Fortnightly Writing Competition: WRITE WHATEVER YOU WANT (Voting until August 9th)

[Mandle]

Yup, as the thread title says, the theme is whatever you want, no word limit.

We've had open rounds before, and I thought it's been a while so about time for another.

Remember to stay honest and write a story within the set time limit, not just copy/paste one you have already written. We are on the honor system here.

FREEEDOM! (Just imagine Mel on his horse, I can't be bothered hosting one)

Open until end of day, August 4th.

[Baron]

You mean the famous one from 1994, right? Oh, Maverick, will you never learn? 

[Mandle]

You mean the famous one from 1994, right? Oh, Maverick, will you never learn? 

Well, he was blue in the face in both scenes, so close enough.

[Mandle]

Pity there's no shot from Blazing Saddles with Mel Brooks riding a horse, but the two Mels probably wouldn't get along all that well, anyway.

[Baron]

Ba ha! I've had an unusual bout of early inspiration. 

Consider me a prospective entrant.

[Sinitrena]

I had no time to properly edit, unfortunately, and won't have time in the next couple pf days either, even with an extansion, so apologies for all mistakes.

The Zombies of Adrian

Spoiler

,,As much as I want to catch this sicko,"Amanda said, starring out of the car window at the old building, "this feels morally questionable."

They had had this discussion before, and, if he was honest, Liam completely agreed, but: "We don't just want him for whatever sick fuck he does with the bodies, but for the murders as well." Though some people in his department actually lauded him on the quiet. After all, he targeted murderers.

"Yes, but using a -"she hesitated, searching for the right word. There, in the morgue, a murder victim had just been opened up and inspected thoroughly, they had received their reports, and now the body waited for some final test results. And then she would receive a proper burial.

The staff had gone home for the evening, the security guard at the entrance already slept peacefully, and here in the parking lot a serial killer (alleged, she added unintentionally) waited for his chance.

"Besides," Liam continued, licking a bit of sauce from his beard, "we still haven't figured out what he actually does with the corpses. Or how he figures out how they died. I mean, sometimes, it's obvious, but..."

"Movement!" Amanda interrupted him, casually gesturing towards the morgue's entrance.

No streetlamp shone onto this part of the parking lot, a fact the staff had pointed out numerous times to the city council and was subsequently ignored. Amanda and Liam could not make out the person, though they had a pretty good idea from the check they had run on the car's license plate a couple minutes ago. Adrian Channel, that was their suspect's name.

The morgue shared a parking lot with a late night convenience store, and that was where both their car's were parked. The only reason they had taken a closer look at Adrian's car was the fact that he parked and then didn't go into the store, just like them. Apparently, Adrian had not noticed the unmarked police car or the two officers staring at the nondescript bungalow that housed the city's morgue.

Liam turned around, trying to find their suspect's car again with his eyes. "Damn!" he said, "Car's gone!"

"What?" Amanda looked around frantically.

"Maybe he's not our..."

"Oh, he is!" Amanda assured him, pointing towards a corner of the morgue. "He moved his car. Closer to the loading bay."

"Shoot! That guy is our perp!"

"Seems like it!"

Not much happened for a couple of minutes after the man or shadow, as they couldn't be absolutely sure that it was a man, and more so, that it was this man, had entered the building. Then, a bit of light fell from the loading bay door. Again, a moment passed, though Amanda and Liam had a pretty good idea what was happening: Adrian had found the corpse he intended to steal, he had slipped over to the loading bay and opened it, maybe he picked the lock, maybe he had a key, more investigation was necessary, and now he probably made sure nobody was right outside where he had parked his car. Then, the door opened fully and someone pushed a gurney out. He opened up his car and dumped the body in the backseat.

*

They followed him through the straight streets of downtown, Amanda driving, Liam on the phone with the prosecutor.

"Yes, he's our guy, absolutely!" Liam said, loosing his patience. "Who the fuck else steals corpses from the morgue. That's our guy."

The prosecutor's answer was as predictable as it was annoying. "Stealing a body is hardly enough evidence to convict him of murder. We need more."

"Obviously!" Liam spat. "That's why we need the fucking warrant. The whole nine yards. Wire tapping, observation, search when its time, but that one not yet."

