Choices (Part 5 - The Cave)

Physical wounds heal within a few days or months but, emotional wounds take a far lot of time to heal, and sometimes they never heal. The pain of the old man who was trying to shoot the chimera was also like that. The chimera of Selonova village was responsible for many killings, and one of its victims was the grandson of the old man, who was only 4 years at the time of his death. But, instead of killing the chimera, he broke free it accidentally when he was trying to shoot it. Boris, Danny, and Maria were mad at him for ruining their plan at the last stage, but they went behind the creature to fix the mistakes done. They followed the blood trail of the creature, and to make the things easier, they had a bear to find it.

The team went into the wilderness and after some time, they reached near a cave. The blood trails were going inside the cave which made the team a bit uncomfortable. "I don't think it's a good idea to go inside a dark cave, where we definitely know that a crazy chimera is present, and which desperately wants to kill us," Danny gulped while looking at the cave entrance.

"We have no choice, this chimera can give us a lot of answers," Maria said.

"Why don't we set a trap out here?" Danny proposed.

"It might not work. This cave could be having multiple exits, and you don't have enough time to waste in waiting for it," Boris advised.

Danny looked at Boris with widened eyes. "But-," Danny stuttered.

Boris looked at Danny. "Don't worry Danny, we have a bear with us. Toby can easily see in the dark and smell the creature's presence. It will be easy," He smiled.

Before entering the cave, they made a torch and lit it on fire. Toby was walking on the front, and just behind him Boris was holding the torch in one hand and a knife on another hand, Maria was behind Boris with her handgun, and Danny was walking last in the line holding a rifle which he took from the old man. While they were walking, they could clearly see the blood trails on the floor. "How hard did you cut its leg, Boris?" Danny asked.

"Pretty hard I guess. If we are lucky, then it might have weakened by now due to blood-loss," Boris replied.

They entered more and more inside the cave, following the trail of blood and the scent of the creature. There were lots of animal skeleton inside the cave, and when they went deeper, they found torn off clothes and human skeletons. There were mostly skulls of adult humans, but some of the skulls were of children as well. Finally, they reached the place where the blood trail was ending, and the creature was lying beside the wall of the cave. The creature was also able to see them, but it was too weakened to move. The bleeding from its leg was stopped, but the fall from a height and contact with fire had worn off all the strength it had.

The team was convinced that there was no danger, so they all relaxed down. "Looks like it has suffered lots of injuries. It's not even able to move its jaw properly," Boris said while looking at the creature.

"It was already looking very weak, to begin with. Maybe it hasn't eaten anything from days," Maria said.

Meanwhile, the creature growled with a weakened voice by saying, "Food."

Maria sympathized after looking at the creature's condition. "Has anyone got anything?" She asked.

Boris didn't want to help the creature to begin with by giving the only fish he had. But, he changed his mind after watching the poor condition of the creature. He sighed and said, "I got a fish in my bag…but, I am only helping this monster because we need some answers."

Boris then pulled out a fish from his bag and watching that, Toby growled. So, Boris looked at Toby. "Sorry buddy, I will get you another one from the village," He gave the fish to Maria and continued, "But before you feed it, we need to tie it up."

"Alright," Maria said.

Boris and Danny tied up the creature, then they patched its wound and fed him. Even though the fish was not enough to satisfy its hunger, it was good enough to give it some strength. While the creature was eating fish, Danny and Boris were looking at the surroundings using the torch they had. Toby was sitting at a corner and Maria was feeding the creature.

While looking, Boris and Danny found a torn plain full shirt covered only with dirt on the floor. Danny picked up the shirt and cleaned it. By that time, the creature was finished with the fish they provided to it. The creature then stood up and stared them. "Great, looks like we can now question it," Boris expressed.

Maria looked at the creature and when she was about to speak, the creature interrupted, "Untie…me…I...I…promise…I won't…k…kill you. I will kill…only…those two," It stuttered.

"Please untie it, let it show its skills to kill us which it couldn't show us back there," Danny said sarcastically.

Maria ignored Danny and asked the creature, "Do you have a name?"

The creature got angry and bared its teeth. "U…UNTIE ME," It roared.

"Do you remember being human?" Maria continued. But, the creature kept on shouting "UNTIE ME" very fiercely.

After asking some questions and not getting the answers, Maria got frustrated and said, "Fine, if you don't want to tell us, we are not going to untie you."

The creature stopped shouting and glared at Maria with bared teeth, but the intimidation was clearly not working on Maria. After some time, it finally calmed down and said while stuttering, "I…d…don't…remember…m…my name…b…but I…remember…being…human"

"Do you remember anyone?" Maria asked politely.

"No," The creature replied.

In the meantime, Danny was cleaning up the shirt he found, and while he was searching the front pocket, he found something. It was a photograph. Boris couldn't comprehend it when he saw the dirt covered photograph in Danny's hand. "What is that?" Boris asked curiously.

"Looks like a photograph," Danny replied and started cleaning off the dirt from the photo.

The photograph also got the attention of Maria. She got closer to Danny to have a look at the photograph. When Danny cleaned off the dirt, they saw a black and white photograph of a 13-14 years old girl standing beside a boy around her age. Both of the children in the photo were wearing sweaters and round caps. They were looking very happy, embracing their arm around each other's shoulder while looking toward the camera.

Maria had got the answer that the creature was, in fact, a human once. And watching the photo, she got curious. She snatched the photo from Danny's hand and showed it to the creature. "Do you know anyone from this photograph?" She questioned excitedly.

The creature looked at the photograph very carefully, and after some time, tears started forming at the edge of its eyes. The human-like actions shocked everyone. "Do you know someone here?" Maria asked.

"B…B…Brother" The creature stuttered.

Maria quickly turned around the photograph. Boris, Maria, and Danny now had a doubt that whether the creature was talking about the boy in the photo or not. Meanwhile, the creature had lowered its head and was crying while uttering the word- "Brother" with a weakened voice.

"Is it talking about the boy in this photo?" Maria questioned which was also in the mind of Danny and Boris.

Boris looked at the creature and said, "And if this creature is really the girl in the photo, then something really bad happened to her."

And then suddenly the creature stopped crying and uttering the word "Brother". It looked at the three-person standing in front of it with desperation and begged, "P…P…Please…un…untie me."

Boris closed his eyes and sighed after looking at the pitiful face of that creature. "What do you think guys? Shall we untie it?" Boris asked.

"Yes," Maria and Danny answered instantly.

"But what if it tries to attack us?" Boris questioned.

"Then we will capture it again. It is already too weak," Maria answered.

Boris walked toward the creature and pulled out his knife. Watching Boris proceeding toward the creature, Toby stood up. Boris carefully cut the ropes and quickly backed down.

After the creature was untied, it stood up slowly and walked toward one corner, and dug up something. It pulled out a small leather purse with its mouth from the hole it dug and took it to Maria. Maria was scared initially watching such a big terrifying creature close to her when it offered the purse to her. But, she gathered some courage and pulled out the purse from its mouth. Then she opened it and found a folded piece of paper in it.

The folded piece of paper was actually a letter and on the top of it, the information of the recipient was clearly visible. "To My Little Sister" was what written on it.