u/Lucky-Dependent-8896

Heyo! This was a story I wrote for my cousins 11th bday so this is my first attempt at Middle Grade writing!

Eric looked up at the arch over the gateway made of rotting wood and rusting steel. Pinewood Cemetery. He looked back at his friends, Tim, Jeremy, and Carlos. The moon was high in the sky and not a single cloud threatened to get in its way. He shivered standing with them out on the cool September night, but unfortunately for Eric, his shivering wasn’t from the temperature. 

“Do I really have to go in there?” Eric asked, knowing already the answer he would receive in return.

“Yes.” the other three said in unison.

“You chose Dare, dude. This is the dare.” Tim said, keeping an eye out for other people that might be passing by. The wind howled just beyond the gate, mimicking the howl of a wolf. 

“Just walk around the outside path once you get in there, you’ll be done in no time.” Jeremy urged. He hadn’t brought a jacket and Eric could see the goosebumps growing on his skin. 

“I don’t know guys,” Carlos started, “when we were here before dark, the groundskeeper told us to avoid the place at night entirely. You remember that don’t you?” Eric nodded his head, though Carlos left out the other part where the groundskeeper said, “If you end up only seeing a ghost, you’d be in pretty good shape.” He knew that it was childish and silly to hang on the words of a grumpy old man, but he had said it with such sincerity, and uncomfortability. 

“Carlos, stop freaking him out, he’s already being a wuss and trying to get out of it.” Eric felt heat rush to his face with anger. 

“I’m not a wuss! Don’t call me that.” Tim crossed his arms in defiance. 

“If you’re not a wuss then walk through the cemetery quick. It’s not that big, and like Jeremy said, you’ll be back in no time.” Carlos put a reassuring hand on Eric’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to do it, man. It won’t make you a wuss.” 

“Uh yeah…It will. He’d be chickening out of the dare. What’s the point of offering him a Dare if he’s just going to wuss out of it.” Eric felt hot enough that he thought that steam would start coming out of his ears.

“I’m not a god damned chicken! And I’m not a god damned wuss! I’ll show you! I’ll show you right now!” 

“Alright! Then do it! We’re waiting!”

“Hey! Quiet down he said, whispering as loudly as he could while still keeping it a whisper. Eric glanced over at Carlos, he didn’t seem to have any reassurance this time. Without saying another word, Eric opened the gate to Pinewood Cemetery and started to walk. 

*****

By the time Eric got out of ear shot of his friends, his confidence he had built out of frustration and anger had subsided and the fear had returned with a vengeance. The wickedly bent trees above him cause even more wicked and sinister shadows on the ground and headstones. Every breath he took felt like it was going against the eerie silence of the space around him. Each crunch underneath his every step, felt like pulling the trigger of a loaded gun, causing what he thought were echoes all around him. Wherever he glanced, unfamiliar dark shapes danced and swung. 

When he glanced forward he saw that he was coming across a mausoleum, a large one, so large you could see it from the road despite that it was in the dead center of the oblong cemetery. It was already spooky to him in the daytime, with its chipping away off-white stone and crooked black metal barring over the windows. But now that he was coming up to it in the dead of night…it was out right creepy. Half of the building glowed in the pale blue light from the moon, the other half sat in utter darkness, holding whatever secrets its nooks and crannies had to hold. He stopped for a moment, trying to get a grasp on his breathing and only daring to look when he felt it was safe too. Eric didn’t know why, but he felt like the mausoleum was staring at him, watching his every move. 

He looked back toward his friends, he could barely see them due to the only light source around being the moonlight. He wondered if instead of having to walk around the whole cemetery, if he could get away with just sitting on the steps of the building for a few minutes and then slowly start making his way back. He tested this idea by waving toward his group of friends. They made no response or wave in return, seeming to continue on doing whatever they were on about. The slightest bit of tension released from Eric’s neck and shoulders, allowing him to breathe somewhat normally for the first time since he had walked in. He took a seat on the bottom step and pulled out his phone, trying to open Instagram only to see that he didn’t have any service. 

“Of course.” He muttered to himself, resorting to opening up the Solitaire app and starting a game. Before he could make his first move, he heard something from behind him. It was muffled and faint so he couldn’t make out what it was. He raised an eyebrow suspiciously, seeing that the only thing behind him was the door to the building. He went back to his phone and got ready to start his game once again when the noise came again, but much louder. 

THUD.

Eric jumped up, startled at the sudden noise. He could’ve sworn this time that it came from behind him, he knew he was only imagining it, but he also could’ve sworn that he felt the ground shake a little when it happened. He stood there, his shivering returning and now on the verge of tears. 

THUD. THUD. 

The thudding continued, rhythmically, like whatever it was behind the door was keeping time to a song only it could hear. Eric took a few steps back now, scrambling to close out his Solitaire game and turn the flashlight on. As he found the flashlight mode on his phone the thudding stopped. Silence once again blanketed the world around him, leaving only the howling wind, crickets, and his heart thumping madly with anxiety against his chest. For a few agonizing moments nothing happened. Then, the knob of the mausoleum door slowly started to turn. 

Eric wanted nothing more than to haul ass down the path to the gate and run, screw going back to the sleepover, he was going to run all the way home and cry in his mom’s lap while his dad chewed him up for trespassing…but he couldn’t move. No matter what he tried to do, fear had frozen him in place.

After half of a minute of the door knob first squeakily turning one way and then even more squeakily turning the other, the door knob stopped moving and everything was still once again. Eric found that his lip was trembling and that tears had started trailing their way down his cheeks. He wished so badly to be able to run, but he couldn’t, so he now wished that whatever was behind that door would just come out already, enough with the waiting.

As if Eric himself had willed his wishes into existence, the door started to creak open, swaying silently and slowly, inching itself open. When the door was completely open, the sound of scuffling and a low moaning sound came from inside the pitch black building. He raised his hand that was holding his phone and shined the light through the open doorway, hoping to the heavens above that what he was hearing was simply just a critter that had somehow made its way inside…but he knew that wasn’t going to be the case. What he saw when the light shined inside shook Eric to his core.

It was a man in a withered suit, tears all over the jacket and pants, dirt covered almost every inch of the man as well. The skin was pulled taut and ripped in multiple places across the face and hands, showing rotted black flesh underneath. It was missing one of its eyes with nothing but inky blackness in its place. The man was missing hair in many places on his head and blood coated his chin and lips. A dead and mutilated rat hung by its tail from the man’s hand. Both Eric and the rotting man stood silently, neither one of them making a move. After only a few seconds that felt like a millennium to Eric, the rotting man burst forward toward him. Eric, thankfully, found that his legs were no longer frozen and booked it down the path from which he came. 

He could no longer see his friends, clouds had found their way into the night sky and essentially flipped the light switch on his part of the world. A horrid scream echoed through the graveyard behind him, a mixture of a little girl's scream and someone choking on a piece of fried chicken. He didn’t try to hold back his fear anymore, he openly sobbed as his legs pushed him forward as quickly as they could. 

He felt he was halfway there when another one of those horrible screams came again. Eric glanced over his shoulder and saw the rotting man was only ten or fifteen feet behind him, random bones popping and snapping as he pushed to get closer to the boy in front of him. 

“GET AWAY!” Eric yelled and managed to push himself harder.

Finally the gate had come into view. It was hard to tell at first but he quickly realized his friends were still standing there.

“Help! Tim! Carlos! Jeremy! Help me!” They didn’t respond, continuing to chat amongst themselves.

 He slowed down as he approached the gate, quickly getting it open enough to slip through. Before he could fully slip through, he felt the icy cold touch of one of its fingers grazing along the back of his neck. He grabbed the gate and slammed it shut. Then tried backing away so quickly that he ran into Carlos and found himself at his friend's feet.

“Why didn’t any of you come help me?!” Eric yelled. His friends looked at him and were confused. 

“What are you talking about?” Tim asked, looking behind them at the cemetery.

“I was just yelling for your help back there before I made it to the gate!” Once again his friends looked confused.

“We didn’t hear anything, man…not until you damn near ran through the gate trying to get out.” Carlos crouched down with Eric.

“Why were you trying to get out so bad?” Eric looked at Carlos and the rest of his friends flabbergasted. 

“Are you kidding me?! There was a dead man running after me! All the way from the mausoleum! He was running after me like I was his next meal!” The boys stood in silence for a second. Then Tim started to laugh, then Jeremy joined in. Laughter filled the air as Eric jumped up to his feet to look past them, only now Eric was the one confused. The moon was out just as strong as it was when he entered the cemetery. Everything was just as it was before the mausoleum. 

“The mausoleum…” Eric muttered.

“What?” Tim asked, starting to get his handle on his giggle fit. 

“You guys will believe me if you see the mausoleum.”

“No chance. We’re getting back to the house, my mom will notice if we’re gone for too long.” 

“But…but…” Eric started as Carlos gently pushed him along when they started to walk back to Jeremy’s house. When the four got halfway back, Eric asked Carlos a question.

“You believe me right?” Carlos only shrugged his shoulders.

“The dark can play tricks on you, man. I remember a few years ago when I was afraid that the sound coming from my closet was a monster of some sort, but when my dad checked the next morning, it turned out to just be a water pipe that was just above the ceiling tile.” Eric’s shoulders slumped and he felt tears starting to form in his eyes again. 

“So you don’t believe me…” Carlos put his arm around Eric’s shoulders. 

“Look, I believe you saw something that scared the hell out of you. Obviously. I just think that maybe it wasn’t what you claim it is.” Eric didn’t say anything more for the rest of the walk.

*****

They spent the rest of the evening snacking on Doritos and playing Fortnite until they eventually passed out between one and two in the morning. Eric’s friends had him convinced that what he saw was probably just a trick on the mind over a rotting man chasing him through a graveyard in the middle of the night.

When his mom picked him up, he told her about everything they did, excluding the part where he was forced to trespass into a graveyard. On their way home, his mom drove past the graveyard due to construction closing off the normal way home. Out of curiosity, Eric looked out the window. His mom coincidentally slowed down by the gate and Eric saw two things that confirmed that his night wasn’t just a trick on the mind. The first, was that a dead, mutilated rat lay just inside the cemetery gates. The second was that he could see the mausoleum clearly in the daylight, and the door was wide open. Though when his mom started to speed up again, Eric swore that he saw the door start to inch itself close…

- Shanghai International Circuit

- Bahrain International Circuit

- Hungaroring

- Circuit of the Americas

- Lusail International Circuit

- Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari (Imola)

I find that all of these tracks have their own unique flair and challenges that I think would be quite fun and enjoyable if added.

​

Over the next week or so I had tried telling multiple people and entities about what had transpired that night. I tried talking with the head of the sciences department, the guy said he never would’ve sanctioned an experiment like that and that he didn’t even know who those three were. I talked to many others, such as faculty members in the sciences, other student scientists, even board members for the university and yet no one seemed to know these individuals or even be able to acknowledge their existence. After being treated like I was crazy by my classmates and roommates alike, I decided that it was time that I brought this sequence of events to the local authorities. I went down to the police station, where everyone knew me by first name due to how frequently I was checking on what had happened the previous night. I sat down with Officer Gerardo, a fine looking hispanic man who was always a good listener and especially good with student related incidents happening off campus. But this time, it seemed that I couldn’t get through to him that what I was saying was even real. The conversation went something like this:

“So let me get this straight, Tim. You get invited to see this live test of three students who are claiming they’re going to reanimate a dead body? Then instead of using an already dead body, they decided to use you, kill you with the serums used for lethal injection, then when you were good and dead, use their concoction they came up with to bring you back to life, fully cognitive and with no issues?”

I nodded my head insistently, he was pretty much on the nose, except for the fact that I could only sleep for two hours at night before I was wide awake like I had just chugged a giant cup of coffee. Officer Gerardo looked me over for a second just like Belle had whenever she saw me.

“Okay, look Tim. You’re a great writer, especially your work in the magazine at the university. I read every entry that gets published and honestly, your work scares the shit out of me. But you can’t believe me to expect that you were killed and brought back to life! That’s something that only happens in science fiction movies! This type of science and/or medicine just doesn’t exist.”

“Yes it does, Officer!” I said, slightly raising my voice though at the time I hadn’t meant to. “How could I make this up? I’ve never written a story in the first person, why would I start now? And why would I make it about me? Please Officer Gerardo, you have to believe me…No one else will. I can even take you to the building where it took place! I can take you there right now and prove that I’m telling the truth.” I proceeded to give him the address on an index card and wait while he talked with his boss about seeing if he could get a search warrant of some kind. A few minutes later, he came back and grabbed his coat, slipping his arms through the arms of the coat. “Let’s go Tim, apparently the city of Coralville owns that building, they gave us permission over the phone to check it out.” I hopped out of my seat and followed him out of the police station and to his squad car. When we got in, we sat there for a moment with the engine running. He turned to me and said, “Tim, it’s just us now…What the hell actually happened last week?”

“I told you exactly what happened Gerardo! Why would I lie to you?” I asked, I was surprised and honestly shocked that he would even ask that question.

“You’re an aspiring journalist, Tim, we have to look out for people who may be possibly making some shit up to start a phony investigation and get a hot article on the front page to pad the resume…It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.”

“If you don’t want to believe that I’m telling the truth, fine.” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and looking out of the windshield into the street. “I’ll just have to show you at that hangar or whatever kind of building it is.” Officer Gerardo let out a long sigh and lit a cigarette as he put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot. The drive to the location wasn’t very long from the station, ten minutes maximum. Then without a doubt, the very same building that I had died in a week prior was still standing there. I pointed it out to Officer Gerardo and he pulled into the building’s parking lot.

Gerardo spent maybe five seconds looking at it before sighing and lighting another cigarette in what I thought to be frustration. “What?” I asked, trying to understand his frustration.

He pointed to the building that had clear rust developing at the bottom of its walls and around the frames of the large garage door on the side and the man door, “It’s abandoned Tim! Nothing’s been there for years more than likely! There’s nothing here. You’re wasting my time, let's go.” He started to put the car in gear but I turned to him quickly, begging him to stop the car. Officer Gerardo put the car back into park.

“Listen Officer. Please. Can we please just take five minutes to check this out? If we go in there and there’s nothing, then we can leave and I’ll admit that I’m losing my marbles.”

Officer Gerardo sat there for a moment, with the expression of regret that he even made the drive out there in the first place, then turned the car off and got out, throwing the keys in his pocket. I followed suit, trailing behind him across the parking lot to the man door of the building. Without hesitating, he opened the door and a wave of musty odor and dust shot at the two of us. We had to back up a few steps, coughing and waving away the blast of dust. After we got ourselves together a little, the officer entered the dark building. I hesitated at first, not wanting to be reminded of the wicked exhibition that was made of me. But I knew that it had to be done. I walked in behind Officer Gerardo.

I couldn’t believe my eyes…The room was full of abandoned cars. Stacked on top of each other like books on a shelf or like kids playing with Lincoln Logs. I rushed past him and started to panic. No, no, no, no. No god damned way. This fucking thing was empty as can be barely a week ago. THEY FUCKING KILLED ME IN HERE. Officer Gerardo came up behind me, putting a hand on my shuddering shoulder.

“Tim, you see what I mean? There’s nothing here…It’s just junkyard storage and forgotten scraps of metal. Nothing happened here. You must’ve had a bad dream or something.”