"Agreed, we don't want him to get spooked."

Liam muted his phone. "Now he gets it!" he mumbled before turning the microphone back on. "Well, can you get it for us?"

"Sure, should take about an hour."

Liam hung up without any other acknowledgment. "Fucking idiot. Always so fucking calm. This is a fucking life or death situation! There's usually no more than a few hours between him stealing the corpse and someone else ending up dead."

"It's usually the murderer, though." Amanda pointed out, though they actually couldn't be sure of that. There was just not enough time to properly investigate any of the cases before the vigilante took matters into his own hands. Sometimes it was obvious, like the girl thrown down the stairs by her boyfriend. The guy was released on bail, then fell down the exact same stairs as the girl. Before, her body had been stolen, and it was never found. None of the bodies of the original victims were ever found. Families had to bury empty coffins. Some found solace in the fact that their loved one's murderer was also dead, that he had suffered the exact same way as their daughters, their sons or their parents, but others cared little for this when the city had lost another body.

But now, they finally had a trace albeit at the risk of loosing another victim.

In the dead of night, the streets were fairly empty, and so Amanda had to keep a greater distance from the car in front of her. Seldom, the head lamps of cars driving in the opposite direction blended her, even less often a car or two slipped in between her car and the one she was following, giving her a bit of a shield, before they moved away again at a different intersection. So far, the driver had not noticed her. At least, he showed no sign that he had. He drove steadily forward, not suddenly changing directions or changing his constant speed. It was risky to follow him for too long though, and Amanda sighed relieved when he turned from the main street into he quiet neighborhood.

"Stay back!" Liam warned her casually. This was not their first observation. They knew what to do and Liam trusted his partner. Still, this warning had been a constant companion from the very first day they worked together.

Adrian stopped fairly soon. His destination was a single-storied family home with a connected garage. And that is where he parked in front of now.

Amanda kept driving past the house and only stopped a few houses away. Pulling out her binoculars, she just managed to watch as the man closed the trunk after moving something heavy into the garage.

Amanda and Liam had a good idea what he had moved. The body was no longer in the car.

"I'll go around." Liam said, "Maybe there's a window in the back."

"Be careful. The guy's armed. He shot -"

"You don't need to remind me of the obvious. - And you should probably call the prosecutor again. We need this warrant."

"You also don't need to remind me of my job!" The words were spoken with a silent laughter in her voice.

*

There was a window, and a couple of minutes later, there was also a warrant to listen in on the suspect.

Light shone through some thin curtains, revealing a garage that could certainly not store a car in its current state. Shelves hugged the walls, filled with all kinds of glasses and cans Liam could not identify and a table was placed right in the middle of the room, a table where currently a corpse lay. On a smaller table next to it, Adrian had placed some boxes containing what looked like organs. There was the gray mass of a brain, the red squishy heart of the dead woman. Her name was Melissa. Liam reminded himself so as not to lose the humanity her.

Adrian walked over to one of the shelves and picked up a surgeon's kit. He rolled it open, revealing pincers, needles and everything else a doctor might need to stitch someone up. The only thing missing was twine but Adrian didn't mind. He wouldn't need it.

Slowly, he opened the black body bag, revealing the body of Melissa. She had been shot. Adrian knew as much and so did Liam.

While Adrian prepared his 'operation', the officer's backup had arrived with a surveillance van. Amanda and Liam watched their suspect with binoculars through the window.

Meticulously, Adrian cut off several strands of blond hair from Melissa and then he opened the Y-shaped incision in the body.

"What the fuck's he doing?" Amanda whispered in Liam's ear.

"Beats me. He's obviously all kinds of crazy."

"We have to stop this." Amanda said, but her heart wasn't in it. And Liam offered the reason right away.

"If we stop him now, that's just desecration of a body. That's a fine. He'd be at it again in a couple of days."

"I know, I know. Shit. Shit."

Slowly, Adrian threaded one of his surgical needles with a single hair of Melissa and took one of the organs, the heart, from the tray. Then, he placed it underneath the ribs, caring little for the blood on his gloved hands.

One after the other, he put all the organs back in their place in the corpse, sewing them in with the victim's own hair.

Amanda shuddered. "I mean, killing the murderers is one thing, I kinda get it, but this... this is just disgusting."

