Chapter XII: Let's try this again
When Aran woke up, the first thing that struck him as odd was the direction of gravity. For all he knew, he fell asleep lying down on a soft mattress, not sitting up on a hard surface. The second thing his groggy mind managed to figure out was his location. He had been there once before.
Pulling his mind from the World of the Sleeping, the black wolf noticed that he was wearing a light blue nylon body harness to cover his upper body - the same one he had worn during his previous visit to that same place. His sleeper, however, was nowhere to be found, only his thick nighttime diaper.
So there was going to be more of this after all. The wolf dreaded the thought of talking to Kaiser. The Doberman had not seemed willing to convey a coherent message yet. It took him only moments to draw his conclusion: he was in the same room where he first woke up after Mason's henchman beat him up.
Was this going to be a repetition of the same moves on the same chess board? The wolf shook his head, denying what he just thought. In contrast to the first time, Aran could clearly feel the presence of a diaper around his waist, which told him that it would not be exactly the same.
"Are you up?" a familiar male voice sounded.
The wolf looked up, meeting eyes with Kaiser. The Doberman sat right across the table on a chair that had been turned around, just like it had been during the previous conversation. His arms were folded over the top of the back.
"There we are. Do you remember who I am?"
Aran softly moaned. "You're... Kaiser."
"Can you recall how we first met?"
"You asked me if I needed help after I had been beaten up by a feline."
"Good, that means you're awake and coherent."
This comment made Aran perk up his ears. His instinct told him that something significant was about to happen.
"Why are you here?"
"W-huh? Wait, isn't that supposed to be my line?"
Kaiser closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.
"Darn... You haven't learned anything from our first conversation, have you?" the Doberman said, but it sounded like he was thinking out aloud. "Back to 'go'. I'm the one that asks the questions, you're the one that answers them, got it?"
The wolf initially wanted to nod, but remembered that his collocutor would probably reprimand him with reference to a microphone.
"Fine," he said, looking away from the Doberman.
Kaiser snapped his fingers. "Eyes, Aran. They're up here," he chided.
'Somebody is in a bad mood', the wolf thought, but he complied anyway.
"Take two. Why are you here?"
"I don't know."
"_Why_are you here?" the Doberman repeated with a little more pressure.
"I don't know," the wolf replied, hoping to fend off any remaining questions.
"Try harder. You're not thinking, Aran."
"Why should I? I'm here because you brought me here after you stuck a needle in my body, satisfied?"
"No. That's how you eventually got here. It mentions nothing about the reason."
The Doberman kept staring down Aran's eyes, which was both dulling and intimidating.
"What do you want from me?" the wolf asked in an attempt to relieve the tension.
"I want you cooperate by answering my question. Why are you here?"
"I don't know, okay?" Aran grumbled. "I have no idea why I'm here or why you took me here. Jennifer says that you guys want to help me, but I don't need any help."
"Don't you, now?" the Doberman provoked.
"No, I don't. I can't think of anything I need help with, or at least something _you_could help me with."
Kaiser grinned. Did Aran just say what the Doberman wanted to hear, or was he laughing at him?
"Why are you here, wolf?"
"I don't know! I didn't choose to be here!"
The Doberman slammed his fist on the table, pointing at Aran with the index finger of his other hand.
"There! Hold that," he said.
Aran, who had grown confident of himself over the past minute, suddenly lost all said sense of security.
"What? I don't get it, Kaiser."
"Hold on to what you just said."
"I... I didn't choose to be here?"
The Doberman nodded. Wait, why was he allowed to nod?
"What do you want with that?"
"Empathy," Kaiser replied plainly.
"For what? Or whom? You got to give me something! I can't just make up my answers!"
"Calm down, wolf. It'll all sort itself out soon enough."
"What is it with you guys? One moment, you're about to tell me what's going on, and the next moment I'm told to shut up and let it come to me. Make up your mind already!"
"I told you to calm down, Aran," Kaiser reprimanded with a sharp tone. "Back to what you know."
The wolf took a few seconds to collect his thoughts.
"I didn't choose to be here, but you say that's right, and it has something to do with empathy. You're not telling me who or what I should show empathy for."
"Correct. What does that tell you?"
"Nothing... I don't know what it means."
"That's not the same. Anyway, it should tell you that the ends are not relevant for now, only the means."
'Can this guy speak in something else but riddles for once?' Aran thought.
"Have you ever felt lost inside?" Kaiser pressed on.
"I don't understand what you mean."
"Somewhere along the line, you allowed yourself to step out and let a stranger inside," the Doberman stated.
"Could you do me a favor and speak in a language I understand?" the wolf queried.
"You were someone else once."
"Aren't we all?" Aran dodged.
"Don't try to be smarter than me. You're not. Cooperate, Aran, I don't have all night," the Doberman said with an agitated gesture.
"Go back again. You used to be a different person as a child. What happened?"
"Puberty, I guess. What are-" he started, but Kaiser cut him off.
"Shut it!" He shouted, followed by a deep sigh as he rubbed his forehead with the fingers of his left hand. "You are a piece of work."
For a second time, Aran's confidence was shattered. 'This is not like you, Aran. Get yourself together. Whatever Kaiser wants from you, he's not getting it,' he thought.
"I'll try this one more time. If you screw this up, I'm going to leave you to your own and you can figure out for yourself whatever you think is going to work. Got it?" the Doberman said slowly, with a threatening tone.
He did not wait for the wolf to respond.
"You used to be a different person. There are a lot of people out there, just like you. People that have denied, ignored or ran and hid away from their former selves."
"If I'm just like a lot of other people, then why is this specifically about me?" Aran asked sincerely.
"Among said people, there are many that can help themselves. Some, however, require others to help them."
"Help? To do what?"
"To return to who they used to be," Kaiser answered plainly as he got up from his chair.
"But why me? I didn't ask for all this, did I?" the wolf queried.
The Doberman put his hands on the edge of the table and leaned towards Aran. "That's right. You didn't ask for it. Lights out."
Not waiting for the wolf to respond, he pressed a button that was embedded in the bottom of the protruding table leaf. Immediately, the power to the fluorescent light above the table was cut, leaving the room in utter darkness.
"Hey, why did you do that?" Aran asked, but the Doberman did not respond.
All he heard was a couple of pawsteps, then a provoking silence that was merely disrupted by their breaths. The wolf should have seen it coming, but since it was dark around him, he did not have the slightest notion of Kaiser's intentions. It was not until the needle of the syringe had already broken the skin of his neck before Aran understood that the conversation was over.