Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

"You're looking at me funny," the girl said.

"I'm sorry," Justin mumbled, but he didn't stop staring.

"It's okay. I don't mind. You're the handsomest man I've ever seen in person," the girl said, and the hunger spread from her eyes all across her face.

"I'm not so handsome," he said.

"Yes," the girl whispered. "You're very beautiful. I've never seen anyone like you."

"Hush!" one of the uniformed women said.

"Oh my God," Justin said quietly. Then he said it again and the words rang with a strong sense of wonder and horror and shock. And of pity and fear. Facing the small girl, looking at this exquisite little creature, the perfect eight-year-old girl, he suddenly understood. Maybe it was in the girl's eyes. Or maybe he was looking into her sad soul.

Justin remembered the word that Helen Roag's doctor friend had used: "ungodly." And now he understood who he was looking at. He didn't know how it was possible, but he was absolutely certain that it was.

"You're here to find my father, aren't you?" the girl asked him.

"Yes," Justin said, his voice barely audible in the room. "And my mother?"

"Yes."

"They'll be here soon. They're coming today."

"You be quiet!" the first woman in white hissed at the girl.

"No," the girl said. "I won't be quiet." She turned to Justin. "I've never spoken to anybody before, not real people, not strangers, and I'd like to talk to you."

"I'd like to talk to you, too," Justin breathed. And then he knew he had to say her name. Just to be sure. Just to know that he hadn't gone mad. "I very much want to talk to you…Aphrodite."

She smiled. "Everybody wants to talk to me. I know a lot of things."

"I'm sure you do."

"Would you like me to tell you everything I know?"

"Yes. I would like that very much." He knew he was speaking very quietly. He was almost afraid to look away or even breathe too loud, as if the slightest disturbance would cause this fragile thing to shatter as if she were made of glass.

"Will you do something for me?" she asked now. "If I ask you nicely and then I tell you everything I know?"

"Yes," he said.

"Anything?"

"If I can," he told her. "I'll try to do whatever you want me to do."

"Then I want you to find my mother and father," she said. "I want you to wait here until they come back."

"I will," he said.

"And then," Aphrodite said, "I want you to kill them."

They were outside walking down the path that led to the gate. The girl kept twirling around in delight and amazement.

"I've never been outside without supervision," she said.

Justin nearly began to cry. He couldn't help himself. He wished he hadn't sent Deena away now. He wanted her to be there so he could grab on to her arm, needing an anchor to a different reality from the one he was suddenly confronting.

They stepped over the broken gate and Aphrodite crossed the property line. She turned back to him and smiled hesitantly.

"I've never been here before. Never been outside these walls." She reached out to take Justin's hand. "It's frightening."

"Everybody's got walls that keep them somewhere they don't want to be," Justin said. "And it's always frightening to go someplace you've never been before."

She let go of his hand now, bent down to pick a yellow wildflower from alongside the road. "I don't want to go in," she said. "Ever."

He let her wander and gawk and touch. She kept reaching out and stroking tree trunks, picking up rocks and fondling them in her palm, kneeling down and stroking the grass. Justin knew she'd talk when she was ready, and soon she was. She stood in the middle of the road, turned and lifted her face toward the sun, and he listened while she told him her story. As he watched her, Justin had to tell himself over and over again that she wasn't what she appeared to be. He was not looking at a fragile eight-year-old girl. He was looking at a woman. A woman who was born in 1974, who had been kept locked away, an unholy experiment, for her entire life.

"It was my mother's idea," she told him as they strolled. "She'd read Skinner back in the sixties. He was the psychologist who talked about raising his children in a cage so he could control their environment and study the effects. My mother liked that concept. I think she gave birth to me so she would have someone to put into a cage.

"My father started his experiments in 'seventy-two. You said you know about them, the ones in New York. When they began to come to fruition, they needed someone they could study from a very early age. He's told me often how they used to long to experiment on a newborn baby, how they thought they could double the human life span if they only had the opportunity to get someone early enough. He's always told me that no one ever wanted a child more than he and my mother wanted me. He says that no child in the history of the world has ever been loved so much or been so valued by her parents."

"What about friends?" Justin asked. "Did you ever have any friends?"

"Not allowed. At first, I was too young to know what I was saying so they couldn't take a chance that I might reveal something without realizing the consequences. Eventually I was old enough to understand what they were doing to me and, of course, then they really couldn't let me in a room with strangers. I might say something knowing the consequences. I've seen the doctors and scientists, of course. The house was filled with them up until a month or so ago. And I've had caretakers over the years. Those two women, the ones you locked in the bathroom, they're the latest. One of them's been there eight years. They keep me company but mostly they're there to make sure I stay behind locked doors. I've been locked inside that house since I was born."

"Jesus…"

"I've got almost everything I could possibly need," Aphrodite said matter-of-factly. "I'll bet I'm the best-read person you've ever met. And I've probably seen more films than anyone my age in the whole world. I can speak four languages, too. Well, five, counting English: French, Italian, Russian, and German. I spend a lot of time on the Internet, although always under supervision. They can't take a chance that I'd contact someone or get into a chat room that might expose them."

"Why did they leave?" he asked her. "You said the house was filled with doctors and scientists until a month ago. What happened a month ago?"

"They finished."

"Finished?"

"With the experiments. The formula."

"What do you mean, finished?"

"They're all done. The treatments they started administering thirty years ago. They've come to fruition. They don't need to do anything else. They've got what they've always wanted."

"And that is…?"

"They can do to other people what they've done to me. They can provide a fountain of youth for anyone who wants it."

The sun had moved along in the sky now, and she walked slowly to the far side of the road so she could remain in its warm stream of light. "I'm almost thirty years old," she said now. "Mentally and emotionally, I'm an adult. Physically, outwardly, I'm a child. I can't talk to anyone who looks like me because we're not remotely on the same level. And I can't talk to anyone my own age because they'd view me as a freak and a monster. I see the way you look at me while I'm talking. You think I'm a freak too."

"I'm sorry," Justin said. "I don't mean to. I just can't reconcile what I'm hearing with what I'm seeing."

"It's all right. I am a freak. I've never been in love, I've never had sex. I'm probably twenty years away from even menstruating. I have no pleasure in my life and none to look forward to. I think about almost nothing but killing myself, but I have never even been given that opportunity. If I keep taking the drugs and supplements and hormones I've been given my whole life, I will probably live another hundred and thirty years.