues to stare at my sister as she takes more slow steps toward me. I notice that with every step, she drags her feet. The sound of them against the wooden floor is the only sound she makes. Her arms flail lifelessly down the side of her body as she approaches me, her hands dangle in the cold air.

Her expression slowly changes as she gets within a few feet of me. Her brow furrows, her mouth slowly opens. Rage plasters itself across my sisters face as her lifeless hands now tightly grip into fists. The drag of her feet gets heavier as she pushes them into the wooden floor which splinters below them as the force of her feet prove too much for the floorboards. The sound of cracking oak as it pierces her little feet make me jump; pieces of the wood stick into the bottom of her bare feet. Shards of flooring tear into the bottom of her toes, which seem to curl downward as it does so, pushing the wood in deeper. I look back to Natasha’s face. Her eyes are wide, as is her mouth. She stares directly at me, her mouth opened as if she’s screaming, but she makes no sound.

As she reaches my cage, Orianne swiftly moves toward Natasha and yanks her away by the arm, pulling her out the door she had originally come through.

As Natasha is dragged away, her feet are pulled lifelessly across the ground, massacred by wood. Her eyes and mouth wide, she stares at me as she disappears behind the closing door.

I fall to the floor in disbelief, staring where my sister had been moments earlier. Was it- some sort of fit? Some attack? I look down to where her feet had torn into the wooden flooring, staring at the small chunks of flesh that had been left behind, stuck in the wood.

But I realise something.

I had seen her feet torn into, grinded by splinters.

But I had seen no blood.

None on her, none left behind.

My uncle leaves the room as I continue to stare at my sister’s small segments of flesh.

–

“Wake up,” a hushed voice pulls me from my sleep.

I quickly sit up and scurry to the far side of the cage as my eyes adjust to the darkness to see Orianne before me holding a small, dimly lit candle. She stands by the door to my cage which is open.

She kneels by the entrance of the cage, still in the same red dress and red stilettos. She places the candle down and lifts up a part of her dress, revealing the gash she had cut into herself earlier.

She speaks.

“See?” she points to the cut above her knee, the blood now dry, “that’s how you know I’m real, remember? I’m sorry about hitting you earlier. I had to play the part of my copy.”

“My – my sister… she… what happened?”

“Your sister?” she asks.

“She – she walked at me and… she wasn’t her. She cut her feet up on the ground, she – She wasn’t her.”

“Oh, shit,” Orianne whispers, “they showed you her copy. They showed you the thing that’s going to replace her. It – it hasn’t learned her mannerisms, what she does. Did it fail to do certain things? Like say certain words wrong or maybe was unable to blink?”

“It – it didn’t lift its feet as it walked. I don’t know if it blinked but…” I trail off.

“That’s your sister’s copy. It’s still learning.”

“Why are they doing this?” I ask.

“I’ll explain soon, but the important thing to note is that your sister is alive. Until the copy is finished, they need your sister alive. The same goes for you. I can see they’ve started on your copy already…” she says as she stares at my wrapped fingernails and bare scalp.

“Where is she, Natasha?” I ask. I don’t care for myself; I need find my sister.

“I can take you there, but we don’t have long. If your uncle’s copy comes down we are both dead.”

“My uncle.. my real uncle. Is he alive?” I ask, voice trailing off as I do so.

“No, Emily. His copy is what’s called a Carp; a perfect, copy. If the Carp is finished, the host isn’t needed anymore. I’m sorry.”

“So – so why are you still alive?” I question.

“Because my copy isn’t complete. My copy is missing a huge part of me that makes me, me.”

“What part is that?”

Orianne smiles, “The fact that I’m good.”

She reaches her hand out toward me, gesturing for me to take it.

“Come on,” she says, “let’s get your sister. We have to be fast. Come with me.”