And onto the end…
I was too busy watching my finger to even notice the redhead cutting a sliver or flesh from my left thigh. I shifted my eyes down to see him placing a bandage over the exposed muscle, before depositing the flesh on a tray next to a syringe filled with the reanimation serum, then carrying the contents to the doctor and the bitch. The syringe was emptied into my flesh and they once again analyzed the data. I was not kept in the room long enough to monitor the results this time and was carted off almost as quickly as I was brought in.
I gather that only an hour or two passed before they brought me back to the operating room. What I saw was astonishing. In the few hours since they had injected the flesh from my thigh with the regenerating liquid, it had managed to mutate, forming tiny bumps that it could wiggle to pull itself along. The doctors had their masks off, big mistake, and were laughing as they watched my flesh drag itself across the cold tile floor. Was that a sense of cold I felt in the hole where my skin had been removed?
“Patient M302’s body is reacting uh surprisingly well to the adjusted serum and has made significant mutations in an alarmingly short time frame.” The doctor spoke into his tape recorder. I could see without his mask that he resembled a banker or an attorney, clean shaven, with a hard, square jaw. He pushed up his spectacles with his left index finger as he continued to speak. I found myself growing jealous of his finger, as silly as that may seem.
“Very soon now, we may be able to form new life from just a fraction of one’s body,” the doctor continued, but I stopped listening at that point, as I was too concerned with the line the bitch was drawing along my left leg with a marker, just above my knee.
I think he said something about using a larger piece today, but I was crying and the tears obstructed my vision as the circular saw was buzzing, hovering over my left thigh.
Dear God, they took my leg.
I lost track of the days after that. My mind was beginning to deteriorate along with my body. Before I had the chance to miss my leg, they took the other one. Even if I was lucky enough to make it out of this alive, I’d never be able to walk again. I would be a cripple for life. I felt selfish, worrying for my own safety, unaware of what might be happening to my wife and daughter, but there was nothing I could do for them if I could not first save myself.
The experiments grew more bizarre and horrific as time passed and by the time they took my arms, I had seen images that would be burned into my mind forever. I’ll never forget the haunting mutations I witnessed from the metal chair in that operating room, deep underground, seen only as a subject, a specimen.
I watched in horror as my toes separated themselves from my foot on their own, attached only by thin tendrils, which wrapped themselves around a vial of green liquid, throwing it down onto the tiled floor. My right hand, void of fingers which were used in further experiments, spawned phallic growths from where my fingers once were. My nipple, which was cut away several days ago had escaped, having grown in length and crawled away like an inch worm. They still have not found it.
I was merely a torso with a head at this point and I wondered how much longer they would keep my head intact. They were running low on body parts and they were taking them more frequently as the experiments grew more and more feverish. As new orderlies came and went, I added them to my shit list, along with the doctor, the bitch, fire-head and the orderlies who first brought me to my cell, bushy beard and his faggot friend.
Finally, one day they took the saw to my skull and I blacked out for some time. When I awoke I found my view obscured by liquid. Looking through the glass, I saw the doctors working on another patient, a woman. It could have been my wife, but the flesh on her face was removed, as were her arms and legs. My God, she was still alive. I could see her chest moving up and down as she breathed. I’ll never know if that was my wife, but it didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was revenge.
I looked around at my surroundings. I was in a glass container filled with liquid and I could move my eyes around, which I found to be on tendrils, attached to my brain. All that remains of me is my brain and my eyes. They let me keep my eyes.
Their last mistake.
They left the part of me that can think, remember, plot, reason…and they left my eyes so I can see. So I can recall the faces of those who took my body apart piece by piece, along with those who assisted them. But then my passion for revenge began to subside as I realized how little I could do, being only a brain with a pair of eyes on stalks like a crab.
Then I saw the tentacles that had developed from my brain and the hundreds of spines, or thorns, that had grown on them. I slowly and cautiously unscrewed the lid that held me in my glass house, as the doctors cleaned up after their surgery. Carefully, so as not to make a sound, I used my tentacles to place the lid on the shelf next to my jar and turned my eyes toward the bitch, who smiled when she unmade my body.
The other doctors had left the room and she remained behind, making notes and straightening the shelves that contained countless mutated organs and limbs. With no little effort, I pulled myself from the liquid and slopped onto the tiled floor below in a wet splash.
Startled, the bitch turned to see my tentacles wrapping around her ankle, my thorns digging into her flesh. She started to scream and I wrapped a tentacle around her neck, while shoving a second one down her throat to silence her. I looked at her face, a mixture of dread and confusion and if I still had a mouth, I would have smiled. My thorns unmade the inside of her throat while I squeezed tightly around her thin, pale neck. Her life was extinguished all too soon for my taste, but I felt great, for the first time since they pulled me away from my meatloaf.
The redhead must have heard the bitch struggling and he returned to the room suddenly, with a look of urgency on his freckled face. I wrapped my tentacles around a desk leg to his left and pulled myself toward him before he had time to comprehend just what was happening. I’ll finish up with fire-head and then the good doctor will be next.
All right you bastards, here comes my brain!
The Living Dread 
Leave a Reply