Testing
Cass can’t be sure how long it’s been, but probably at least a few days. Week, week and a half at most. There was no real passage of time where he was. He just went to sleep and woke up in that same room. That woman was usually there though when he opens his eyes, and if she wasn't she came soon after. Must be watching him somehow, sneaky cunt. Hell if he knew how though. Nothing even close to resembling a camera in this joint.
She said her name is 9 of all things, not even spelled with letters, just the friggen number!
“Who in their bloody right mind gives someone a number for a name?”
Cass slurps down some blood she's brought him and chomps on a sandwich she's also provided. The woman smiles at him, taking a seat. The grand, ornate chair that had been there when he'd first awoken has since varnished and she's brought in a tiny table set. Over the days she's also brought in a mattress and some books, but she wouldn’t let him out. He’s asked many times, demanded even, and all she says is, “It is not time yet, my dear.”
Overall though, Cass has to admit it isn’t such a bad wrap. He has shelter, is given food and blood--the whole vampire thing she just seems to know about somehow, he doesn’t bother questioning it with everything else going on--the only thing he'll really need eventually is some outside human interaction... and drugs. Definitely gonna need drugs soon. Though the normal withdrawal symptoms he'd get after a few days cold turkey like this don’t seem to be coming on, at least not strongly anyway.
“We were a special case,” she finally answers, blowing on a cup of tea she's brought for herself. It smells heavily of different flowers and fruits.
“We?” Cass chomps into the sandwich again and she gives him another smile, she seemed to enjoy his questions.
“My sisters, I'm 9 and there are about 14 others. Almost all of us have numbers.”
“That is a right stupid thing right thar,” he punctuates his words with his sandwich. She just keeps smiling and all Cass can think is ‘This woman's a bloody loon.’
On about the third or fifth day, he guesses anyway, he tries to just break out. He’s had enough of this shite. Pleasant vacation and all, but for the life of him he cannot get his thoughts straight no matter how hard he tries, and he has an itching feeling that this bloody room has something to do with it. He notices when she isn’t there that there's some kinda door that slides into the wall, so one day after getting up to an empty room, he waits.
He waits for hours it seems, it could be for all he knows, he doesn’t have any way of telling, and when the door finally opens he springs forward at his inhuman fastness. He plans to just dart past her ass, no normal person could catch him at this speed, but apparently this were no normal bird though.
Girl doesn’t even flinch! Just grabs him by the collar, hoists him off of his feet, shakes her bloody finger at him and says, “No no.” Not a sweat broken! Nada! At first Cass thinks she might be another vampire, but she sure doesn’t have the scent. When he really thinks about it though she didn't quite have a human smell either. This whole bloody place doesn’t smell right! It doesn’t look right, it doesn’t even fucking feel right! It isn’t even like a real place, more like an idea someone had and then carved it into bloody reality somehow. Best way he can think to describe it anyway. Cass can’t begin to make heads or tales of things at all anymore, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t try to escape again anyway. He is comfortable enough, and it isn’t like he has anywhere to be...he thinks he doesn’t anyway.
Thinking isn’t coming so easily to him right now. When he sleeps his dreams are scattered and messy. He see a person with one face and then they'll have another face, but they'll still be the same person. Then he'll have dreams where the world just looks different all of a sudden, like someone has taken a paint brush over it. 9 seems to be trying to help him remember things. Every day she’ll come in and ask him questions about people, places, experiences, things Cass feels like he should know, and sometimes he does. But sometimes they feel just outta reach.
“Let's try this again, and try to take it seriously this time please. For you own sake. Name?”
“Oy! Do we need to do this every bloody day? I know I said things were...hazy and all that but I’m pretty sure I’ve got my own bloody name covered by now!” Cass is restless, anxious, mostly just rightly pissed. He is tired of the damn questions, of the damn room, and she's picking on his last nerve. 9 just gave a sigh.
“It’s important for continuity's sake, and a few other reasons that I can’t remember the names of. It’s important to start on a base of something that you know is certain many ways.” She takes out her phone, setting it to record, and places it on the table. She hears Cass mumble to himself about her being a cantankerous bird as she does so. “From the top. Name, please.”
“Cassidy,” he says flatly. He's exhausted truly, it feels like they've been going at this for hours, but again he has no bloody way of knowing that or not! 9 sighs again at his answer.
“Full name please.”
“Bugger off!” he scoffs at her, annoyed she'd even ask. He'd still really like to know how she knows all these things...and why he keeps getting things wrong to begin with.
“Alright,” she says. “I guess that counts, all things considered. Let's just go slow this time. Where were you before you were here?”
Cass doesn’t know why, but he hates the way she says 'here' for some reason.
“Texas.” That he is sure of for some reason. Things are in fact coming back to him, in scattered bits and pieces, but they are coming back. It’s just so hard to try and put them back together.
“Do you remember what part specifically?” She's taking notes down in a little book like she was some sort of bloody doctor! Is she a doctor? Is he just some crazy man locked up somewhere where they'd thrown away the key? Cass does consider that a moment, but that’s far too simple an explanation for everything. He does actually think about the question before answering, but the jumbled thoughts come pouring in again. Part of him swears he's been in Annville for a few months now, but then another part says that’s bullshit because Annville blew the fuck up years ago! So many places go flying past his eyes as he tries to pin one down. The very act seems to be making him nauseous.
“N-no. I can't,” Cass’ breath is shaky when he speaks, as if the act of trying to remember has taken all of his energy.
“Aright, what about the people you traveled with, who were they?”
Traveled? Yes traveled. They had been traveling. Everywhere, all throughout the country and even to some other ones. They'd...they. He’d been with Jesse and Tulip..but...something in him feels like somewhere along the way...they weren’t with him anymore, and it’d been his fault.
“Jesse...Jesse Custer and Tulip O'hare.” What had happened to them? What had happened to him! It couldn’t be the Grail again could it? The Grail...that seems fairly clear in his head, hard to forget getting your dick shot off, but as for exactly when that’d happened...he still isn’t sure what year it is. Sometimes 9 says things that just boggle him, and yet Cass feels some sorta odd familiarity with. Like her damn phone even! The thing is a bloody computer! Got internet, took pictures, good ones too! Has these little things on ‘em she called ‘apps’ that go to certain sites or something, he wasn’t entirely sure. Part of him is just flabbergasted by the damn thing, but something sort of in the back of his head is telling him, ‘Don’t be daft, boyo. Everyones got one of those’. And he hates that. He hates that his own mind seems to be against him for no reason, that he’s locked up somewhere with his brains scrambled, with no idea what has happened to his friends or what is gonna happen to him. And slowly, bit by bit, Cass is starting to hate 9. But then again, it’s hard to hate the only person whose talking to you. It’s not like she’s terribly cruel to him or anything, fairly pleasant all things considered, nicer that most people in fact...that first day was still pretty weird though. Cass is still having trouble getting his head all the way around it. He asks her about it and she’ll just brush it off. So Cass let’s it go for the moment, she doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but he is getting to the bottom of this damn thing one way or the other, somehow.
“Can you describe to me what Jesse and Tulip look like?”
Oh, this shit again. He hates this question with vigor. Why you ask? It’s a fairly simple question after all, and for the most part he can in fact remember what Jesse and Tulip look like. But what he hates, what scares him, is that when he tries to picture their faces he doesn’t see one face, he sees two.
Cass sees two Jesse's and two Tulips, and his brain is telling him they’re both the same damn person.