Page 34 of Fathom

THIRTEEN

LEIJA

“He loves me,” I whispered, plucking the final petal from the flower.

I could hear his breath from the other side of the door, like a tiger caught and caged.

I looked up from where I leaned against Eun's door, staring at the underside of the padlock on the outside, still gleaming shiny and new, feeling like I was crazy for what I wanted to do. The door locked from the outside. I'd woken up the next morning after the thwarted kidnapping to find it on Eun's door, with Eun locked inside it. That first day, Eun had spoken to me through the door, insisting he had to go through something, but he would be okay. I wanted to let him out, but the key wasn't anywhere in the apartment. After that, he stopped speaking. Eun's uncle came twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, to unlock it with the key he brought with him and deliver food. He didn't let me go in with him. I only caughtglimpses of Eun in those brief moments, the small moments shocking.

Eun was chained.

He was feral.

His hair was wild, rising from his head from a nest of snakes, and he was always looking right at me, his eyes fixed on me like the mere sight of me was the only thing he lived for. Sometimes he lunged towards the door, and the chain around his neck would pull him short. The walls of his room had deep furrows in them, his sheet shredded. I heard him at all hours. The sounds were bestial. Something was wrong with him, worse than the moment he had pinned me to his bed in the studio apartment.

It had been two weeks, and he wasn't speaking anymore, just growling.

I could tell that the fact that Eun wasn't speaking bothered his uncle, the worry on his face growing deeper every time he stopped by, like he expected this state to be over sooner. The last time he had dropped off the food, Eun had fought against the chain around his neck, harder than before, trying to get through, to get free.

But if I came near the door and spoke to him, the snarls would cease.

The single blue petal between my fingertips caught the light with a slight shimmer on the edge of the petal. The rest of them lay in my lap on top of the billowy shorts I had on, spread out in a circle around the key I had stolen from Eun's uncle when I went down to the restaurant. Right now was the period of time when everyone got off work, and the restaurant would be flooded with customers. It would take him hours to notice that I had takenit.

Eun had saved me, and now he was locked away like an animal.

"I can't," a low, gruff voice said from the wall across the room.

It took me a few days to figure out that one of the walls was a television, and a single session with Abby to learn how to use the controls. She'd come over to teach me, eyeing the padlocked door with concern, but she didn't say anything about it. Instead, she had pushed aside the books and gotten out the remote, queuing up a playlist of episodes and shows to watch. I'd taken to watching them with my back leaned up against Eun's door.

The alien woman on the TV wall leaned forward and placed her hand atop the hand of a male who looked startlingly like Eun’s uncle, scaled, broad-shouldered. He was still, intently focused on the woman across from him in the way predators never quite stopped being.

The female was striking, her appearance strange but undeniably graceful. A thick, white mane cascaded from the crown of her skull down the length of her spine, disappearing just above her hips. Her dress was made of sheer, see-through fabric that clung to her form, open along the back to reveal the full line of her mane. The rest of her skin was soft and bare, and though she stood upright like me, her body was entirely other: four arms, six eyes, eight full breasts, each visible through the whisper-thin fabric that gave the impression of the idea of a secret, not a hidden thing.

As her hand met his, the male’s mouth opened slowly, rows of gleaming teeth catching the light. The footage dipped into slow motion, focusing on the flicker of his gaze as he stared at the point of contact. Then it cut to her face.

Even with her alien features, rounded and unfamiliar, I saw it clearly.

Hope.

"I trust you," the female alien said, her voice soft as her smile grew as he pulled his hand away.

I leaned forward. She liked that he was pulling away from her?

"I could hurt you," the reptile said, his voice rough as his hand twitched, just a few inches away from hers on the table. Her fingers stretched out towards him, and his curled back, his claws scraping at the table. The camera shot emphasized the differences in her small, rounded nails and his talons. "I can't stand the thought of hurting you."

"That's how I know....," she said. I didn't understand all the words, so I paused the show, flipped through my workbook until I found them, then unpaused. I had a little more trouble with her words as she had a different accent than she was used to. "...that you don't want to hurt me."

"But I do," the reptile groaned. "Alicandria, I do."

The female alien pulled her hand back, her face reflecting hurt and confusion. "You said you loved me."

"A predator can never love their prey," the reptile growled. "You know why I keep coming back to you. You need to end things. This relationship will only end in one way if it continues."

He stood up from the table, his chair clattering back to the ground. They were at an outdoor cafe, and the background actors all around them gasped and stared at them. Several people whispered things like 'is he bothering her?' but no one did anything, just like no one did anything when they saw the pack targeting me on the train. After a while here on the planet, it became clear that certain species didn't travel alone, at certain times of day, or in certain areas.

"I can't," she cried out. "Please don't make me."

It was overly dramatic yet so compelling; I couldn't look away.