Episode 191: Adele (Thayer)

He moved into the room, slipping through the door and absorbing every detail as quickly as he could. Inside the room he knew there would be a girl, but he wasn’t expected a girl with thick lips and shoulder length hair that curled away from her face in waves.

He wasn’t expecting to feel a desperate wanting the second he saw her.

He tried to smile at her, but his own lips were tight. He felt coiled, like a snake ready to strike, but without bloodlust.

“Hey. I’m Thayer,” he said.

She smiled, and her voice was as soft as mist cascading across a river. “I’m Adele.”

“Did you see any rules around here?” he asked. His eyes had already caught the paper, sitting on the counter of a piece of kitchen that was separated from the main part. It looked like Cecil’s desk in the classroom, but the room had a fridge and an oven. It had white cabinets with black accents on the appliances. The whole place was white. It wasn’t worth further comment.

He moved to the counter and read the rules. Adele, his girl, was standing in the middle of a room that had a white couch in it. She waited while he read them, but he kept his eyes on her in case he was wrong about the day and she was going to try and kill him. He didn’t know what promotion meant or demotion, he just knew the day was going to end in an unexpected way.

His biggest theory about the day ending oddly was Asa: he was in trouble, doing stuff with a kid outside. He wasn’t the one being promoted, which meant everything Thayer had expected was changing. The rules were changing. The game was changing.

Thayer was tense.

He refocused on the rules and then set them down. His brain couldn’t comprehend anything on the paper beyond some duty to touch her, to lay with her.

He didn’t want to call it anything else. This wasn’t romantic. He knew his life would never be about romance, being stuck in this place, but it didn’t make him want it any less. This girl, this setting, this everything was wrong.

And he had to be most convincing at it.

“Hey,” he said to Adele again.

She almost lifted herself to her toes and peered at him. “What do they say?”

Living in a world where everyone was muscles and not much else, she was big. Not big. Did girls feel insulted by that? Emily wasn’t big. Adele was…. Plushy?

“They…” He didn’t want to say what the paper said for two reasons. The first, because it would ruin his chances at winning if he broke his act. The second, because he didn’t want to say them. If he could salvage his experience, if he could carve a nook of something more out of the moments he spent in these rooms, he would have something to hold onto.

He wasn’t sure if he was going to lose Asa, his best friend, his partner in their awful lives. He’d never imagined a world where he might survive longer than Asa; his goal had always been to survive long enough to get Asa through.

Why was he stuck on Asa? He had a girl in front of him that was supposed to touch him in ways he never wanted Asa to touch him.

Ever.

Times forever.

He looked at her, and remembered she was hot even if she wasn’t Emily. Not that Emily was the hottest thing ever, but he liked her body. Adele had a good body. He just… it felt wrong, being here just to touch it.

What in his life felt right?

He took a step toward her. “They said we should get to know one another, enjoy each other’s company.”

Her cheeks tinged with pink. “Get to know each other? Like…?”

She took a step toward him, in case he was dense.

This was wrong. In every way wrong. “In every way.”

He wasn’t any better than whatever this test was, because he wanted her. He walked past her and looked out a fake window. It looked like a real window, and having never really seen a real window it probably could have convinced most people, but it just lacked something. He decided it was a window to another room, and the outside illusion was for him to feel at some sort of ease.

“What do you like?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, her tone darker than Cecil’s had ever been. Darker than any of their instructors.

His body was hot and cold about her. Is this what girls were? He was doing fine without them before.

“I know all about this stuff.” She puffed out her chest, and he wanted to laugh and grab her waist. She stared down his body and grinned.

“You do?” Why did she know all about stuff.

She moved closer again. He just stood there. Every move here was important and this was important and Asa was outside in trouble and he didn’t know what to do, for once, except not move. This was supposed to be something fun in life, not something that felt like dying.

No one said he had to move. He would lose if he didn’t get around to it, but for now he had some time.

“You don’t like good food?” she asked.

Not cannibalism.

“I meant, you know about this stuff?”

“That’s what girls here learn. What do you learn?”

“We work on physical skills, reading, math.” This was a good topic, safe, bonding, he could build off of it and give a decent performance. When did stuff become a performance? This place sucked. “But mostly working out and strategy.”

Thayer was almost certain he used to believe in following the rules and whatever information they fed everyone, he knew he had lived long enough to have been reasonable, but something had changed in the past few years and he was sick of it. If he didn’t have Asa, he had nothing worth sticking around for.

He needed to shake it off. This was a girl, and he had the chance to do whatever he wanted to her. He wanted to do stuff to her.