“No Officer! I know what happened! Why would I lie about fucking dying?! It was right here!” I pointed at a rusted out Lincoln sedan. “There was a Y-shaped table here! With chairs surrounding it, and a bright light above it, and there were carts for tools…Where did it all go…”

Officer Gerardo wore an expression I had seen many times before. It was an expression of sadness, of pity. I knew right then that he didn’t believe it. He might’ve believed that I believed it, but he certainly didn’t think it ever happened. He put his arm around my shoulder as I did my utmost to control my breathing and prevent hyperventilation.

“Tim, let’s go back to the station and see about making some calls, like your parents. Whatever you’ve been through, it’s beyond what I can do okay?”

That’s the moment where I knew that no one would ever believe my story, that whenever I told it, or whomever I told it to, they would just think it was another one of my crazy horror stories that I was putting together for the magazine. I nodded my head to Gerardo and went back to the station. I sat there at Officer Gerardo’s desk for about an hour and a half before my parents walked in and saw me. They rushed over and hugged me. My mother, of course, asked if I was okay and my father asked if I was having any issues with people. My father was never the emotional type, “A Man’s Man”, I think is the best way to describe him. I sat down with them and told them what had happened. After roughly half an hour, I wrapped up my story and just like everyone else, there was the look of disbelief, but this time, there was also a sincere look of concern with it.

Only moments after I finished telling my story, Officer Gerardo came to his desk and asked to speak to my parents privately. They went around the corner into a room that had windows on all sides. Though I did my best to mind my own business, I couldn’t help but side-eye them as they talked together. It became rapidly clear within moments that the situation didn’t appear to be good. They were only in the room for maybe five minutes before they came back out. My father stood back with Officer Gerardo and let my mother do the talking. With having to hold back tears, she told me that I was very sick, and that I needed to get some help. I was over the moon at that moment! Officer Gerardo had come to his senses and had convinced my parents to get me some help! I was going to finally be believed! I agreed and got into the car with them, weirdly enough though, Officer Gerardo came as well.

“Why are you riding with us, Officer? We’re just driving to the hospital.” I said, going between looking out the window and back at him in the front seat with my father who was driving. He looked ahead at the road, not saying anything more than, “Just making sure everything goes smoothly.” I didn’t understand what he meant until we got to the hospital and realized that it wasn’t the general hospital, it was a hospital for the mentally ill and challenged. My father pulled into the drive up and before I had a moment to protest, my car door was opened and I was helped out of the vehicle. This is when I understood why it had taken an hour and a half for my parents to show up at the police department. They only lived half an hour away…I guess the other hour was Gerardo explaining the situation and my folks making the arrangements.

My parents didn’t even attempt to say goodbye as I was taken inside the building, only watched with empty and somber eyes as I was whisked out of sight…That was in April of nineteen seventy-one. I’ve been in this institution for about fifty years now, well, it’ll officially be fifty years in two months. The last five decades have been interesting and yet boring at the same time. At first, I was thought to be severely schizophrenic, seeing things that weren’t there and/or hearing things that only I could hear. But I shortly proved that wasn’t the case at all. The doctors and other various specialists also had a hard time trying to disprove my scars from where the needles went into my head, chest, and arm. Unlike the arm needle that cleanly healed up, the chest and head scars were a different discussion. They were rather large and strong needles, meaning a larger needle, making a larger hole, but you get what I’m saying, I won’t continue to ramble much longer.

They still have no idea what’s wrong or what was done to me. I have made some headway though! I’ve finally convinced them that there was indeed an experiment done on me around the time I had continually claimed. The biggest piece of evidence is that I haven’t seemed to age a single day since that night. I’m seventy, turning seventy-one in a matter of a couple of weeks, yet I still look the same as I did when I was twenty. My physique is the same, skin hasn’t begun to wrinkle, my voice hasn’t become hoarse, my hair color hasn’t even remotely begun to become a mix of salt and pepper. I’m quite literally no different than I was fifty years ago.

I’ve become a marvel of medical science and even join the doctors occasionally when they go to lectures and guest speaking, mainly to show me off like the freak show that I guess I am, like the character Charlie in Flowers for Algernon. But I don't mind anymore. I get to leave the institution and be in the outside world again. I get to see how much the world has evolved and changed for the better and sometimes for the worse. The only part that I dislike is when I have to go back. I’ve asked many times to be able to finally leave, to be able to join the outside world again and do what I still think is my destiny to do. But I still find myself going back to my room at the end of our trips and stuck to reading my books or writing some story as I tend to do when I’ve read all of the books that I’ve acquired for the day or week.

There are many things that I wish to have seen throughout my long stay at this establishment. Seeing computers be put into cars, phones that you can carry in your pocket, hell, it would’ve been cool to see that band Nirvana play once or twice before the guy killed himself, but most of all, I’ve never once heard of Aaron and David ever again. They disappeared off of the face of the map, and I still become angry just thinking about it. Though I’ve mostly come to accept that I’ll most likely be here forever, and I mean quite literally, I still want to know what happened to them. I want to know that they finally got caught, finally received justice for the hideous and awful experiments they and their peers had performed on innocent people. I want them to see what they’ve done and to look at me, and see what they’ve created. So they can see that they may be able to restore life, but that they’re also able to destroy it at the same time. If either of you are reading this right now, you had better hope that I don’t ever get out of this place…I’ve had nothing but time to think about how to kill you both.

​

Those questions stayed in a rotation floating through my thoughts as the day passed on, morning turning to afternoon, and then afternoon turning to evening. I sat half-reading and half pondering the same thoughts as I paced the library until the librarian told me she was closing up for the night. I thanked her for letting me stay there as I always did when I needed a quiet place to decompress. With it being eight-thirty, I decided that I could start walking to a bus station to wait for a ride across town to Coralville and try to find this lab. It didn’t take me long to accomplish my goal, by nine-thirty I had been dropped off at a stop just three blocks away from the address I was given. As I walked down the street, I noticed that this neighborhood had a run down look to it. A lot of houses I passed had boards over the window frames, peeling paint on the porches and sides of the houses, the smell of rotten trash and urine. I guessed back then that nobody had lived in those houses for years if not a couple decades.

The scenery was more or less the same for the first two blocks that I walked, occasionally there’d be a person in their parked car, either sleeping or lighting what could be many things though at the time I assumed it was a joint or pipe. As I got to the beginning of the third block I started to see a large building take shape behind some apartment complexes that like the other houses in the neighborhood, looked abandoned for quite some time. The building looked like a smaller airport hangar, light gray in color and surprisingly, some roof windows and even something that looked like a satellite dish that the military would have but on a much smaller scale, then there was a large sliding door in the front and middle of the structure facing the street with a man door on the south end. There were about nine or ten cars parked in front of the hangar in the small parking lot, most of them looking like the average vehicle, though one was a Pontiac Firebird and made me wonder whose father was loaded enough to get their son or daughter something like that.

When I reached the man door, I tried turning the handle but it was locked. I ended up having to knock on the door and wait for about five minutes before I heard the deadbolt release and saw the door open a crack, seeing half of a familiar face peering through the crack. It was half of the face of Belle, looking both excited yet exhausted at the same time. She looked me up and down, as if the clothes I had chosen were questionably appropriate for such an occasion. After a few moments of her looking me over, the door opened wider and there was Aaron with the same smile he wore yesterday in room two-hundred and twenty and waved me in. 

The inside of the hangar was very dark, the only noticeable lighting being small bright lamps posted around on scattered tables and a large bright light behind clearish curtains in the middle of the room. “We still have a little bit of time before we plan to get started, take a look around, my friend. We have some of our past experiments spread about on the tables you could give a glance at while you wait.”Aaron patted my shoulder and went off to a back room. Belle looked at me one more time before following him. I turned from them and looked around the room once again, this time noticing nine or ten people wandering around from table to table, occasionally making a comment to one another. I started to look at these experiments myself and found myself getting slightly anxious. 

On one of the first tables, there was a heart in a clear case that was set up to a machine that was pumping reddish clear liquid through it. I didn’t know what I was looking at until I read the placard next to the clear case: This is an experiment most recently concluded and proven to be a success. We wanted to see if we could get a heart to start pumping again from a state of not being used for over five years. The machine you see is pumping blood into the heart and from a serum we concocted, the heart's electrical currents started back up and started pushing the blood through its system. This heart in the future can be put into someone’s chest to keep them alive. 

Just as I found myself getting anxious, I also found myself getting chills down my spine, giving me gooseflesh on my arms and legs, making the hair stand up. I took a step back and glanced around the room at the other tables, finding that all of the tables had an odd experiment they had performed at one point or another. Those around me were talking with excited, hushed voices. They seemed thrilled about whatever they might get to witness that night. What the fuck is going on here? Are these kinds of tests and experiments really being approved by the university? Is any of this even legal?

I kept my head on a swivel, always checking on the door I came in to remind myself of where the exit was, in case I needed to make a quick escape. I was even contemplating whether or not I should leave right then and there when a voice from behind me broke the side conversations and brought attention to the curtain in the middle of the room. 

“Hello everyone! Thank you for coming out tonight! If you’d all like to take a seat in the chairs right inside the curtain, we’ll be beginning very shortly,” Aaron's voice called out. Everyone started making their way to the curtain and finding their seats. At that point, I was thoroughly scared out of my mind for what was possibly to come and started to back up toward the exit. As I made to turn and walk straight for it, Belle was already there and had locked the door, putting a bike lock through the bolt, as if to make sure no one could leave until they were good and ready. Belle and I made eye contact as I stood frozen, ignoring the occasional bead of sweat that ran down my face. 

Belle approached me wearing a clear apron and cap on her head, it reminded me of a surgeon. When she got within arms reach, she looked up at me, with a smirk on her face, “Come on Tim…Don’t want to miss the show, right?” I shook my head slowly and followed her as she started toward the curtain where everyone else had already gathered. When I walked into the clear dome of the curtain, there was a singular large light in the middle, illuminating a table made of stainless steel, with a head pad at one end and two smaller, thinner pieces of stainless steel that stretched out at the sides. If one didn’t know better, they’d think that it looked exactly like an execution table. This table was covered with straps. Two on each small wing, two on the head pad, and three found on the main slab of steel, all made of strong, brown leather, fresh out of the package. 

It was quiet beside the one or two side conversations happening on both sides of me, I couldn’t tell what either of the discussions were about but at the moment I was too mentally preoccupied to care. After a few moments of sitting there, patiently waiting, or in my case, impatiently and anxiously waiting, we heard footsteps from outside of the curtain that were approaching. The flaps of the curtain opened and there were Aaron and David, in surgeons apparel, David pushing a cart of tools and gods know what else in the drawers and on the top. He rolled it to the opposite side that I was sitting on, and started preparing some things, muttering things under their breath as they were doing so. After a minute that felt like hours, the three dressed as surgeons turned to their audience. 

“Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us tonight.” Aaron started, walking around the table and facing us. “Tonight is a night that David, Belle, and I have been waiting for and anticipating, for a very long time. We hope to test and achieve a hypothesis we had made two years ago, and have been working tirelessly to be ready for this moment. Tonight, we hope to change history.” 

Already, I had the feeling that something very weird was going on, maybe even illegal. As Aaron kept on with his introduction, I caught Belle and David occasionally glancing my way, nodding occasionally or shaking their head at each other after a muttering match. I could feel my anxiety increase with every minute I spent in this place, already counting the seconds until I could leave. I tuned back to Aaron as he continued his spiel, “...we are going to attempt what many have said to be impossible. We are going to bring a lifeform back to life tonight! We are going to take a body that is dead…and bring them back to life and hopefully, with full cognitive brain function! And we have the perfect subject to try this on!” The looks on the other audience members weren’t what I was expecting at all…They were excited, some to the point of barely being able to stay in their seats. Some were nail biting, others were still stuck with their mouths agape at the mere thought of reviving a dead body, the room was turning electric in ways that were almost indescribable. I seemed to be the only one that didn’t find this kind of speech to be riveting, I found it horrifying! Not to mention absolutely insane! These people seemed to legitimately think that they could bring the dead back to life! Did they truly think this was possible? Or had they read H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West - Reanimator one too many times?

“Now, with the introduction out of the way and the blood pumping in our veins, let's introduce our test subject tonight…” Aaron said, looking around at his spectators. Everyone started to look at each other, wondering if the subject would come through the curtain flaps just like they had, or was the subject already in the room with us? Belle and David then walked over to me and put their hands out. “Mr. Timothy Steinbrock! Thank you so much for volunteering yourself to be our brave subject for tonight’s making of history!” Aaron exclaimed as everyone around me clapped. ME?! The subject?! NO…NO! I screamed in my head as I turned my head rapidly, hoping to find a moment to escape, but no opportunity of the sort was available. My occasional beads of sweat turned into a rapid perspiration as I realized finally what Aaron and David meant when they said that they had found the perfect subject…

As Belle and David reached their hands out farther to help me up, I grabbed the sides of my chair and held on for dear life, using every muscle in my arms and core to make myself an unmoving boulder. I looked back over at Aaron who just stood there with a look of pity, and then said to David, “Davie, looks like Mr. Steinbrock’s going to need something to help him relax a little, do you mind?” Relax a little? What the fu-” and before I could reach the end of my thought I felt a pinch in my right shoulder and felt everything start to loosen up. I slowly, because that was as fast as I could move my head, looked over at my right shoulder and watched as David pulled a long needle out of my arm. My grip on the chair loosened, and then eventually gave way, and I started to slide down. Belle caught me before I slipped to the floor while David picked me up and carried me to the steel table. 

I couldn’t move my body with any sort of conviction, it was like my motor skills had been stolen from me by an invisible phantom. As Belle and David started to move my limbs and strap me into the table, Aaron once again started speaking to the audience, “Now, I know that may have seemed like an odd way of getting someone to agree to be our subject, some would even say it was illegal and immoral, well I agree with you. But! Knowing that we had limited room to fit an extra guest, we still made room for the man, so we, or at least I, thought no harm no foul. Besides, he’ll be back with us in no time! You’ll all see for yourself! We’ll have Mr. Steinbrock back, good as new within minutes of our wonderful experiment’s beginning!” 

He looked down at me and gave me the same smile he gave me when he first met me in the sciences building yesterday afternoon. How he could give me that same smile I’ll never know, because I more than likely had an expression of complete terror covering my sweat drowned face. 

Aaron leaned down as he started to fasten the straps across my chin and forehead. I attempted to move my head and evade the leather but it was no use, he had my forehead strapped in before I knew what could happen next. He started to fasten the chin strap when he began whispering to me, “You know Tim, I actually like you. Though I find you a little arrogant and full of yourself, you’re also a straight up person and I find a lot of value in that.” 

“Then why me? Why not anyone else? Anyone could’ve worked for this right?” I fought to whisper back. 

“No, unfortunately. The kind of specimen we needed is exactly what you are. You’re healthy all the way down the list my friend. You’re not only physically fit and physiologically sound, but also mentally very unique. These are traits that we needed to ensure that this would be a success.” He adjusted the strap across my forehead, tightening it a little bit more as I felt tugging across one ankle, and then the other, now knowing that I couldn’t run off even if I wanted to. I looked back up at Aaron who had now put a surgical mask over his face.

“Aaron…what happened to the last person before me? You said that something didn’t work out…Can you tell me what happened to them?” He stopped what he was doing for a moment, possibly contemplating whether or not he should answer the question, or maybe how he should answer it if anything. 

