Chapter 10
When Liz woke up some time hours later, her body immediately let her know she had been through hell last night.
Her eyes felt gritty and heavy as she opened them reluctantly, a room with minimal furniture coming into view. The curtains were halfway open, a harsh bright light spilling through that made her wince and have to shield her eyes away hastily with her arms before she recovered and her vision adjusted. She was aching everywhere; Every muscle, every tendon in her body, was aching dully. She couldn't remember feeling so bad before.
Maybe there had been a few reckless times where she'd gotten so drunk the night before that the hang-over in the morning had been horrendous. But those hang-overs were nothing compared to how she felt now, lying in an unknown bed, in some strange, near empty room.
Her throat felt sore, her eyes heavy, eyelids hot and watery. Her nose even felt achy and blocked, as if she was suffering from sudden sinus issues that she hadn't usually experienced or ever had a problem with before.
Hell, even her teeth, jaw and gums ached. Why did she feel so terrible?
She wasn't sure she could even sit upright in the strange bed without it being a major effort, but she made the attempt. Bracing herself with her palms on both sides of her body, she lifted up slowly on the mattress, grimacing at the new fresh bout of exhaustion it brought onto her. The pain, the feeling... it was indescribable. She found herself panting heavily simply by managing to slump herself upright against the bedpost behind her. Everything felt... stretched.
As if her insides and her bones had been mangled then put forcefully back together the night before. It was excruciating, something she imagined going through labor and giving birth to a child would be like, but without the pain killers to dull the agony.
Trying to distract herself from the pain she felt, she surveyed the room around her nervously. All there simply was, was the bed she was lying on and some old antique armchair in the corner of the room. It took her moment to realize that the room itself looked as though it had gone through hell. It was as if the room had been torn apart, as if it had been hit by a bomb itself. She realized the white sheets that had been covering her body were strewn apart, with large holes and tears, as if someone had claw apart the sheets into shreds. When she glanced at the old armchair again by the corner of the room, she realized even that hadn't survived whatever the hell had happened last night.
The old fabric had tears in it, like claw or teeth marks. Small holes had white stuffing flung out of it. Some of the fabric even had a slight red tinge to it, which... Swallowing and wincing at a sharp sting to the back of her throat, her eyes flew down to the mangled bed sheets again. They had little red dots on them, like splashes of paint or... blood?
Blood? Had she gotten hurt last night? Had someone gotten injured last night in the room? Was that the cause of all the blood?
Everything was so confusing. It made her head pound brutally just thinking of it all. Just trying to piece all the puzzle pieces together...
Something was near her leg beneath the shredded sheets. She squirmed, kicking her bare foot nervously, hooking it between her ankle to try to make out what the thing was. That was when she realized it was a piece of rope. A piece of rope that also had been ripped apart, frayed and yanked apart at the threads. Rope.
Rope. At the sight of it, a memory of last night hit her brutally. Rope. Being tied up to the bed posts by the wrists.
Red. No, not Red. Her brows creased and knotted together as she felt her heart race. Raymond? Raymond was... Red?
"What have you done to me?!" Fractured moments of last night began to explode inside her head, making her heart beat even faster in panic as she breathed unsteadily. Red watching her struggle on the bed. "Why am I tied to the bed like this? What are you doing?"
Her begging him to take her to the hospital desperately, only he had laughed her suggestion off.
"Despite what you think, a hospital isn't truly what you need, Lizzie." His voice. The memory of it, how careless he sounded, how calm, it made white hot anger flare up inside of her all over again. "Without hospital care, I can assure you that you will be quite fine in my company." Touching her with the back of his dry fingers, taking her temperature or doing... God knows what? Caressing her while she was helpless? "It's always easier with a like-minded individual there to guide you."
She slid her tongue to the corner of her lip as she shook. Her lips felt dry and cracked, a sting as her tongue flicked over the corner of it making her wince.
"I know this may be hard on you, Lizzie, but screaming does nothing..."
"I don't care! Get off me!" She felt that desperation all over again, that heart-racing fear. "I need a hospital! What's happening?"
"What's happening is that you're changing, Lizzie. And I apologize for having to say this, but... you are powerless to stop it."
Then the worst flashed before her eyes, yet again. The worst. The scariest part of the whole entire night.
"Elizabeth, look at me!" His voice had been so deadly serious, so firm and commanding that she had no choice but to listen and to obey. "If you don't believe it, then watch. Watch and learn."
Watch and learn. Oh, God. She truly had watched and learned, hadn't she?
Gritting her teeth, she slammed her eyes shut and leaned back against the headboard, trying to calm herself down. She tried to clear her mind, focus merely on the tempo of her breathing. She felt too hot, too... flushed. As if she was any second away from passing out.
Red had turned into Raymond right before her very own eyes. Turned? No, shifted?
