Aperi

“My name is Aperi. My job? It’s a long story with twists and turns you couldn’t possibly understand. Just know that I stand before you not only to plead my case, but to plead for my life.”

“Aperi!!! Aperi, no!” My mother’s voice is distant, her cries escaping from the house I had left behind long ago. She runs through the open door, the open gate, the open padlock on the old fence that protected the sandy beach, but she’s too late. My head dips under the water, the salt from the ocean filling my nose and burning my eyes. My mouth opens to gasp for air and the water takes its chance, filling my lungs with a finality I can feel in my bones.

The doctor’s whispered voices surround me as I play with the blocks on the table, the cameras in every corner observing the movement of every muscle, every twitch of my finger. I am the center of their world, the only thing they care about, but that is the key… I am a ‘thing’, nothing more.

I break from the flashes of memory to look back over the crowd gathered. They had come to see me. Once again I am the center of attention, and I draw that into my lungs like liquid fire. Burning fills me, my nerves screaming with every beat of my heart, but do they scream in pain — or pleasure?

You looked at me with pity. You saw a child whose past haunted her, whose present tears her to pieces. You aren’t one to break the rules, but you did for me. Even my mother had given up when she found out what I was. Yours is the first love I know.

They took advantage the moment you left. They knew the worth of what they had gained, even if I didn’t understand at the time. I watched you walk away, putting your faith in people you didn’t really know. The blue and red still remind me of your grace…

The crowd shifts at my silent gaze. They don’t understand why I watch them, why I don’t speak. After all, I had requested this briefing. Years behind bars without so much as a word and now — I wish to tell my story. That was the reason I gave. A simple lie, but now as I stand before these people I find that part of me wishes it were the truth.

The alarms sound overhead, but they’re too late. I hear my team hooting and hollering for me to hurry up, holding the back door open as they gesture to the waiting van. My legs pump. My arms clutch the precious jewels to my chest. I toss the bag to the nearest person and slam the door behind me. The lock slides into place.

“What would you do if you were born with a gift that no one understood?” My voice echoes in the large chamber. I speak quietly, but they hang on my every word. The chains weigh me down, my shoulders slump, the people in my vision disappear as the muscles in my neck give out, forcing my eyes to the floor. My captors know what they are doing — this time.

“You don’t get to just take what you want!” The crew is fighting again. I sit in my corner, chewing on the week old bread I’ve been given. It’s the first time I’ve eaten in days.

A hand runs along my shoulder, down my arm, fingers gently interlacing with mine. “So beautiful… So perfect… And all mine.” His voice is slick with oil, but I remain still. I learned the hard way that the best form of defense is unconsciousness.

“What would you do if your own mother sold you to the highest bidder?” I hear the sudden shift, clothing brushing against skin, shoes brushing against the floor as feet try to flee, murmurs from mouths that had spread rumor after rumor of my origin. No one knows my story but me, and even then… it isn’t whole.

Perfect mother. Perfect father. Perfect baby. They joked that I was Houdini at first, nervous chuckles as I escaped from playpen after playpen. I didn’t understand who he was, but that didn’t stop the first word from my mouth: “Dini!”

Project Houdini.

That was the nameplate on the door to my cell. They insisted that it wasn’t a prison, but a hospital to keep me safe. I played along for some time, until you came along…

Tears fill my eyes now. The sheer weight of the metal around my shoulders biting into my skin; pinching and blistering the sensitive layers that haven’t seen the sun in years. I wonder if you’re in the crowd, but I dismiss it as a childish wish. More than likely you are in the same prison I had emerged from. The only difference: you are free…

I tremble as you remove my hospital gown. Is it the emotion of finally being free? Or is it fear of what will come? You were so optimistic as we had run, insisting you could keep me safe as long as I stayed put. The problem is, I don’t have control…

Control. That’s what they taught me after you left. That was the piece that was missing in our relationship. You gave me too much freedom — a mistake. They kept me in line any way they could. It taught me to control my body, my mind, my abilities.

But never control over my choices.

I force my head up again, looking through my long greasy hair to stare directly into the eyes of a man in the front row. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know his name. If he is a father or a brother. What I do know: he is my way out. I smile, the skin of my dry lips scraping along my teeth, splitting and cracking as my own muscles pull apart molecules and tissue that should remain together. The man shivers. Perfect.

“Aperi,” you say softly. I look up into your eyes, the same color as the sea that tried to take my life many years ago. “You must promise me that you will never hurt anyone. You are stronger than you know, but you are good too. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.” I nod my head slowly, and you sigh with relief, pulling me into a crushing hug. I could have done it then, unlocked your wrists and escaped. But I trusted you. That was my undoing.

“By now, you’ve heard what I can do. You’ve come to see the freak in her cage, to hear the untold story of the girl who can open any lock.” I speak to the crowd, but I engage with the man. “You’ve been assured that it’s safe. I mean… 10 years locked in a pitch black room force fed through a tube should be enough to prove that I’m no longer a danger, right?” I hear the officer to my right shift uncomfortably. Good.