“Well Tim, there was a freshman out of Cedar Rapids who looked to be very promising for a long time. He thought our test was amazing! He was more than willing to do it. One day we decided that we were going to use a test version on him to see what it would do…A complete failure that test was, and our poor man from Cedar Rapids ended up not enrolling in classes for the next semester, matter of fact, he didn’t show up to classes after that night either, such a shame…”

These sick bastards…They killed that kid! He had his whole life ahead of him and these people took advantage of his willingness to help and destroyed him…I looked away from Aaron and decided to stare at the ceiling as I felt the rest of the straps fasten first across my arms, and then my waist, and then eventually across my chest. I couldn’t move anything, nothing at all…This was to be my fate so I thought. Moments that felt like eternity passed in silence before my eyes as I thought about every mistake I made and how I could’ve prevented them or fixed them, remembering every moment I had with my family, knowing I would never see them again. I fought back tears harder than I ever had in my entire life. I wanted to die with a little dignity left to my name when all was said and done. Our devilish ringleader started speaking once again like the king he thought he was. 

“Alright! Ladies and Gentlemen…Who’s ready to see if we can bring life back from the dead?” Though I couldn’t see them, I knew that there were mixes of fright, anxiousness, and overall excitement. “There will be two serums used. The first, is the natural mix of serums used for lethal injection in prisons on death row. If anyone is concerned that he will be in pain as he goes through this process, I assure you that he will feel no pain. The second serum that’ll be used, is the very concoction that we’ll be testing tonight to bring life back to the dead. Our serum that we named ‘BDA’. This serum, if we have corrected it, should within moments of entering the heart, start the heart pumping again and within moments of entering the brain, revive cognitive function! Bringing back the very Mr. Steinbrock that we see lying on this table at this very moment.” This mad man is literally going to kill me and try to bring me back to life with the use of some god damned liquid?!

“If everyone is ready, let’s begin.” Aaron said, walking around the right side of me. David walked up on my left, while it looked like Belle had been standing at my feet, ready to assist either of the men if needed. David took a pair of scissors from the cart and started cutting my shirt up the middle, exposing my torso. Fucking asshole, I liked this shirt. Then both Aaron and David used a marker to make marks on me, marking where solid veins were. There was a mark made just to the left of my sternum, one just below my right temple, and another in the crevice of my elbow on my right arm. With the marking finishing up, it was my time to die. I glanced over at Aaron, who looked calm as he had been the entire night, but when I looked at David, he looked nervous, a disaster waiting to happen. I thought for a second that maybe he truly was forced into this, that maybe Aaron had made promises of fame and fortune.

“David? Listen to me man,” I started whispering at him, “If you don’t want to do this, call it off! Please David! I didn’t sign up for this! Have a heart man…” David used a towel at his side to wipe sweat from his brow and nose, shaking his head after doing so, most likely shaking out the last bit of his nerves. He leaned down for just a moment and said, “Shut the fuck up! This wasn’t his idea, it was mine…We’re doing this, you’re going to be back with us before you know it so just ride it out.” He straightened out his back again and proceeded to do last checks of his needles and other possibly needed tools like scalpels and clamps. 

Aaron double checked his measurements in his syringe and then nodded to David, the moment had arrived, what I had thought to be my final moment. I felt a strong pinch in the crevice of my right arm and then a sensation of everything slowing down. My breathing started becoming slower, my heart thumped less and less as the seconds went on, I could almost feel the blood starting to settle in place as my vision started to tunnel. I didn’t realize how much the blood running through your body could keep you warm, because now I felt the coolness of the breeze coming from under the hangar walls, the icy cold touch of the table I was laying on. For a few moments nothing seemed to happen, then I felt my eyes force themselves close and then there was nothing. I heard nothing but what sounded to me like rushing water, crashing against cliffs, the wind pummeling my ears as I walked through it, like ever-rumbling thunder on a stormy night. I heard all of these things yet I could see nothing but blackness. There was nothing to see but the everlasting night which was death. It wasn’t too bad, all told, peaceful even. No worries of grades, not having to deal with the outcome of student loans and finding jobs left and right as a journalist, only peaceful blackness and rushing waves of soothing harmony. 

I’m still not sure how long I spent in that void of restful midnight, but as if hit by a freight train, air rushed back into my lungs and my heart beat at an insane pace. My eyes shot open and a large bright light was hovering above me. Meanwhile I heard screams, whimpers, even shrieking and gasping as I attempted to move my head and observe my surroundings. Was I dead? No that can’t be right, I was here at some point I think.

“Holy shit…” I heard someone say just above my head as I continued to squirm and try to untangle myself from the restraints I found myself in. I stopped after probably ten or twelve seconds of this, running out of breath much faster than I had thought I would. I laid there trying to catch my breath, eyes burning from the light and feeling as if they might burst. I turned my head to the left to see a familiar face taking off a surgical mask, to my right were two more familiar faces. The man on my left started to ask me some questions.

“What is your name?” The man asked. What kind of stupid question is that? Are all doctors or scientists like this?

“Timothy Steinbrock? Was I supposed to be someone else?” I asked him, wondering if any other odd question would come out of his mouth.

“Timothy, where do you think you are right now?” The man asked curiously. To be quite truthful I didn’t quite know at that moment. So I asked, “Maybe if I looked around, past the table I can’t really see my surroundings, with the bright light shining in my eyes and whatever the hell is holding me still.” The man looked at me with hesitation, like he wasn’t sure why he would do that. I had no idea what was going on still, wondering why the hell I was even on this torture table of sorts. Both of the men and the woman slowly and cautiously unfastened the straps and I felt the relief of being able to stretch out my limbs again. Looking around, I started to see more and more familiarity with my surroundings. The strange people sitting in chairs around the table, the clear curtain behind them, and the empty chair that had a coat hanging over the back of it. Is that my coat? That’s gotta be my coat. Why is it over there? Wait, why am I here? Why’s my shirt cut open? What the fuck is going on?...These thoughts traversed through my mind at the speed of light and then all at once, I remembered what I was doing there. These crazy people had just killed me for their god damn experiment!

Wait…If this is the experiment hangar…and I’m talking and moving…did their test work? Did this crazy man’s dream actually become reality? Without a moment’s hesitation I got up off of the table and put my jacket on, zipping it up and walking out of the flap. Footsteps followed behind me as I started towards the man door at the end of the building. Belle had rushed out in front of me and blocked my way. Stopping, I looked at her with an anger that could hardly be controlled, the heat of my emotions flowing through me like a strong current of magma.

“Wait! We still have after serum questions and tests to perform! You can’t leave yet!” She yelled, putting her hands up to my chest. I grabbed both of her wrists with my hands and applied a pressure to them that I didn’t even know I was capable of before. I started to feel things popping and crushing under my grip as she dropped to her knees, whimpering in agony. I kneeled down and met her eye level, saying, “If you don’t open that door, I’m going to make your buddies over have to test the serum on you and see if its miracle properties work a second time. Open, the fucking door.” With that I let go of her wrists and watched as she momentarily cradled them in her lap, silently crying some more. A couple more sets of footsteps approached from behind me as I stared at the partially broken woman on the floor. I turned around to see Aaron and David looking freaked out.

“What the hell Tim? You should be excited with us!” Aaron said, taking a couple small steps toward me.

“I should be excited? You fucking kill me like it was an exhibtion and I’m supposed to be excited?! DO YOU WANT ME TO START SHOOTING CONFETTI OUT OF MY ASS, AARON?!”

Aaron moved back the couple of steps he had taken and continued even further, making David the closer one of the two. David didn’t say a thing, just looked at me, marveling at what he had just accomplished tonight. I walked up to him and stared down into his eyes. I had to hide my horror at what I saw in them, no human should ever have that gaze about them. He had the look of emptiness about him. There was nothing to his stare, not like there was at the beginning of the night.

“ Is this what you wanted, David? Did you get the results you so desperately craved? Did you enjoy killing me and the other poor guy just to reach this? I hope you’re fucking happy with yourselves, you sick fucks.” I now remember spitting at his feet as I turned toward the man door which Belle had somehow managed to unlock with her most likely broken wrists. When I walked out of the door, it quickly shut behind me, omitting cries from what I assumed to be Belle and heated discussion between Aaron and David. I double checked and made sure everything I needed was on me, until I reached into my inside pocket and realized that I didn’t have my recorder. For a moment I turned back toward the door, contemplating walking back in and taking my recorder back, but after some thought, I decided it wasn’t worth it and started my chilly walk back to my dorm, with many thoughts and philosophies of death to consider...

Over the next week or so I had tried telling multiple people and entities about what had transpired that night. I tried talking with the head of the sciences department, the guy said he never would’ve sanctioned an experiment like that and that he didn’t even know who those three were. I talked to many others, such as faculty members in the sciences, other student scientists, even board members for the university and yet no one seemed to know these individuals or even be able to acknowledge their existence. After being treated like I was crazy by my classmates and roommates alike, I decided that it was time that I brought this sequence of events to the local authorities. I went down to the police station, where everyone knew me by first name due to how frequently I was checking on what had happened the previous night. I sat down with Officer Gerardo, a fine looking hispanic man who was always a good listener and especially good with student related incidents happening off campus. But this time, it seemed that I couldn’t get through to him that what I was saying was even real. The conversation went something like this:

“So let me get this straight, Tim. You get invited to see this live test of three students who are claiming they’re going to reanimate a dead body? Then instead of using an already dead body, they decided to use you, kill you with the serums used for lethal injection, then when you were good and dead, use their concoction they came up with to bring you back to life, fully cognitive and with no issues?”

I nodded my head insistently, he was pretty much on the nose, except for the fact that I could only sleep for two hours at night before I was wide awake like I had just chugged a giant cup of coffee. Officer Gerardo looked me over for a second just like Belle had whenever she saw me.

“Okay, look Tim. You’re a great writer, especially your work in the magazine at the university. I read every entry that gets published and honestly, your work scares the shit out of me. But you can’t believe me to expect that you were killed and brought back to life! That’s something that only happens in science fiction movies! This type of science and/or medicine just doesn’t exist.”

“Yes it does, Officer!” I said, slightly raising my voice though at the time I hadn’t meant to. “How could I make this up? I’ve never written a story in the first person, why would I start now? And why would I make it about me? Please Officer Gerardo, you have to believe me…No one else will. I can even take you to the building where it took place! I can take you there right now and prove that I’m telling the truth.” I proceeded to give him the address on an index card and wait while he talked with his boss about seeing if he could get a search warrant of some kind. A few minutes later, he came back and grabbed his coat, slipping his arms through the arms of the coat. “Let’s go Tim, apparently the city of Coralville owns that building, they gave us permission over the phone to check it out.” I hopped out of my seat and followed him out of the police station and to his squad car. When we got in, we sat there for a moment with the engine running. He turned to me and said, “Tim, it’s just us now…What the hell actually happened last week?”

“I told you exactly what happened Gerardo! Why would I lie to you?” I asked, I was surprised and honestly shocked that he would even ask that question.

“You’re an aspiring journalist, Tim, we have to look out for people who may be possibly making some shit up to start a phony investigation and get a hot article on the front page to pad the resume…It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.”

“If you don’t want to believe that I’m telling the truth, fine.” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and looking out of the windshield into the street. “I’ll just have to show you at that hangar or whatever kind of building it is.” Officer Gerardo let out a long sigh and lit a cigarette as he put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot. The drive to the location wasn’t very long from the station, ten minutes maximum. Then without a doubt, the very same building that I had died in a week prior was still standing there. I pointed it out to Officer Gerardo and he pulled into the building’s parking lot.

Gerardo spent maybe five seconds looking at it before sighing and lighting another cigarette in what I thought to be frustration. “What?” I asked, trying to understand his frustration.

He pointed to the building that had clear rust developing at the bottom of its walls and around the frames of the large garage door on the side and the man door, “It’s abandoned Tim! Nothing’s been there for years more than likely! There’s nothing here. You’re wasting my time, let's go.” He started to put the car in gear but I turned to him quickly, begging him to stop the car. Officer Gerardo put the car back into park.

“Listen Officer. Please. Can we please just take five minutes to check this out? If we go in there and there’s nothing, then we can leave and I’ll admit that I’m losing my marbles.”

Officer Gerardo sat there for a moment, with the expression of regret that he even made the drive out there in the first place, then turned the car off and got out, throwing the keys in his pocket. I followed suit, trailing behind him across the parking lot to the man door of the building. Without hesitating, he opened the door and a wave of musty odor and dust shot at the two of us. We had to back up a few steps, coughing and waving away the blast of dust. After we got ourselves together a little, the officer entered the dark building. I hesitated at first, not wanting to be reminded of the wicked exhibition that was made of me. But I knew that it had to be done. I walked in behind Officer Gerardo.

I couldn’t believe my eyes…The room was full of abandoned cars. Stacked on top of each other like books on a shelf or like kids playing with Lincoln Logs. I rushed past him and started to panic. No, no, no, no. No god damned way. This fucking thing was empty as can be barely a week ago. THEY FUCKING KILLED ME IN HERE. Officer Gerardo came up behind me, putting a hand on my shuddering shoulder.

“Tim, you see what I mean? There’s nothing here…It’s just junkyard storage and forgotten scraps of metal. Nothing happened here. You must’ve had a bad dream or something.”

“No Officer! I know what happened! Why would I lie about fucking dying?! It was right here!” I pointed at a rusted out Lincoln sedan. “There was a Y-shaped table here! With chairs surrounding it, and a bright light above it, and there were carts for tools…Where did it all go…”

Officer Gerardo wore an expression I had seen many times before. It was an expression of sadness, of pity. I knew right then that he didn’t believe it. He might’ve believed that I believed it, but he certainly didn’t think it ever happened. He put his arm around my shoulder as I did my utmost to control my breathing and prevent hyperventilation.

“Tim, let’s go back to the station and see about making some calls, like your parents. Whatever you’ve been through, it’s beyond what I can do okay?”

That’s the moment where I knew that no one would ever believe my story, that whenever I told it, or whomever I told it to, they would just think it was another one of my crazy horror stories that I was putting together for the magazine. I nodded my head to Gerardo and went back to the station. I sat there at Officer Gerardo’s desk for about an hour and a half before my parents walked in and saw me. They rushed over and hugged me. My mother, of course, asked if I was okay and my father asked if I was having any issues with people. My father was never the emotional type, “A Man’s Man”, I think is the best way to describe him. I sat down with them and told them what had happened. After roughly half an hour, I wrapped up my story and just like everyone else, there was the look of disbelief, but this time, there was also a sincere look of concern with it.

Only moments after I finished telling my story, Officer Gerardo came to his desk and asked to speak to my parents privately. They went around the corner into a room that had windows on all sides. Though I did my best to mind my own business, I couldn’t help but side-eye them as they talked together. It became rapidly clear within moments that the situation didn’t appear to be good. They were only in the room for maybe five minutes before they came back out. My father stood back with Officer Gerardo and let my mother do the talking. With having to hold back tears, she told me that I was very sick, and that I needed to get some help. I was over the moon at that moment! Officer Gerardo had come to his senses and had convinced my parents to get me some help! I was going to finally be believed! I agreed and got into the car with them, weirdly enough though, Officer Gerardo came as well.

“Why are you riding with us, Officer? We’re just driving to the hospital.” I said, going between looking out the window and back at him in the front seat with my father who was driving. He looked ahead at the road, not saying anything more than, “Just making sure everything goes smoothly.” I didn’t understand what he meant until we got to the hospital and realized that it wasn’t the general hospital, it was a hospital for the mentally ill and challenged. My father pulled into the drive up and before I had a moment to protest, my car door was opened and I was helped out of the vehicle. This is when I understood why it had taken an hour and a half for my parents to show up at the police department. They only lived half an hour away…I guess the other hour was Gerardo explaining the situation and my folks making the arrangements.

