In My Hand

Wildly I looked around, looking for an escape route from this hell hole I had created. There wasn’t one except for the door I had come in from but I couldn’t go back that way. I sprinted towards the nearest wall and hurled myself at it. Not one stone gave in. “Help me! Some one please help me!” I screamed while pounding my fists on the hard rock. The reality of the situation began to take hold of my mind and desperation turned to sheer and utter despair. How could I have let this happen? Where did I go wrong? I collapsed in a heap in the center of the room and cried.

I was being stupid. Soon there would be horrid things surrounding me. There was no way that no one had heard me yell and scream like a maniac. Bringing myself to my feet, I strained my ears for any noise. “Nothing yet,” I said in a relieved mutter. For the next half hour I sat in the corner and waited for the worst to come. Fortunately, just when I was about to break into hysterics once again, a sliver of light fell upon my head. My head swung up to stare at the now visible ceiling. Above me, where the light had come from, there was a small glass window. That was my only hope. I tore off my sweatshirt and started ripping it into one long, rope like piece of fabric. It was weak and not nearly long enough so I started doing the same to my shirt.

“Damn it!” I swore, “It’s still not long enough.” I tore the sweater again into a thinner piece and took off my belt and looped it to the end of the pathetic rope. With great difficulty (it took me over a hundred tries), I managed to hook my belt on a rock protruding from the wall somewhere up above. I tugged on the rope to make sure it was securely on and then I began to climb. The going was rough and disturbing I could hear single threads breaking apart all around me; it echoed around the room. I was halfway up the rope when I heard it. That cruel and evil voice of a human that was half beast made my heart jump.

My hands slipped off the rope and I fell almost ten feet before I grabbed it again. I scrambled up the rope. He wasn’t allowed to get me. If he did, I would be dead for sure. Faster and faster I climbed, never looking down. I was probably about ninety feet in the air when the door slammed open. The creature between the frames made me scream out loud. His thick, tentacle like strands of hair were slicked back with slime. There were fangs hanging from his upper jaw and his snake like eyes were barely visible through the fur that was as thick as a lion’s mane. His back was hunched and there spikes all over it. On his elbows were thick, sharp blades resembling a highly improved version of a machete. Both his feet and hands looked like distorted paws and had extremely sharp claws coming out of the side of the heels They seemed to be like the talons of an eagle.

He looked up and a disgusting sneer spread across his face. Reaching down into a pouch tied around his waist, he withdrew a shiny, circular object. Its razor sharp edges glinted as it was raised upwards. The beast let it fly. I watched frozen in horror as it whizzed towards me. A horrible cry came out of my mouth when I felt and saw the blade go through the rope and then my wrist. It seemed forever for me to fall but it still ended all too soon. The last thing I remember before blacking out was seeing my hand twitching about five feet away from me and the creature I had created walking towards me.

When I awoke, I couldn’t move at all. I was tied tightly down onto a cold metal bench. The atmosphere was dim and black with only a few candles present to light the dingy dungeon we were in. For I knew where I was. I knew every single crack, every single inch of this space. This dungeon was where I performed my experiments. This dungeon is where I let loose the dread that would haunt the world for a long time to come. I heard a creaking behind me and I was soon in a vertical position.

“Jenny!” I exclaimed. Right across the room from me was my oldest friend and she too was attached to one of my dissecting tables. I watched in fear as she slowly raised her head to face mine. Her eyes were blood shot and her face was bruised all over. My eyes moved down her body. There was a rip right down the middle of her blood stained blouse which exposed her breasts and her pants had been lowered so they hung in sodden rags at her ankles. “What has he done to Jenny?”

Her bloodshot eyes widened in disbelief as she looked at my dirty face and my handless arm. “Fred?” she inquired, “Is that really you? I thought you were dead.” Laughter filled the chamber and the beast stepped out of the shadows.

“My master isn’t dead. I have much better plans for him,” growled the mutant, “He has made it so I and many others can’t live the same as we used to. They shall be arriving shortly to witness the end of your pathetic human existence. But before they come I shall have some fun at your expense.”

With those words he took his right elbow blade and made large cuts on Jenny’s forehead, her neck and her thighs. He let the blood run until it made it look as if Jenny had bathed in blood. Then he took a step closer towards her. His eyes roved up and down the naked body. One finger reached out to touch the blood running down her face. He brought it back to his mouth and licked it. After licking every drop of blood off his finger, he lowered the bench Jenny was on to a position halfway between lying flat and standing straight.

To my horror he pounced onto the bench with Jenny. He began this assault with licking the blood off her face, his fangs making even more cuts making his victim scream in pain. The increasing amount of blood filled the screaming mouth and the beast proceeded to clean it all out with his tongue. He slowly moved away from the head and continued downwards, licking clean every bit of skin until he reached the center of Jenny’s stomach. Then he moved down to her ankles and then crept up to the cut on her thigh but he didn’t stop there. He went up to where there wasn’t any blood and continued licking.