“Physical skills?” she asked, closer even…even closer than before.

“Like…” he looked up at the ceiling. It wasn’t white. That was weird. It was soft blue, like the strings on his clothes after a few washes. “Running faster and hanging from ceilings longer.”

She stepped back, and he realized she had been so close the oxygen in the room was gone. It felt good to breathe again.

He was being an idiot. This wasn’t anything more than another game. He needed to show up for it, be there, win it.

“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked. “I have a nicer apartment.”

“I don’t think we’re allowed to.” And he wasn’t going to quit. He needed to do this. She was hot enough.

“Yes we are,” she pushed back. “Did someone tell you we weren’t?”

Cecil was lenient with them, but creative around the rules excursions were not tolerated. Arguing was going to cause him to lose, leaving would cause him to lose…. Why was she even suggesting it?

“Why do you have a nicer apartment than this?”

Her chin lifted and she looked proud. “Because I’m in charge of this facility and I like nice things.”

“You’re what?”

No that was too much. He closed his jaw.

He wanted to kill her. Right here, right now, he wanted to kill her and see how she liked being fed to people. Not any of the people he knew, but maybe just cooked on principle. That was gross. He could say it though, he could say he was going to cook her and then leave her somewhere.

No, he couldn’t kill her. She was in charge. She was the one doing this to them. She would have guards nearby or some way to protect her. Or she was lying.

If she was lying… maybe it was the test. Going along with it for more clues would be a way to find out what she was up to, what was going on.

“Yeah, we can go,” he amended.

Her mouth widened into a too-big smile. He was less than a dog, he was her chew toy.

“Good, she said. She moved around him and opened the door. “You’re close friends with Asa?”

No. Not Asa.

“We work well together on things.”

“He is in a lot of trouble right now.”

“Because of that kid?” Thayer asked.

“And he is too comfortable being the favorite,” she continued. So that meant yes to the kid.

Asa was in trouble. “I don’t think he’s even a little bit comfortable. Favorite can be a bad thing.”

Asa was the one that seemed the most stressed the most often. Everyone else was either stupid and thought they might live or knew they were going to die and just wanted to see how long they could live.

Asa, he had something dangerous – hope.

It was a tiny flickering of hope, but he had it. Thayer knew it was his fault for fanning it into what it was, but if anyone was getting out of there he wanted it to be Asa.

“We’ll have to disagree on that.” Her voice was tight and cold again, her body coiled like a snake. “I’m usually right.”

“Yeah, too uncomfortable,” he amended.

The way she walked and talked, Adele was like a kid at a playground, except no one else was having fun.

“What do you like to eat?” she asked, in this creepy way that made him wonder if people was the right answer.

He didn’t care if Asa died, he would never say he liked to eat people. It reminded him of the kid outside, and the kitchen duty comment. Asa was trying, it seemed like, but that poor kid. All the kids were going to die even if they didn’t know it yet. Someday, even if it wasn’t today, Thayer would die. He looked forward to it for the first time.

No, he wasn’t going to do that, he needed to be strong and hopeful.

This, he knew, was not a normal response to being told he’s supposed to spend a night with a girl.

“Anything you want,” she added, pushing for more.

“Caramel,” he spat out. They’d had caramel a few days ago. It was good. It was the only thought he had that related to things he could stomach.

She entered a room, and he followed her inside. It was still white, but everything was nicer. There was silver and it was sleek and everything looked angled.

She walked toward a kitchen area and found a bag in the cupboard. “Did Cecil tell you one of you was being promoted?”

“He did, yes.”

She unwrapped a caramel and held it to his lips. He ate it.

“It’s you,” she boasted. “What do you think of your new apartment?”

This was not a promotion. This was bad.

“Thank you for the promotion. The apartment is nice.”

“You can live here now. I won’t let anyone kill you, or hurt you.”

She turned to a black wall and with the press of a button the wall filled with images of girls with Brendan, Neron, Thackery, Ian, and a lone girl in the last room.

“That’s Asa’s girl. He’s still at the obstacle course.”

“What is going to happen to him?” If he had been promoted, he’s do what he could for Asa.

“He’ll get that girl pregnant. Then he’ll take her home to her family, who has missed her for a long time, and they’ll accept him as one of their own, and then he will feed us information on how to kill them. Asa, as we saw today, will do anything to protect a child. That will only grow for his own children.”

Asa… a dad… it made no sense. Not yet.

He mumbled something and she asked if he wanted kids.

No, but he couldn’t say it to her. He asked her back instead, and made a point of touching her arm.

She nearly squealed. “Rules, first. I don’t have many. Then you can do whatever you want.”