My parents didn’t even attempt to say goodbye as I was taken inside the building, only watched with empty and somber eyes as I was whisked out of sight…That was in April of nineteen seventy-one. I’ve been in this institution for about fifty years now, well, it’ll officially be fifty years in two months. The last five decades have been interesting and yet boring at the same time. At first, I was thought to be severely schizophrenic, seeing things that weren’t there and/or hearing things that only I could hear. But I shortly proved that wasn’t the case at all. The doctors and other various specialists also had a hard time trying to disprove my scars from where the needles went into my head, chest, and arm. Unlike the arm needle that cleanly healed up, the chest and head scars were a different discussion. They were rather large and strong needles, meaning a larger needle, making a larger hole, but you get what I’m saying, I won’t continue to ramble much longer.

They still have no idea what’s wrong or what was done to me. I have made some headway though! I’ve finally convinced them that there was indeed an experiment done on me around the time I had continually claimed. The biggest piece of evidence is that I haven’t seemed to age a single day since that night. I’m seventy, turning seventy-one in a matter of a couple of weeks, yet I still look the same as I did when I was twenty. My physique is the same, skin hasn’t begun to wrinkle, my voice hasn’t become hoarse, my hair color hasn’t even remotely begun to become a mix of salt and pepper. I’m quite literally no different than I was fifty years ago.

I’ve become a marvel of medical science and even join the doctors occasionally when they go to lectures and guest speaking, mainly to show me off like the freak show that I guess I am, like the character Charlie in Flowers for Algernon. But I don't mind anymore. I get to leave the institution and be in the outside world again. I get to see how much the world has evolved and changed for the better and sometimes for the worse. The only part that I dislike is when I have to go back. I’ve asked many times to be able to finally leave, to be able to join the outside world again and do what I still think is my destiny to do. But I still find myself going back to my room at the end of our trips and stuck to reading my books or writing some story as I tend to do when I’ve read all of the books that I’ve acquired for the day or week.

There are many things that I wish to have seen throughout my long stay at this establishment. Seeing computers be put into cars, phones that you can carry in your pocket, hell, it would’ve been cool to see that band Nirvana play once or twice before the guy killed himself, but most of all, I’ve never once heard of Aaron and David ever again. They disappeared off of the face of the map, and I still become angry just thinking about it. Though I’ve mostly come to accept that I’ll most likely be here forever, and I mean quite literally, I still want to know what happened to them. I want to know that they finally got caught, finally received justice for the hideous and awful experiments they and their peers had performed on innocent people. I want them to see what they’ve done and to look at me, and see what they’ve created. So they can see that they may be able to restore life, but that they’re also able to destroy it at the same time. If either of you are reading this right now, you had better hope that I don’t ever get out of this place…I’ve had nothing but time to think about how to kill you both.

Those questions stayed in a rotation floating through my thoughts as the day passed on, morning turning to afternoon, and then afternoon turning to evening. I sat half-reading and half pondering the same thoughts as I paced the library until the librarian told me she was closing up for the night. I thanked her for letting me stay there as I always did when I needed a quiet place to decompress. With it being eight-thirty, I decided that I could start walking to a bus station to wait for a ride across town to Coralville and try to find this lab. It didn’t take me long to accomplish my goal, by nine-thirty I had been dropped off at a stop just three blocks away from the address I was given. As I walked down the street, I noticed that this neighborhood had a run down look to it. A lot of houses I passed had boards over the window frames, peeling paint on the porches and sides of the houses, the smell of rotten trash and urine. I guessed back then that nobody had lived in those houses for years if not a couple decades.

The scenery was more or less the same for the first two blocks that I walked, occasionally there’d be a person in their parked car, either sleeping or lighting what could be many things though at the time I assumed it was a joint or pipe. As I got to the beginning of the third block I started to see a large building take shape behind some apartment complexes that like the other houses in the neighborhood, looked abandoned for quite some time. The building looked like a smaller airport hangar, light gray in color and surprisingly, some roof windows and even something that looked like a satellite dish that the military would have but on a much smaller scale, then there was a large sliding door in the front and middle of the structure facing the street with a man door on the south end. There were about nine or ten cars parked in front of the hangar in the small parking lot, most of them looking like the average vehicle, though one was a Pontiac Firebird and made me wonder whose father was loaded enough to get their son or daughter something like that.

When I reached the man door, I tried turning the handle but it was locked. I ended up having to knock on the door and wait for about five minutes before I heard the deadbolt release and saw the door open a crack, seeing half of a familiar face peering through the crack. It was half of the face of Belle, looking both excited yet exhausted at the same time. She looked me up and down, as if the clothes I had chosen were questionably appropriate for such an occasion. After a few moments of her looking me over, the door opened wider and there was Aaron with the same smile he wore yesterday in room two-hundred and twenty and waved me in. 

The inside of the hangar was very dark, the only noticeable lighting being small bright lamps posted around on scattered tables and a large bright light behind clearish curtains in the middle of the room. “We still have a little bit of time before we plan to get started, take a look around, my friend. We have some of our past experiments spread about on the tables you could give a glance at while you wait.”Aaron patted my shoulder and went off to a back room. Belle looked at me one more time before following him. I turned from them and looked around the room once again, this time noticing nine or ten people wandering around from table to table, occasionally making a comment to one another. I started to look at these experiments myself and found myself getting slightly anxious. 

On one of the first tables, there was a heart in a clear case that was set up to a machine that was pumping reddish clear liquid through it. I didn’t know what I was looking at until I read the placard next to the clear case: This is an experiment most recently concluded and proven to be a success. We wanted to see if we could get a heart to start pumping again from a state of not being used for over five years. The machine you see is pumping blood into the heart and from a serum we concocted, the heart's electrical currents started back up and started pushing the blood through its system. This heart in the future can be put into someone’s chest to keep them alive. 

Just as I found myself getting anxious, I also found myself getting chills down my spine, giving me gooseflesh on my arms and legs, making the hair stand up. I took a step back and glanced around the room at the other tables, finding that all of the tables had an odd experiment they had performed at one point or another. Those around me were talking with excited, hushed voices. They seemed thrilled about whatever they might get to witness that night. What the fuck is going on here? Are these kinds of tests and experiments really being approved by the university? Is any of this even legal?

I kept my head on a swivel, always checking on the door I came in to remind myself of where the exit was, in case I needed to make a quick escape. I was even contemplating whether or not I should leave right then and there when a voice from behind me broke the side conversations and brought attention to the curtain in the middle of the room. 

“Hello everyone! Thank you for coming out tonight! If you’d all like to take a seat in the chairs right inside the curtain, we’ll be beginning very shortly,” Aaron's voice called out. Everyone started making their way to the curtain and finding their seats. At that point, I was thoroughly scared out of my mind for what was possibly to come and started to back up toward the exit. As I made to turn and walk straight for it, Belle was already there and had locked the door, putting a bike lock through the bolt, as if to make sure no one could leave until they were good and ready. Belle and I made eye contact as I stood frozen, ignoring the occasional bead of sweat that ran down my face. 

Belle approached me wearing a clear apron and cap on her head, it reminded me of a surgeon. When she got within arms reach, she looked up at me, with a smirk on her face, “Come on Tim…Don’t want to miss the show, right?” I shook my head slowly and followed her as she started toward the curtain where everyone else had already gathered. When I walked into the clear dome of the curtain, there was a singular large light in the middle, illuminating a table made of stainless steel, with a head pad at one end and two smaller, thinner pieces of stainless steel that stretched out at the sides. If one didn’t know better, they’d think that it looked exactly like an execution table. This table was covered with straps. Two on each small wing, two on the head pad, and three found on the main slab of steel, all made of strong, brown leather, fresh out of the package. 

It was quiet beside the one or two side conversations happening on both sides of me, I couldn’t tell what either of the discussions were about but at the moment I was too mentally preoccupied to care. After a few moments of sitting there, patiently waiting, or in my case, impatiently and anxiously waiting, we heard footsteps from outside of the curtain that were approaching. The flaps of the curtain opened and there were Aaron and David, in surgeons apparel, David pushing a cart of tools and gods know what else in the drawers and on the top. He rolled it to the opposite side that I was sitting on, and started preparing some things, muttering things under their breath as they were doing so. After a minute that felt like hours, the three dressed as surgeons turned to their audience. 

“Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us tonight.” Aaron started, walking around the table and facing us. “Tonight is a night that David, Belle, and I have been waiting for and anticipating, for a very long time. We hope to test and achieve a hypothesis we had made two years ago, and have been working tirelessly to be ready for this moment. Tonight, we hope to change history.” 

Already, I had the feeling that something very weird was going on, maybe even illegal. As Aaron kept on with his introduction, I caught Belle and David occasionally glancing my way, nodding occasionally or shaking their head at each other after a muttering match. I could feel my anxiety increase with every minute I spent in this place, already counting the seconds until I could leave. I tuned back to Aaron as he continued his spiel, “...we are going to attempt what many have said to be impossible. We are going to bring a lifeform back to life tonight! We are going to take a body that is dead…and bring them back to life and hopefully, with full cognitive brain function! And we have the perfect subject to try this on!” The looks on the other audience members weren’t what I was expecting at all…They were excited, some to the point of barely being able to stay in their seats. Some were nail biting, others were still stuck with their mouths agape at the mere thought of reviving a dead body, the room was turning electric in ways that were almost indescribable. I seemed to be the only one that didn’t find this kind of speech to be riveting, I found it horrifying! Not to mention absolutely insane! These people seemed to legitimately think that they could bring the dead back to life! Did they truly think this was possible? Or had they read H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West - Reanimator one too many times?

“Now, with the introduction out of the way and the blood pumping in our veins, let's introduce our test subject tonight…” Aaron said, looking around at his spectators. Everyone started to look at each other, wondering if the subject would come through the curtain flaps just like they had, or was the subject already in the room with us? Belle and David then walked over to me and put their hands out. “Mr. Timothy Steinbrock! Thank you so much for volunteering yourself to be our brave subject for tonight’s making of history!” Aaron exclaimed as everyone around me clapped. ME?! The subject?! NO…NO! I screamed in my head as I turned my head rapidly, hoping to find a moment to escape, but no opportunity of the sort was available. My occasional beads of sweat turned into a rapid perspiration as I realized finally what Aaron and David meant when they said that they had found the perfect subject…

As Belle and David reached their hands out farther to help me up, I grabbed the sides of my chair and held on for dear life, using every muscle in my arms and core to make myself an unmoving boulder. I looked back over at Aaron who just stood there with a look of pity, and then said to David, “Davie, looks like Mr. Steinbrock’s going to need something to help him relax a little, do you mind?” Relax a little? What the fu-” and before I could reach the end of my thought I felt a pinch in my right shoulder and felt everything start to loosen up. I slowly, because that was as fast as I could move my head, looked over at my right shoulder and watched as David pulled a long needle out of my arm. My grip on the chair loosened, and then eventually gave way, and I started to slide down. Belle caught me before I slipped to the floor while David picked me up and carried me to the steel table. 

I couldn’t move my body with any sort of conviction, it was like my motor skills had been stolen from me by an invisible phantom. As Belle and David started to move my limbs and strap me into the table, Aaron once again started speaking to the audience, “Now, I know that may have seemed like an odd way of getting someone to agree to be our subject, some would even say it was illegal and immoral, well I agree with you. But! Knowing that we had limited room to fit an extra guest, we still made room for the man, so we, or at least I, thought no harm no foul. Besides, he’ll be back with us in no time! You’ll all see for yourself! We’ll have Mr. Steinbrock back, good as new within minutes of our wonderful experiment’s beginning!” 

He looked down at me and gave me the same smile he gave me when he first met me in the sciences building yesterday afternoon. How he could give me that same smile I’ll never know, because I more than likely had an expression of complete terror covering my sweat drowned face. 

Aaron leaned down as he started to fasten the straps across my chin and forehead. I attempted to move my head and evade the leather but it was no use, he had my forehead strapped in before I knew what could happen next. He started to fasten the chin strap when he began whispering to me, “You know Tim, I actually like you. Though I find you a little arrogant and full of yourself, you’re also a straight up person and I find a lot of value in that.” 

“Then why me? Why not anyone else? Anyone could’ve worked for this right?” I fought to whisper back. 

“No, unfortunately. The kind of specimen we needed is exactly what you are. You’re healthy all the way down the list my friend. You’re not only physically fit and physiologically sound, but also mentally very unique. These are traits that we needed to ensure that this would be a success.” He adjusted the strap across my forehead, tightening it a little bit more as I felt tugging across one ankle, and then the other, now knowing that I couldn’t run off even if I wanted to. I looked back up at Aaron who had now put a surgical mask over his face.

“Aaron…what happened to the last person before me? You said that something didn’t work out…Can you tell me what happened to them?” He stopped what he was doing for a moment, possibly contemplating whether or not he should answer the question, or maybe how he should answer it if anything. 

“Well Tim, there was a freshman out of Cedar Rapids who looked to be very promising for a long time. He thought our test was amazing! He was more than willing to do it. One day we decided that we were going to use a test version on him to see what it would do…A complete failure that test was, and our poor man from Cedar Rapids ended up not enrolling in classes for the next semester, matter of fact, he didn’t show up to classes after that night either, such a shame…”

These sick bastards…They killed that kid! He had his whole life ahead of him and these people took advantage of his willingness to help and destroyed him…I looked away from Aaron and decided to stare at the ceiling as I felt the rest of the straps fasten first across my arms, and then my waist, and then eventually across my chest. I couldn’t move anything, nothing at all…This was to be my fate so I thought. Moments that felt like eternity passed in silence before my eyes as I thought about every mistake I made and how I could’ve prevented them or fixed them, remembering every moment I had with my family, knowing I would never see them again. I fought back tears harder than I ever had in my entire life. I wanted to die with a little dignity left to my name when all was said and done. Our devilish ringleader started speaking once again like the king he thought he was. 

“Alright! Ladies and Gentlemen…Who’s ready to see if we can bring life back from the dead?” Though I couldn’t see them, I knew that there were mixes of fright, anxiousness, and overall excitement. “There will be two serums used. The first, is the natural mix of serums used for lethal injection in prisons on death row. If anyone is concerned that he will be in pain as he goes through this process, I assure you that he will feel no pain. The second serum that’ll be used, is the very concoction that we’ll be testing tonight to bring life back to the dead. Our serum that we named ‘BDA’. This serum, if we have corrected it, should within moments of entering the heart, start the heart pumping again and within moments of entering the brain, revive cognitive function! Bringing back the very Mr. Steinbrock that we see lying on this table at this very moment.” This mad man is literally going to kill me and try to bring me back to life with the use of some god damned liquid?!

“If everyone is ready, let’s begin.” Aaron said, walking around the right side of me. David walked up on my left, while it looked like Belle had been standing at my feet, ready to assist either of the men if needed. David took a pair of scissors from the cart and started cutting my shirt up the middle, exposing my torso. Fucking asshole, I liked this shirt. Then both Aaron and David used a marker to make marks on me, marking where solid veins were. There was a mark made just to the left of my sternum, one just below my right temple, and another in the crevice of my elbow on my right arm. With the marking finishing up, it was my time to die. I glanced over at Aaron, who looked calm as he had been the entire night, but when I looked at David, he looked nervous, a disaster waiting to happen. I thought for a second that maybe he truly was forced into this, that maybe Aaron had made promises of fame and fortune.

