warm summer day at her parents’ estate. Her father owned a chain of luxury hotels, and had invited my family to a charity event at their home. I was only eleven at the time, which would’ve made her around seven. While our parents mingled, she took Jude and I out to the garden, where an elaborate cage housed a bright and colorful bird. The moment Melody stuck her finger inside, the bird flew to the fleshy perch, and I watched as Melody nuzzled and kissed her pet. She was the most gentle creature I’d ever met, always kind and vibrant. Smiling. Unlike most girls born into wealth, she was grounded and genuine.
“What happened to her?” I can’t peel my eyes away from the dirt streaked up her arms and across her face, mixed with what I guess is blood.
“Her father asked that we run some tests on her, seeing as we didn’t have much of a family history gathered on him.”
From what I understand, the man was a self-made millionaire, who my father often jabbed as nouveau-riche.
“In doing so,” Friedrich continues, “we stumbled upon a trigger that led us to believe she may have been assaulted, or abused, at some point.”
Melody slams her palms against her ears, screaming as she rocks in the corner. It’s possible her father could’ve hurt her.
“What will you do with her?” I ask.
Friedrich sighs, and tips his head, still peering through the window. “Well, she’s certainly not fit for release at this point. We’ll continue to run tests.”
My own experience tells me they’ve no intentions of curing her mental state. “What is the nature of these tests?”
Friedrich’s cheek twitches as if he might smile. “In order to study a subject's propensity for violence, you must prod them a little.” He points toward the corner opposite where Melody sits, and I follow the path of his finger to a pile of birds scattered on the floor, their heads detached from the bodies. At the sight of white droppings across the cement, I lift my gaze to the birds perched on the ceiling rafters above. About a half-dozen colorful birds, like the one in the cage all those years ago.
“She’s begun biting their heads off, like a feral cat. It’s remarkable to watch.”
“What have you done to her?”
“Nothing that wasn’t in her all along. Think of the repercussions, if she’d have snapped outside of these walls. She might’ve killed someone. We merely gave her violent tendencies an outlet.” He clears his throat and turns to face me. “Come. I’ve more to show you.”
We keep on down the corridor, and come to a stop in front of a door, through which he ushers me inside a room that opens up to a glass dome, around which a number of chairs are set out. In the chairs, sit a number of men with wires attached to helmet-looking contraptions on their heads. Below them, on the lower level, a man is laid out on a table, held down by restraints. Another in a lab coat wears thick gloves, as he lifts a branding stick with a red-hot slab of metal on its end. The man on the table whimpers and squirms in his binds, screaming against the bit caught between his teeth. At the first crackle of burning flesh, something flashes in my periphery, and I turn to see monitors that seem to be capturing waves. Brain waves, I’m guessing.
“We’re trying to measure empathic neural response by using EEG recordings.”
“Empathic? As in, trying to see if these people give a shit that you just branded a man with hot metal?”
“Precisely.”
“Couldn’t you have just played a video of someone getting branded? Why this?”
“Could you not practically taste that burning flesh on your tongue just now? I would venture to say your gamma waves were off the charts watching it.”
Shoving my hands into the pockets of my slacks is all I can do to keep from throttling the motherfucker. This is what my father has been pumping money into all these years? This is what the bastard insisted I keep pumping money into, when he finally died? To make sure these assholes continue to produce bullshit studies.
And they’re one of the bigger reasons I’d never attempt to pursue Isa. If they thought, for one second, that I was serious with her, she’d be stalked and monitored, her whole history dissected in secret. My mother didn’t know a damn thing about Schadenfreude, but they knew everything about her, down to her menstrual cycle.