ASBO-Boy - Helix

18:21 Tuesday 12th April 2016

“How are you feeling today Helix?”

The voice rang through the chamber like a clamour of bells. Helix looked up and saw Gwen approaching. He smiled.

“Better.”

“I’m glad,” Gwen replied, standing at the perimeter, looking in. She sat down in her customary chair and pulled out her notepad. Helix watched her cross her legs and take off her glasses.

“I wanted to talk about your dreams today Helix, is that okay?”

Helix nodded. He liked talking to Gwen – she made him feel happy.

“What did you dream about last night?”

“A boy. Running through a park. He dreams of the sea.” Helix replied.

“Would that be…” Gwen checked her notes, “Michael Thomas? We got to him in time, Helix. Were there any others?”

Helix shook his head. There were no others. Not now, anyway. There would be more. He knew this. He was watching them. They didn’t know it. But he was. Always watching. Dreaming.

“Good Helix, I’m glad.” Gwen scribbled on her notebook and looked down. She always found it difficult to look at him. The transparent cell was eerily lit and it made him look small and weak. She shuddered.

He was dressed as he always was – in that hideous costume they’d made for him. It was yellow, white and red. There were still holes in it, big sooty patches and tears across it. The blue cape was a tattered remnant. This was the way he’d looked when he arrived.

“How is your brother, Gwen?” Helix asked, standing up and walking to the wall of the cell. She smothered her feelings and fought internally with her racing heartbeat. He put his hand against the invisible wall and watched her, his eyes empty and cold.

“He’s doing better.” She replied neutrally. Her brother was a vegetable, she thought bitterly, hooked up to a life support machine buried deep in the complex. They liked to keep Helix’s victims close by for observation.

“I’m glad,” Helix replied – his hand pressed against the reinforced glass, as if he was feeling out for her. “I hate what I have become.”

Periodically he had these moments of melancholy, where he slipped back to reality and felt as the old Helix would. Then, he would drift away again, his feelings evaporating into the unknown, his soul lost somewhere to the ether.

“Don’t say that Helix. You’re perfect.” Gwen replied. Her instructions were quite precise on the matter of responses and Gwen practised them endlessly.

“Perfect.” He repeated, airily.

Gwen stood up. She’d got what she needed from the boy and she couldn’t stand to be in his presence much longer. “I will see you soon, Helix.” She said politely, standing up.

“I know, Dr Gwen.” Helix replied. “You will come back the day after tomorrow and we will talk again. Our usual topic. Amongst other things.”

She nodded and began to walk away, fighting the urge to break into a run.

“You are very pretty,” Helix said after, his voice changing. It was deeper now, it was the voice all her worst fears spoke with. It sounded like her father’s. She felt his leer drilling into the back of her neck. Her insides turned cold. Grief and repulsion grappled for supremacy within her. She felt sorry for the boy – he was only a teenager, barely any better off than her brother in many respects. Certainly, he wasn’t much younger than him.

There were times when Helix said things which seemed to curdle her – looks, moments of absolute evil which seemed to come and go like all of his moods and emotions.

She feared the day when Helix would break out. She knew it would come sooner or later. He’d seen it – he wouldn’t say when – but he knew it was coming. The others told her they were prepared for any eventuality, but she knew that they were kidding themselves. When Helix decides to break loose, no prison cell in the world will stop him, she thought.

As she reached the door, she heard weeping from behind her. His mood had shifted again. She turned around and watched him, leaning against the door handle. She liked watching him cry. The hunched figure folded on the ground, trapped in a glass cage, lit from all around by piercing light and that tattered cape spilling from his neck like a shroud.

She smiled and thought of her brother. It was these moments that kept her coming back. Somehow watching this shell of a lad crumble under the weight of his own guilt and fear was enough to calm the knot of anger in her chest that demanded his blood on her hands.

Shaking, she opened the door and stepped out, closing her feelings away, locking them in the room with devil called Helix.