endured, I escaped, and here I am.”
“Do you ever plan on going back?” she asked.
The thought honestly hadn’t crossed my mind. I had no desire
to go back to London’s hell, but I remember the silent promise I
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had made to myself to go back for the Other. Still. I wasn’t going to trust Morrison with that; not yet anyway.
I shook my head.
She stopped walking and eyed me for a moment. For the first
time since I was constructed, I didn’t look away from a being that was trying to read me. I forced myself to stand up straight and not have the slight hunch that London had given me with her cruel
actions and malicious words.
“I have no need to go back,” I said in as steady as a voice as I
could manage.
“Not even for her to finish you?” she inquired.
“London will never finish me. She never finished any of us. I
say us because I’m sure I couldn’t be the only one she ever made.
Take care of the way you speak of London; kind words are
nothing if not wasted on describing someone as lost in lunacy and
delirium as her. Kind words wouldn’t save you from her if you
ever have the misfortune of meeting her,” I said quietly.
Morrison shrugged and pulled me along next to her, “She
seems interesting enough, though. I mean I can never understand
what you went through with her and I’m not saying this because I
think what she did was a good idea or anything, but looking at
you tells me what kind of genius she is. To make life out of
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nothing is not simple I would imagine and to be quite honest with
you if I had never heard you ticking in the factory and lifted your eye patch, I never would have expected you to be anything other
than a young man who had gone through a harrowing ordeal with
battle scars that prove his worth.”
My mind wandered off to Finnegan for a moment. She too
had battle scars only I didn’t know what kind of battle she had
been through. She didn’t hide her face from the world as I did.
When she approached me, she did so with an amazing confidence
for something that looked so young and fragile. I would be
haunted by her confidence and her face for the rest of my life, but I would also try to mimic her and try to build myself up to not be afraid of anything, and that included London.
Morrison and I walked through the streets until the sun started
to come up again. As she pointed out things here and there I kept
thinking of how I just might be able to muster up enough courage
to go back to London’s home.
Cars whirred past us and more than once she had to pull me
back from the crossroads onto the sidewalk so that I wouldn’t be
injured. I couldn’t help it though, my mind was elsewhere and it
showed.
As the sky started to show that beautiful lavender and orange
serenade it had the previous morning, she guided me back to the
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factory. I didn’t say a word to her. Instead I left her pulling the wooden boards back over the opening so no one else would enter
and I made my way back up to the room I had taken for myself on
the third floor.
I dragged the bed from where it had sat by the window to a
darker corner near the mirror and laid down. As I stared into my
own face, my thoughts were erratic.
Maybe Morrison sees London as a genius because she’s had
the same tendencies.
Maybe she’s keeping me here to lure London out.
Maybe I should’ve followed Finnegan.
Maybe I should’ve set London’s home on fire.
Maybe I wasn’t real, but that didn’t mean I could be
programmed to feel could I?
Maybe I could teach myself new emotions.
Maybe I could make myself stronger.
My eyes had started to close as the thoughts raced through my
mind. With as erratic as they were I knew these were my own
thoughts and not borrowed.
I especially knew that I had finally gained some control over
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the brain and mind that was harvested for me when I had one last
thought before I finally stop fighting my resting state with a smile.
Maybe I was strong enough to kill London.
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Six
Morrison was gone when I came down the next evening. I
wasn’t sure if she told me she would be gone or if maybe she
decided to take a few days away from me. I didn’t care. Either
way it was nice to have this place to myself again for once.
I glanced at myself in the mirror before I made my way to the
window. I noticed that for some odd reason it looked like I had
slightly aged. There were small lines around my eyes and my lips
and I was beginning to look tired. My hair seemed to have grown
slightly and my skin looked slightly darker for some reason.
I dismissed my reflection and placing my hands on the
windowsills I leaned out and took a deep breath. My resting
schedule was so erratic lately that I was surprised I could still
function properly. I had to get on a normal schedule which was
something I promised myself to work on soon.
I took one more deep breath and noticed something was
different about the air, for some reason it seemed a little cooler and crisper.
