Monster's Theory

Chelsie stood facing the view, far too caught up in a world of her own to hear him step through the doorway. Pyjama bottoms and a tank top were the order of the day. Unkempt bleach blonde hair danced with the breeze. The tattoo was new. A trail of small black and white butterflies arching across her right shoulder blade.

Liam was tongue tied. Caught in that labyrinth between awe and fear.

The fairy jumped the gun and flew around to face her. "She's lost a few kilos."

"She's perfect," he whispered out loud.

And that's all it took.

The girl whirled herself around and swore as she stumbled back, rearing against the safety rail. A hand went straight for her top pocket and fished out her panic remote.

"Wow - wow - wow - woah! I come in peace!" He stuttered with hands raised high. "I swear I used official channels."

"Who let you in?!"

"Charlie! Charles buzzed me in."

"You're lying."

"I swear! Almost ten minutes ago. I've got the pass and everything!" he defended, pulling up the dog tag.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously at him. "Toss it over."

He promptly complied, ripping the visitor's tag of his neck and throwing it over. She caught it by the string and dropped it over the edge without even checking.

"Now get out."

Liam stood there baffled. "Seriously?"

"Yes!"

"But you haven't even heard why-..."

"Get the fuck out, Shannon!"

He regarded her with a hurt look. Then his expression hardened. "You forgetting what your mercenaries did to me the last time I dropped by without identification?" he asked lowering his arms.

"Well maybe that's the idea," she shot back.

"Jesus, when did you become so cold Chel?"

"Firstly. You don't get to call me that anymore."

"... Happening all over again..." he muttered.

"And second; this is my house damnit! You're breathing my air," she declared, venom dripping off her tone. "You've got nerve, you know that? Randomly popping up unannounced like you're still welcome."

"You think that I want be here?" he asked, adrenalin seeping into his blood. "That the first place I'd wanna visit on a Saturday morning would be the homestead that screwed my childhood over?"

Rosy lips gave him a spiteful smile. "Well then. Clearly we're on the same page. So how's about I make this easier on both of us?" A beep resounded through the air as Chelsie pressed the button.

Blue eyes shut in frustration. He could already hear his conscience singing 'it told him so'. That he should have just stayed at home, dissecting a frog or playing Hatred instead.

But now hired guns would thunder up the stairs, kick the door over before ripping out his fresh intestines and using them to hang him over the edge of her balcony. No doubt Cruella over here would be rubbing off to the sight with unbridled glee.

"I kinda had a feeling it would go down like this," he said, swinging the backpack off his shoulder and onto the floor. "So I left my number and address on the back page. You know... just in case you'd forgotten," he finished as a pink flat file found its way into the open.

Liam stood up with caution and in vain, offered the collection of assignments and notes. But his classmate just looked at it like it was some abomination. Then regarded him with the same expression.

The offer was withdrawn with a sigh. "Or I could just leave it on your headboard. Suppose that works too," he said, taking a step back.

"Leave it wherever the fuck you please. I'm not touching... not tou... not... touch..."

"Not... touching it?" he completed on her behalf.

She didn't confirm. Didn't get the chance to. Without warning, the girl clumsily swayed into the corner before the railing steadied her.

"Chelsie?"

The remote fell discarded to the pavement below with a distant clatter. "Shannon... Leave." It was barely above a whisper. He heard it nonetheless.

"You heard her," his conscience concurred, tugging on his collar. "Let's go."

"Not yet. I wanna know what's wrong first."

"I don't have to tell... To tell you shit." She cradled her forehead in her palm while the other tightly gripped the bar. "God please not now."

The backpack found its way back to the floor regardless. "You really expect me to leave you like this?"

"What I expect, is your heart... on a silver platter... in a few..." Her other hand quickly grasped for the bar before weak knees surrendered to gravity. "In a few minutes..." she finished, completely spent on breath.

"See. Common ground," he reasoned, cautiously closing the gap between them. "How about we talk about that, and your other sadistic aspirations somewhere less suicidal?"

A pale hand dropped off the bar and went limp by her side. The rest of her body followed suit.

"Uh... Are we still alive over there?"

No response. She just lay there. Eyes closed, leaning motionless against the cold rusted metal. He couldn't even tell if she was breathing.