“C’mon Aperi! We don’t have time for this!” I flinch at the anger in his voice, but I don’t back down. I won’t be a thief. Not anymore. He kneels in front of me, forcing my chin up to look him in the eyes, “C’mon Darling. I keep you safe don’t I? I keep you out of the labs and away from the doctors?” It’s true, he had prevented all medical care, even when I lay bleeding on the filthy floor of my dungeon room. I rub at the bullet wound in my shoulder. Still tender.

“So, I’ll ask you again. What would you do? If you had the ability to escape any situation you were put in? Would you run from your abusers? Hide from the experimenters? Distance yourself from the captors?” My voice drops to a whisper as I think of you. “Perhaps stay with the lovers?”

“Enough!” This is it. This is his breaking point. He grabs my tender shoulder and squeezes. I drop to my knees, hot tears pouring from my eyes as a cold dread fills me. “You are going to do this job. You are going to go into that bank and get us whatever you can grab. Or you will starve to death in this pit you call a home. Now get your ass up and MOVE!”

It came almost naturally to me, the gift, and in that moment it spoke to me as if we had conversed for years. I knew what to do. I didn’t know the cost.

“Open.” I whisper, my gaze back to the ground before my bare feet. The padlocks obey, the heavy chains made of every metal they could find falling from my shoulders in waves. Chaos breaks out before the avalanche reaches the stage. Chair legs scrape along the floor as those who had braved to see me in person choose to run for their lives. I hear the cautious officer yell for me to get on my knees. I raise my hand instead. His gun explodes outward, every piece opening at my command, the bullets raining down to land at his feet.

His rant cuts off mid-sentence, and I look up into his eyes to find them filled with fear. “What are you doing?” He asks, somehow knowing that the blood rushing through his veins is now under my control. His hands fly to his ears, his hands pushing together until his skin turns purple with the force. “No! Stop! Stop, Aperi!” I say nothing as I watch his head explode. It’s the first time he’s ever listened to my opinion.

The man still sits in the front row, his eyes wide, his mouth agape. As I had suspected, he didn’t run at the sight of my talent. He was just like them — the doctors who wanted to study me, the abusers who wanted to control me, my parents who wanted to sell me, and you… you who wanted to love me. “Catch me.” I say, stepping off the edge of the stage into thin air.

The rest of the crew had run; any affection they had toward me disappeared with the blood that misted through the air. I simply sank to my knees in the gore, unable to stop the laughter that rang out around me — or perhaps I just didn’t want to.

I hear the gun go off as the man turns, his gentle grunts as the bullets thud into his flesh his only sign of resistance. A pity really. I had hoped he could take me the full distance. Despite the weakness in my underused legs, I step forward as he falls, commanding the wall before me to open before stepping through. By the time the officer has reloaded his weapon, there is a solid concrete wall in his way.

I take my time now, pacing myself as the mass of people who had come to watch scatter before me like cockroaches from the light. By the time I reach the patio door, word has spread: the most dangerous criminal in history is on the loose. I know they will send everything they can after me, but I have a suspicion they’ll struggle to find people willing to take on that suicide mission.

The patio door slides open easily, and I step into my childhood home.

“Aperi.” My father says, standing slowly from his position on the old recliner. Not much has changed then. “Come. Sit.” He gestures to the kitchen table, two place settings ready and waiting for dinner.

“Where is she?” I ask, my voice cracking slightly. I tell myself it’s from disuse, but I had delivered my speech without a rasp.

“She passed about three years after you left.” He pulls out one chair before settling into his own.

A laugh escapes me. I can’t help it. “Left? You mean after you sold me?”

“We had no choice, Aperi. We had no choice… It killed your mother. She wasted away before my eyes, unable to make amends for what we had done.”

“And you think I should feel something for that?” I ask, settling into the chair, as my hands slide over the smooth wood of the table.

He shakes his head slowly, “No. I don’t expect your forgiveness or your understanding. I just want you to know that we always loved you.”

Love. That’s what we had, you and I. Before they came for you in the night. Before I hid in my closet just like you said.

We sit in silence, my father ladling soup into the bowl in front of me. I eat, tasting spices I barely remember from my time as a toddler, running around this very kitchen while my parents watched and laughed. The clock ticks by as we dine, and I hear the sirens approaching in the distance; their wail cutting off as they make their way into my neighborhood.

“They’ve come for you, Aperi. What will do you?” My father asks, and I almost hear sympathy in his voice.

“What I should have done years ago.” I say, my voice barely a whisper. He simply nods and resumes his meal.

A few moments later I stand and return to the patio door, looking out at the beach and ocean beyond.

“When I come for her, don’t stop me.” I say to the man, but I know he won’t understand.

I open the patio door and step outside.

I open the gate, the bullets whizzing by my head, cracking and splitting before they reach my skin.

I open the padlock, the old fence barely standing now…

I walk into the sea, and let the water envelope me, but this time I fight the urge to breathe.

I command the ocean to open.

I command time to bend.

I command the world to split.

And then I’m there, walking out of the water to find a little girl making her way to the beach in front of me. I look through the open padlock, the open gate, the open patio door as my mother yells, “Aperi!!”

But the little girl before me doesn’t respond to her name. Instead she looks at me, her curiosity and wonder not yet dulled by the atrocities she will face.

I kneel down in the sand, and open my arms, “It’s good to see you, Aperi.”