“David? Listen to me man,” I started whispering at him, “If you don’t want to do this, call it off! Please David! I didn’t sign up for this! Have a heart man…” David used a towel at his side to wipe sweat from his brow and nose, shaking his head after doing so, most likely shaking out the last bit of his nerves. He leaned down for just a moment and said, “Shut the fuck up! This wasn’t his idea, it was mine…We’re doing this, you’re going to be back with us before you know it so just ride it out.” He straightened out his back again and proceeded to do last checks of his needles and other possibly needed tools like scalpels and clamps. 

Aaron double checked his measurements in his syringe and then nodded to David, the moment had arrived, what I had thought to be my final moment. I felt a strong pinch in the crevice of my right arm and then a sensation of everything slowing down. My breathing started becoming slower, my heart thumped less and less as the seconds went on, I could almost feel the blood starting to settle in place as my vision started to tunnel. I didn’t realize how much the blood running through your body could keep you warm, because now I felt the coolness of the breeze coming from under the hangar walls, the icy cold touch of the table I was laying on. For a few moments nothing seemed to happen, then I felt my eyes force themselves close and then there was nothing. I heard nothing but what sounded to me like rushing water, crashing against cliffs, the wind pummeling my ears as I walked through it, like ever-rumbling thunder on a stormy night. I heard all of these things yet I could see nothing but blackness. There was nothing to see but the everlasting night which was death. It wasn’t too bad, all told, peaceful even. No worries of grades, not having to deal with the outcome of student loans and finding jobs left and right as a journalist, only peaceful blackness and rushing waves of soothing harmony. 

I’m still not sure how long I spent in that void of restful midnight, but as if hit by a freight train, air rushed back into my lungs and my heart beat at an insane pace. My eyes shot open and a large bright light was hovering above me. Meanwhile I heard screams, whimpers, even shrieking and gasping as I attempted to move my head and observe my surroundings. Was I dead? No that can’t be right, I was here at some point I think.

“Holy shit…” I heard someone say just above my head as I continued to squirm and try to untangle myself from the restraints I found myself in. I stopped after probably ten or twelve seconds of this, running out of breath much faster than I had thought I would. I laid there trying to catch my breath, eyes burning from the light and feeling as if they might burst. I turned my head to the left to see a familiar face taking off a surgical mask, to my right were two more familiar faces. The man on my left started to ask me some questions.

“What is your name?” The man asked. What kind of stupid question is that? Are all doctors or scientists like this?

“Timothy Steinbrock? Was I supposed to be someone else?” I asked him, wondering if any other odd question would come out of his mouth.

“Timothy, where do you think you are right now?” The man asked curiously. To be quite truthful I didn’t quite know at that moment. So I asked, “Maybe if I looked around, past the table I can’t really see my surroundings, with the bright light shining in my eyes and whatever the hell is holding me still.” The man looked at me with hesitation, like he wasn’t sure why he would do that. I had no idea what was going on still, wondering why the hell I was even on this torture table of sorts. Both of the men and the woman slowly and cautiously unfastened the straps and I felt the relief of being able to stretch out my limbs again. Looking around, I started to see more and more familiarity with my surroundings. The strange people sitting in chairs around the table, the clear curtain behind them, and the empty chair that had a coat hanging over the back of it. Is that my coat? That’s gotta be my coat. Why is it over there? Wait, why am I here? Why’s my shirt cut open? What the fuck is going on?...These thoughts traversed through my mind at the speed of light and then all at once, I remembered what I was doing there. These crazy people had just killed me for their god damn experiment!

Wait…If this is the experiment hangar…and I’m talking and moving…did their test work? Did this crazy man’s dream actually become reality? Without a moment’s hesitation I got up off of the table and put my jacket on, zipping it up and walking out of the flap. Footsteps followed behind me as I started towards the man door at the end of the building. Belle had rushed out in front of me and blocked my way. Stopping, I looked at her with an anger that could hardly be controlled, the heat of my emotions flowing through me like a strong current of magma.

“Wait! We still have after serum questions and tests to perform! You can’t leave yet!” She yelled, putting her hands up to my chest. I grabbed both of her wrists with my hands and applied a pressure to them that I didn’t even know I was capable of before. I started to feel things popping and crushing under my grip as she dropped to her knees, whimpering in agony. I kneeled down and met her eye level, saying, “If you don’t open that door, I’m going to make your buddies over have to test the serum on you and see if its miracle properties work a second time. Open, the fucking door.” With that I let go of her wrists and watched as she momentarily cradled them in her lap, silently crying some more. A couple more sets of footsteps approached from behind me as I stared at the partially broken woman on the floor. I turned around to see Aaron and David looking freaked out.

“What the hell Tim? You should be excited with us!” Aaron said, taking a couple small steps toward me.

“I should be excited? You fucking kill me like it was an exhibtion and I’m supposed to be excited?! DO YOU WANT ME TO START SHOOTING CONFETTI OUT OF MY ASS, AARON?!”

Aaron moved back the couple of steps he had taken and continued even further, making David the closer one of the two. David didn’t say a thing, just looked at me, marveling at what he had just accomplished tonight. I walked up to him and stared down into his eyes. I had to hide my horror at what I saw in them, no human should ever have that gaze about them. He had the look of emptiness about him. There was nothing to his stare, not like there was at the beginning of the night.

“ Is this what you wanted, David? Did you get the results you so desperately craved? Did you enjoy killing me and the other poor guy just to reach this? I hope you’re fucking happy with yourselves, you sick fucks.” I now remember spitting at his feet as I turned toward the man door which Belle had somehow managed to unlock with her most likely broken wrists. When I walked out of the door, it quickly shut behind me, omitting cries from what I assumed to be Belle and heated discussion between Aaron and David. I double checked and made sure everything I needed was on me, until I reached into my inside pocket and realized that I didn’t have my recorder. For a moment I turned back toward the door, contemplating walking back in and taking my recorder back, but after some thought, I decided it wasn’t worth it and started my chilly walk back to my dorm, with many thoughts and philosophies of death to consider...

I think back on it with disgust, that awful night in which I witnessed the side of science that the intellectual world turns its back to. A universe of individuals with hideous ideas that accomplish ever more horrifying results. Why do such people go beyond just spontaneous curiosity to attempting to bring chaos and dismay to their societies? We may never know, and hopefully for the betterment of humanity. I was unaware on that cold spring night in the early days of nineteen seventy-one that these thoughts would forever cross my mind. 

It was in the second half of my sophomore year at the University of Iowa, only two classes away from finishing the rest of my general education courses and being able to finally start the courses for what I was to make my career, to be a newspaper journalist. Since I was a boy of eleven, I had always had the fascination of stories. Stories of all kinds and fashions, from the unfolding of local events in my town’s newspaper, to the large imagination of other worldly suspense and horror that inflicted minds in the paragraphs of H.P. Lovecraft’s work. Through those years, I was only an avid reader, never going anywhere without a book, always ready to dive back into whatever it was that I had that day and completely immerse myself. 

By fifteen, I had made up my mind that I wanted to be the one to write the narrative, that I wanted to be the one to catch a reader's undivided attention and give them a world to fall into as I had been given in my youth. My early works at first were mediocre at best, and no story that wasn’t at least relatively predictable. Stories of romances gone wrong, adventures of olden times, pirates looking for treasure, that sort of thing. But as I got on through my high school years, my writing matured more with every day. I eventually started writing articles for my school’s newspaper, little two hundred word articles about that week's pep rally, or a fun game that one of the gym coaches had invented to keep their class interesting, nothing that truly grabbed my interest…Until I was able to get my job with the town newspaper as one of their junior journalists. 

Still finishing up high school, I ceased to write for my school and dedicated all of my talents and time to my new position. At first, like at school, I was stuck writing about small things, like local city hall events like playground openings, and traffic light petitions. Before long, I began to grow bored of these assignments too, persistently asking for a real assignment from my editor, telling him that I was ready for something serious. After three months of asking on a regular basis, he finally humored my numerous requests and gave me the kind of assignment I had been waiting for, A murder behind the bowling alley of a seventeen-year-old girl from the town over. This was the assignment that called to me and told me that the darker things in life were what I wanted to write about. So from then on until the end of the summer when I graduated from high school, I wrote of all sorts of odd and horrifying events happening in the area. Everything from thefts and arson, to violent crimes such as the occasional sexual assault and bar fights, only on two rare occasions did I get to write about a murder or attempted murder. 

During all of these assignments, I also had time to keep writing my fiction stories, tales that got darker and darker the older I became. Some made it into the newspaper, most were rejected and stayed in a folder at home, only read once in a while by family and friends. But these stories and articles I wrote were in my resume that I sent along with my application to the University of Iowa, hoping to be accepted and enrolled in their Journalism program along with possibly getting to do some things with creative writing. 

Students in this program were all constantly trying to get published in the university’s newspaper, which printed once every two weeks, and their literary magazine, which only printed volumes once a month. Every student that was with you in class was your friend, but also your competition when deadlines came up. I, personally, had a much easier time getting my fictional stories published in the magazine, speaking that young people at the time of the late sixties and early seventies were always going against the norms of society, accepting the strange and abnormal. This attitude towards the strange and weird made my stories of the supernatural, dark creatures of the night and underground very popular across the campus. Multiple professors in my writing classes told me that I had good chances to be an author, but I still dreamed of being a journalist first and a novelist second. 

I was searching around the massive campus, which was in the city of Iowa City, Iowa, and the neighboring city of Coralville, always on the lookout for something worth reporting about. I visited the police department every morning to ask about that night's arrests, checking message boards at multiple buildings about upcoming events, checking schedules for sporting events in the off chance that something interesting might happen like a fight or an injury. It sounds awful that I’d wanted to write about that sort of incident, which I agree, but I needed to get published as much as possible and those sorts of stories got the student body’s attention.

One afternoon, after I finished attending the day's classes, those being American Literature and Journalistic Composition, I decided to walk over to the science buildings on campus. I didn’t venture over yonder very often, due to it being out of the way of my normal daily activities, but classes had ended earlier than usual and I had time on my hands. After a forty-five minute walk, cutting through buildings and some neighborhoods I hadn’t discovered before, I reached the main building and walked into the lobby. It was much different than most of the buildings on campus, much cleaner and interestingly designed, with its sharp, intelligent edges on the corners and smooth surfaces. There weren’t any outrageous colors either, just a mix of whites, grays and the occasional black. I was mesmerized that something like this even existed at the university, not having been to the main science building until just then. Shortly after stepping in, a student who was working the information desk up front approached me and asked if she could help with anything. After snapping out of my awkward daze I asked her if I could see the bulletin board to see about any events coming up. She smiled and gladly showed me down the main hallway until we reached a large bulletin board covered in fliers of people needed for participation in experiments and about upcoming presentations for new discoveries being made. If I had to guess, there were at least fifty or sixty fliers hanging off of that board, all extremely detailed and small printed in most cases.

It felt like it had taken hours to sort through most of the fliers, but realistically had only taken maybe thirty-five minutes at most. Most experiments or presentations didn’t seem all that interesting, at least to a non-scientific person like myself. Things like creating different color lasers, watching robotic arms pick things up and move those items around. There was one that involved mice, but was mainly just watching them run through mazes looking for cheese. Though I found robotic arms and lasers very interesting, I thought that the people who would be reading the article wouldn’t necessarily have the same opinion. I was starting to feel like I had just wasted almost an hour and a half of my time when I spotted a grayish-white flier with bold black font. It read, See the Abnormal come to Life!

Upon reading the description, it was a couple of student scientists that were doing some tests on cell regeneration and cognitive function, and even seeing about the chance of revival of a lifeform who has already been confirmed dead. It sounded completely fake and honestly, kind of silly, but I saw it as a win-win kind of situation. If it was silly and a load of dung then I got an entertaining article to write for the paper and got to have a laugh while doing it. If it turned out to be true, then I would be the first journalist on scene to report on their miracle experiments and possibly get my ticket into big time journalism on the national level after graduation. The flier also had the time that it would take place and that it was by previous reservation only, if anyone had questions they were to meet with one of them in room two-hundred and twenty on the second floor where one of the students running the project could make those arrangements. 

I immediately walked up the stairs at the end of the hall and up to the second floor where I ended up trekking to the complete other side of the building, where the room was located. The hallway was an interesting thing to look at as I passed through. Photos of past experiments being conducted, newspaper clippings of previous students showing off their results or findings, even some who had already graduated and gone off to do amazing and fantastic things. These types of exhibits lined the walls all the way down to the end of the hall where I found the room. When I walked in, there were three people sitting on stools around a lab table with binders out. The room instantly blasted me with a strong smell of bleach and other assorted chemicals. Posters of the human anatomy and specific organs lined the gray walls and shined bright off of their laminated covers. The group of three were two men in lab coats who seemed to be going over the preparation of a small lab session and a female who seemed to be their assistant, the men telling her what kind of tubes and tools they may or may not need for their session. When the door shut behind me all three of them looked my way. There was a silence as the three of them eyed me and checked me out. Finally, the male with short brown hair and a pencil thin mustache stood up. He wasn’t very tall, maybe stood at a height of five-feet and six inches, had a very shy and nervous demeanor, wearing what looked like street clothes and tennis shoes underneath his lab coat. 

“Uh…What can we…help you with?” He asked, slightly struggling to find the words to use. 

I slowly but confidently walked up to the table and put my hand out in front of the standing man. “Timothy Steinbrock, journalist for the University newspaper. I was interested in possibly being able to see your experiment tomorrow night.” The man looked at me with confusion, like he didn’t know what I was talking about. 

“The flier?” he asked, looking back at the other man at the table. The other man with very dark hair, almost black, stood up with a smirk shaking his head. This man, unlike the short awkward one, was much the opposite in demeanor. For one he was much taller, roughly around 6 feet tall, he had a full beard that was very well maintained, and he seemed very comfortable when it came to talking with people. “David! How did you forget that we put up a flier for our regeneration experiment? You made the damn thing!” David stood there once again confused before having a moment that seemed like an epiphany and a smile crept on his face, “Right! Sorry, it’s been awhile since we put the thing up, I forgot about it completely.”

“Not a problem! If I remember right, the flier says that if someone wants to see this experiment that they need to reserve a spot ahead of time?” I asked, trying my best to take some pressure off of his shoulders.

The tall man with dark hair nodded and put his hand out to be shaken, “That it does! I’m Aaron Walker, and that’s David Keiyse. We have a friend who runs his own laboratory across town in Coralville and he’s just a little, well, odd about how many people he likes having in the lab. So, unfortunately we can’t have very many people to see the experiments but at least we’ll have a place to do them in the first place, better to have a limited crowd than no crowd at all.” I shook hands with him and nodded my head, understanding that someone didn’t want a bunch of strangers stampeding through their space, especially their work space, and that these guys were lucky that he was willing to offer up his space at all. 

“So, can I make a reservation with you two? I was really hoping to write an article about your endeavors and experiments for the university paper and shine some light on your work and the sciences as a whole. Would that be okay?” I asked, trying to gauge the reactions of the three in the room. Aaron looked like he didn't have any issue with it at all, though David and the woman who had yet to introduce herself looked rather hesitant. 

“I don’t know…Having you be there might put a damper on the experience if our other visitors know that you’re a journalist…” David mumbled out. The woman nodded her head as she went back to cleaning some scalpels and clamps. Aaron got up and put his arm around David’s shoulders giving him a little shake. “Come on guys! We’ve been waiting for someone from the media to finally take some notice right? This is a great opportunity. I don’t see a problem with it at all”. David and the woman looked over to Aaron with curious and confused expressions. “David, I think we can squeeze one more person in, can't we? I mean, again, there’s finally someone in the media who wants to write about something other than corporate greed or political scandals. He wants to write about our innovations and discoveries.” David still wore a concerned expression and then must’ve realized he wasn’t going to win and accepted defeat, dropping the look on his face and nodding toward Aaron. Aaron smiled back then and did some weird half bow air handshake with him and turned back to me. 

