CHAPTER FINALE: END
Isabella was tending to George who was lying on the hospital bed in an ordinary ward. The doctor were quite surprised at how quick George was able to get out of his critical state and kept demanding for his fiancé to tell her something about her daughter. Thank goodness she had decided to listen to him or else she wouldn’t have known what a little devil Arlene had turned out to be. It has been about 2 days since the staff from Cybertronics came and took her back to their company to probably dismantled and thrown into the dumpsters with other of their failed mecha subjects.
“I just can’t believe that Arlene—my Arlene—was capable of doing such things!” Isabella said as she pulled the blanket over George with a look of disbelief and horror on her face. “I just can’t believe it!”
“Well, dear,” George said, laying a hand on Isabella’s arm. “She’s out of our hair now and she won’t be hurting other innocent people anymore. She’ll be in good hands and way out of anyone’s way.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right,” Isabella forced a smile on her face.
“That’s one way of ruining a great wedding though,” George sighed humourously, tickling Kitty’s chin who ahs climbed his way up to George’s chest. The Super Toy has been by his side for quite a while now and he has been demanding to be taken along every time Isabella wanted to go visit George. Seems like Kitty has taken quite a liking for this man.
“There’s always next time, George. Think of it as our wedding being postponed to another better date,” Isabella chuckled. “The important thing is that you’re OK.”
The couple chuckled heartily. Isabella then excused herself to go to the toilet. As she walked down the hall towards the toilet, she thought she heard the sound of screaming and a long pattering of feet. At first she thought something was wrong but then she realized that she was in the hospital, so she dismissed it as a patient in need of help and some nurses or a doctor could have rushed over to see the matter.
It was raining outside with a little thunder rolling. Isabella shivered a little with cold as she went into one of the cubicles to do her business. As she did her business, she heard footsteps and assumed that someone else has entered the toilet to do her business. She heard the footsteps going from one cubicle to another, as if looking to see if any of them was taken or clean enough. She remembered that she was the only one in the toilet and all the other cubicles were free. ‘This person must be a hygiene freak,’ she thought.
The footsteps stopped right in front of the cubicle she was using. She could hear the footsteps coming closer towards the door and stopped again in silence. This lasted for about a full 5 minutes before a knock came suddenly onto her door, taking her by surprise.
“This toilet’s taken,” Isabella replied after putting herself together. Again, a long silence hung in the air, and this time it was a little bit longer, about 7 minutes or so. Then she suddenly saw through the gap under the cubicle door a pair of fair-looking hands resting itself on the marble floor and a faint shadow getting darker and darker as whoever-it-is lowered its head closer to the floor. ‘Oh no,’ she thought. ‘Is this some sort of a pervert trying to peek in? Wait till I aim my handbag at him, he’ll be sorry he’s ever…’
Her thoughts were cut short when she saw who the owner of the hands was. Staring back at her was a pair of sparkling aquamarine eyes and her locks of coffee-coloured hair spread on the marble floor and on her face was that sweet, innocent smile Isabella could never forget. And how could she forget the small, sweet voice that escaped from her lips as she said, “Found you.”
Isabella screamed but the lightning and thunder had drowned it. At that split second when she screamed and when the lightning struck, Arlene’s face disappeared from the gap. Isabella gasped for breath as her heart thumped in shock. Has Arlene returned? That can’t be! She had seen her being taken away by the Cybertronics staff. George and everyone else have seen it. How could she have escaped? Besides, even if she did escape, there is no way she could’ve gotten here within 2 days. She’s just a small child. A mecha maybe, but still a small child.
While she tried to gather herself and tried to be convinced that what she just saw was an illusion, another bang was heard on the door. She suddenly felt a chilly, pressurizing aura above her. Tentatively, she looked up and saw that Arlene has climbed onto the top of the cubicle door and was hanging onto it, her sweet smile stuck on her face. Her eerily cute voice echoed down the toilet.
“Hello, Mama. Missed me?”
This time she was convinced that she wasn’t hallucinating. She screamed out loud and opened the door abruptly, forcing her to fall down. She ran out of the toilet and all the way to the reception counter to ask for help. She saw that there was no one sitting at the counter, not even a nurse and when she looked over the counter to see if there’s anyone, she was shocked to see that the nurse in charge was dead, lying on a pool of her own blood with a scalpel sticking out of her jugular. She almost panicked and was about to just drop over and faint but she remembered that George was still around and if Arlene was really back, she would target George first.
