A Scientist experiments on lab rats, injecting them each with a mysterious serum. Two rats in front of her were slumped over in their cages, motionless while she watched the last rat intensely through her circular glasses. A calendar on the wall above her desk had each day marked off but the last in the month. A small pile of other months were torn off and haphazardly piled below on the desk. There were pictures pinned to the wall around the calendar that were printouts of Facebook posts. Small inscriptions of, “I miss you,” and, “I’ll be home soon,” could be seen written in the margins.

  The last rat scurried along the cage, likely in fear after being injected with the Mystery Serum and watching its relatives die likely painful deaths. Its movements slowed until it stopped just in front of the Scientist. With the glass of the cage between them, It faced Her and lowered itself to its belly and slowly closed its eyes with what seemed to be a grin on Its face.

  “No, no, NO! Come on, little guy, this is my last chance!” She spoke in a hushed voice, barely above a whisper, but was obviously flustered and nearly cracked.

  “There’s nothing else I can change to make this work, I’ve tried every protein in every combination of mixtures!” She threw the small notepad and pen she held in her hands as she watched the rat and they clattered against the wall and rat cages before settling together in a manner that almost resembled a butterfly. She sobbed for a few moments before her gaze moved up to where the notebook and pen had landed and stared at it for a few moments.

  “That’s it!” She darted out of the chair, grabbing the notebook and pen and removing the dead rats from the cages as she continued past around the corner where there was a wall of cages full of rats. She disposed of the dead rats in a chute in the wall next to the interior of a large vault door before grabbing three more rats and putting them in the cages the other rats had died in. In a rush she swooped into her chair and rolled to her computer which was on the adjacent wall to the experimenting cages and hurriedly clattered on her keyboard, her eyes glued to the monitor.

  “That last protein looked promising, let's try a few of that one.” She mumbled something about folding and protein as she clicked a few times before a machine next to the computer monitor began spinning, a centrifuge. Slowly at first, then it quickly began spinning at a rate that had it sounding like a jet engine. She leaned back in her chair and kicked her feet up on the desk before setting an alarm on her watch and closed her eyes with her hands clasped behind her head.

  A few minutes went by and The Scientist had just started snoring slightly when a timer beeped from the centrifuge, marking the machine slowing down. The Scientist let out a snort of a snore as a startle from the timer. She let out a heavy sigh and stood, grabbing the vials from the machine as it stopped spinning, and walked with a brisk pace, but more leisurely than before, towards the new live experimenting rats. Upon arrival to the cages she paused, closing her eyes and lowering her head, saying a silent prayer, or making her peace before her last failure.

  “Here goes nothing.” She set two vials in front of the other two cages, and left the last vial in her other hand, reaching into the first cage on her left and grabbed the rat inside, her hand wrapped in a thin blue medical glove. The rat was calm and didn’t try to bite, but tried to squirm out of her hand as she pierced its skin on the back of its neck with a needle, almost glancing her own hand in the process. She let out a small grunt and muttered, “I hope, for your sake buddy, that hit your vein,” and pressed the syringe, injecting the serum.

  The Scientist checked her watch, grabbed her notepad and pen and scribbled some notes, then moved on to the middle cage and repeated the process of the first, though the rat was less squirmy. Both this rat, and the third and last rat went through the process without a hitch. The Scientist had finished marking her initial notes in her notepad for the third rat, when she looked up towards the first cage she administered, and let out a sigh. “I should’ve known I didn’t hit your vein, buddy. That’s too bad.”

  The rat she was looking at had slumped against the front right corner of the cage. A large hole had developed on the back of the neck of the poor animal, nearly completely decapitating the rat, the flesh completely cauterized throughout the wound.

  “I wonder if you died of internal bleeding first, or if the cauterization led to you suffocating. I’ve not seen it eat completely through the bone before. It may have something to do with the new protein structure.” She scribbled a few more notes on her notepad, then went back to staring at the two other rat cages periodically, checking her watch every five minutes, and scribbling or scratching on her notebook every now and again.

