Tag: quarantine

quarantine 3

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Neal was drifting in and out of sleep in his austere grey room with a bed that looked like a cot. He didn’t want to think about the scenes of that day, but they kept drifting into his sleeping eyes and kept insisting that he scream at them, silently, one more time. 

He was alone, waking and sleeping. Even Acardi had learned silence and inaction and in his silent screaming, he was alone. 

He woke to a scurrying in the vents. He groaned and rolled over. On top of all this, the compound had a vermin problem. The next moment, the scurrying seemed closer, like it was on the ground next to his bed, whatever it was. 

And a hand closed over his mouth. He meant to yell, but the hand was clamped tight over his lips.

“No sounds,” the reedy voice whispered. “It’s very secret. You act like a guard, lead me down the hall. I am handcuffed. But I lead you. Then you’ll sleep better. You’ll see.” A scrawny girl handed Neal a pair of iron handcuffs, then turned away and offered him her hands. His hands were shaking as he closed the iron over her thin wrists, but what choice did he have? 

Neal Grover only paused to pull on a pair of jeans and tuck in his white undershirt before following this strange girl down the hall, wherever she led him.  

She made him push her along a couple times so it looked like he was leading her, but it didn’t matter. The halls were deserted. Neal didn’t know his way well enough even to know what sector he was in when the girl stopped abruptly in front of a door that looked exactly the same as all the others and passed him the handcuff key. He freed her wrists and she opened the door with another key from her pocket.

She slipped in, barely opening the door, forcing Neal to edge his way through awkwardly behind her. 

The room was well lit and furnished with a round table and chairs whose occupants were of all shapes and sizes. Among them was Vanessa Acardi. A man with a beard that was barely more than stubble stood up and looked expectantly at Acardi. She nodded.

“He’s the one.” Neal tried to keep himself steel, but his eyes never obeyed. Now they were wide with alarm. The man nodded curtly at the scrawny girl who had brought Neal here.

“Good job, Norv, as always,” he complimented. Norv smiled crookedly.

“See. Rat’s are good for something.” She turned her smile sideways to Neal. “Aren’t they?” Neal was too confused to respond, and whether he would admit it or not, he was scared. 

“What’s going on?” he snapped. The man’s figure commanded the room as he looked at Neal with direct, but not harsh, eyes. 

“My name is Viktor Nicklaus Hartmann and this is the Resistance.”

quarantine 2

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Neal was sitting in the break room, still wanting to cry. He had no duties yet, so he was waiting, but he wasn’t sure what for. Vanessa Acardi came into the small room and got herself coffee as stiff as she always was, but that didn’t stop Neal, or the words that tumbled out of his mouth desperately, almost tearfully. 

“How do you do it?”  Acardi turned towards him and raised her eyebrows.

“Do what?” she asked.

“What you just did. When that guy just…” he shook his head, “and you just stood there.” The guard thought about it as she stirred half-and-half into a small styrofoam coffee cup. 

“Just like you did,” she answered.

“What?” 

“Like you did,” she repeated. “Stand still, say nothing, do nothing.” Neal shook his head.

“But how do you just let that happen, right in front of you?” Acardi opened her mouth, about to answer, but changed her mind. She paused with her eyes on this new guard, scared and desperate, and she looked almost sorry. She apologized with a sad smile. 

“You learn,” she said, and left.

quarantine 1

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The air of the cavern-like dining hall was literally filled with insects: butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, but no bees or horseflies. The ground was carpeted with small, harmless furry animals: rabbits, mice, ferrets, gerbils, and everything in between. But the benches were
also filled, with humans.

Mycha started to walk through the fray.

“This is the Harmless Animal Sector, pretty self explanatory,” she explained, as she dodged a butterfly and stepped over a rabbit. “We don’t have to worry about them much. They know that one foot, or antenna, out that door and who knows what could happen? If someone happened to swat them or, god forbid, step on them, it would be such a tragic
accident. But after all, only an accident, of course.” Mycha’s smile made the air seem colder, and harder.

Next was the Semi-Harmful Animal Sector. It was bigger and felt a little less homey.

They walked through multiple sub-sections: stinging insects, biting insects, venom-less snakes, wild dogs, birds of prey. There were even more in the wings, Mycha told him.

After that, Mycha, who smiled too often and too cold, took him to the Dangerous
Animal Sector.

And this section felt like a prison. The air was somehow even harder. The walls were grey cement, the only furniture was hard and metallic, and hardly anyone was around, especially not in animal form.

Mycha motioned Neal into a smaller hallway decorated with its own set of locked stainless steel doors. Mycha pushed him through a smaller door at the end of the hallway. It was lead to a stairway and a small observation room with a one-way window. Even before he looked, Neal didn’t want to see through that window. Mycha gave him another chilly smirk.