She'd had her suspicions of course. She had noticed how Red the man seemed so strangely like Raymond, the dog. The eyes, the tilted head. But she hadn't actually assumed it was possible, she just thought she was being silly indulging in the thought. Oh, god. It was real. He was Raymond the dog, such a thing... it truly existed? A man could turn into a dog?
She couldn't remember what had happened after that. She remembered Red holding her down on the bed, then... all that other weirdness. The loosening pressure of his body, his hand and knees on her, holding her down to the mattress. The way his knuckles and fingers went blurry... shrinking fingers... hair growing on his knuckles. Then the paw was there, on her shoulder. Then, as she had looked up, oh god.
Raymond panting down at her, mouth halfway open, pink tongue hanging between his sharp teeth as he tilted his head down at her. The little huffs, the little sad whining noises he was making down at her, as if pleading for her to understand, to not react badly or do... something.
After that, the rest of the night was a little fuzzy. And her body felt like it had gone through hell. Why couldn't she remember? What on earth had happened between the time Red became Raymond, and then... what? What happened after that? Why the mess in the room and the light splotches everywhere of what presumably is... blood?
And where was he now, even?
Eyes snapping open, Liz sat up carefully, bringing her eyes around the room again. Where was Red? Or... Raymond? She wasn't sure what she was looking for. Was it a dog she expected to see, that Siberian husky? Or was it the man?
To her relief, he was nowhere in the room to be seen. But as she had taken more notice of her surroundings while searching for him, she realized she had misjudged how bad the room had looked. Now that she had glimpsed down at the floor, she noticed the old lamp laying on its side, glass from the globe smashed everywhere. The sturdy looking beside dresser that it had been on was smashed in with scrape marks down the wood with the one drawer attached to it torn off its hinges.
What the hell had happened? Why all the damage to the room?
Apparently she had spent too long lounging around, thinking about everything. A short, brisk knock coming from the door into the room startled her away from her thoughts.
Liz felt her pulse increase frantically as her eyes darted towards the door. Now was this the moment he came back? Was this the moment he returned, whatever he was?
She flinched when the door knob rattled, then slowly came open. To her surprise, who she expected to see wasn't there. It wasn't Raymond the dog returning to her or... or this strange Red man. No, instead it was a woman. A woman with a heavy-rimmed pair of glasses on, rather stern looking. Her dark hair was cut dramatically below the chin, the lines on her face giving her an austere look. The woman frowned as she blinked back at Liz, something causing her face to soften sympathetically at the sight of her in the bed.
As if realizing it wasn't helping Liz's situation in staring at her pitifully, the woman cleared her throat and pushed her way inside the room slowly.
"Hello, Dearie. Don't mind me, I'm just here to clean up all the mess."
Her eyes fell down meaningfully to what she was holding and Liz followed her gaze. She noticed the woman wore latex gloves on both hands while she held a bucket and sponge mop. Liz thought she could smell the bleach and cleaning products all the way from where she was, hiding away in the bed.
"Dear Lord," the woman muttered with disappointment beneath her breath, an impressed-sounding whistle escaping between her lips. "Oh, well," she continued, stepping further into the room, glass crackling beneath her shoes as she looked around. "It could have been worse."
Liz wasn't sure why she felt ashamed when the woman's eyes took in the blood stains on the floor and on the furniture, all the shredded sheets and fluff around the room. Wile she could remember little of what happened during the time after Red had shown himself transforming into a dog, Liz had a weird guilty feeling in her chest that she were somehow responsible for the room being in the state it was now.
"Where is he?" Liz demanded, unsettled by the sound of her voice. She sounded so weak, so frail. As exhausted in tone as how she felt on the inside. She cleared her throat hoarsely. "The man that did this to me? Where is he?"
As the woman bent down near the armchair, outstretching her hand to fiddle with a piece of stuffing with her glove-clad fingers, seemingly ignoring Liz, Liz felt herself snap.
"Where am I?" She demanded, pleased her voice sounded stronger and less weak. "What is this place? H-how did I even get here?"
The woman merely shot her a look behind her shoulder before she went about inspecting the room again. "He brought you here."
"He? As in the man that did this to me?" Liz knew she wasn't sounding very polite right now, but she couldn't care less. She wanted answers, damn it. She needed them. Politeness be damned. "Where am I? Why did he bring me here? Where's here?"
"Safety." If the woman was startled by Liz's rude tone, she didn't show it. She simply began wetting the sponge and scrubbing briskly at a dark splotch of red blood. "He brought you hear to safety. Here is where it's safe."
Safe? It felt anything but safe to Liz. She almost scoffed out loud.
"Do you know what he is?" she asked, changing tactic. "Do you know what he... does? What he... is?"
"Yeah. He changes form."
