Abomination by A.J. Cole (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📖

The screams had stopped years ago – with the worst of the pain over, I no longer vocalized agony. The tears of despair were dried, the ability to produce them gone.

I was unchained, no longer confined. But free? No. Never again. I had been recreated, not reborn. My life, my body, was a tool, a weapon, a means to someone else’s end. The idea of escape, once a deep itch, now seemed ridiculous. Why would I escape? That would mean I had somewhere to go. I was where I belonged, with nowhere to go but my cell and wherever I was to be sent.

The little blind girl, abducted, tortured, used as the subject of an experiment in wicked biological abominations, now the abomination herself. Me.

I am the vengeance of the Harpy, the foul breath of Hel; I am Enyo and the Morrigan, the Keres bound in one body.

My name is Morta…and I am no longer blind.

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

“She makes me feel a little ill, Vic. Besides knowing what she can do, there’s something else. Something, I don’t know, disconcerting about the very air around her when she enters a room.”

“Of course there is. What did you expect? We told you what she is when you first signed on here. Why is she bothering you now after all this time? Now stop irritating me with your idiocy and come help me choose the weapons for her session this afternoon.”

I could hear them. They knew I could hear them, even through the heavy steel door. They also knew I was aware of how little they cared if I was listening. Fine. But was the mention of weapons supposed to get me excited about the day’s training? At one time, maybe.

Sun gleamed through the small window in my cell, through thick metal screening embedded in the translucent glass. I’d been awake for nearly an hour, my body clock jostling me out of sleep at the same time it did every morning. Other than putting my hair up, I’d done nothing else.

I pushed myself off the edge of the bed and stood in the grey-white patch of light, naked, stretching, waiting. My clothes would be brought with my breakfast. I closed my eyes, face raised to bathe in filtered starfire, my inner stop-watch ticking off the remaining seconds. Seven…six…five…four…three…two…one…

“Open up, Morta.”

I shook my head at the predictability of my keepers and smirked, the only expression I allowed myself that wasn’t a scowl or a blank stare. The door wasn’t locked, but Frida’s hands would be full with my things.

As always, she looked away when I opened the door. Why? Modesty? Disgust? I never could figure out which. Whatever - I owned neither. “Thank you.” I took the light stack of folded clothing from her left hand, laid it atop the covered tray trembling in her right – she wasn’t a strong person at all – and relieved her of her burden. Poor thing.

A step back, I used my left foot to shut the door in her face.

Ten minutes later, my breakfast of raw fish stuffed with raw super greens finished, I got dressed. Today’s outfit, a long-sleeved body suit that fit like a coat of paint, was light blue. Yesterday’s had been red. How lovely. Variety.

A knock was followed by the door swinging open – ah, yes. My master, Victor Polydon. I stood straight, saying nothing. What would I say?

“Ready for your morning run, Morta? I brought these.” He held out a pair of ankle weights. “I thought we’d go to the dunes. We haven’t had to run through the sand for a while. It will do you good.”

We…As if he’d ever make the effort to run at all. I nodded, taking the weights, and bent down, strapping them on.

“How was your meal?”

I shrugged. He wanted me to talk. Too bad.

“That good, eh?” A chuckle that meant nothing.

I offered him one of my smirks.

“Let’s go. I’d like you to complete at least ten miles before you break for lunch.”

Forcing myself not to look sideways at him as we walked down the corridor, I gave a quick nod. Why was he going so easy on me? Ten miles was nothing – I could do nearly three times that before lunch time and feel no strain, even with the ankle weights. Even through sand.

We stepped outside where the light showed its truer self, warming the air with its distant flame. Nice day. The building from which we’d emerged was not nice. Featureless cement walls with few windows enclosing a cold space divided into corridors and rooms. Nothing more.

The black vehicle that reminded me of a shiny, malevolent scarab crouched in the curved driveway. First meal of the day – me. I got in, devoured in an instant when the door was pulled shut, waiting in semi-darkness to be fully digested. We began to move.

“What is the driver wearing, Morta?”

I had to answer that one. A light tightening of the muscles around my eyes, and there: the black divider between us and the front seat was no longer an obstacle to sight. “Blue jacket, white shirt, no hat, black slacks, short brown boots, watch.” The driver had no taste.

Once in a great while I would be allowed a magazine to peruse before bed. From those brief moments when the glossy pages became my windows to the rest of the world, I learned what the human race thought about clothing. Fashion. Everyone on the pages slim like me, but not. I doubted any of their sleek bodies hid what mine did under the skin. I didn’t know much else about these people, but I knew that brown boots with black slacks and a blue jacket would not be a look any of them would adopt. Ever.

Victor was speaking again. I held back a yawn. “What shade of blue?”

Darker than my paint-on suit. Oceans. “Cerulean.”

“Excellent. But you didn’t mention his socks.”