"Don't throw up!"

Amanda just rolled her eyes.

And then Adrian's work was interrupted by a phone ringing. He sighed and slipped out of the gloves. After a short look on the screen, he answered it: "Hey, mom!"

"Phone surveillance is online?" Liam asked.

Amanda nodded, tapping the edge of her headphones.

"Hi, sweety, how's it going?"

"I'm fine." Adrian said distracted.

"How's work?"

"Actually, I'm right in the middle of it. I just have to finish some stitches and then she should be ready for the ritual. I sure am glad she has long hair, makes it so much easier when I don't have to use strips of skin."

"Adrian, don't talk about our clients like that! It's rude."

"Sorry, mom. Wait a sec, let me put you on speaker, so that I can finish this up."

"What. The. Fuck." Amanda mumbled, turning slightly pale in the light of the early morning while Adrian put the phone next to Melissa's head and started on his sutures again.

"Are all the organs back in place? Are all the wounds closed?"

Adrian rolled his eyes. "I know how to do my job, mom."

"And the papers are ready, dear?"

"Mom! Of course they are. Passport, birth certificate, everything-"

"I think he's planning to ru-" Amanda said silently.

"- she'll need to reach the island. I only wished I could bring her there before."

"I know, dear. But it's not possible, you know that. Proximity. You'll have to take her with you."

"I know, I know. No more than 1.36 miles, I know. Took our ancestors long enough to figure that one out."

"Don't be unfair, Adrian. People lived closer together in the past. It just didn't come up that often then."

Adrian rolled his eyes again. "We really went through this often enough, all the rules, all the little peculiarities of our magic. I know my duty, mom." he said as he finished the last stitch.

"Well, it took you long enough to accept it!"

"Mom!!! I know what I'm doing. And I gotta go now. She's ready for the ritual."

"Alright sweety, take care and don't get caught. They wouldn't understand."

"'course, mom."

"I sure as fuck don't understand." Amanda commented as Adrian hung up and then picked up the body and placed it on the ground, out of view for the two officers watching him.

"They're insane. They're both completely insane." Liam agreed.

"What do they need a passport for? For her? As in, for the dead woman?" Amanda wondered.

"And what's that about an island? And 1 point something miles? What?"

"Nothing of this makes sense. - Can you see what he's doing now?"

"Not really," Liam said, "all I see is..."

Light. At first, there was just the light from the naked bulb hanging from the garage ceiling. It shone through the high window, only occasionally interrupted by the back of a head popping up, showing the short brown hair of their suspect. Then, there was a single flash of green lightning, blending the watcher for a second. The next light was black, it was darkness and it still shone through the thin curtain.

After a couple of minutes, the lighting in the neighborhood returned to normal and Adrian stood back up, a satisfied look on his face.

*

"What do you mean It's not enough? He has the body right there!"

"But neither that nor the weird phone-call is proof that he is a murderer. We need more." the prosecutor said as all was silent in the house for a while.

Night turned into morning and nothing moved. The body was back on the table and Adrian had gone into the main part of the house. He had worked on his computer for a couple of minutes, looking up a name.

A name that had no connection with anything as far as they knew. It hadn't come up in the investigation into Melissa's death, and still Liam and Amanda could not shake the feeling that this man was her murderer. They had just as much proof for this theory than for anything in connection with Adrian.

But than again, Adrian did not spent a lot of time looking him up. Just enough to find a photo. There was no research as to a relationship to Melissa, nothing about his daily schedule, nothing that really told them anything. And their own research from computer in the surveillance van didn't turn up much either. He might have known Melissa, but so far they couldn't tell.

And then Adrian was on the move again. He opened the garage door again and the back of his car. Carefully, he lifted up the body, dressed now, and carried her outside, this time without the black body bag hiding her features. She had been a beautiful woman when she was alive, now she was nothing but a pale puppet to Adrian. On his back, he carried a rifle.

"He's going to kill this guy." Amanda said, already moving towards the driver seat. "We should at least warn him."

"Already on it." Liam answered, the phone at his ear. He dispatched some of their colleagues, while keeping his eyes on their own suspect's car.