"Oi, Liam," a certain high pitched voice piped up. "Tell me you hear that..."

The sound of stone cracking crept through the air. Subtle at first, but each variation came louder than the last. Startled feet spun him around and around, searching for the source. That gut feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong raced up his spine.

"What is it?"

"Hell if I know," came the reply, "but if I had to guess, I'd say that big fella over there is the culprit," it deduced.

But by the time Liam turned back to where his delusion was pointing, laws of physics were already at play. Blue eyes watched on helpless as the railing and underlying concrete gave way, taking the girl with it. Chelsie slipped over the edge without putting up so much as a fight. Three stories worth of stone and glass lay witness to her unconscious form plummet to the cold hard concrete. Not a single scream was heard on the way down.

Back on the balcony the boy stood frozen, haunted by his own incompetence. Breathing was beyond him. And before he knew it, unsteady knees had already touched the floor.

'A mere six feet away... How could he have just stood there...? If he hadn't shown up, if he hadn't been there then...'

Denial set in. That vainly optimistic part of a person that refutes reality. Lord knows he had enough the hallucinations to discredit his vision. Who was he to believe his eyes without a second opinion? What `just happened was impossible. There was no way he'd just do nothing and... and...

"I agree! Now for fucks sake, snap out of it and give me a hand!"

Liam regarded his conscience buzzing wildly from the scene of the tragedy. Its tiny hands were entangled in stretched blonde locks while transparent wings desperately tried to keep the pavement from turning into a crime scene.

"Any time now!" it grunted as the threads started slipping through its fingers. "She's not getting any lighter you know!" The sound of hair strands snapping echoed with the wind. A pink slipper followed the remote as pale feet dangled over open air. Bit by bit, the body started its descent.

"Liam goddamnit!"

The plea went ignored. Instead, trainers walked him over to the decimated edge of the balcony. Blue eyes peered down. No body. No blood. But there was what looked like lots of blue fur swirling in the breeze.

"Liam!"

"How did you do that?" He replied.

It snorted sarcastically. "'How am I doing that' he says." A distraught laugh escaped as it struggled to keep the body from plummeting. "At a time like this, that's the first thing that comes to mind? You know, when we're done here, you should seriously consider paying your shrink another visit."

The fairy's grip failed. At that point, Liam had already gotten a hold of her arm. Then her waist-band, tearing the flimsy cloth as he clung onto her. She barely weighed a thing. But just as he hauled her over, the boy thought he spotted something standing on the pavement below. For a split second, he could swear something did make the fall. It just wasn't Chel.

The fairy saw it too. It continued its hover over the edge, locking stares with the foreign object below. He observed it drop down to all fours and stalk away.

Liam frantically checked Chelsie's pulse. Then her eyelids. All of a sudden, the incessant whining started to make sense. Even more so when he remembered the discarded cables. "Idiot. You went ahead and discharged yourself, didn't you?"

Further downstairs, a Humvee sped over the previously discarded remote. Two more followed just seconds later, crushing the remains to dust. Reinforced tires screeched through the swimming pool area, skidding to a halt by a side exit.

In fact; a top down view would show multiple military grade vehicles closing off all known escape points to the premises. Some cut directly through the neatly trimmed maze, others emerged from the woods while more broke through the tennis courts, a trail of unnecessary destruction left in their wake.

Further above, blaring rotaries could be heard circling the main compound. Window panes vibrated with each rumble. So did the utensils parked on the vanity.

"They're coming!" the hallucination warned, flying back from the balcony and circling the hospital bed. Liam had already laid the girl back on the covers and was busy strapping the pulse sensor onto her finger. Nervous hands then picked up her elbow and scrambled to clip the colour coded tubes back in their plastic sockets.

"Hey lover boy! Did you not just hear me? Now would be an excellent time to make like a ghost and..!"

"Can we just make sure she's stable first?" The boy pleaded.

"There's no time!"

"But what if..."

"We're not doctors, okay?" It cut in. "You're in no position to determine whether or not she's critical. Especially when you don't even know what's wrong with her! Just let the people paid to keep her alive do their jobs."

Hesitation ensured. "Okay... okay..." he stuttered, standing up straight and glancing around. "M-my backpack. Where is it?"