"Changes form?" Liz repeated, astonished by how blase the woman sounded about it all. As if it happened every damn day.
"Yeah." The woman turned back around to look at Liz, the discs of her glasses shining back at her. "And so do you."
And so do you. Four simple words, four simple words that held such power.
The blood drained from Liz's face as she held the woman's gaze. All of a sudden she felt the struggle again to breathe. And so did she? Did she really? Was that why she could not remember or comprehend anymore of what had happened last night?
"Where?" she croaked out, finding it easier to ignore the woman's words, to fail to register them. "Where is he? The... the man that did this to me? The man that brought me here?"
"Raymond?"
"Yes, Raymond," she confirmed, squeezing the name out through clenched teeth. "Where is he? He was in here last night?"
She heard the woman inhale heavily as she dropped her chin, her gaze falling to something on the floor. "I don't think you'll want to see him right now, Dearie." Dearie? Dearie? The term of endearment that rolled off the woman's tongue made Liz almost want to flip out and scream. While she knew the woman wasn't calling her that to be deliberately patronizing, it was simply irritating, how rational and calm the woman sounded given the situation.
"Well, you are wrong," Liz stated. "I do want to see him. Right now."
Liz tried to hold her gaze as the woman inhaled again deeply. The woman grabbed each glove with her fingers, peeling them off her hands. Then she approached to where Elizabeth was still lying in the bed, and panic laced through Liz's body for some reason. The woman didn't seem all that dangerous but she didn't know who she was either. She wasn't just going to trust any stranger right now.
"Okay, then, Dearie," the woman said in a much softer, gentler tone, extending her arm. "I'll take you to him. He's just out in the other room."
"If he's in the other room, then why can't you bring him to me?"
"Because he's being taken care of," the woman simply said cryptically, her tone giving nothing away.
He's being taken care of? What did that even mean?
Liz hesitated before taking the arm offered, scooting her legs out of the bed. She wasn't wearing any shoes, she realized. Her feet were bare, no socks. She couldn't remember removing either her shoes or socks, but she still had some clothes on, at least. She wasn't naked.
"Just mind the glass," the woman muttered, as if able to read Liz's thoughts the instance her toes hit a square patch of unmarked carpet. Closing her eyes for a second and tightening her fingers grip on the woman's forearm, she forced herself to stand, readying herself for the pain to come.
Strangely enough, no pain did. As the muscles in her legs contracted and stretched with her standing motion, Liz felt the oddest burst of adrenaline, of relief. As if her muscles had only simply been aching because she had been bed bound, as if they had missed any slight activity to exercise them.
"It's okay, Dearie," the woman soothed as they began moving, Liz keeping her eyes downwards to the floor. She feared treading on any piece of broken furniture or glass. "I've got you, it's just in the other room."
The stench of the strong cleaning product in the bucket grew even more stronger the closer Liz and the woman edged towards it. She inhaled, her nostrils stinging at the potent fumes. She curled her lips and twisted her nose in disgust as the woman steered her past the bucket, towards the open doorway.
"Be warned, I told you that you wouldn't want to see him right now," the woman said beneath her breath as they entered into another room.
Liz's eyes inspected her surroundings cautiously. Everything about the place was rather boxed in and crowded compared to the bedroom. There was only one window with heavy curtains that were still drawn, holding the light of the early morning out. A large bookshelf scattered with thousands of books messily. The stench of stillness and dust, mustiness of old unturned pages. A fireplace, still lit and crackling, plunging the room into a hotter, muggier temperature the further the woman guided her towards it.
And then... him. Liz stopped dead still at who she saw standing around near an old, ratty couch. Dembe?
Dembe, the man who she had presumed was Raymond the dog's owner was standing above the couch, both hands gloved, holding something small that resembled a needle.
He was the very last person she had been expecting to see for some reason. She had expected to see the other man, yes. But not... him. For some reason, her mind hadn't correlated the fact that Dembe must have known all along that Raymond the dog was actually also Red the man.
"I told you that was not a very smart idea, Raymond," she could hear the dark-skinned man mutter as he bent over the couch, doing something with the needle that Liz could not see as his large, imposing body obstructed it.
He sounded disapproving, truly like an owner scolding their pet for their behavior. Which was ironic considering...
"I understand that you wanted to be in the room with her but it was not smart. You are lucky she did not go for your carotid. A few centimeters closer and you would be dead."
A loud, pained hiss made Liz realize just who was seated on the couch below the man. "Yeah, well," the man that had had her confined, bound and restrained to the bed last night said, his baritone voice laced with anguish, "Every dog has it's day."
Something else filled her nostrils the closer the woman led her towards the couch. Something unsettling, something weirdly sweet and metallic. Liz realized what it was a second later when she saw, as Dembe pulled his arm back, a wet coating of blood on his gloved fingers. Bleeding. He was bleeding and he was wounded.