  After five minutes, the other 2 rats had both begun searching the edges of their cages more, and after another five minutes their breathing was obviously erratic with their movement coming to a near halt. Neither rat made it the next five minutes, their breathing coming to a complete arrest within seconds of each other.

  “No no no- FUCK!” She let out a guttural scream followed by a few seconds of dry heaving before finally retching up a small puddle of clear liquid.

  “Just kill me now you cock-sucking motherfucker! I’ve tried EVERYTHING, dammit! Just get it over with like you did with the last three!” She pounded the desk in front of the cages three times with her fist, and sobbed for a few minutes with her face buried in her arms, planted on the desk in front of the rat cages.

  At this point she had quieted down to a normal conversational level, at least as normal as a single scientist trapped alone with hundreds of lab rats could get, “I should’ve never expected to see my parents again after I woke up in here. You were probably lying the whole time anyway.” She sniffled and stared up in the corner to her left at a security camera pointed directly at her, red light blinking.

  She let out a small chuckle before glancing at the calendar and photos on the wall, then standing and walking to the wall of rat cages around the corner. “I guess you guys have become my new family these past eight months.” She let out another small chuckle to herself and placed her palm on the glass of one of the cages. She paused for a few moments with a solemn grin on her face before reaching into the cage and grabbing one of the rats that had a black spot over one of its eyes. She held it in front of her like a child might do with a cat, her hands supporting the rat under its front legs, her fingers clasped together behind its shoulder blades.

  “I’m sorry for what I’ve done to your siblings. I hope you understand, I didn’t have a choice.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The Scientist quickly jolted her head back towards her desk in reaction to a loud SNAP, followed by glass shattering and various objects clattering to the floor. She nuzzled the spotted-eyed rat to her chest and darted to the experiment cages. She took a sharp gasp of air as she rounded the corner and saw what stood before her. Where there once was a floating desk, mounted to the wall, with three rat cages perched atop, instead there was a monstrous rat the size of a labrador surrounded by glass shards, the two other rat cages -mostly intact- to either side, and various pieces of glassware and measuring utensils sprawled across the floor, the broken desktop leaning against the wall.

  “What just- OH MY GOD, what the FUCK is that!” Clambering backwards, she dropped the spotted-eyed rat to catch herself as she fell to a sitting position on the floor.

  The rat stood on its hind legs and waved its front legs. The Scientist flinched and covered her face with her arms, but the rat didn’t advance. The rat was chittering, and it seemed to be in some sort of rhythm, repeating after a second. The Scientist tilted her head and perked her ear to the rat. She was just looking up at the rat when there was a ratcheting of gears from the vault door, followed by a loud BANG, then the clang of the door swinging open against the wall. A rush of heavy footfalls pounded through the door and to the current commotion of the room, then a single gunshot and the rat fell.

  A single set of footsteps approached from around the corner, heavy but leisurely paced, stopping behind The Scientist as she lay still on the floor, staring at the now dead impossibility in front of her. She slowly stood, without turning, and walked stiffly to the shattered glass around the dead rat. Picking up a small notecard, she read it aloud, still refusing to turn to The Man and his posse.

  “R.S. number four-seven-five-nine.” She reached into her coat pocket, pulling her notepad out to inspect it. “Histidine is the main enzyme used for the vaccine produced for this subject, you can find the specific protein structure used on the computer, it was structure sample number five-nine-seven.” She finally turned to look at The Man. “This was never really a vaccine you were forcing me to recreate, was it?” Her eyes were red, and her cheeks were sticky with tears, some of her auburn hair clinging to them as most of it had fallen out of her poorly kept bun.