"Maybe where you left it?"

Nimble feet shot for the balcony at Olympic speeds. He burst through the curtains, only to be swept up off his feet by a blast of freezing cold wind. Blue sky speckled with cirrus clouds, green trees lining the horizon, and then concrete. Cold hard Concrete. The tornado turned him over, and slammed down.

God that smarked. His lungs could barely draw a breath under the pneumatic onslaught. Why the hell was it so cold all of a sudden? Where was all this air coming from?

A hard push against the coarse floor rolled him over to meet the machine responsible. The Black Hawk stared back down at him. Majestic in its size, downright intimidating in its armoury. His ears felt ready to burst as the propellers rained down a barrage of pressure upon him.

A warning was broadcast through the megaphone. Not that he could hear it over the blaring of their engines. But if he were to take a wild guess, he'd assume they were telling him to stay the fuck down. That any cute behaviour would be rewarded with lethal force.

He chuckled at the notion while reinstating his legs back to duty. Imagine the cleaning bill for guts and raw meat, splattered across their floors. What a waste of a perfectly functional liver, kidneys, heart, lungs... etcetera. Fortunately, that wouldn't happen.

50 caliber weaponry, such as the machine guns mounted on that beast, utilised armour piercing ballistics. By far, more than enough velocity to rip through him and the walls. They wouldn't dare take that chance. Not when their raison d'etre lay on a bed just a few metres away. Besides. How would they deal with the publicity shit storm to follow after gunning down an unarmed minor? With such unconstrained overkill, no less.

Eye contact was made. And for a second there, through the reflection, he saw the pilot's visor. No doubt he wasn't all suited up for decoration. Liam called the bluff anyway, picking up the bag and bolting back inside. Somewhere along the line, this entire scenario had gotten blown way out of proportion. One button. Just one panic button could do all this. Just how bored can a security group get?

He sprung across white tiles, glancing one last time at the patient. All he needed to do was get to the laundry shoot down the hall. Security would be fixated on cutting off all official routes before marching up the stairs. Assuming the first vehicle arrived thirty seconds ago, he'd have at least another minute before the top floor was secured.

This granted more than enough time to slide down the tunnel and emerge in the basement. He'd then make his way past the wine cellar and into the decommissioned boiler room. The auxiliary valve would have to be shut before climbing further down the manhole and into the drainage system. From that point on, he was home free. Straight out of Hollywood.

But just as he was about to rocket out the door, he slid to a standstill.

"Oh come on! What are you waiting for?!"

The boy turned to look at the hospital bed. Sky blue drapes flattered wildly around it. "There's something I need first," he said, raising his voice over the high pitched engine outside. "Go on without me."

The fairy stared at him with a flat expression. "I don't think you necessarily have a full grasp on how this relationship of ours works."

Not that he was listening. No. He just tread towards the foot of the bed where the drip chambers swung with the air current.

"I noticed these earlier," he said, a hand unhooking one of the plastic containers. "Drip chambers are used to infuse either medication or nutrients into a patient. They're a last port of call when the said patient can't take the substance naturally." The pack was turned over and blue eyes skimmed through its description. "Thing is, unlike the others hanging here; this one contains neither medication nor nutrients... Not in the conventional sense anyway."

He strung it back up on the overhead bar before regarding his ex-best friend on the bed. An unspoken worry written all over his features. "Why would you need a blood surrogate, Chel?"

Distant calls of voices could be heard from the hallway, getting louder by the second. The helicopter continued its post outside, blowing in the curtains along with layers of dust.

"When would you have lost enough blood to warrant this?" he queried, redirecting his attention to the infusion pump mounted on the bedpost. An electrical gadget that channeled the fluids through their respective tubes and into her arm. "I mean, I don't recall seeing any scars during pool sessions. But even if that was the case, what has a substitute got over the real thing? You're not Jehovah's Witness by any chance are you?"

"Thirty second window!" his conscience warned from the doorway.

With haste, Liam skipped over to the computer console by the headboard. But when he opened the logs, all he saw were warnings rolling in, one after the other. Many of them were beyond his ability to translate. Those were of no consequence however.