Soon, they followed him again, this time through busy streets that only started to clear up a bit after the usual morning traffic jam. Amanda always kept one or two cars between herself and the suspect. Adrian seemed to know exactly where he was going. He didn't hesitate at any intersection, he didn't look behind him. Soon, the streets became wider and the houses higher, one-story houses turned into office buildings and finally skyscrapers as they reached downtown.

Adrian turned suddenly, slipping his car into one of the many parking garages underneath a high-rise of about 25 floors.

"Shit." Amanda cursed as she herself drove past the entrance. The ceiling was too low for their van.

"Park on the side, we'll go in on foot." Liam said, already opening the sliding door of the van and jumping out before the car had fully come to a stop.

They ran in, but Adrian was already gone. His car stood empty close to the elevator, which just dinged shut. Liam sprinted over to the car, looking inside. There, Melissa's body still lay on the backseat, out of view for someone just passing by, looking like someone sleeping to someone glancing in.

She looked alive as she lay there, with her long blonde her hiding her pale face and a blanket thrown over her hands. No part of her skin was visible, and the few clothes that peaked out from under the blanket seemed clean and well-cared for.

Apart from the corpse, the parking garage was empty.

"We need to find him!" Liam said, staring at the elevator panel to figure out what floor their suspect got off.

"On it!" Amanda said, staring at her phone instead. There, the information about the next possible victim of Adrian flashed over the screen. "Roof! The other guy works across the street."

Liam had already called the elevator back. There were two. While one, carrying Adrian, moved further and further up, the other slowly opened its doors for Amanda and Liam.

*

Guns at the ready, they waited. One floor after the other ticked past on the display.

Their mouths formed no words as they waited, but their thoughts continued all their discussions from before. And all the questions asked remained unanswered.

5, 6, ... pinged past. Liam tapped his foot to his own heartbeat, Amanda bit down on her lip.

10, 11, ... So far, they were luck, no one else had tried to enter the elevator.

14, 15, ... They willed it to move faster, but both elevators moved at the same pace and Adrian had a head-start of a couple of minutes.

19, ... A shot. They were too late. It rang out, it echoed in the narrow space of the cabin.

And then the elevator came to a stop. For a moment it stood stock still, far longer than it should, or so it seemed to them, and only then the sliding doors dinged open.

Bright sunlight replaced the chemical light of the interior, blending them for the fraction of a second. A shadow moved at their side as a man slipped into the elevator to their left.

"Stop! Police!" Liam called out, running out of the cabin, but it was too late. The doors closed again. Frantically, he pushed the call button over and over again, but the elevator already moved down towards the parking garage again already.

"Secure the scene!" Amanda called, pressing the button to go down in her own cabin. "I'll go after him."

*

The head start had shortened, but she was still behind their suspect, if only by a few seconds.

She was ready when the doors opened.

"Stop! Police!" she shouted before she even saw Adrian, her gun trained slightly to her left where she knew he had to be. If he hasn't gone out on a different floor! she feared.

But there he was, starring like a deer in headlights at her, his sniper rifle slung over his back as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He didn't grab for it, he didn't move at all.

Some heartbeats passed as he slowly moved his head, turning it towards his own car. "That is unfortunate." he said calmly, "You really are an annoying bunch."

It happened so fast, Amanda hardly knew what happened. One moment, he stood in front of her, starring at his car with sad eyes, then they turned completely black and she saw nothing. Black light from his eyes blended her. She fired her gun without thinking.

She heard him fall over before her eyes worked again.

The next thing she know was that she was kneeling next to him, pressing down on a wound in his arm while dialing for emergency services with her other hand.

"Shit," he murmured, "you're fast. Just keep me alive for a couple of minutes, please."

"A couple of minutes?" Amanda asked, wondering if her mind had fully caught up with the situation.

"You don't understand. - No, you wouldn't understand. If I die before he does, she does."

"She? Melissa? She's already dead, buddy." Blood gushed past her fingers as the phone finally connected and she rattled of the necessary information to dispatch on autopilot.

Adrian had laughed silently, but once she finished her call, he said, "Not if he dies just like she dies, shot through the shoulder and then the heart. Luckily, I'm precise."

"You're insane." Amanda commented.

"From your point of view, probably. But sometimes, insanity matches reality." He coughed, but a scream interrupted him.