Soon after, he jumped off her but it wasn’t to stop her agony, nor was it to stop mine. The beast was ripping off the very little clothing he had on, exposing deformed areas which should never be seen. Like his back, it was covered in spikes but that wouldn’t stop him doing what he wanted. He climbed back on top of Jenny to finish what he had started.

I listened as my best friend screamed in agony. I listened as the beast moaned in ecstasy. I watched the love of my life being molested by the horror I had created to please my need for scientific knowledge. I closed my eyes but that couldn’t block out the sounds nor could it block out my thoughts of sorrow.

My eyes opened when I heard Jenny stop screaming and start whimpering. The creature was in front of me still naked and standing fully erect. His mouth was foaming slightly and when he talked he sprayed me with saliva.

“Now, I think its time to explain to her whose fault it was that she had to go through all that ‘maltreatment’” Then he laughed.

I looked once again at Jenny across the room and our eyes met. My head lowered in shame. There was no way I could ever look at her face, especially now when there are tears running down her cheeks. Again the creature laughed.

“My master doesn’t want to talk? I wonder why that is. Weren’t you once so proud to call me your very own? Weren’t you once willing to talk to my face and weren’t you once willing to explain how easily this experiment was going to be and that there would be no side effects? LIAR!” The beast raised his paw/hand and slashed me across the face. I did not wince; I just let him continue his rant. “I suppose you aren’t a complete liar. You did tell us that we would become stronger. And we did. I could rip your scrawny little head right off your shoulders with ease but you deserve something even worse than that.” He turned towards Jenny and whispered something in her ear and then said, “He made me…he made us all.”

Jenny was staring at me with disbelief and disgust. Her head was shaking and she was crying even harder. This didn’t stop the beast. “You advertised in The Bugle, didn’t you? Asking for people who would wish to help their country develop human strength enhancers without telling them what they had to endure. There were about fifty of us at the beginning. One by one you took us into your lab taking samples of our blood but not telling us why. Weeks later you called us all back and injected us with some sort of fluid and divided us into five different rooms. None of us knew what you were up to but we trusted you because you said we could.”

“It was two weeks after staying in that room for a whole day that the changes began. First our muscles developed. We were excited about this. Many of us were scrawny and had no definition but that was no longer. This continued for a week until our arms were as thick as a sixteen year old girl’s waist. The changes didn’t stop there. About half of us started developing a need to draw blood. This need was only often met by killing others. You caused that. It was another couple weeks later when our number was lessened by eight. It seems that those eight all died the same way. Their hearts sped up so fast that it wore itself out and exploded within the chest. Not pretty is it.”

“It was at that same time when the rest of us started to change… but not for the better. Some, like me, developed a hunch in their back and blades sprouting from their arms. Others grew tails like monkeys and scorpions and still others developed a rock hard exterior and were able to breathe fire. There were many other odd changes, all of which developed over time. Either way, all of us were forced to flee from the people who once loved us but were now scared to be within fifty feet of us. AND IT’S YOUR FAULT!” He took a moment to calm himself which was a good thing because it looked as if he wanted to rip out my heart.

The beast paced back and forth and then spoke once again, “There are now only twenty of us. Two others died due to their heart exploding. All the rest were hunted down and executed. Only the ones who had the desire to kill survived. Now, I have gone through all of your experiment information and I have discovered what you did to us.” Again the beast turned towards Jenny and started to explain what I had done, “You see, after you boyfriend took our blood samples he had all of our DNA’s. With the DNA he could specify the injection each of us would receive. Everyone’s injection contained one section of their DNA. However, the missing sections were filled in with a mixture of DNA from various animals. The DNA’s could never combine properly by any ordinary means. It needed a form of radiation. You may think the sun would do but Doctor Fred wanted it all to happen faster so he put us all in five different rooms, each with a different level of radiation. In the room with the strongest radiation sat the ten who died first due to unnatural heart conditions. In the next two rooms sat those who are still alive. The twenty of us who were hunted down and killed because they had a lack of desire to kill were in the rooms where there was less radiation. Your experiment worked. You weeded out those who were the weakest. Now you are left with the ones that are the strongest. HA! You don’t even know our names. That’s why we came back. You need a lesson in courtesy; you need a lesson in manners and you especially need a lesson in pain. Yes, you may have been smart enough to figure out we were coming after you and yes you may have smart enough to run somewhere remote where we wouldn’t find you till you messed up which you did. I was so happy when I found you. I just wish I had been willing to cut off more than your hand. By the way, my name is Paul.” He snarled and walked towards the far corner of the dungeon where all my chemicals and equipment were.