What he was really interested in were diagnostics. Perhaps even daily summaries, prescriptions, treatment schedules, something, anything that would shed any amount of light with her condition.

"Twenty five!"

"Just a little more!" he said, swiping from one view to the next. "I've almost got it..."

At this point, eyesight was the only functional sense. Fingers trembled ever so slightly as they scrolled through the data. Metal crashing against brick startled his nerves. The same meal from earlier now decorated the near wall. The trolley lay on the floor next to it, wheels still spinning. Should've slid the balcony door shut.

"Twenty!" The sound of boots slamming against stone was unmistakable. So were the barking noises that accompanied them. What were those? German shepherds? Doberman perhaps?

"Bingo!" The printer on the other side of the bed fired up, drawing a page in. Liam ghosted over to it and snatched the sheets before the wind could whisk them off. So maybe he wasn't smart enough to make sense of all these hieroglyphics. He did however know someone who was.

"Fifteen! Liam cut your losses!"

"Still enough time. We're out!" he shouted back. But just as he was about to ninja away, something brushed against his leg. Something cold. Liam turned to see a barely conscious Chelsie looking his way. Her green eyes were mere slits behind tired eyelids.

To the sheer horror of his accomplice, the boy crouched down next to her and held the hand that reached for him. "Talk."

Pink lips moved, albeit barely so. Not a decibel came out. None needed to.

The fairy watched dumbfounded as its master stood, went for the vanity and found the oxygen tank. "Five seconds," it whispered to nobody in particular.

Five seconds later, transparent tubing found its way around pierced ears, then under her little nose. Oxygen fizzed into the cannula, filling her nostrils. Her chest rose and fell in relief.

The escape window was no doubt shot. Even if an attempt was made, the dogs would surely shred him to bits before progress was made. So the boy did the next best thing he could think of. Today would not be a total loss.

His bag was quickly shed and laid on the floor. In a last ditch effort to salvage his work, deft fingers unzipped the main pocket before shoveling the printouts inside. Footsteps were just metres away at this point.

Liam jumped back to his feet. One of which kicked the backpack into the open closet. Guilty eyes next regarded his conscience, seated quietly on a picture frame. "Well? Say something."

It just shook its head, a disappointed look plastered across its features.

The very next second, oak doors flew off their hinges and in stormed private security. Rifles, laser sights, shock bars, Kevlar, all that good stuff. They carried it all.

Blue eyes shut knowing what came next. And they did not disappoint. They never did.

The electrical shock as a baton knocked his knees into midair. The size thirteen boot as it slammed his chest down to the floor. The cold barrel of a shotgun as it dug into his cheek.

A cough ripped itself from his lungs. The weight denied him the next one. It hurt. So much that it gave him sears. Teeth grit and eyelids shut tighter, refusing to let her see him broken again. Not this time.

"Sweep the room! We're confiscating anything and everything that's not on the manifest!" That voice. That alcohol marred voice. "I want a medic in the room ASAP, a detailed CCTV report of the entire premises starting fifteen minutes prior to now..." Liam could recognise it anywhere. "And for fucks sake, someone tell Feldman to move that bird elsewhere. I can barely hear myself think."

An eye cracked open to regard the asshole. A psychopathic grin lit up his marred features. "Well hello there, kid." he greeted. "I heard you finally showed face again but I just didn't believe it." The boot pressed down harder. "Jokes on me, huh? And that's saying something 'cause, Jesus..." the sadist laughed, "I thought you would have learnt by now. How've you been keeping anyway?"

More white hairs than the boy remembered. More wrinkles too. Especially around the eyes. He still wore that faded camouflage cap... the silver dog tags... Must be an ex-marine thing.

With his last grunt of air, Liam reached out and clicked the weapon's safety on. That drew a chuckle out of the mercenary. "I see your point. Wouldn't want the fun to end too quickly, would we?"

Windows rattled as the helicopter started its ascent. So did the trolley, the utensils; they all clattered with every vibration. "All clear, sir!" another voice called out.

"Of course it is," he silently admonished, pulling a cigarette out of his rear pocket. "Since when has anyone ever breached my perimeter?" The combat boot lifted off, only to kick the child onto his back. Deprived lungs battled for oxygen in between ragged coughs.