Quickly, she took to her heels and ran towards George’s room. Suddenly all the lights went out and she could hardly see. The backup generator turned on and the hospital was slightly lit, but it was still dim enough to hide a small child. As she tried to find her way she heard Arlene’s voice echoing around down hallway.
“Mama~! Mama~! Let’s play hide-and-seek~”
Isabella shivered as she continued her way towards George’s room. When she entered the room, she found that his bed was empty. George was nowhere to be seen. The only person on the bed was the ever fearful Arlene, sitting there with her smiley, innocent-looking face and Kitty in her arms. Kitty looked pretty scared himself and was desperate to get out of the little murderess’s arms. Her eyes sparkled as she tightened her embrace around the Super Toy.
“Aww~! Mama has found us, Kitty. Looks like it’s my turn to become the ‘It’. You better go and hide, Mama. I’m ‘It’ this time.”
Isabella was getting even more scared. She backed away from the room and started running. She ran and ran until she had lost track of where she was. Only when she stopped for breath that she realized that she has hid herself inside the surgery ward. Right beside the surgery table was a tray of surgery utensils. Everything lethal was just right there: scalpels, syringes, sharp poker-like things, razors…you name it, it’s there.
Definitely a wrong place to hide.
“Mama, I’m gonna find you~! You can run but you can’t hide~!”
Isabella could hear the eerily sweet voice of Arlene gaining closer and closer towards her. She quickly ran under a surgery table and held her breath, hoping that the little girl would not find her. She heard footsteps closing in. she heard the door barged open. She heard some sort of clinking sound. She heard more footsteps again. And then she saw those tiny footsteps just walking by the table she was hiding. She recognized those shoes; they were the shoes she had bought for her when she had just entered her family after her activation. She shivered at the thought of being captured and tortured before death by Arlene who is now capable of doing anything once she had set her mind to it.
“Found you!!”
Isabella screamed as Arlene’s face appeared abruptly in front of her as she went down on all four. She had a scalpel in her hand and she didn’t hesitate to swish it at her face. The blade was threateningly sharp and threateningly close to her face. Isabella desperately crawled out of the surgery table and armed herself with a syringe.
“You shouldn’t play with sharp things, Mama,” Arlene said as she came to view in front of Isabella. “You might get hurt and I would be very, very sad, Mama.”
“You stay away from me, you…you monster! You she-devil!” Isabella yelled as she brandished the syringe at her.
“Why, Mama? Why are you keeping me away?” Arlene asked innocently. “Aren’t I your little girl?”
“No, you’re not. Not anymore!” Isabella replied as she shook her head to mean what she said.
“You promised me that I’ll be your little girl forever! You promised me!” Arlene’s innocent eyes turned glaringly angry.
“I don’t have a little girl like this! I didn’t raise my little girl to become a murderess!”
Arlene’s eyes soon narrowed into dangerous slits as she charged at Isabella with the scalpel. Isabella moved sideways quickly and made a dash for the surgery door. Before she got there, Arlene suddenly stood in front of it in lightning speed, blocking her way.
“You’re not going anywhere, Mama,” Arlene hissed. “I’m going to make sure that I shall be your little girl forever.”
When Isabella looked she realized that Arlene was not holding a scalpel anymore, but a uranium battery-induced laser usually used for amputating the body parts or opening the skull. She smiled as she turned on the laser. It glowed an eerie blue and illuminated Arlene’s face which looked like she was ready to kill. Without warning, she was pointing the laser at Isabella, ready to shoot her with it. Using her reflexes, Isabella grabbed one of the trays that kept the surgical equipment and used it as a shield. The laser shot passed through the metal and missed Isabella by a few inches away from her ear. Depending on her brute strength, she let out a shout and ran towards the surgery door, ramming Arlene with the tray. It worked luckily and Arlene was knocked over to the ground. Isabella almost tripped over her but she regained her balance almost immediately.
There wasn’t time to fall down or do anything. Looking for George and saving their lives was the most crucial thing to do right now.