“He isn’t wearing any.” Just the hair on his ankles and the sweat on his toes. Good thing I wouldn’t be anywhere near him when he took those boots off.

“All right.” He said nothing more for the rest of our fifteen-minute ride.

Relief. I hated the sound of his voice. That sound would get him killed one day. Another smirk – third of the day. Record-setting.

An inlet off the Atlantic Ocean where the water was never warm. I could no longer recall the name of the town I had lived in as a child. If the ocean had been anywhere nearby, I hadn’t been aware of it. All that child knew were voice-sounds, inside-the-house sounds, out-in-the-yard sounds, and weather. Tastes. The feel of things. But not darkness. Being blind doesn’t mean you see dark. It means “see” has no meaning. Instead, you ideate thoughts, you define colors by tactile experience. Black isn’t a color and I could never have imagined it had I not been given this unnatural, horrible ability to see.

The car stopped; I heard seagulls, and when the driver opened my door, I looked up. Four of them. Their flight paths floated in crisscrossed ease as they searched for prey on, under, the water.

The line of dunes, low sandy hills that stretched for well over twelve miles, began here and wandered to the left of where I stood by the side of the car. To the right, the sand was flat, the inlet a wide curve of chilly sparkles banded by a narrow beach.

“All right. Start.” Victor had come around the back of the car from his side and pointed at the dunes. The ankle weights fit snug around the top of my bare feet – I never wore shoes, never thought to wonder why. Straightening, I gave a nod, and began to run.

Ten miles through sand was ten miles of peace. The exertion exhilarated the part of me that loathed inaction, that hated living in a ten-by-ten cell. Five miles up the line of dunes, and five back. Too easy. Over too soon.

Victor looked up from something he was reading on his iTablet, nodded, handed me another set of weights, these smaller. Wrist weights.

I frowned.

“Put them on Morta. You didn’t think I’d only have you run ten miles, did you?”

My curiosity about that had almost encouraged speech to ask why, but silence was being rewarded, and I shrugged.

“Probably not,” he murmured.

I strapped on the wrists weights, bounced a little on the balls of my feet. What now?

“All right – on your hands, ten miles. Same route.”

I could run on my hands on flat ground, on grass, on cement, even up small hills. Through deep sand? I’d have to close my eyes and run blind. Well, that was something I could do. But when I sank into the sand with my feet, my upper legs pulled me out and kept me going. Sinking up to my elbows or shoulders…

“Go, Morta. It’s getting late and we have a lunch meeting.”

I blinked. Yes, I could do this. But why? Was I being punished? A brain pattern, my unnatural eyes boring into his. “DROP DEAD.”

His natural eyes widened. “Morta! How dare you!”

I hadn’t spoken out loud, but suddenly wanted to laugh. The idiot. I suspected that he forgot from time to time that I could do that. I turned away, went into a hand stand, and took off.

Ten miles through the sand this way was longer, but I did it. My hair was full of the gritty stuff, as were my eyelashes, my lips spared because I’d compressed them the entire time.

On my feet once more, I raised an eyebrow at Victor and crossed my arms. How easy it would be to snap that neck. How satisfying to punch into his chest and pull out his heart.

He looked at his watch. “Good timing. Let’s get back. We have some new weapons for you today, and a new instructor.”

Great. A new instructor. A new pain in the ass I would have to obey. Fine.

“I expect you’ll give him the courtesy of speaking to him.”

Do you, now. Maybe. I nodded. Him, but not you. Nope. Bastard. You murdered my mother. I couldn’t see you doing it, but your voice became imprinted on my mind that day, your mean laugh, your bored sigh. I smelled her blood in the room, and later on you, Victor.

After twelve years in the cold cement building where I had become a changling, I still had not spoken more than perhaps as many words to this man. This bag of sentient pus.

I had survived everything he’d done to me, accepted it, learned to live with it, chosen to use it as instructed. For now. I might never run away, but that didn’t mean I’d have to allow this bastard human to keep breathing the same air. Yes, I would stay. He, on the other hand, was on – as I read in a magazine and found appropriate – borrowed time.

^^^^^^^

“Hello, Morta. I’m Gideon.”

Gideon. Okay. Looked like he was in his late twenties, early thirties. Handsome but not pretty, strong build. Reddish-brown hair cut short, no waves. Copper-brown eyes surrounded by black lashes and lid folds that described someone who either smiled a lot or scowled too much. Maybe both?

Victor had more or less shoved me into the room and left without making any introductions. No one else was here except the sniveling sycophant with whom Victor had been speaking outside my room that morning. His name was Pruitt and he meant as much to me as the centipedes I saw slithering into floor cracks in the corners from time to time.

“I heard I was going to be given new weapons.” There. I’d spoken. After all, this Gideon had not yet given me a reason to shut him out.

“Did you. One physical weapon, yes. The other is not.” He looked over his shoulder. “Bring me the rifle, please.”

Pruitt