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They called her ‘the Wild One’. It might have been her red eyes, peering out from the room in which she was held. It might have been the groans and growls she emitted anytime someone passed by. It might have been the savagery of her tastes in food and how her left overs looked each time. It might have been any of these things.

For me, the name was wrong. She wasn’t wild. She was no animal, any more than she was truly human. Not anymore at least, after whatever they did to her in that other place.

No, she was transformed, an evolutionary oddity, a mistake perhaps. But she was still something, she was still someone. They forgot that. All their experiments, all their aims and desires, overcame the one simple truth: what she was before was like them, and what they made her was something entirely other.

So they locked her up each night after cruel days of study during the sunlight hours. They’d test her, prod and poke and provoke. How could she be anything but wild? They’d be the same in her position.

No, they’d be worse.

I’m just the admin assistant. I just record their outcomes and file them away, putting order into the chaos they create every day. Nobody sees me, I’m invisible to them. But I see truer than they do, I see her.

And one day I’ll gain her trust. I work on it, each day, and now when her eyes watch me I can see a recognition. I can see something glitter, the birth of belief. And one day, when I’m sure she understands, I’m going to set her free.

And if she attacks them, takes them down, I don’t care. That’s what Wild Ones do, after all, and they made her. No, I won’t give a damn. I’ll just watch it all, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

Helen M Valentina ( c) 2019