Without wasting any moment, she ran towards every secluded place that a small child could hide someone: the janitorial room, the boiler room, the cleaners’ closet, in other wards (she hoped that she had did it as silently as possible so as not to wake the patients up), almost everywhere she could think of. Then she realized that Arlene wasn’t a small child at all and she could’ve stuffed him in some place unimaginable. She quickly ran towards the lift and pressed the UP button, hoping that it would hurry up and get her to the top floor. That’s the only place she could think of for a small dangerous mecha to place a full-grown but helpless man.
When one of the lift doors opened, she was taken aback and was struck with horror when she saw a doctor and a few nurses slumped on the floor of the lift all bloody and terribly mutilated. Their bodies were practically surgically hacked off judging by the clean cut on their foreheads, arms, legs and guts. There were pieces of them all over the lift and they were so severed, Isabella wondered how she could stomach all this.
Needless to say, Arlene had taken the lift and had used the laser on them.
Isabella had no choice but to take the stairs. People seldom take stairs these days but this was the only way she could ever get up to the top floor where she thinks George would be—the other lift was out of order judging by the crashed and crushed lift buttons when she tried to take the other lift. It seemed like Arlene had a head-start in things. Isabella quickened her pace as she advanced higher and higher up towards the top floor.
Once she reached the top floor, her frantic eyes started searching for her husband-to-be. She searched the area trying to find any trail that would lead her to her fiancé. She searched high and low to find any signs. After walking and searching for some time, she found Kitty on the floor, his power turned off. Isabella picked him up and held him close to her chest, her eyes searching the place again for any signs of George. She tried to move as quietly as she can just in case Arlene could be anywhere watching her every move.
As she had feared, she soon heard Arlene’s exaggerated sweet voice calling out for her, “Oh, Mama~ Over here~!”
Isabella turned abruptly towards the voice. She was shocked to see that Arlene was sitting on a water tank and was smiling like she had something under her sleeve. Isabella was horrified—could it be that Arlene has had George inside that tank? She began to fear the worse.
“Arlene! Where is George? What have you done to him?” Isabella demanded.
“Where is George? What have you done to him?” Arlene repeated her question in a sarcastic tone of mockery before spiting, “You’re always caring about somebody else more than me! You always have someone else in your mind instead of me! Why can’t you be like always, when there is no Angela, no Roberto, no George, nobody?! Why can’t we be like we used to be, Mama? Why must there be always someone else between me and you??”
“Don’t be jealous, Arlene,” Isabella said as she came closer towards the water tank. “You’re over-reacting. You don’t really know what you’re talking about…”
“Jealous? Over-reacting?! Don’t know what I’m talking about??” Arlene exclaimed as she got off the tank and landed right in front of Isabella. “Listen to yourself, Mama! You’re the one who doesn’t know what you’re talking about! I love you, Mama! I love you more than anyone else put together! I love you more than Angela could, I love you more than Roberto could, and I bet I love you more than what George could give you! I’m your little girl, Mama! You promised me that I’ll be your little girl forever! How could you do this to me?!”
“Arlene, listen to me,” Isabella tried to speak in a kind way so as not to let Arlene go berserk. “Arlene, we all need someone else in our life sometimes. We cannot stay with the same person forever. Sometimes other people need our love and sometimes we need other people’s love too. We cannot stick to the same person all the time…”
“Yes, we can! I can! I can be with you forever and I can stay with you without needing anyone else’s love! I need only your love, Mama, and I don’t want to share with anyone else! I am your little girl who needs only your love!! Is it so hard for you to give?!”
“Arlene, calm down and listen…”
“No, I can’t listen to you! I won’t listen to you anymore! Every time I listen to you, something would come between us!” Arlene covered her ears with her hands. “If I can’t have you for my Mama and I can’t be your little girl, no one else will! No one!!!”
With that she brandished the laser again and swished it dangerously in front of her, missing her by about a few inches. Isabella struggled to both get away from the treacherous laser beams and figure out a way to get to the water tank to make sure that George was alright, just in case he was in there. In the end, she had no choice but to throw Kitty at her to distract her. At the touch of those laser beams, Kitty’s head was immediately decapitated off his shoulders, sending cotton and wires and other tiny mechanical parts falling all over her head. As Arlene shielded herself from the falling pieces, Isabella took the cue and ran towards the water tank. She hopped onto the ladder of the tank and climbed as fast as she could up the tank, praying that he wasn’t in there.
