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That’s why I couldn’t remember anything from this place for so long. I was too small, and that part of my life was all merely a blur of shuffling fabric and unintelligible voices. It’s probably why I clung to the teddy the way I did, my fingers curled so deeply into the toy that they tore through the outer layer and into the cotton underneath.
But this boy’s face, it was like the sun. His hair glowed like a halo, making it seem fairer than the bluish-black of today, and his eyes, they were less...fierce. He held out his hand to me with a kind smile. I don’t know how I understood that he was asking for the bear. He didn’t use words, probably because I couldn’t speak yet, and he knew that.
So I gave it to him, my fingers unhooking from the holes they’d drilled in the fabric. He inspected the toy on all sides, and smiled at me as he carefully took my hand. I may not remember any spoken words, but as I walk up the stairs to the next floor, my hand trailing the banister, a warm feeling of being seen and cared for wraps around my heart.
It’s not long before I stand in front of the room where he sewed the bear up for me, his skilled moves fluid in the sun. Was that before or after they’d started to torture him in the basement? Before their evil finally broke the only soul who had ever shown me kindness?
I look around the small room, my hands resting against the chipped door frame on either side. If there was ever any coziness to this space, now it resembles nothing but a prison cell with its bare walls and barred window. And there are rows upon lines of rooms like this.
My hands finally drop off the door frame and I step away, eyes still fixed on the spot where his cot was. The memory of his hands working on the toy in a sunny halo keeps pulsing in my head until a scar peeks out from under his white sleeve. No, a burn wound, a pink, fresh one.
So it had already begun.
But the good was still there. The sensitivity in his eyes, the look in those dreamy blue irises, it prickles its way up my spine. They kept going at him until it was lost, every last drop of hope dried out until he was forged into an iron beast. His unique capacity for candor, for nobility, for virtue, all tortured out of him. Years later, he became an evil genius.
The memories transform into a feeling, something tugging at me, sending another scene unfolding in my mind’s eye. I’m holding the bear to my chest as I descend the stairs, the plush still imbued with his scent of dew and citrus. A scent that had quickly become home to me. I’d sneak up to his room whenever I had the chance, and he never sent me away. One night, he let me slip into his bed, held me and told me a story to fall asleep. I can’t remember the story, but I’m pretty sure it was invented.
But he wasn’t there tonight.
So I went down the stairs where I’d seen him go with some boys before, a few nuns escorting them. I could smell the burnt flesh from the head of the hallway.
I stop in my tracks as the memory of it hits my senses. I’m at the bottom of the stairs, the basement hallway stretching out in front of me, rusty pipes running overhead. The door to the laundry room is cracked open, light licking into the bare hallway and sending a blood-curdling feeling through me.
He didn’t cry out even as the iron seared his skin. The nuns were no longer there, but those evil boys sure had a lot of fun. I can’t decide what felt worse, the sound of what they did to Zayne, or their laughter, the delight they took in it.
I didn’t dare take another step that night, but the pain I felt comes back to me full force, knocking me in the chest like a hammer, splintering my breastbone. I couldn’t breathe. The boy who gave me the closest feeling I ever had to home was being torn apart in that room, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
Tears are streaming down my face, and I’m sucking in quick, painful breaths as my hand drops off the banister and I head towards that hellish room. Towards the place where the boy I loved died, even if his body remained. Zayne Thorngren of today is a vestige of the boy who once felt like home to me. But what was left of him attracted me like a magnet from the day I met him at his office at BioThorn.
Reaching the door that is standing ajar, I push it open.
The room never changed. Old washing machines still take up one wall, a couple of thick pipes running across the ceiling, and another few along the back wall, under a row of small basement windows that march along the upper part.
The corner, that is the spot where Zayne suffered. Rope is still coiled around the pipe, a pile of ironing tables tucked into a corner, and an old, rusty flat iron rests on the floor next to them. And, sitting right next to that iron–
“Mr. Grapples,” I yelp as the name hits me like lightning, bolting towards the teddy bear. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t speak out his name back then, but I did know it. I lift the brand new toy in my hands, inspecting it on all sides. It’s identical to the one I used to have, but how in the world did it end up here?
An eerie sensation travels up my spine, and I know someone is here before I hear them speak.
“There were days when the only reason I kept going was you.”
I turn around, slowly, and there he is. The angel from my memories. The devil from my present. The halo of light that used to surround him is now a fuzz in the light that filters through the windows.
“How could we have forgotten?” I whisper as I watch him approach. It doesn’t matter anymore that I ran away from him, and he found me. Nothing matters right now except the two of us.
“It was a trauma for both of us. There are things the brain can only deal with by suppressing them.”
He comes to a halt, towering over me.
“How did you get here so fast?” I whisper, unable to look away from his face, the teddy bear still clasped between my hands.
A smile lifts a corner of his mouth.
“Declan isn’t the only billionaire who owns a private jet, you know.”
This is the point where I should freak out, but all that washes over me is calm.
“Aren’t you upset?” I say. “That I ran away?”