I walked quickly down the stairs and made my way to the
back of the factory on the main floor. There had to be more than
just the door at the entrance and for now it would serve my
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purpose to find it. I walked along the wall running my hand
across it from one end as I made my way to the other. It was so
dark in this part that I knew I wouldn’t see a difference; I would have to feel it to find any hidden door.
Halfway down the wall I felt a small bump. I ran my hand up
and down the bump for a moment before I was sure that it was
what I was looking for. Leaning toward the wall, I pulled at the
bump as hard as I could. Slowly it started to come away from the
wall and I could feel the breeze from outside. This wasn’t like the wooden boards that were used to barricade the front. Grunting
with effort, I pulled harder until the secret door finally gave way causing me to fall backwards. Thankfully I had a good enough
grip on it that I was able to stop it before it landed on top of me and caused irreparable damage.
I shoved the door to the side and got to my feet. As I
suspected, it wasn’t as simple as wood and interestingly enough I
felt a small flicker of fear when I looked at it. It was made of
some kind of metal and had an odd design to it. In a way, it
reminded me of the doors that London used to lock herself into
her workstations.
I tore my eyes away from it and stepped out into the night air.
My feet touched the wild grass that was growing in the small lot.
I looked down and couldn’t help but think that freedom was a
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beautiful thing. There was nothing sharp or dangerous under me
like when I was kept prisoner. The grass was pleasantly caressing
my feet with
each soft gust of wind.
I leaned down and picked a blade of grass and smiled. The
color was somewhat lighter than what I had seen in the woods
around London’s home, but as I looked up at the trees I noticed
that the leaves seemed to be slightly colored differently as well.
Almost as if overnight they had gone from a dark green to
yellows, reds, and oranges.
How long was I asleep?
I let the grass fall from my hands as I reached up and felt one
of the leaves from the nearest tree. It felt slightly weathered just as I had woke up feeling.
More time than one night had passed, that was sure but I just
didn’t know how much. I glanced up at the moon for a moment
before I went back into the sanctuary of the factory. There was
nothing in here that could tell time and if my body hadn’t woken
itself in what seemed to be a season, then I was running out of
time faster than I thought.
I walked from the back of the factory out the front door and
into the night. Something, somewhere would tell me how long I
was asleep.
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As I quickened my pace I glanced in store windows but it
seemed that anything that would be able to tell me what time I
was in right now was hidden from view or put away for the
evening. I was becoming frustrated which I knew would lead to
nothing good. I remembered seeing London frustrated one time
when she was making one of her creations. In a fury, she kicked
over her work table and pieces of material, tools, wheels, and
everything else she used had gone flying all over the room.
Thankfully she hadn’t known I had been watching her; that was
the only time she had ever left the door slightly ajar.
I chuckled to myself then thinking of what she would’ve
possibly done to me had she known I was standing there watching
her.
“Watch it,” some man barked at me as we bumped into each
other.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t realized I had just
walked into someone. I didn’t feel any need to reply to him
because I was on a more important mission; to find out how much
time had passed while I slept, so I kept my eyes forward and
glanced around for any tell-tale sign of how long it had been.
After another twenty minutes of walking I came across a
curious cube that held what looked like news stories folded neatly inside. I gave the small door a slight tug and accidentally wound
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up pulling the plastic door completely off the hinge. I looked
around frantically to make sure no one had seen me. It seemed
like beside the one man I had run into I was alone in the street.
Letting out a sigh, I placed the door next to the cube and pulled
out a paper. October 2nd it said.
Closing my eyes, I recited the months to myself trying to
remember the month I had left London in. April. It was April. So
then how long had I been asleep?
April, May, June, July, August, September, October.
There was no way.
I couldn’t have slept for six months.
That left me with less time than I had imagined.
Why hadn’t Morrison thought to wake me up? I couldn’t have
alienated her in the span of a couple of nights, could I?
I felt a surge of what I assumed to be anger. I would never
have left her vulnerable and sleeping for as long as she left me,
alienated or not. In that moment I decided that I could no longer
trust her.
Placing the newspaper back in its little box, I started to walk
toward the center of town. I had no desire to go back to the
factory tonight and I had never been to the center of town.
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It didn’t take me long to reach my destination though I had no
idea what my intentions were of being there. The deeper into the
heart of the town that I walked, the more I noticed droves of
people huddled outside of doors, talking loudly amongst each
other or smoking by themselves.