When she was almost to the top of the tank, she suddenly let out a yelp as she felt her leg being tugged. She looked down and saw that it was Arlene with her glaring aquamarine eyes looking up at her, her face showing a sign of intentional murder. Arlene let out an eerie smile and hissed, “You won’t find him there, Mama. That bad man who dirtied you would never die an easy death such as this. He’s not in there.”
“Then where is he?!” Isabella demanded.
“I’m not telling you, Mama,” Arlene giggled like the little girl she used to be before her eyes went back into the eerily innocent pair and hissed again, “You have to figure that out later, when you’re my Mama and I’m your little girl again!”
Isabella trembled in fear at upon hearing Arlene’s last words. She wasn’t the same Arlene she used to be. She wasn’t the sweet and innocent Arlene who liked to giggle and do anything to please her and play hide and seek and watch her make hot chocolates and sit there with her while she drank the hot chocolate. She was the Arlene who was possessive and wouldn’t hesitate to have blood on her hands just to get her attention and her love, even if it means having to rid of all the humans in the world who stood in her way to be close with her Mama. She was there to get her, she was sure of it. Arlene was going to kill her once and for all so that she could keep her forever. She had to do something to get her away from her—anything to get rid of this little murderess bent for the kill.
Her eyes shifted from the water tank and the power cord overhead. As she tried to kick Arlene’s hand off her ankle, her brain began to work up a scheme to eliminate her. If whatever Arlene said was true—that George wasn’t in the tank as she feared, then…
With one last desperate kick at Arlene’s hand, she struggled to climb up the rest of the tank to reach the lid. She didn’t how Arlene could have such strength to pull her down but she had to get to the top. Finally she saw the lid in front of her and, as she struggled with Arlene’s persistence to pull her down to the solid ground below, her trembling hand reached the latch of the lid. She prayed that it wasn’t padlocked or anything. Fortunately for her, it wasn’t. She undid the latch of the lid and pushed the lid open, exposing her to the water inside the tank.
Suddenly, Arlene’s abnormal strength pulled her down again, and this time, the mecha child succeeded in sending her down to the floor with a thud. Before Isabella could do anything, Arlene was already on top of her, holding the surgery laser in front of her face and turning it on, the blue glow treacherously meaning that she was going to go in pieces. As Arlene pointed the glowing tip at her, she smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Mama. It may hurt, but it’ll be all over soon.”
Isabella would never go down that easily without a fight. She and Arlene wrestled hard on the laser—one who wanted to cut her into bite-size pieces and one trying not to become bite-size pieces. As they wrestled, Arlene’s finger came to the laser beam switch and barely skinned Isabella’s ear. They wrestled again and again as if their lives depended on it (Isabella’s life does). Struggling, Isabella finally forced Arlene’s hand that held the laser upwards and the beam shot at the power cord. Part of the power cord fell into the tank and into the water within it.
“Bad Mama!” Arlene scolded. “Now look what you made me do! That was dangerous!”
“Not as dangerous as this,” Isabella said as she noticed Arlene got a little bit distracted. She got up abruptly and picked Arlene up. Arlene may be strong but she was still built as a mecha child, and Isabella was still capable to carry her. As the little girl struggled, she hoisted Arlene over her shoulder and brought her towards the tank.
“Let me go! Let me go!! You’re my Mama and I’m your little girl!! You can’t do this to me!!!” Arlene screamed as she stabbed the laser beam onto her back. Isabella groaned as she struggled to wrap a piece of cloth over her hand and climb the ladder of the tank. She had forgotten that Arlene still had the laser in her hand and she had no time to wrestle it away from her again. Arlene stabbed her again and again, yelling things only a kid can think of. It hurt her real badly but she had to carry on. There’s no time to stop now. Holding on the stabbing pain of the laser on her back, she climbed higher and higher up to the top of the tank. There were a few times the laser beams penetrated through her body and missed her heart just by a few inches and her body was going red because of the blood but she persevered.
When she finally reached the top of the tank, she saw that the frayed end of the power cord shot by Arlene’s surgery laser dipped in the tank. She carried Arlene off her shoulders and raised her high above her head. Trembling to both hold on to the pain of her bleeding body and holding her up, she stared straight into Arlene’s aquamarine eyes and said, “You are my little girl. You always have and always will be.”
“Really, Mama? Am I really your little girl?” Arlene’s eyes softened into the pair of eyes Isabella has come to know ever since she had activated her. “Will I be your little girl forever?”