“Everything’s in place for you, but, because of the nature of our experiments and the people who signed up to see it, let’s try to make sure that your affiliation with the paper stays between us four. Timothy Steinbrock right?” Aaron asked, pulling out what looked like a list of names. I nodded back and spelled out how to write my name. I nodded my head and agreed that I wouldn’t reveal why I was there other than to see some science in action and that I could just take my notes on a small voice recorder than I could fit in my pocket.

“We want to start the main experiment by ten-thirty tomorrow night so make sure to get there a little early so you don’t miss anything okay? Here’s the address to the laboratory so you know where to go”, Aaron said, writing the address on an index card and handing it to me.  

“Sure thing man, thanks again.” I said, smiling at Aaron again before turning around and exiting the lab. As I was walking toward the door I heard the three of the talking in hushed tones. I wasn’t able to pick up all of it but I did hear something along the lines of “...David, we finally have a subject to try this on, you wanted to do it on some lame ass freshman with barely enough intelligence to pass high school. This guy is it! He’s the best subject we’ve seen so far…” I stopped and turned around, catching the group's attention again. “Another question, Tim?” Aaron asked, stepping away from their huddle. “I just heard that you found a new subject and was curious”. Aaron looked back at the other two and laughed nervously. He walked up to me and leaned in, “Well, between us, off the record I mean…” I nodded and agreed, “Well, finding the right subject for tomorrow night’s experiment has proven rather tricky but we finally found the perfect one to give us what we think will be the best results.”

I nodded, not necessarily understanding what he was getting at but I didn’t want to make myself out to be stupid so I went with it. Had I known then what I know now, I would’ve told them that I had changed my mind and would’ve never stepped foot in that building again and certainly wouldn’t have ever gone to the laboratory in Coralville.

I had spent the rest of the day resting easily, even going out of my way to eat a little extra for dinner that night at the cafeteria. I knew I had just secured the article of the year and easily would have something amazing for editors to read over in my resume. All I had to do was take some notes at this science fair if you could call it that and I would be golden. I went back to my dorm room and laid in bed staring at the ceiling, surrounded by posters of my favorite music artists and past articles that I was proud of, relieved that I finally found something different from the normal gig but also a tad bit nervous, hoping that this event I was going to would make for a good article, regardless of how good or poorly the results were.

I woke up the next morning and brushed my teeth, humming some song that I overheard from the radio in the common room last night as I was passing through. It might've been The Beatles or something I can’t quite remember. After getting dressed and picking up my bag, I started my normal hike from the dorm building to the English department. Unlike normal April weather, that day was rather cool, I’d even go as far as to say it was out right cold. Reading a thermometer outside of the English building, it said it was twenty degrees outside at seven-thirty that morning. I thought that it was odd, speaking that it was in the low fifties just the day prior, but I had learned through my many years living in the upper midwest that you could get any season just about any day of the year. When I entered the English Building, peeling off the jacket that I had to go back to my room for, I noticed that it was also very cold in the building as well, I instantly put the jacket back on. There was a note hanging from the bulletin board behind the information desk that usually sat abandoned. It read: Classes canceled due to Boilers not working properly. Classes in this building will resume upon finished maintenance of the boilers. All assignments due during the maintenance period are still due to your professors office at their assigned times. Sorry for the inconvenience. I was rather annoyed with that message, why hadn’t they sent some people to post these at the other dorms instead? At least people wouldn’t have to make the trek just to find out their time was wasted. Regardless, I wasn’t going to hang around if I didn’t have class. 

I didn’t know what to do at that point so I walked out of the building and started making my way toward the middle of campus, thinking that I might be able to find something to do at the library or something to pass the time until it was time to go to the presentation at the laboratory that night. As I got to the library, I thought it was closed too. There weren’t any cars in the parking lot except two parked on the side in the employee spots, nor did I see anyone walking by.

Taking my chances, I pulled on the doors and they were unlocked. The library was basically a ghost town. I walked in and noticed that I wasn’t alone, the librarian was sitting in her office which had windows on three sides so she could always have a constant eye on her surroundings. The low but sufficient light that came from the lamps posted on the tables and walls brought a wave of relief as I started to walk through and find a spot to set up camp. It’s an odd feeling to explain to those who aren’t readers but there’s just something about being surrounded by books that brings a sense of calm and relaxation to the soul. I started towards a table in the very rear of the room when I heard the hushed tones of loud whispers being traded in private conversation. I wasn’t normally one to eavesdrop and even now I hold to that, but when I was about to turn around to find a table away from these people, I had recognized the voices that were whispering to each other, it sounded a lot like Aaron and David…

I put my bag down on the closest table and tried to sneak my way into an aisle, which just turned out to be one of the many fiction sections, particularly romance. As I walked further down the aisle, the whispers got louder and louder, the closer I got, the more emotion and hesitation there was in the voices. It seemed to be a heated conversation. Once I got close enough to make out what was being said, I stood out of sight and tried to make my breathing as silent as possible.

“Inviting him was a bad idea, why did you tell him it was okay?” David asked, sounding like he was rather frustrated. 

“Why do I have to keep explaining this to you and Belle? Mentally, physically, and physiologically, he’s the perfect subject for the experiment tonight! We haven’t found anyone better who was interested in doing this for us…This is our best chance to get the results we’re looking for.” Aaron said, seemingly annoyed and exhausted from having this conversation that had probably started much before I arrived at the library. 

David got a little louder and said, “He’s one of them Aaron…If it doesn’t go exactly as we hypothesize we’re never going to find work anywhere...We’re going to look stupid in front of anyone who hears about it and we’re going to be laughing stocks even after we graduate.” I heard a long sigh being blown out while silence came from the still heated David.

“Look…David…I’ll make a deal with you. If tonight doesn’t go as planned and people hear about it, I’ll go public and tell everyone it was all my idea and that I blackmailed you and Belle into helping me by saying I’d spread some nasty rumors to potential employers or something…Okay?” There came another long silence as I continued to stay hidden around the corner. Finally there was a sigh coming from who I assumed to be David, “Okay…This shit just freaks me out man, them being there really puts a lot of pressure on this plan succeeding.”

“We’ll do just fine David, just try to relax and stay focused for the task at hand tonight.” Aaron said as I heard them start to walk in my direction. I flattened myself out against shelves and held my hand over my mouth and nose. Neither Aaron nor David even looked down the aisle as they passed with a couple of books in their hand. 

Once I could no longer hear footsteps, I bent over to put my hands on my knees and finally started breathing again. What the hell did they mean? Who would be putting so much pressure on their shoulders? Is it me? That can’t be right. They didn’t even know who I was until I introduced myself yesterday afternoon…Maybe it’s one of their peers who’s likely to make them look like they made asses of themselves if all goes wrong. What is the experiment for that matter? And who’s this subject that they’ve mentioned?

Sam crossed his legs and clenched his butthole as he held off a fart that he considered to be questionable at best. He’d had his fair share of farts in his day, he’s also had his fair share of shits. This one was in the gray area between the two. It could just be a loud fart that catches everyone's attention, or it could be the other outcome. It could be shart, which is a shitty fart. This would result in having everlasting humiliation from his friends and having to go back across the city to change clothes, not to mention having to throw away the pair of underwear. He was wearing his favorite pair of jeans this time, and he was down to his last pair of clean underwear for this trip, he could not afford to take the risk.

Subway cars swayed him from left to right and then back again as they passed through the tunnels. His friends Zeke and Carlos were in the middle of a discussion on whether or not their friend, Harley, would actually date one of them for the billionth time.

“Listen, man.” Zeke started, “I got the new job, the beard just started rolling in, I even moved out of my mom’s place. She won’t be able to resist.” He confidently readjusted his polo shirt in the reflection of one of the windows. Carlos just stared at him with an eyebrow cocked.

“Beard? Bro, you look like you just started tenth grade and you’re twenty-nine…”

“Aren’t you also working the front desk of a Motel 6 in Brooklyn or something?” Sam asked tensely, tightening his butthole even tighter. Zeke turned back to them offended.

“What the fuck, guys? I’m tryna move my way up in the world, you can’t always start in the middle or the top. Plus you’re one to talk, Carlos, you work at a laundromat!” Carlos stayed calm and jovial.

“You’re right, I do work at a laundromat, but I own the laundromat. We don’t work for anyone but ourselves.” They shook hands in truce and went on talking about meaningless things. Sam felt his stomach start to cramp up, if he didn’t find somewhere to dump this out soon, it was going to be a bad time for everyone, not just him.

“How long before we stop guys?” Carlos checked his knock off G-Shock watch.

“Probably ten minutes or so. Why” Carlos saw Sam’s tense and scrunched face. “Why does your face look like Zeke’s nutsack?”

“How do you know what that looks like?” Zeke asked defensively.

“Cause any time you have more than one tequila shot your pants come off. I’m pretty sure a quarter of NYC has seen your sack by now.” A low audible grumble came from Sam’s abdomen. He wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer.

“I think I’m gonna have to get off at the next stop and find a bathroom, man.” Zeke and Carlos looked at each other wearily.

“I’d recommend just holding it until we get to the bar, man.” Zeke said cautiously.

“What are you talking about? Every stop has bathrooms.” Sam stated confusedly. Carlos put a hand on one of Sam’s shoulders.

“Bro, those bathrooms are incredibly fucked. There’s always some nasty or weird shit going on in one of those. If you can, I’d wait till we get to the bar and dump your guts there.” Sam nodded and did his best to brave the cramps and constant assaults on his asshole. But after only a few minutes, he knew that waiting until the bar would be impossible. Sam could feel they were slowing down and started awkwardly waddling towards one of the car exits.

“Dude, no! Just wait!” Zeke pleaded.

“I can’t!” Sam said over his shoulder, “Contrary to popular belief, I’m not trying to shit my pants today.” The doors clanked and slowly opened.

“What about the bar, man?” Carlos asked.

“Send me the name and address! I’ll catch up!” Then he started walking away on the platform before his friends could respond further. Sam glanced around, looking for the restroom's signs. At first all he saw was the nasty tiled walls that he could tell were shiny white once a million years ago, a few people who looked like they had seen much better days. After a few seconds he saw the restroom sign higher up on the wall across the platform, barely readable through the dirt and dust that coated it like a thick blanket. Sam started his little waddle towards the restrooms, holding his gut, having his other hand behind his back just in case his buttcheeks wouldn’t be able to hold back the enemy line anymore. Right as he ten or so feet from the door, one of the unsavory folks he had seen approached him.

“Where ya goin’ stranger?” The man smelled a combination of many awful things, like B.O., semen, and a little bit of shame he guessed if that had an aroma. He also had many missing teeth, clothes that were tattered and didn’t fit right, and a beard that stretched halfway down his chest that had a mix of salt and pepper coloring. Sam pointed to the restroom. The stranger looked concerned and shook his head.

“I’d find a place up top if you gotta do your business, mister. These bathrooms got demons in ‘em.”

“I don’t doubt it, I’m trying to be free of some myself, if you’ll excuse me.” Sam took another step before the awful smelling stranger stopped him again.

“I’m bein’ serious, mister! Someone just got themselves done deaded in there just last week! The toilets are suctioning folks to the seats and sucking they guts out they assholes! I seen it!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sam muttered, feeling he was less than a minute from releasing the kraken in his pants.

“Mister, please…There are plenty of toilets up top, I’m sure you’ll be just fine up there.” Sam shoved the more than likely homeless man away from him and proceeded into the bathroom.

He had to admit right away that it looked absolutely horrid. It stank of piss and bleach, and every single led light in the room flickered as if they were ready to burst or die out. Sam did his best to ignore the random bits of graffiti, the stains on the unwashed tiled walls and the cracked stall doors and picked one at random. The one he chose had piss and little specs of feces on the seat, causing him to gag a little. He understood missing the toilet every now and then when hanging a piss but how the hell did you miss the bowl when you were sitting down to shit? He quickly decided to not go down that rabbit hole and wiped down the seat as fast as he could with the 1-ply toilet paper the restroom provided.

He then shoved his pants down around his ankles and sat down, feeling the flood gates release as his ass cheeks hit the toilet seat. It was both mind-blowing and earth shattering, the intensity of which he shat at. He equated it to his butthole being the thrusters on the space shuttles when lifting off, having to hold on to a little rail attached to the wall that most people had nicknamed “The Oh Shit Handle.” After five minutes of sweating, praying, holding on for dear life and multiple flushes it seemed that the calamity was over. Sam put his elbows done on his knees and panted, finally able to catch his breath. Between breaths, he heard what he thought was a low growl, faintly audible but present nonetheless.

“H-h-ello?” Sam choked out, still trying to recover. There was no response, only the growl that continued. Sam wiped and then used the “Oh Shit Handle” to start standing up when he felt a force push his bare ass down against the seat. He attempted again and then got shoved down even harder, the growling now had gotten louder, almost rumbling the floor. Sam shook his head in denial, he had to be in a daydream or something, because he swore the growling was coming from underneath him. He looked down between his legs at the water, where he saw small ripples. What the fuck is happening? The growling had now become much louder, to the point that he’d had to speak up to be heard over it. He went to get up the third time and got all the way standing up, he bent down to pull up his pants and then got slammed down on the toilet seat again, hitting his head against the back wall in the process. The toilet paper holder then started shooting out toilet paper at rapid pace, causing the roll to whir on its plastic holders.

“What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck!” Sam yelled, trying to pry himself off the seat but to no avail, it felt like the skin on his thighs and ass were air tight sealed to the seat, suctioned cupped with no wiggle room in sight.

“Help! Someone! Anyone! Help me!” He yelled as the toilet paper had completely come off of the roll and piled in a heap on the floor to the left of him. He started panting again, anxiety creeping up his spine like a crackhead climbing a telephone pole in the night to try to strip some copper wire from the lines. The growling had changed then from the monotonous drone that it had been, and started to form long slurring words.

“Feeeeeeed meeeeeeeee…”

“What?!” The growly voice came again.

“FEEEEED MEEEEE!” The toilet itself started to shake like an unbalanced washing machine running on its wash cycle. Then he heard a separate voice come from the bathroom.

“Yo, what the hell are you doing in there?” Sam wiped his sweaty hair out of his face.

“I need help! I’m stuck on the fucking toilet, man!” The other voice started laughing, howling even. As the man was laughing he heard that he had dialed his phone and put it on speaker.

“Aye! Get this bruh. This dude in the bathroom on the subway out here shitting so bad it got him screamin’.” The voice on the other end of the line also started to howl laughing.

“Nah, you lyin’, Dre. Ain’t no one scream shittin’ in the subway bathroom.” He then saw the man on the other side walk over to the stall and stand in front of the door.

“Yo, Poopin’ Man, you good in there?” Sam felt anger and humiliation boil inside his chest and fight one another to make it to his head.

“I’m stuck on the fucking toilet! Just help me, man! For fuck’s sake.” The guy's buddy on the phone howled to the point of distorting the sound on the man’s phone.

“Alright, Imma let you go Ty, imma see if I can help this dude out.” Ty on the other end was still laughing incredibly hard when the guy, Dre, on the other side hung up the phone. “Sorry, ‘bout that, man. Ain’t no way they was gonna believe me if I told them after the fact.” Sam gritted his teeth.