I was continuing on my way when I noticed one of the
females staring intently at me in the middle of her group of
friends. She had long light pink hair, reminiscent of cotton candy.
Her bangs were cut right above her steel blue-gray eyes and her
oval face held the innocence of a newborn angel. Little golden
key earrings, swayed gently beneath her hair as she swiveled her
head to get a better look at me.
I stopped for just a moment to take her in. She looked almost
radiant in her white dress with a pink floral design generously
smattered about. Her legs seemed to be impossibly long for
someone as small as she was. I noticed her trick when I looked
down at her feet and saw that she was wearing some type of shoes
with a large, curved heel on them.
I had never seen her before but she obviously seemed to have
a very stark interest in me. If she knew what I was I was almost
certain she and her friends would go back inside of their music
and drink filled building and continue their night.
Out of curiosity I decided to head into the building she stood
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in front of staring at me so intently to see if maybe I could find out what she wanted from me.
As I disappeared into the dimly lit building, I was
overwhelmed by all the sensations that came over me. The music
was so loud that it seemed to shake me from the inside out. There
It smelled of sweat and passion as couples danced together; their
bodies pressed tightly against one another. I pushed my way past
them as I tried to make it to the long table that seemed to wrap
around part of the room with small stools in front of it. I noticed that here it smelled of sweat and desolation. Some people were
sitting together in small groups laughing and talking, while others were sitting alone, hunched over their small glasses of dark
liquids.
This was too much for me to take in all at once.
I made my way back out into the night air and past the cluster
of people that seemed to be making their way in.
She was still there, small and devious as ever.
She kept her hands in her pockets and her face was as hard as
stone as we locked eyes. Nodding at her, I made my way past her
and her group of friends, feeling her eyes boring holes through
me the entire time.
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The more I thought of it as I walked the more my instinct was
to get as far away from her as possible and I had every intention
of doing so. As I turned the next corner I heard footsteps behind
me. One hindrance of having being made and not born, was that
at times like this I wasn’t able to distinguish if the footsteps were closer or further than I thought.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a flash of pink duck into
an alley.
Not as fast as you’d like to be, are you? I thought to myself
with a grim smile.
Angel Face was following me and I wasn’t sure why.
&nb
sp; A plan suddenly formed in my head. I knew where I would
draw her to and it would be somewhere she wouldn’t have a place
to hide. I looked both ways at the crossroads and walked quickly
to the other side. My memory was all I could rely on now to get
me back to where I needed to get her.
Her footsteps behind me quickened as I picked up speed. I
was going to make sure she was exhausted before I got her there
that way she wouldn’t pose as big as a danger to me as she might
like to.
I never glanced behind me again because I knew she would
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quicken my pace even more. A grin formed on my face as after a
few more moments I saw the park where I had met Finnegan in
front of me. Maybe she would be there tonight and we could
interrogate Angel Face together; I wasn’t sure but I knew I could
do it alone if I had too.
I lowered my head as I walked even faster into the darkness of
the empty park and made my way to the swing set, disappointed
in the fact that she wasn’t there that night. Behind me I heard the muffled jogging of my pursuer as she followed me directly into
my new comfort zone.
I stopped walking and turned to face her.
It was so unexpected that she almost ran into me. I looked
down at her. She came up to my chest but for some reason I just
knew she was dangerous by the way she stared up at me. Backing
up a bit she put her hands back into her pockets and looked at me
vacantly, almost as if she were suddenly in a trance.
“What’s your name?” I asked her coldly.
“Cassara.”
Her voice sounded like wind chimes as a soft breeze passes by.
“Why are you following me Cassara?” I inquired.
She didn’t answer me; instead she backed away just a little
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further, keeping her eyes locked on mine. Tilting her head slightly she smiled, revealing a row of perfect and impossibly white teeth.
“I’ve been trying to find you,” she said softly.
A look of confusion crossed my face as she took her hands
out of her pockets and balled them into fists at her side.
“What?”
She put one of her hands over her mouth as she giggled.
Something was definitely wrong with Cassara and I was starting
to feel that familiar twinge of fear.
When she was done laughing at my confusion she put a single