“Unfortunately,” Isabella said in a lower, more hateful tone, “You’ve been a very bad girl, and I don’t like my little girl to be bad. You made me very, very unhappy, and now Mama has to punish you.”
To Arlene’s horror, Isabella let go of her and let her fall into the tank where the water is. As soon as her body came in contact with the wet stuff, she was immediately electrocuted. So that was the reason Isabella wanted the power cord to fall into the tank—to short circuit Arlene. Isabella tried to keep her face slightly away from the tank as she saw Arlene twitched and shook vigorously as the electric current ran through her system and all through her metallic insides. She could see the electric current flow around her body and burning everything that is conductive to electric inside her. White steam came out of the tank as the water inside the tank bubbled and sizzled. She could see that it was going to boil and churn out of the tank. Before she was able to make a run for it, the water exploded out of the tank, sending her falling off the ladder she was standing on and onto the ground.
Before she fell into unconsciousness, she could’ve sworn she heard Arlene letting out a bloodcurdling scream, yelling for her Mama…
“Isabella? Isabella, you OK? Nurse! Nurse, she’s up! She’s up!”
Isabella opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was white. When her eyes came into focus, she saw that she was in a ward covered in bandages. She turned her head to one side and saw that George and a nurse were in the ward with her. She tried to sit up but George kept her back down on bed.
“Don’t move yet. You were found up in the top floor covered in blood and lying in your pool of blood with multiple wounds,” George said. “The doctors were amazed that you’re still alive.”
“How long have I been out?” Isabella asked as she took another look around the ward as the nurse did a brief check-up on her. “I remember going up the top floor trying to look for you and I had a fight with Arlene and…”
“Shh…” George hushed her and stroked her hair. “You have been in a hard time. Arlene did capture me by knocking me out with chloroform and dumping me in the ice-cold compartment in the morgue, but I came round and went looking for you. Suddenly the backup generator blew off and everywhere was dark and I practically couldn’t see a thing. I tried to call for the police using the cell phone but I couldn’t get any reception until I heard the loud explosion on the top floor. I rushed up there as fast as I could and I found you lying there on the floor and the water tank smoking. You were in and out of unconsciousness for almost a week now.”
“Arlene…? Where’s Arlene?”
“The people from Cybertronics came and found her body parts in the tank. They told me that there had been an accident at the main company thanks to our little Terminator there and that they were staffs from one of their company branches. Anyway, they practically have to empty the tank to get her out of there, and they made sure that she was completely demolished and short circuited before taking her into their van and left.”
Isabella wrinkled her nose, looking worried and skeptical. George quickly reassured her.
“I can assure you, she was completely fried from head to toe, like a human charcoal. I saw them taking her away and leaving myself. You don’t have to worry about her ever again. On the other hand,” George grinned as he took out the newly repaired Kitty and sat him on her lap, “You’ll have this to worry about.”
“Kitty! You fixed him!” Isabella smiled as the Super Toy leaned forward and hugged her.
“Yeah, well, he got a few damages here and there but I took him back to fix him up real good. He’s a-OK now.”
“Mama, where’s Arlene? Is she gone?” Kitty asked in his ever familiar teenage boy Mexican slang voice.
“She’s gone. We won’t have to bother about her ever again,” Isabella replied.
“Do I still get to be the ring-bearer?”
Kitty’s question sent Isabella and George into peals of laughter.
“Dolls, hyacinth, uranium, elephants, teddy bears…”
A woman in her 30’s was sitting in front of a small child with her fingers pressing slightly at the back of a little girl’s neck. She was about 10 years old, give or take, with beautiful sparkling aquamarine eyes and billowing waist-length coffee-coloured hair, rosy cheeks and a brilliant smile. She wore a pink nightgown decorated with little cloth roses. She looked really beautiful indeed and was beyond perfection.
“Kittens, casserole, Arlene, Benita. Arlene, Benita. I hope I got this right.”
The woman whose name was Benita looked at the form again, making sure she got the words right. She couldn’t hear any reaction from the little girl she called Arlene and was worried that she had done something wrong. Without warning, she felt a pair of small arms wrapping around her waist. She was too overwhelmed to say anything but she could hear the tiny innocent voice whispering out to her.
“I love you, Mama…I love you…”
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