Releasing the woman's arm, Liz decided she could manage to walk completely unassisted on her own now. Something bitter and sour formed in her mouth, a strange taste, as she strode forward around the couch faster. She felt the malicious urge to scream, to shout, to unleash her fury over what the man had done to her last night, not that she could remember really. Her teeth gritted together as a hot throb burst in the center of her forehead as she rounded around the couch to see the two men better.
She felt a frightening sudden odd urge to snarl, to growl through her teeth. Where such an animalistic urge came from, she wasn't sure. But it had been the same way with Tom after their argument that afternoon, when she had bit him uncontrollably.
Only the instance she properly rounded around the couch, facing the man, she stopped dead in her tracks, her hands loosening from their curled, bunched up fists at the sight of him. A puff of air escaped from her clenched teeth and her stomach felt as though it had dropped. She had been right and it must have been the cause of all the bits of blood in the other room.
It was his blood. His blood and he was injured. Red. Raymond.
His eyes found hers at once, and they stared at each other.
Though his face was rather bravely expressionless and stoic considering how much pain he must have been in, Liz thought she saw the fleeting discomfit that passed through his eyes as he held her gaze while Dembe pierced the needle through the skin on the side of his neck, sowing it back together. The blood... it was everywhere.
She didn't even think anything about the fact that the middle-aged man was shirtless, his chest bared to her while he sat slumped on the couch, his legs crossed at the ankles.
All she could see was the rather large gash, the blood- some probably dry- that was staining and trickling down his neck.
She had demanded the woman show her to where he was because she wanted to yell at him, she wanted to let him know how violated she had felt at the fact that he had bound her last night with rope to the bedpost, that he had even... what? Turned into Raymond the Siberian husky right before her very own eyes last night?
And all those times she had told him to stay away from her at the park, all his seemingly crazy theories about her being infected by the dog that had saved her in the fire that night... She had been so hell-bent on believing him to be crazy, in being some weird guy that was harassing her. Did she believe that now? Could she believe that now, after all that she had witnessed last night?
And if he were capable of somehow shifting into a dog then... where did that leave her?
After all, he was the only one in the room with her last night. She couldn't recall anything of what had happened after the moment he demanded she 'watch and learn', showing himself to be Raymond the dog. He was the only one who knew what happened last night in that room obviously, whereas her mind was blank of what came afterwards. Only he had the answers and the knowledge of what had happened afterwards. Would he be able to tell her what happened afterwards? Would he be able to tell her why she couldn't remember it too?
There were so many questions she felt bombarded with to ask him, all at once. Like how was it possible for him to shift into a dog at will? What was he? What happened last night after he showed her himself to be Raymond the dog as well? Why couldn't she remember anything more of what happened last night? Why was he bleeding with a bloody torn apart gash in his neck right now? And, most importantly, what did this mean for her?
As she stared back into his eyes, the only question she could seem to blurt out, the only coherent one enough was, "Your Raymond?"
"Yes," he muttered without hesitation, his voice a low, whispery croak.
"You were the dog as well this whole entire time?" She knew it was pointless to ask the questions seeing as she already knew the answer to them, but an actual confirmation from the man itself helped. "E-every time he was waiting for me at the park, when I allowed him to sleep over for the night while T-Tom was away... when he guzzled wine out of my glass, when he ate takeout..." Her voice was growing increasingly louder and more stressed by the second, though it wasn't intentional. The sudden realization, it was stressing her. "It was actually you?"
His lips pressed into a thin line as the muscle beneath his eyelid twitched. "Yes." At least he was being honest.
Liz wasn't sure whether to be angry at that. She had unknowingly allowed the man- a stranger- into her home that she shared with Tom. Hell, she had even allowed him to sleep in her bed with her.
She barely remembered Dembe being present in the room, until she heard him speak. "All done now," he said quietly, interrupting them. "All stitched up now, Raymond. Try to limit your head movements for now."
"What happened to you?" she asked as she watched Dembe slowly remove the latex gloves he was wearing. She looked down into Red's eyes again as he reached blindly for the dress shirt that was strewn across the couch. "What happened last night? W-Why are you bleeding and hurt?"
It took him a moment to answer but she waited. She watched as he gingerly redressed into his shirt, moving each arm into the sleeve carefully. Whatever had happened last night, it was evident he was in a lot of pain from the neck wound. She heard him hiss again as he clenched his teeth tight, his teeth seemingly biting the inside of his check. It was only when he took his time in buttoning up each button on his dress shirt to cover himself up that he finally answered her.
"As it turns out, you are quite like me, Lizzie. And as for your bark, well..." He paused as he gently rolled his head side to side, stretching out his neck, "Your bark is every bit as bad as your bite."