finally being free.
She watched the beast lurch forward with each step and she tried to figure out who he might have been before, how he might have looked.
He certainly wasn’t inexperienced, but if she believed what he said before about fathering all the beasts, did he mean only in the lab, or with his seed as well?
The torches burned brighter as they followed the hall to the end. The walls became less rotted and overgrown, more clean and maintained. At the end of the hall, a single steel door waited for them. It wasn’t like the cells, which had barred doors, but more formal. More final.
“Is this it?” Mary said, ducking under the beast’s arms and examining the door. Her mind raced. The beast guided her back with his hand and gripped the door handle, yanking it open with a satisfying hiss of air. Mary’s ears popped as the pressure equalized and she inhaled the scent of something fresh, the stagnant air of the dungeon all too familiar. As the door opened, the beasts in the cells all the way down the hall howled and moaned with astonishing ferocity.
Mary looked to the monster, finding his eyes which looked lost.
“Are you coming with me?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” the beast said.
Mary frowned, she couldn’t tell him he wouldn’t be gutted and killed the instant someone saw him.
“I have to find a way to reverse this. Reverse the way I am,” he said.
“Reverse it?”
“Beyond this door is the laboratory. I’ll be able to work there, hopefully... these claws won’t fail me.”
Mary looked at her hands and his. A thought fluttered through her. “I could stay and help you.”
The beast snorted. “Impossible.”
“Why?” Mary fumed, offended. “I could help you!”
“You can’t. You can’t stay here much longer.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. I still need to get home too, how am I supposed to do that without help?”
The beast lowered his gaze and met hers. He grasped her shoulders with his clawed hands.
“This isn’t where you belong. This dungeon isn’t in a city, a building, or anything. It’s separate from your world.”
Mary’s mouth opened as if to interrupt, but the beast continued: “When you step through there, you’ll fade back to where you came from.”
“How did I get here in the first place then? I don’t understand...”
“I don’t know. I had agents on the outside with drugs that would induce the transportation, but they shouldn’t still be around anymore.”
“I don’t like it. I don’t want to leave if you can’t come with me.”
“I already said, I have to work on a cure first.”
Mary struggled against his grasp, freeing herself from his claws. “I don’t buy that. What if you find it and I never see you again?”
“We will find each other. I promise.”
She shook her head, a smile crossing her face. “I can’t believe any of this. I don’t even know your name.”
“Reizan.”
“Your human name.”
The beast frowned. “I don’t remember.”
“Reizan, it is then. I’m Mary.”
She took his claw and shook it, trying to not think too much about everything.
Reizan didn’t answer. He looked at her mournfully, long-fully. Before she could say another word, he grabbed her and shoved her through the open door.
***
H er skin was moist and dewy when she came to again. Too dizzy and disoriented to speak, she tried to look around and gauge where she was.
Darkness surrounded her from all directions, she reached out with weak arms and brushed at it, and saw it flutter. The light broke through the darkness the brightness making her shield her eyes. As she recovered, she realized where she was.
She was under her bed, the skirt and sheets bunched against the sides and blackening the room. She rolled out from underneath and gasped for fresh air, clutching the sheets in her hands as tight as possible.
Her pants were torn, her shirt still moist, her makeup smeared, and her mind foggy.
She heard stirring outside her