He wanted to leave. If Asa was here he would have asked if it was an option.

“Yeah?” He said instead.

“You don’t need clothes here. You don’t need to leave. If you try to die, I will bring you back. If you try to escape, I have ways to force you to stay, but I would like to be able to trust you.” She paused, and for a moment he thought they were just going to be silent. Wishful thinking. “Can I trust you, Thayer?”

“You can trust me.”

“Good. Then I can keep you alive. You can live forever, and be mine and I will be yours.”

She pushed him down to the floor and kissed him. He closed his eyes and pretended he was somewhere else.

“Last rule is that you are not allowed to say no to me, ever.”

It matched everything else in his life, no control. This wasn’t his life. This was someone else’s life and he was stuck as a pawn inside it.

“Why would I?”

He kissed her again. He hated kissing. He should have liked it, but he didn’t. She’d ruined it. She’d ruined everything in his life, including himself.

***

Her hands stretched across his chest. “I have waited a long time for you to be ready for me, Thayer. Too long.” Then her gaze left him for the screens, where he could see Asa and some girl in a room. This wasn’t for him to see.

She disgusted him. He kneaded her hips, imaging her neck. “Do you need to watch them?” he whimpered, like he wanted her focus.

“No, but I like watching people have sex.”

She had recorded them, he bet.

“You should watch them,” he managed to say.

Instead, she turned toward him and kissed him. He hated her lips.

“Do you want more caramels?”

Not from her fingers. “Yes, please.”

She got up and got the entire bag of caramels. As she walked back she shook her head at the screens. He didn’t look.

“Brendan is gay,” she stated. “I don’t want to watch him have sex, he’s broken.”

Brendan was gay? Since when? He looked at the screen for a second, to see if he was with a girl or a guy. It was a girl. It didn’t make sense. Brendan was just another one of them, even if he was a jerk.

She turned the screens off. “We’re trying to get some other people. If I get them they will live here with us too.”

“Okay. I hope I get to meet them soon,” he lied.

“You’ll have to share them with me,” she said, her eyes locked on him like he was going to react.

Yeah, if he wanted to die he would have already.

She kept talking, and for some asinine reason he kept prompting her for more information. She claimed one was Asa’s dad. Yeah, right. Apparently the kid Asa was running the course with was his brother. She said a lot of things about people and Thayer was just glad she didn’t like gay guys. Sharing her, and not having to be with them, was the highlight of his evening.

He kissed her. “It’s amazing what you’re doing behind the scenes.”

She ran her hand down his cheek. “It’s hard on you boys, but we’re trying to save the world. I used to know your dad.”

It took him a second, not even, to realize she had thrown an extra bit into her sentence.

Don’t react. Don’t die.

“What was he like?”

“He looked like you. He was picky.”

Thayer was picky too. He didn’t like boys or Adele.

“Is he alive?”

“No,” she sighed and grinned at once. “It is a tragedy, but at least you are here.”

He had to decide if he was going to do something or not. He wanted to, every cell of his being wanted to.

He wanted to do it right. He needed to succeed in killing her, not enjoy the experience or rush it .

“What was he like?”

Thayer wished he knew more words about women, people, who were like this. He wanted to call her things, if only in his mind, but he had nothing.  He guessed she was the reason: In charge, disgusting, banner of words that could be used against her.

“If I lay down there,” Thayer suggested, pointing to a spot on the floor a few feet away from the wall of screens. “You can face away from me and watch the screens.” And he wouldn’t have to look at her.

“But then I can’t see you. I always want to see you.” Her words were meant to send shivers of something good through him, and maybe the did for her, but he just felt chilled the way he always felt after a death threat.

He had been a fool; death sounded much more pleasant now.

He glanced at the wall, where Asa had been. It was black now. She took his hand. “Come on, I have toys for you.”

He followed her, because he wasn’t allowed not to. It wasn’t just his life, it was Asa’s life too. If he ever found out Asa was dead, he wouldn’t play along anymore. He promised himself not to get lost in her toys and her games. His entire life was complicated games. This game, at least, was easy: say yes, agree, compliment.

Her bedroom was scary.

If he turned around, he would be in trouble.

There was a waterfall outside her bedroom window, so he stared at it and tried not to think about anything else.

“This room is incredible,” he managed to say.

“It’s yours,” she stated.

He didn’t want it.

He zoned out, but he tried to compliment her and have some sort of response to the things she said. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about his life, he wasn’t sure he cared about Asa’s enough to do this long, but for now he just carried it like every other burden of his life.

He hated his life.

He was done.

“Playtime?” she asked.

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