I have never felt so bad in my life before and I still couldn’t bear to lift my eyes to look at Jenny. The man…my experiment…had repeated everything I already knew. It was like looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing nothing but your faults, nothing but your mistakes and nothing but your failures. Paul was right. My mistakes were the biggest ones I had ever made. Those were the mistakes that caused pain to millions of people in this country. Those mistakes are the ones that have caused Jenny pain. I felt a tear run down my face. I must get Jenny out of here even if I have to sacrifice myself. My thoughts traveled on that same path until I heard a whole lot footsteps coming in my direction. I turned my head to where the sound was coming from. There, in front of me, were faces I recognized, people I had experimented on. None of them looked happy.

Paul was walking back over towards me. In his hands he was carrying a bag of bandages and a syringe with a liquid already inside it. As he came closer, he smiled. “I will have to stop you bleeding before we proceed,” he chuckled. It took him ten minutes to bandage my arm up without cutting me.

“Ah Fred,” Paul sighed, “the time draws near. Soon we will have sweet justice. Soon we will all have our vengeance. Even poor little Jenny will get something out of the ordeal. You see this needle. In it is a specialized formula just for you. We have copied the formula you used for us and have improved it. Instead of having to spend twenty hours in a radiation room to combine the DNA, all you need is one ray of sunlight. Also, instead of taking weeks to develop the bodily changes, it will take minutes. We have succeeded where you have failed. You will feel the same desires we have but to a greater extent. You feel the pain we felt but you shall feel it always. Let’s see…sunrise is in thirty minutes. We shall stay till then and laugh at the existence you will be forced to live.” With these final words, he untied me from the bench and kicked me in the groin. I slid to the ground in great agony.

Have you ever discovered that when you want something to happen, time goes by really fast but when you are dreading something to happen, time speeds up? That is was happened with me. In what seemed like no time at all I felt a tug at my hairline. I hadn’t even seen the sunlight. Next, I felt my stomach churning and my whole body hurt all over. I couldn’t stand the pain. My body gave up and I passed out.

~~~~~

When I woke up, the creatures were still there and I was thirsty. I sniffed the air. There seemed to be a lovely aroma there. It was something fresh, amazingly fresh and warm. I followed the smell. When I found it my heart did a somersault. It was Jenny right in front of me. Something inside wanted me to pounce on her and rip the flesh away from the bones but I didn’t want to. Slowly, I backed away but my tail (I had a tail? This was getting weird) hit something soft and dug in. I withdrew it and brought it towards my face then I smelt it. My face lit up with joy and I licked the blade of my tail. The thing inside me pushed even harder to jump on Jenny and tear at her throat. I didn’t want to but it wouldn’t listen.

I was a cat and I wanted to play with my food or maybe it was my real self telling me to get Jenny out of here. Either way I untied her and told her to run and run she did. My brain kept control over my body for at least ten minutes. Then the smell of fresh blood overwhelmed me and I was running after her at top speed. I could never run this fast before. Maybe that is because I was always running on two feet instead of on all fours like I was now. With the speed I had now it took me no time at all to catch up to Jenny.

When I found her she had just run into a room which I knew had no other exit. I opened the door and sauntered in. The aroma was strong in here; it made my mouth water. I saw Jenny standing terrified in a corner. She was trembling and crying. “Fred,” she whispered, but I could hear her perfectly, “Fred. You still look like the man I fell in love with and I know you are in there someplace. You wouldn’t have let me run away otherwise. If you love me you will spare me. If you don’t I just want you to know that I love y-AAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”

The creature inside me didn’t know what those words meant but I did and I was crying “I love you! I love you too!” as I bit her leg off. I tore a piece of flesh and skin off the bone and ate it. It was disturbingly refreshing but I didn’t want it. Unfortunately, I had very little control over my body anymore. The only thing I could manage was another “I love you too!” and a cry like a howl. Then the beast took control of all my actions.

I quickly tore all the meat off the leg I had just taken off and swallowed it whole. The blood lust was greater than ever before. In the corner of my eye I noticed that my prey had started crawling away from me. I couldn’t have that now could I. My great legs of power bent and then pushed against the ground. I landed right in front of her and snarled. The food fell backwards and crawled in the opposite direction but I was quicker. Her ankle was now in my jaw and I was twisting in my head in all sorts of directions. I let go of her leg and she went flying across the room. Somehow she was still conscious. This wasn’t going to work this way; I would have to finish her off quicker.

Quickly, I bound across the room where my prey was whimpering, begging for mercy. I no longer knew the meaning of please. My paw pressed against her throat and tilted her head back. Before I was going to do anything with my prey I was going to let everyone know I had succeeded so I let out a wicked howl which made my conscience shudder. I stared at the fleshy piece of meat squirming in front of me. My head thrust downwards and my jaw ripped off an enormous chunk of meat. The body still moved so I took my other paw and thrust it claws first into the left side of her chest. I searched desperately and when I found what I was looking for I grasped it and pulled it out. It was so warm and it was still beating. I engulfed it, savoring the feeling of its rhythmic pulse as it slid down my throat. Ironic isn’t it how I always had the heart of Jenny but was never satisfied until I could see it sitting in the palm of my hand.