At first, Amanda thought an unwitting witness had stumbled into her crime scene, saw the body on the ground and the blood on the concrete. "Ma'am, please..." she started to say, looking over her shoulder. But there was no passer-by.

There was a body moving in his car. A woman with long blond hair over hair eyes frantically touched every part of her body, every living, breathing, moving part of her body; the skin that had lost its ashen complexion, the hair that was missing a couple of strands, the angry red scar on her chest that was clearly a scar now and not a wound, the bullet hole in her shoulder that had healed, the heart that was clearly beating again, the clothes that were not her own.

"Told you." Adrian grinned. "You wanna go over there and explain everything or shall I? I'm kinda used to this conversation, you know."

Adrian started to sit up, but Amanda pressed down on his wound hard. "You're hurt." she said, emergency training taking over where logic failed to exist. "Keep still. Ambulance will be here soon."

"For me or for her? I won't need it."

"You're not going to die. Not on my watch. You'll answer for your crimes in front of a judge."

"Sure will. How you gonna explain that? That sure is a fun report to write. And she's panicking, she'll hurt herself if you don't start explaining shit to her soon."

"How the fuck am I supposed to explain anything if I have no fucking idea what is going on?" Now calmer overall, her own panic and confusion started to set in.

"Precisely. So help me up, officer."

"You're hurt. I shot you."

"It's not as bad as you think." Adrian's own reaction from before seemed forgotten, his own panic and pain gone. The fear that he might die had disappeared from his eyes after the first shock. "I heal fast."

Tentatively, Amanda moved her hand from his wound. A bit of blood still seeped from the hole, but a red welt had already started to form, melting his skin back together.

"Who are...? What are you?" She didn't stop him this time as he tried to sit up again.

"Vengeance!" he said overly dramatically with a mischievous grin on his face. "Look, can I go help her or not? For all intents and purposes, she's alive and she needs help, help you cannot give. So can I do my job now?"

She didn't stop him. She didn't stop him as he stood up or as he opened his car door. She didn't stop him as he explained to Melissa that she had died, that everyone thought she was dead, that the world would hunt his kind His kind? down if they ever learned of their existence, that no-one could ever know that she was resurrected, that there would be panic, religious stupidity, crusades, that he had papers for her and a place to be, a secure island where she could stay, create a new life of her own. And in a couple of years, slowly, they, his family, could ferry her loved ones over there, they could learn her secret, one by one. She was not the first they had saved like that, there were hundreds just like her, thousands more that had ancestors saved by his kind.

Amanda did stop him when he tried to get into the car himself. "I can't let you go!" she said, pointing her gun at him again. "You're a murderer."

Adrian shrugged. "What would you want me to do? Lay back down where you shot me and pretend my wound didn't heal insanely fast? Would you like to explain why Melissa is alive again? Or maybe where her body went? The car was stolen before we got back down, it might work. But is that really what you want? Is you arresting me really more important than all the people I will save?"

"Save? You kill people, you don't..." But Amanda's resolve was wavering.

"Obviously. That's how the spell works. And Melissa is alive, is she not? Or maybe I'm just an insane murderer and you can explain away all the weirdness in your report. Change reality to make sense or you will be considered insane as well. Or maybe you are? You see her breathing, after she was shot, after an autopsy. But I'm sure there's a logical explanation. What shall it be?"

When Amanda didn't answer, Adrian started his car and drove away, just as the ambulance came to a halt outside.

[close]

[Baron]

Through the Looking Glass

Spoiler

The rat gnawed at the bars of its cage. As a rodent, it was perhaps just trying to grind down its constantly growing incisors. But perhaps it was hungry—the sound was reminiscent of a human inmate banging an empty cup on his jail cell bars, at least if contemporary cinema had depicted the sound accurately. Then again, perhaps the rat was just doing it to annoy the scientist, just to see what would happen, a kind of role reversal that made Kent uneasy.

"Stupid rat," Kent said, shaking his head.

His phone rang, the tone indicating that it was his supervisor. "Hi, Marty. Yeah, still twenty-nine more banks to tend to, then there's the data entry. No, I won't be clocking out early just because it's the weekend. Yes, I'll make sure to lock up the safe this time. Yeah, yeah, enjoy your Sunday, too."