“They were waiting for you. How nice.” She held down the intercom button.

“Bring her in, Vanessa.”

“Acardi, call me Acardi. We’re not on a first name basis, Barton.” Mycha released the intercom and shook her head, still smiling.

“Oh, Vanessa, always so formal.” But Neal wasn’t watching Mycha anymore. He was
looking through the window, and he knew he would regret it.

The guard called Acardi came through a cleverly hidden door on the far side of the room, roughly pushing a girl, short and almost too thin to be healthy. Neal guessed that it wasn’t by choice.

From the high observation window, he felt like he was watching a movie. No, dolls.

He was watching a game of make-believe that felt all too real. [He dissociates here] He was far away, so much bigger than that small, struggling figure, but he felt so close.

But he kept his jaw steel and his face hard. Mycha was grinning.

“You know, it’s your first day, let’s get closer.” Neal wanted to shake his head quickly and back away, like the shy kid he had been just a few years ago, but he [suppressed the instinct and] instead he gave his sadistic colleague a curt nod and followed her down a narrow metal ladder that took them to the stage of the scene that had started just minutes ago. And Neal looked where he knew he would regret.

Acardi had forced or maybe allowed the short, thin, handcuffed girl to fall to her
knees. Neal pursed his lips.

“Those handcuffs look…different,” he noted. Mycha shrugged.

“Iron, stops them from shifting as long as they’re touching it.” Neal nodded but he
wanted to scream.

“This is the fox that’s been causing all the trouble,” Mycha smirked. “Used to be a
Semi-Harmful animal, now she’s a little bit more, and gets her own…special treatment.” Acardi kicked the girl with her rubber boot. The girl barely flinched. She looked so broken; Neal doubted they could break her anymore.

“No moving,” Acardi ordered. The fox’s eyes were clenched shut and she didn’t
move. Acardi nodded at the door. “Subject ready.” Neal wanted to shiver but he was already
cold, hard, steel. A man in a white lab coat came through the door with a petri dish, a
scalpel, and some tweezers. The fox’s back was facing Neal, so he was forced to look where
he would regret. The man pulled the stretched and bloody collar of her T-shirt down to
expose her shoulder blade. He made an unceremonious incision. The blood started again,
Neal supposed, to flow. The fox flinched her eyes shut tighter but made no sound, and she
did not move. The man was not done. He pushed the tweezers even less ceremoniously into
the incision and pulled. The flesh ripped. The girl’s lip curled up, but still she did not move
and she made no sound.

“Flesh sample,” Mycha grinned.

Neal knew his eyes were wide, but at least his jaw was still steel. He wanted to
throw up.

The flesh sample went into the petri dish and out the door with the man in the white
lab coat who was too bored for the blood that poured down the back of this small
unmoving fox-girl. Acardi forced the girl off her knees. The blood still ran on pale skin like
wax, but it was too fast for dripping.

Neal wanted to do something that he hadn’t done, or even thought about, for years, almost a decade. Neal Grover wanted to cry

quarantine 0

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Part 1 – Breaking the Dragon from Her Cave

The Fox Escapes

The air was hard. Neal Grover breathed in steel air conditioning and let his
heart run under his steel-tipped jaw. First day. He was stationed at the quarantine island.

He had heard stories about the terrible disease that raged there, so many different stories that he had sometimes doubted that the disease could be real. But that was ridiculous. Why have a quarantine island and no disease? He could never answer why such an island would need guards in the first place. But it wasn’t his job to ask questions, or to answer them.

His cold walk brought him finally to the overseer’s office. The overseer was a man in his late thirties that could only be described as gruff. He seemed disgruntled even before he caught sight of Neal. He didn’t look any happier to see a new guard. Neal took a deep breath. Steel, he reminded his jaw. Steel, he reminded his heart.

“Name?” the overseer snapped.

“Neal Grover, sir.” The overseer rolled his eyes.

“Sir…yes you are new. They never bother with that courtesy anymore.” He sighed wearily. “Past experience, Grover?

“None, sir.”

“Good, fresh out of the academy. They are getting thin. The guards I get are greener and greener each year.” Neal’s eyes darted around the room. He wasn’t sure if he was expected to answer or if that would make this already disgruntled man even more disgruntled. The overseer shook his head. “No matter, we’ll train them, always have, always
will. Mycha!” he called. A guard sauntered into his office in answer

“That’s alright, Mycha, don’t hurry it would make my day too easy.” Mycha only grinned in answer. She crossed
her arms.

“What do you want, Boss?” she asked. The overseer pointed at Neal.

“This is Grover, Neal Grover. He’s fresh and untrained. Take him for a tour and show him the ropes.” Mycha grinned in answer.