“It’s fine, just, help me out here.” Sam reached as hard as he could just barely able to reach the clasp on the stall door and slid it back, letting the door swing in and revealing himself to the black man standing on the other side of the door. Dre looked exactly the way he had imagined. A mixed man in baggy restaurant pants, a lightly stained McDonald's work shirt and a visor on backwards on his head. Without hesitation Dre broke out in laughter again. Sam covered his cock and balls with his hands and rolled his eyes. After a few minutes Dre seemed to pull his shit back together. We looked at each other awkwardly.

“How…how do you want me to…” Dre looked around the stall and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that there was hardly room for one adult man let alone two.

“Uh, I guess just see if you can hook my armpits and see if you can pull me up. I’ll use my legs to help.” Dre cocked an eyebrow. “Please, come on, man. This is embarrassing enough.” Dre stepped forward and reached under Sam’s arms.

“Yo, I’m not not gay, though. Just sayin’.” Sam let out a frustrated sigh.

“Good to know, man. I’ll keep that in mind. You ready?” Dre nodded. They heaved and instantly Sam felt a searing pain flare from his thighs and ass. Dre looked at his legs and quickly let go and backed up to the back of the stall, slamming into the door and causing it to open outward instead of inward. Sam looked down at his thighs and saw that his skin had ripped and started bleeding moderately. The flesh just inside pulsing with his heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump. Sam had to catch his breath and keep himself in the present.

“What the fuck, man! You actually stuck!” Sam rolled his eyes.

“Yes! Asshole! I’ve been saying that from the start! Come on, help me out again.” Dre shook his head vehemently.

“Hell nah. I’ll call the ambolance or some shit, but I ain’t touching you again.” Sam hung his head and plopped his elbows back on his knees.

“Fine, just call them. Please.” Dre’s phone had already started dialing.

“911 what’s your emergency?” Dre cleared his throat.

“Yeah, uh, I’m at Station 22 on the subway, and, uh, this dude’s stuck to the toilet he’s on.”

“You said he’s stuck on the toilet? How so?” Dre put his hand over his head in frustration, as if the dispatcher could see him emote.

“With his ass cheeks on the seat, girl, how the fuck else do you get stuck on a toilet?”

“I’m just trying to understand, sir.” Dre started giving the dispatcher more information when the growling started up again, and the stall door faintly squeaked as it started inward. Sam noticed Dre’s head was directly lined up with the peg on the inside of the stall door. He tried to motion for him to move but Dre didn’t pay any mind to him, going on trying to ask the dispatcher how he can be any clearer.

“Feeeeddd meeeee…” The growl said once again and before Sam could eke out another word, the stall door flew back inwards, the peg plunging into the back of Dre’s head. Dre immediately stopped talking and rolled his eyes slightly back, making unintelligible choking sounds. Blood dripped and started to pool at Dre’s feet. The dispatcher was still on the line, and Sam picked up the phone.

“Please, ma’am, there’s been multiple accidents in this restroom on Station 22. Please just hurry.” He hung up the phone. Looking up at Dre again and seeing his lifeless body hanging on the stall door, his toes just barely not touching the ground. Sam didn’t know what to do, he started breathing quickly, panting, descending quickly into hyperventilation. Then he saw a line of toilet paper slither across the floor from the stall next to his, it wrapped itself around Dre’s legs dozens of times until it was strong as rope and then tugged Dre off of the peg, causing brain matter, blood, and viscera to spray everywhere like a popped water balloon. In front of Sam’s eyes, Dre’s body was seamlessly wrapped in toilet paper like a mummy, his cold soulless staring pits into Sam as they were covered. The toilet paper then dragged Dre out of sight underneath the stall walls.

Shit was hitting the fan harder than ever thought imaginable. God had had an aneurysm that Sam decided to not shit his pants in front of god and everyone on the subway and was now punishing him, by essentially super glueing his thighs and ass cheeks to the seat of this horrid demonic toilet and accidentally getting someone impaled and mummified. What the actual fuck. Sam reached into his pocket for his cell phone. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he had been crying, only noticing when he tried looking at his phone screen and seeing nothing but a blur.

He still had ten percent left, with one bar of signal. It wasn’t much, but it was worth a shot. He started looking for Zeke’s number and stopped. Why the hell would Sam ever call him? The man hadn’t had the volume up on any of his cell phones since they were sixteen years ago and he was trying to score with Bonnie Dimarco. Once he inevitably didn’t get anywhere with Bonnie due to her having dignity and self-respect, he turned every cell phone into silent mode or vibrate only. He started to look for Carlos’s contact when Sam received a text from him:

“Where r u? We’ve been here for like an hour now.” An hour? Sam could’ve sworn that he’d only been down there for ten or fifteen minutes at most.

“I barely got off the train ten minutes ago, bro. It couldn’t have been over an hour already.” The little bubble with three floating dots appeared and Sam waited for Carlos’s response. He was uncontrollably shaking, thinking any moment this demon of porcelain would decide that Dre wasn’t enough to satiate its hunger. Sam looked back down at his phone and saw that the little floating bubbles had disappeared, but Carlos hadn’t responded. That’s when his phone started ringing, it was Carlos.

“Carlos? Dude what do you mean it’s been an hour?” He heard a rowdy crowd in the background and the unfortunate situation of Zeke drunkenly shooting his shot with Harley for probably the twentieth time.

“I MEAN WHAT I SAID! YOU’VE BEEN GONE A HOT MINUTE. WHEN ARE YOU GONNA BE HERE?” Sam sighed frustratingly.

“That’s the problem, Carlos. I’m fucking stuck on the toilet, I can’t get up.” Carlos howled laughing like Dre and his friend earlier.

“YOU TAKE AN EDIBLE OR SOMETHING BEFORE LEAVING WITH US?”

“No! You know that’s not my thing. Psychs and liquor or nothing. Dude you were right about these bathrooms. There’s horrible shit happening right now. I need you and Zeke’s help.”

Sam heard a man yelling in the background, followed by what could only be someone slapping the absolute shit out of another person.

“YOOOO, HARLEY JUST BITCH-SLAPPED THE FUCK OUT OF ZEKE!” Sam rolled his eyes. It didn’t take rocket science for him to put those two together.

“Carlos…Please…I need to get the fuck out of here. There’s some weird shit happening down here…” There was silence for a second on the other end, Sam had to check to make sure the connection didn’t cut out. Then Carlos responded.

“Ugh…Fine. I’m not helping you pull your pants up though. That shit’s gay.”

“Yes, Carlos, that’s fine. Just please hurry, I’m at Station 22.” Before Sam could say anymore, Carlos had hung up and his one bar of signal had disappeared. He spent the next several minutes trying to keep his breathing in check. He just wanted to take a shit. That was it. Why was that such a crime? He couldn’t control when his bowels decided it was time for a clean out. He felt tears start to well up in his eyes and he wiped them away. Then he heard the door swing open.

“Hello? Carlos?” He didn’t get a response, but he heard approaching footsteps nonetheless. Finally, just as Dre had, the person stopped just in front of his stall door that had closed itself in the meantime after the assassination of Dre.

“You’re still in here, I see.” The voice said. It had a familiar gruff that he had heard before, but at the moment Sam would be damned if he knew from where.

“What? What do you mean? Who are you?”

“I told ya, I told ya there was demons in this place. But you ignored me.” The man idly paced in front of the stall door. Where did he know this voice from? Before Sam had much time to start thinking the man answered his internal question for him.

“Don’t remember me stopping you just outside a couple a hours ago? I told ya there was demons in this place. You says you were trying to be free of them yourself…Remember now?” It clicked immediately, it was the homeless man he had run into just before walking in.

“Can you get me out of here, man? I’ll get you whatever you want.” The toilet behind him started a familiar low growl. “Please, I think it’s getting ready to start up some shit, Please!” The man stopped pacing.

“There ain’t a thing on this planet you could give me that would convince me to get in that damn stall with you…” Sam slammed the wall beside him.

“Then why the fuck did you come in here?!” The homeless man didn’t say anything for a moment. The silence in the room spoke louder than any amplifier. The growling had intensified, became steady and growing ever so slightly in strength.

“Well,” The old man chimed in, “I came to see if it left anything of ya. Sure doesn’t look like it left much of that black fella who came in not long after ya…” Sam put his face in his hands and spoke through them.

“You sure seem to know a whole lot about this, how about filling me in? Not like I can go anywhere…” The old man came back to the stall door.

“Well, I guess. I don’t ya will like whatcha hear all that much though, I won’t lie…” Sam didn’t respond, just remained still with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “The bathroom started acting weird about a month ago, folks comin’ in to do their business whether it be pissin’, shittin’, coke, fuckin’, whatever it was, but they wasn’t comin’ back out. Some of us down here thought they was just dyin’ in there and cops was takin’ them out while we slept. But I ain’t a fool, son. I knew somethin’ else had to be goin’ on.” Sam felt the toilet start to vibrate once again, sending Sam into a rapid spiral of dread.

“Some dark shit happened in this bathroom. Enough to cause a demon to hold dominion here. Coulda been a ritual, a summons, or just outright depravity. Somethin’ tells me that it’s probably a mix of the three…They all wind up stuck on the toilet when it decides to strike.” Sam tried his best to stay on track, but it just wasn’t adding up. He’d seen so many movies and documentaries, he’d read so many books. He’d never heard of something like a toilet being possessed, and why a toilet of all things?

“What does it want then?” The old man coughed a little while letting out a sigh.

“To be honest, son…I ain’t got a fuckin’ clue. Your guess is as good as mine.” Sam couldn’t hold back the tears this time and quietly sobbed into his hands. The old man stood silently outside. After a few moments, the man started to walk away.

“Wait!” The footsteps halted. “How did they wind up? Do you know?” Sam heard a distant huff.

“Nah, even if I did, I’d probably try to forget as soon as I could.” Then the footsteps resumed until the door swung open and once again, Sam was left alone.

*****

Another hour had passed and Sam was fighting off sleep as if he was the third monkey on Noah’s Ark when it started to rain. Everything that had happened had completely drained him. He wondered for a while why his friends hadn’t made it yet, or more importantly why medics or police hadn’t shown up yet. He started pulling out his phone to check for a signal when he felt a tug from inside the toilet. The growl then bellowed as if from the deep depths of hell was being opened. The deafening noise had instantly popped his eardrums and he could feel the warm metallic liquid running down both sides of his neck. He didn’t even bother to cover his ears after that, there wasn’t a point. 

He tried forcing himself off of the toilet again, not caring if it caused him some damage. If his skin ripped off, then his skin ripped off…but he’d be free from the execution chamber he’d been stuck on. He finally slid his jeans and underwear off from around his ankles and straddled the toilet to give himself the best leverage he could. On the count of three, he tried as hard as he could to thrust himself up from the toilet. He couldn’t move an inch, it felt like he had the weight of a taxi cab full of people on his shoulders, pushing him down further and further until his legs nearly gave out. He finally gave up after exerting himself for almost a minute, popping blood vessels in both of his eyes.

He laid back against the upper tank, breathing long and hard, letting his legs go limp as the sensation of fire shot up and down them. He was then tugged hard against the toilet seat, cracking it down the middle and causing his hips to go into the bowl and folding him up like a lawn chair. Immediately he started feeling something come out of his butthole. The pain was excruciating, the feeling of a million papercuts being covered in lemon juice. He tried to scream, to call for help, to get someone’s attention, but the strain of his body being folded had made it come out barely above a whisper.

The toilet screamed in triumph, causing his innards to be pulled out even harder and faster. Sam’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as the toilet screamed and flushed, sending blood, feces, and pieces of intestines flying every which way. The last thing Sam remembered was glancing down at his cracked cell phone, and seeing that Carlos was trying to call him. Then his lights went out.

After five minutes or so, the growling died down to nothing once again. Bits and pieces of both Dre and Sam lingered, scattered about as if hit with a hand grenade. Then the toilet paper rolls from every stall and the paper towel holders by the sinks started dropping sheets left and right, slowly cleaning up the mess that had been made. By the time someone else had finally braved walking in a couple of hours later, it looked as if it never happened. That person sat on the very toilet that Sam had occupied…a low growl faintly started.

A lonesome night. A theater. An audience of only forty or so had shown up for a showing that was yet to be known. They murmured amongst one another in their finest fabrics, standing tall and sophisticated. Our fellow, minding his own, stood in the corner. He wore a plain black suit, white dress shirt, and a black tie. There was a time and place when he would’ve spent an hour or more getting himself ready, pressing his pants and dress shirt, steaming his jacket, and even trimming his beard. Nowadays, he’d be lucky if he could convince himself to take more than the average five minutes it took him to put this everyday ensemble together.

After seeing and critiquing what had to be thousands of productions at that point, it was just another show on an ordinary night. It was a different show with a different cast playing the same characters he had seen over and over again. It would end up being another critique in the newspaper the following morning, having to give a polite but harshly accurate professional opinion about the night’s performance.

But something about this particular night had a different feeling to it. The tension. The tightness. But also…Uncertainty…Nervousness…an unsettling vibration hung in the air of that lobby where he and the other forty-some attendees idled while waiting for the doors to open. Our critic removed the playbill from the inside jacket pocket, remembering the odd fellow outside in the ticket box.

It was an elderly man, with wrinkles beyond imagination and an extremely slouched posture, almost akin to a hunchback, a man who had bid farewell to his young years many decades ago and hadn’t dared to look back. The ticket box man never spoke a word during their short interaction, only looked at him with blank knowing eyes upon his tall wooden stool and used his fingers to show ticket prices when asked. When he received the ticket stub, he was handed a playbill along with it.

The playbill was another mystery. It was only a single page folded in half like a booklet. On the front, only the words “PLAYBILL”, and in the center where the title would traditionally be, was “A Play on A Stage”. He flipped to the center of the one-page booklet only to find five lines of text, two on the left side and three on the right. In order they listed, A Man, A Woman, A Boy, A Girl, and the strangest line of all, An Audience.

Our critic started to wonder what this whole thing was. From the outside and the lobby, he couldn’t help but find the structure absolutely gorgeous, a marvel of what he assumed was Victorian architecture. He couldn’t wait to see the theater itself, especially since he was about to get a box seat. What a view he hoped it would be. He then wondered if this was possibly an Experimental Theatre experience. He’d heard of it before when he was a young lad, finishing his master’s degree at university. Avant-garde it was called. But he learned that when speaking to the general public of unusual and niche things in theatre, to just use layman’s terms.

He thought about the lack of information and advertising, was it part of the experience? It certainly made a person think, explore the possibilities of what could be. He hadn’t experienced many examples of this type of theatre, but for that night, he could get behind it. It wasn’t the same old thing he had always seen, and for that, he was ever thankful.

He placed the playbill back inside his jacket and glanced again around the room. The walls were filled with framed paintings of all different shapes and sizes, he found it quite hard at times to stop and look at just one. There were depictions of ancient battles covering all eras of time, of angels and demons, portraits of men, women, children, and everything in between with every range of emotion. One could spend an entire night alone looking at all of them, just like a trip to an art gallery.

Along the corners and edges were slates of carved, silver trim going well with the off-white color base of the walls behind the paintings. Other than that, there were two simple but large chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and a single set of oaken double doors that stood on the opposite side of the lobby from the outside entrance.

The lights then blinked in slow intervals. The set of double doors opened quietly, and the small crowd started to filter in through the doors. It was dark once inside the doors, a small hallway between the lobby and theater. A woman stood off to the side wearing an ushers uniform holding a jet-black box with a slot in the center of the lid that people were dropping their ticket stubs into. Yet another thing that struck him as peculiar, but he assumed that it could be a part of the show and didn’t think beyond it. He dropped his stub in the box and asked how to get to the box seats, explaining that he hadn’t seen a sign anywhere. The woman simply pointed to her left, and then to her right, all without looking, then stared back ahead and continued to smile at the other passing guests as she had before.