Kent disconnected the call. This job was making him crazy. Maybe another microdose would help him take the edge off? His eyes met the rat's and he thought he detected the hint of judgement behind them.

"Stupid rat," Kent repeated, finishing the food and water restock and moving on to the next cage.

Of course, it wasn't the rat's fault that Kent had failed out of pre-med biology and had been obliged to pursue the somewhat less glamorous career path of laboratory animal technician. It was not the rat that indulged its drug habit to the detriment of making something of himself, nor the rat's choice to mate with Cindy, the on-again-off-again borderline psychotic girlfriend who had just moved back with her mom again. Likewise, the rat had not taken on an imprudently large mortgage just to own a sliver of the American Dream, albeit one with a leaky roof in a run-down neighbourhood, necessitating extra shifts at work just to cover the interest payments.

In fact, Kent reflected, the rat seemed to be doing pretty well for himself. His cage was like a little hotel room, and he himself was the room service staff. It was clean, unlike Kent's own home, and well stocked with food and water. There was an exercise wheel—Kent couldn't afford exercise equipment, and would be unlikely to use it even if he could. Yes, Kent should be so lucky, one day, to be retired and treated so grandly as a lowly rat. Granted, there were the hazards of the experiments to contend with—these particular rodents were on various regimens of psychotropics to study their long-term impacts on cognitive development—but the data showed most of them actually lived a more balanced life than Kent himself. Grunting in hollow despondence, Kent popped the next two rats' doses and fudged the records to cover it up.

Five o'clock came late that day. Time dragged its heels, like an old dog on its last walk. Kent barely survived the commute afterwards, the long evening shadows stretching over yet another accident on the one-six-three. Dinner consisted of beans and hash, or maybe it was just hash? It all blurred together in the haze that choked his thoughts.

And then came time to sleep, to rest and reset for the ordeal of another day. Except all he could hear was the scratching in the walls, as bit by bit an infestation of rodents ground his questionable real-estate investment into dust. Kent's eyelid twitched in the darkness, anger warring with despair for dominion over his soul.

"Stupid rats!" Kent shouted, flinging his bong at the far wall and smashing it to bits. He found a crowbar—the home invader two-thieves-ago had obligingly left it behind—and smashed a hole in the wall that seemed to vibrate like a speaker with the sounds. With shaky hands he raised the flashlight of his phone to the hole he had made, worrying at what he might be capable of in his agitated state if he actually found a rat.

But there was no army of rodents in the wall, not even one, which made him question his sanity. If he squinted just right, Kent could imagine the space in the wall belonging to a network of tunnels, where the back ends of common things formed a twisted parallel world. The back of a light switch was a metal box that looked like swiss cheese—who knew so many wires were required to light a bulb? Exotic fluffs and disturbing dusts mingled with spider webs and pierced by the pointy ends of nails. A network of pipes jostled with duct work for space as they snaked off to somewhere else to be useful, carrying the echoes of what could be scuffling rat feet or maybe just the whispers of air vented from the sewers.

Kent popped another pill and returned to bed, his phone and crowbar clutched to his chest like comfort stuffies in the arms of a sleeping child.

***

Six AM came too early, as it always did. The glaring light confounded Kent's vision, and a wave of nausea washed over him. The pounding of a hangover prevented his scattered brain from connecting the stimuli around him into any sensical narrative. Was that a dentist's drill suspended from the ceiling? Who was playing backwards-talking devil music at this hour? Why did it smell like someone had burnt toast?

Kent raised his hand to rub at his tired eyes and immediately regretted the manoeuvre, for the crowbar did his headache no favours. Squinting into the light, he noticed what looked like a band of slime connecting his face to the receding bar. What the hell was going on?

Kent sat up all at once, making his stomach roil like the churning drum of a washing machine. Disoriented, he looked around his room, or at least what remained of it. His bed was still intact, as was his dresser, but further outward in a spherical shape his possessions tapered to a charred nothingness. Beyond that, there were bars, hatched like an animal cage, and beyond that a vast room full of lights and machines that baffled his imagination.