“Easy enough. Where’s he stationed?” The overseer sighed and looked at his
scribbled notes.

“I hate to do this, but we’re short staffed in the Dangerous Animal sector. He’ll go
there.” Neal blinked rapidly. Dangerous animals? This was a Quarantine island, not a menagerie. Mycha shrugged.

“Your job, not mine, Boss.” She turned back to Neal. “Come on, Grover, you’ve got a lot of touring to do.” She left the room quicker than she had sauntered in, leaving Neal to scramble to catch up. His jaw loosened as urgency overtook his first-day nerves.

“Wait! Hold on.” Mycha turned back to him. “What does he mean, dangerous
animals? I thought this was a quarantine island.”

“Okay, Grover, I’ll cut you a break today, since you’re greener than grass on the
other side of the fence. Lesson one, newbie, this is not a quarantine island.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s a place we hold a very special type of person.” They were walking through a
different hallway with hard air and grey walls.

“What kind of person is that?” They reached an iron door, locked from the outside.

“It’s where we keep shapeshifters,” she said and swung the door open.

quarantine 4

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Indigo walked down the hallway in jeans and his white undershirt. He walked quickly and reluctantly, like he had somewhere to be but was afraid to go there. His journey brought him to one particular stainless steel door. He pressed the key tightly into his palm.

What was he doing? He was a guard, not a caretaker. The broken arm shouldn’t
bother him, nor should the damage done by Jeremias’s angry fists. He’d seen beatings before.

Why should this girl be different?

The teeth of the key left bite-marks in his shaking hands, and he looked at the door
for moments longer before he unlocked it. The little snake lifted her head in curiosity like she had not been asleep, and maybe she hadn’t. She blinked and pinched her eyebrows together. Even Indigo had to admit; he was strange company for the middle of the night in a
room that looked too much like a prison cell to be anything else.

The groundcrawler sat up and swung her legs off the twin-sized cot that passed as a bed. She was ready, ready to get up, ready to attack.

What do you want? She snapped with her eyes. Indigo shook his head and held out a condom.

“I have an offer for you.”

That little snake looked at the small shiny package for longer than Indigo wanted to
hold it out, but still he held his offering, and still she stared.

Indigo watched her face closely for any sign of change. Her eyes were wide, as
always, but they didn’t change. But her chin seemed to bob up and down in a slow, imperceptible nod. Finally she nodded, curtly and certainly. Indigo nodded back.

“Good.” And together they unceremoniously pulled off their pants and their underwear. They kept their shirts on and their voices low. Although it wouldn’t have mattered anyway; those walls were meant to keep in any sound no matter how piercing and painful. Indigo hoped that these sounds would not be painful. With just as little
ceremony, he rolled the condom on his erect penis, and looked at the snake expectantly.

She nodded, and it began. There was just as little prelude as there was ceremony. It was not long before Indigo was on top of the groundcrawler and then, in her.

Naja watched and felt, almost impassively. It hurt a little at first, but then it felt good.

He waited for her to orgasm, then withdrew, tied the condom, and threw it into the trashcan where they had thrown her tooth earlier that day.

Without invitation, he laid down next to this…snake. They were both breathing
heavy and neither looked at the other as they laid, almost touching, on the twin-sized excuse for a bed. Their breathing had quieted when Indigo finally looked at her.

“Do you ever talk?” he asked. She looked back at him. Their noses were barely
inches apart.

“I don’t talk to guards,” she answered, her voice soft and smooth. Indigo raised his eyebrows.

“Am I not a guard?”

“Not right now,” she smirked with a small, soft laugh. Indigo let the silence hang before he turned back and asked another question.

“What’s your name?” The snake sighed.

“Just my genus and species: Naja sumatrana. People call me Naja.” Indigo watched her closely.

“But not guards.” Naja gave him a long cold hard look.

“Guards aren’t people.”

Indigo didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. Naja looked up at the
ceiling, wondering, but not really caring, how he took that comment. He finally turned back to her, with his body, not just with his head, and slid his fingers up her jawbone. He looked into her sharp brown eyes.

“Well, Naja,” he started softly, “snake or not, you’re quite something.” Naja pulled
herself closer and looked back at his eyes.

“What does that mean, Indigo?” He pulled back, surprised that she knew his name, but he looked back into her eyes and they pulled him forward.

“It means, Naja, that, guard or not, I regard you very highly.” Their eyes shared one solid, heavy-breathing moment. She didn’t expect what was coming, but she knew. He pulled her neck closer to him and their lips met. And Naja shared with this human guard a moment only her cheek had shared with a thin pair of lips, somewhere, buried deep in days when magnolia trees didn’t bring a knot to her throat.

But this moment was heavier, more alive. This moment belonged in reality and would not be disappointed because it would never, could never exist outside of this room.