Sure enough, there were dim, candlelit staircases on either side of her, no more than twenty feet away. When climbing the staircase, he couldn’t but feel that something was eerily strange and ominous about it, the candlelight only causing enough light to barely see where the stairs were, the walls were painted black as night and so were the stairs, and each step he took was followed by creaking sounds from beneath him.

Once he reached the top of the steps, he was greeted by a hallway of similar fashion, candles lining each side and black painted walls. But this time the floor lined with carpet of some sort; he couldn’t quite tell. It didn’t seem to be a long walk though, he could see the light at the end of the hallway, no more than one hundred feet he imagined.

When he reached his box seat, he was blown away just as he had hoped to be. He had stepped foot into a grand theater. Despite being in one of only two box seating arrangements it had to offer, he looked out over the hundreds, possibly over a thousand seats, with the few audience members scattered about. He was too far away to count, but he guessed that there were sixty rows, twenty seats to each row. The mezzanine that partly hung over the floor seating had to have at least twenty-five rows, twelve or thirteen seats to each of those. He’d never seen a room that could hold this many people unless one was speaking of stadiums, arenas, or racetracks. This theater was none of these things.

He took a seat and found it to be surprisingly comfortable, not the usual worn-out seat that felt hard as steel that he had become accustomed to over the years. He started to reach for his tin of cigarettes in his jacket when he saw a metal ashtray on a stand get set next to him on the right. It was the usher from the entrance, still smiling…only this time she looked at him, her unblinking stare gave him chills up and down his spine.

There was nothing behind her eyes, nothing whatsoever. It felt as if he was looking at the shell of a human being, a robot only programmed to serve the most basic of tasks. He could’ve sworn those dead eyes could burn pits into his own, and for some reason, he couldn’t turn away. She smoothly turned around and disappeared into the dark hallway behind him. He shook it off after a few seconds and lit his cigarette. Some people just grow up to be weird, he knew that. Hell, he could probably argue that he was one of those people himself, but that woman was outright creepy. He breathed in the smoke and sat back in his seat, hoping it was just a spell of paranoia and nothing more.

He had just finished his smoke when the lights came down to complete darkness. A lone violin started a melancholy tune, ringing, spreading throughout the theater. How tremendously it rang in his ears. A spotlight shot down onto center stage, just where the silver curtain was starting to part, opening up to reveal a barren stage.

A second stringed instrument joined now, following the melody in a lower octave, making him think it was . A woman, dressed in brown pants, a black shirt, and white dancers shoes glided her way to the spotlight. She was tall, slender, and graceful with every move she made. The epitome of a ballet dancer. She danced slowly, with intention and passion, letting the music guide her. Then a second spotlight appeared, just off to the right hand side of the stage. A boy no more than ten years of age made his way out. The woman smiled as the boy held out her hand in an invitation to dance. They met in the middle and started a slow heart-warming two-step to the simmering tempo of the music. It felt like a mother and son, which he figured was what they were getting at but still found fitting. Not long after, a little girl anywhere between the ages of eight to eleven ran out to them. Two more stringed instruments joined the mix, a cello and a standing bass.

The trio interacted in beautiful glee, bringing a genuine smile to his face. It reminded him of simpler times, happier times, back when he was a child and had nothing more important to do than figure out how to enjoy the day ahead of him. It felt like a scene you might see from something akin to The Sound of Music.

The music suddenly stopped as one last spotlight appeared, pointing to the back left corner of the stage. Moments passed in utter stillness. No music, no dancing. The actors watched with unbreaking focus. Everyone’s attention was now on the spotlight in that back left corner.

One footstep echoed, then another, then four or five more as a tall, burly man in a plain black suit walked out. The children ran up to him and jumped in his arms. The woman slowly walked in the other direction, an expression of anger stretching across her face. The man put the children down and they ran off stage. The woman stayed distant, brewing in an unfound anger. The man came up behind her and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled back at him unconvincingly. The children came back on stage, skipping and playing, the man went over to them to play with what could be assumed were his children.

The woman put a hand to her mouth and mimicked a motion of calling out to her children and they once again disappeared off stage. The man turned around confused, why had she called for them to leave? She walked up to him, no longer attempting to fake her happiness at his return. She started her slow, solemn dance once again, this time around the man, touching him every now and then with longing but also with hints of reserve. The critic started to question what was happening in the scene now. They had started as a happy family. Mother, son, and daughter. But then the father came home, and the children were overjoyed…but the mother had other opinions. Why? What was it they were missing? Was he putting on a front for his children, just waiting to let the real man show himself? The “husband” started to fall to the floor, first to one knee and then the next. He would’ve fallen flat on his face if he hadn’t caught himself. The woman’s once light touches had turned into what looked like hits, shoves, jabs. The man held on to his left side, breathing quicker and quicker. The music started back up, intense, getting faster, and faster with every second. The instruments were no longer in time with one another, all off on their own erratic journey.

Sweat started to develop across the critic's forehead, his heartbeat quickened. He felt he could hardly keep himself seated. Where was this going? What was this? He glanced around at the rest of the theater and the other patrons were watching the show as if nothing was amiss. The boy child then walked out calmly as the woman stopped and faced the man. The boy held a familiar black box and brought it to the woman. The man was now bleeding, a pool growing larger and larger on the ground on his left side. She propped open the box, tossing the lid to the floor, and removed a single shot pistol from it. The stringed instruments started scraping and scratching, no longer making what the critic considered music, just sounds and noise he felt were made to make a person go mad.

The woman then pulled a slip of paper from the box, and breathed in a deep breath. She gently lifted the man's face to see hers, before he knew what would happen next, she pulled the trigger and removed him from existence, the smoke rising from the end of the barrel as he dropped head first to the ground.

The critic tried to get himself to stand and run. It was insane! This wasn’t a theatre experience, this was an execution, planned and choreographed to the very step. He had to get out of there. But something was wrong. He wanted nothing more than to leave and inform the police but he was frozen in place. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get his legs to move or his arms to lift him out of the chair. He glanced back down at the stage and what he saw terrified him more. The woman and the children were now staring at him. Unwavering. Not a single blink amongst the three of them. He then glanced around the theater, the patrons were staring at him too. He then started to feel drowsy, suddenly exhausted and in need of sleep. He fought hard against his heavy eyelids but knew within five seconds that it was a failing battle. As he drifted into unconsciousness, he saw the dead-eyed face of the usher tilt his head back.

---

When he awoke, the drowsiness was still heavy in his chest and limbs. A bright light was now striking his eyes with the intensity of the sun. He rolled his head over and began to open his eyes. Without a doubt, he was no longer in his box seat. He was laid flat on a hard black surface, his shadow stretching out a few feet beyond him. Without a second thought he attempted to lift himself up. He had to get out of here, wherever “here” was. But only moments after getting himself to his knees he was hoisted up onto his feet and carried. 
His eyes adjusted and unblurred as reality began to take hold. He was still in the theater, but he was on the stage. The spotlight followed him and whomever was carrying him as if he was a doll over to a wooden chair in the center. The critic moved his head around the best he could, trying to come to terms with the situation but two things perplexed him. Where was the man? If he’s on the same stage as the one he was watching, the body should still be there. And even more importantly…where’s the blood? The stage was just as clean as the beginning of the performance, only a few skid marks here and there from the years of use. 
He was lightly set down into the wooden chair now, the blinding light shooting back into his eyes. He could hear the murmurs and whispers out beyond as the strings began to play yet another tune. The woman, boy, and girl started dancing again, this time with the original glee and beauty that they had started with. But the critic was sweating rivers, breathing quickly, trying his damnedest to keep his train of thought to one thing at a time. How long have I been here? He asked himself. It would’ve had to have taken hours to get all of the blood cleaned up. Had he been here for hours already? 

He attempted to shoot forward, to jump off the stage and run through the oaken doors he had come in from, for as fast and long as he possibly could. But he only found himself on the ground again, having smacked his head and right arm in the process. He looked down to see that his torso, wrists, and ankles had been strapped down with leather straps. When did this happen?! He almost screamed. Laughter roared from the audience, creating a cacophony of echoes all at his expense. Nothing was making sense. Why had they chosen him? Why were they doing this? He stopped fidgeting and took a few deep breaths. The music was intensifying and the performers were still dancing behind him. He took a sideways glance out at the crowd, finally being out of the spotlight. All of the seats were filled now. Only forty or fifty seats were taken when the show had begun…but now there wasn’t a single seat left open. His breathing became erratic as quickly as he had slowed it down. He was yanked upright again and dragged slowly back to the center of the stage. The woman, boy, and girl, just like they had with the man before him, started dancing in a circle around him. The music had taken on a new tone. This one wasn’t nearly as fast and crazy. This one was slower. Lower. Each note drawn out in a stretch of notes that brought on the most ominous dread. The creeping motion of the piece had made it hard to breathe, as if some demon had his hands around the critic's throat and was subtly adding more pressure and cutting off just a little more oxygen. Then with a single, bone-cracking whack, all of the wind was knocked out of his chest and he was sent back to the ground. The woman now stood over him, a brutish well-loved club in her right hand. The spotlight had already coasted slightly over from where they were at the center. Slamming backwards had broken the chair significantly. He was able to freely move his limbs again…but he wasn’t able to make himself move. He only had to graze over his chest to tell that multiple ribs had been broken when he was hit. It explained why he could only let out short raspy wheezes. The boy and the girl now joined the woman, with clubs of their own in their hands. The critic looked at them up close for the first time. Despite being on stage with them for only god knows how long, he hadn’t had the chance to truly look at these people. They all seemed…ordinary. Bland normally colored hair, dark eyes, and cold expressionless faces. He couldn’t even fathom how they were able to keep a blank expression when committing such violence. On the other hand, how were they able to keep the same expressions when they were dancing the way they had? All questions he’d never muster. In a flash, the boy had reached back and swung the club at his left ankle, taking it out from under him and snapping it clean in half. In the moment that he was going to scream, the girl had swung and taken out his right ankle too. The agonizing pain only let him release a silent, hoarse scream. One that couldn’t be described, only shown or experienced. He couldn’t just lay there any longer. He had to get out of there…even if he had to crawl and suffer more and more from the performers' abuse until his body was nothing but broken bones and bruised skin. He could faintly see a staircase down to one of the audience aisles out of his peripheral. His crawl was painfully slow in every way conceivable, only having his arms and will power to keep him moving. As he moved inch by inch, the music continued and the performers continued as well, dancing and hopping over him as if he was just a prop on the stage to avoid. After a minute or so, he was within just a few feet of the staircase…that’s when the boy made a long leap and stomped on his left elbow, crushing the bones and joint beneath it. He wretched and heaved with the agony that followed. Then the woman came over to hold his other arm out straight. He did his best to fight her, throwing jabs and half-assed elbows. But she was able to easily grab hold of his wrist and shoulder and shove them flat to the floor. The little girl was only a few feet away waiting patiently. He knew what was coming next and again tried fighting against it. But there was no use, she had him pinned down…and she wasn’t letting him go anywhere unless she wanted him to. Only moments later, did the familiar snap and crack follow, and another fiery round of pain shot through his body. He could do anything but move his head now. He was battered and essentially paralyzed. The audience was excited, anxious, causing the theater to rumble with their reactions. Finally, the critic had started to silently shed tears. He didn’t understand what was happening. He was just doing his job, going to see a show that didn’t have a lot of details about it. Now, he was battered, broken, and most of all…he was most likely going to die for no reason other than the fact that when they pulled that slip of paper from the black box, that his ticket stub must’ve been pulled. It’s the only reason he can think up that would explain why any of this had happened. As he continued to silently cry, letting his tears drip onto the stage and start to mix with own blood that started to seep from the corner of his mouth, he was hoisted up onto his butt. The woman hooked her arms under his armpits and started to drag him towards the center once again. He hardly felt anything at this point, he was going through so much agony that his body must’ve sent him into a state of shock, numbing everything to the point of nothingness. He looked down and saw the grotesque view of his legs, primarily how his broken ankles pointed in every which direction and tossed and turned as he was dragged along. He didn’t even dare to look over at his arms, he could only imagine the catastrophe they both were. The spotlight followed them until it stopped, and he was dropped flat on the floor. He just stared at the ceiling for a second, hoping that any moment he would start to see a light and then he would go after it as quickly as possible. Then he was whacked in the chest again…and again…and again. With every swing, he could feel more bones breaking, more organs being ripped, more blood filling up places they had no business being in. There was a stop to the brutalizing. He hoped this was the end, he didn’t want to hang on. He started to cough up blood, covering himself in his own phlegm and blood. The woman then stood over him, her feet shoulder width apart. The club in her hand was now painted red. With her expressionless face she looked out to the audience. They roared with satisfaction. They were at the finale, the moment they were waiting for. She turned her stare back down to him and raised the club over her head. She held it there for a while, letting a couple of drops of blood and viscera drip onto him and herself. Then she brought down the club and his vision went black.

---

The critic shot up out of bed as he woke. He was sweating puddles into his sheets and his heart going a million beats a minute. What the hell was that? He muttered as he took inventory of his surroundings. He was at home in bed, the alarm clock on his night stand showing it was a quarter past one in the morning. He then remembered the brutality he experienced and scrambled to check his chest and arms. Everything was intact and seemed fine. He ripped the sheets off of his lower half and other than seeing that he had lightly urinated in his pajama bottoms, nothing was broken, let alone shattered and left useless. It was just a dream…thank fucking god it was just a dream. A large sigh of relief shot out of his chest and he laid back down for a minute, just catching his breath. After this lone moment, he had to take on the task of having to shower, change out of his pajamas into clean ones and having to change his sheets. What was even worse was that he knew his cleaning lady would greatly peeved if he didn’t leave a bigger tip for all of it. After all of that, he double-checked that his alarm was still set for nine and then drifted off into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

---

When he woke he ate breakfast, dressed in a simple brown suit and tan dress shirt, and went to his office at the local newspaper. While there, he was editing an article he had written about a horribly acted performance of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” when his boss stepped in and gave him a new assignment. There was a show that one of their scouts had heard rumblings about and he wanted his best guy (the critic) on the job. When the critic asked about any details, his boss said that he didn’t have any. Only an address for the theater it was supposedly being put on at. His boss gave him the slip of paper with the address written on it and then left. Later that night, the critic went to the address. On the taxi ride there, part of him wondered if maybe his nightmare from the night prior meant something. He had heard about premonitions and visions. But after just a moment, he waved it off. He didn’t believe in that sort of thing ever before in his fifty-six years on this earth and he wasn’t going to let a silly nightmare change that now. At just before seven-thirty the taxi dropped him off in a quiet part of town. At first he was about to ask the cab driver if they were in the right neighborhood. Then a little farther down the street he saw the glow of the theater lights and a small line formed just in front of the ticket box. He walked half of a block or so down to the theater and got into line. No one paid him any attention as he quietly waited. There was something familiar about the outside of the venue that he couldn’t put a finger on. He looked around the rest of the block and there wasn’t anything significant to look at. There weren’t any stores open, no lights in any windows. Just a slightly run down neighborhood that seemed to have seen better days. After ten minutes or so, he had finally gotten to the front of the ticket line. His heart instantly jumped into his throat and caught his breath…as the veiny wrinkled hand of a horribly familiar face had reached for his cash to pay for his box…