  The Man, dressed in a regular black suit and black tie, sporting stubbly sideburns grittier than most sandpaper found in wood shops, was unfazed, showing no reaction in his face, nor wavering in his stance with his hands firmly clasped in front of him. He stepped forward, The Scientist took a small step back, then the man continued forward, past The Scientist to the computer. He clicked a few times, then once again the centrifuge spun up, whirring loudly after a minute. He waited for the machine to finish, the Scientist silently -aside from her labored breathing- watched as he did so, and he grabbed the vials then walked back to The Scientist, putting his back to his three men uniformed in S.W.A.T. raid gear.

  “You’re quite right, my dear Erin.” He spoke in a deep and gravelly voice. “We are in a new age of arms race. Conventional weaponry is a thing of the past. We need something no one can stand against, no matter the strength of their bombs.” A small grin grew across his face as he dangled the syringe loaded with a vial of the serum between his fingers like a treat for a dog.

  The Scientist, Erin, stepped closer to The Man and spread her arms to each side. “And let me guess, no witnesses, huh? Me getting to go back to my parents was all a lie afterall, otherwise you wouldn’t be showing your face.”

  “Astute observations, Ms. Cold, but no. I am a man of my word, you will be returned to your parents.” The man took another step forward, but seemed to blur as he stepped, covering the three step gap at an inhuman speed. Reaching Erin, he grabbed her arm, placed the needle in a vein in her arm, and emptied the vial's contents in her bloodstream. He leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “But, I will be needing to remove your pesky parents from the equation at some point.” He chuckled then released her.

  Erin tried to lash out, but her movements were sluggish and sloppy. She stumbled forward, the momentum swinging her from the swipe at The Man. Her eyelids began to droop, and her blinking slowed. She tried to step to The Man again, swiping at him, leading to her stumbling. This time she stumbled all the way to the floor and laid limp. The Man walked up to her and set the palm of his hand on her cheek.

  “No, worries. Your new possession should take care of that little problem.”

  Suddenly Erin jolted awake under a heavy comforter blanket. She was in a bed, not a lab locked behind a vault door. The Man and his soldiers were nowhere in the room.

  She gasped, clasping her hands in front of her mouth to muffle her voice, “This is my bed, in my room. I’m home!” She quickly darted out of bed and swung her door open. “Mom? Dad? Are you home?”

  A male voice rang out in response, “Making breakfast! Come and get it now before it's all gone!”

  Erin walked down the hallway and stopped just in the open entryway to the right of the end of the hall, leaning against the frame. “I had the craziest dream, you wouldn’t even believe.” She rubbed her eyes and gave a hefty yawn.

  “I bet. First nights back in your own bed tend to do that to you.” Erin's mother sat at the kitchen bar on a stool, holding a steaming coffee mug, smiling at Erin with her head cocked to one side resting on her other hand with her elbow planted on the table.

  Erin’s eyes widened for a moment, then she smiled back at her mother, walked up to her, and wrapped her arms around her mother's waist silently. She let out an, “Oh, that’s sweet, honey,” setting her coffee mug down to place a hand on Erin's face, then Erin walked around the bar and hugged her father who replied with, “I guess you did miss us! You regret staying at school through the holidays, don’cha?! Hah, oh oh!” Erin let out a giggle to her father’s goofy laughter and hugged him tighter.

  CRASH

  She and her father both turned to the source of the sound and Erin let out a shriek. Her mother’s hand that was holding the coffee mug had severed from her arm and fell to the ground, shattering the mug. She turned in the chair, but slid off, disconnecting her torso from the waist, and sloshing to the floor. Erin took a few steps toward the bar, where her mother once sat on the other side.

  There was a sloshy thud of something behind Erin again, and she turned slowly to see a pile of flesh, bones, and fabric where her father was just standing, cooking in front of the stove. The fabric was the clothes her father was wearing.

  Thud thud thud thud.

  The sound of familiar footsteps approached from the hallway, and a familiar face presented itself in the same entryway Erin stood, only moments before, leaning against the same spot. The familiar, deep, gravelly voice of her nightmare rang in her ears.

  “A man of my word, I tell you I am, my dear.”

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