Something pushed at his chest, flinging him back onto the mattress. It was a beam of green light, only it was substantial in a way that bent the rules of physics as Kent understood them. The backwards-talking music intensified, and the cage was suddenly engulfed in shadow as a giant creature that was all eyes and tentacles examined him with a drooling intensity. Kent quivered in fear, but the ordeal was thankfully over quickly. Soon the devilish music voices receded, the lights dimmed to a tolerable level, and there was nothing left to menace him except the strange hum and buzz of distant instruments.

What the actual fuck?! Kent reached over to his dresser drawer and popped another pill. And then another three, just to be safe. The world around him softened and even twisted a little, but the basic building blocks remained—he was the caged animal now.

***

Eight paces by sixteen paces, that was his world between the bars. Beyond the comforts of his bed and his quickly depleting dresser, there was a two gallon jug of funny tasting water affixed to the wall and a bowl that was filled with cardboardy food pellets on regular intervals. A pair of metallic orbs dangled from the ceiling, which when touched simultaneously would cause his muscles to spasm uncontrollably in what Kent supposed amounted to exercise. A panel of swirling blue light was fixed to the wall with a cushion in front of it, approximating the experience of television without the nuisance of insipid programming. And a tube like a vacuum with a padded attachment proved to be a disturbingly efficient way of evacuating his bladder and bowels.

The days passed, or so Kent supposed, for the rhythm of lighting changes and probing light beams mapped poorly onto his own circadian needs. At first it was terrifying being the specimen in the jar, but familiarity quickly bred ennui. As time stretched out, it even felt as if the creatures that had abducted him began to lose interest. Beams that once held him firmly in place by the middle only glanced half-heartedly off his shoulder, for example. Kent shrugged it off, for he could appreciate the rut such repetitive duties could wear into one's soul. He wondered what the musical backwards-talk words were for "stupid rat".

So Kent spent most of his time lounging in bed and playing on his phone. By digging the outlet out of what remained of his wall with the crowbar he had been able to splice the wires to the two orbs in order to keep it charged. Days turned to weeks, or maybe months, who knew? The date function on his phone seemed set on random, or maybe it was just the algorithm of his phone struggling with the complex fields of space travel? Kent could only guess, and in the end he decided he really didn't care, for in his bones he felt terrifically at ease with the arrangement. Someone else had the job of worrying now—all he had to do was exist, which was just about his speed.

At length, however, the irksome scratching returned. Not an audible sound in the wall this time, but rather a feeling at the back of his mind that grated at his peace. At first he thought it was the lack of internet. With a bit of fiddling in his phone's settings he was able to detect a number of signals that registered as wifi and bluetooth, but nothing his device could make sense of.

More disturbing was his diminishing supply of drugs. Loose protocols at his old job meant that his dresser had started off exceedingly well-stocked, but the little pills could not last forever. Anxiety bled into paranoia about how he might cope once they were truly depleted, and he began to wean himself off of them in order to stretch out his supply as long as possible. It was probably gentle symptoms of withdrawal, he reasoned, that gnawed at his subconsciousness like a rat in the wall.

Or maybe it was the boredom that began to play tricks with his mind? Maybe it was a clearer head as he cleaned himself up? But as the hours built up and the days dripped away the stain on his conscience grew. He imagined distant voices—human voices—weeping and lamenting at the edge of his hearing. The dubious routine of his handlers became scattered, even erratic. Kent began to contemplate the end-game, for how many rats had he himself disposed of, after their experimental usefulness was done? Slowly, but with increasing savageness, the instinct of self-preservation was able to claw its way out from under the blanket of hazy laziness that shrouded his mind.

And so it was, while idling on his phone one day, that Kent was presented with a stark choice. He had been experimenting with creating a mobile hotspot despite his phone's lack of connectivity when suddenly the signal triggered a hatch to open up in the ceiling of his cage. Did he dare stake his existence on the dangerous opportunities of freedom? Where would he go? He was surely in an alien lab if not an alien spaceship ... And yet the scratch scratch scratching at the back of his mind wouldn't let him just close the hatch back up. Anxious reluctance grew into a grim determination as he packed the duffle bag he kept under his bed. Drugs, phone charger, crowbar, bedding. He took the cardboard food pellets he had stashed in the event of the unforeseen. With a bit of prying he was even able to rip the half-full water jug off its moorings and bring it along as well. Then, by pushing the bed onto its edge beneath the hatch, he was able to climb to his freedom.

The unholy hum of the alien instruments reminded him of a hospital as he scurried along the periphery of the room like a mouse, each beep and flash making him startle as if his presence were detected. It had been hard to see the floor from his cage, but it turned out to be strewn with a spaghetti-like tangle of cords, some the size of well-fed pythons, and some even snaking lazily into wall panels that were left half-ajar to accommodate them. And there were other cages, too, rows and rows of them, stacked like crates up to the towering ceiling. The scale of the operation made him feel truly small indeed.

The only cages he could see into were those close to the ground, and these contained people and animals in delirious states. One man raved about the coming of the Jagthura, although he could not define precisely who or what it was. Another cage contained a kangaroo that seemed to babble in human idioms. A third contained only a skeleton, tied to the two orbs with ripped bits of cloth, the electricity causing it still to twitch in a dance macabre. A fourth contained a bed like his own, only when he passed by—

"Kent?!" a woman's voice called out in confusion.

Kent turned to see Cindy, his on-again-off-again borderline psychotic girlfriend, clutching bedsheets to her chest to hide her nakedness.

"Cindy?" he asked, the coincidence jarring something at the back of his mind. "I thought you were at your mother's?"

Cindy rolled her eyes. "Does this look like my mother's, Doofus? You never did have a head for the obvious! That's why I broke up with you again."

Kent was about to make a wise-crack about who was the real doofus who kept getting back together with him when the blankets of the bed stirred again and Marty, his supervisor at the lab, sat up.

"Oh, hi Kent ..." he said, struggling for words. "I tell you, some of these experiments they've put us through ... whoo-wee, am I right?"

Kent blinked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

The kangaroo nodded along from behind its bars. "It's a real dog's breakfast," it sighed. "Or is it a dingo's breakfast? Well, it's all gone haywire now, eh mate?"

"You know, you're just going to get yourself killed, right?" Cindy was saying. Her arms were crossed and her tone was haughty, two tells that she was preparing to shout at him. "Don't spoil it for the rest of us. This is so like you, going off without really thinking things through. Get back in your loser cage! The rest of us need to make what we can of our lives."

Kent thought he heard the distant sound of backwards devil music. He should probably try to free his fellow humans with his phone signal, but time was now of the essence, and it's hard to act in the best interests of someone who is going red in the face dressing you down. Instead he opened his duffel bag and stared long and hard at the pills he still had.

"There's the mother lode!" the kangaroo gushed, ears twitching in excitement. "Don't tilt at windmills, though."

Kent wasn't sure what was real anymore. On impulse he started flinging the pills, at Marty and Cindy and at the grateful kangaroo, too ("Hey, the grass is always greener, right?").

"Wait, is that ... company property?!" Marty exclaimed, pulling out his reading glasses from somewhere under the blankets.

"You stupid twit!" Cindy screamed. "You're going to get caught! You always ruin everything you touch! Admit it! Just ... just give up. It's pathetic watching you ... you ..."

"Chase your tail?" the talking kangaroo supplied as it munched down on gobs of pills.

The sound of backwards devil music was growing louder as Kent turned and fled. He dashed under instruments, squeezed between crates, and clambered over wires the size of pipelines. The backwards devil music rose to a crescendo now, as if the giant alien being was incensed that a tiny creature should dare to escape its bonds. There was no going back to the cage now. No, now there was only the open panel and the twisted labyrinth of the unknown within.

[close]

[brushfe]

The theme here this month seems to be biting off more than can be chewed. I had a very short sourdough starter, with intentions to expand it into a longer prose piece. But all I can submit is the starter, if it counts? Either way, I'm really looking forward to reading your pieces!

A Conclusion None Will Read

Spoiler

A scolding sun. Coughing makes sparks in the air.
What have we done?
By our own hand, but against our will.
From clay to space and back again.
A cosmic rounding error.

[close]

[Mandle]

CONTEST CLOSED
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Awesome! Three entries!

Sinitrena: The Zombies of Adrian
Baron: Through the Looking Glass
brushfe: A Conclusion None Will Read

Voting will be open until the end of August 9th.

Please vote in the thread with your favorite only. Feedback also appreciated!