DAY 28: Bad Gone Worse (Mutant Strains II)

Zraeli’s neighbor has taken in a very unusual pet and it’s done something gross and unpleasant to both his lawn and his pet. Actually, it chewed off the head of Zraeli’s pit bull and somehow managed to spray the blood over the left side of Zraeli’s house at the same time. The walls on the left wing of his house looked like something had tried to repaint it and failed.

The lawn was a different matter entirely. It was the aftermath of a battle between a T-Rex and a triceratops.

Recently, Zraeli had been hearing strange sounds in the still of the night piercing the air with blood-curdling squeals. Zraeli’s neighbor had been up to something. It probably had a thing to do with his gene-splicing gig up at the MoGenetics Labs where he worked.

One night, (after the incident with his pet pit bull and the odd painting job which he washed off effectively and of course, his messed up lawn) Zraeli kept hearing noises coming from his backyard suggestive of giant slugs slithering around in the starlight. He’d never heard those sounds before and his mind went back to his neighbor especially, his state of mind after all these excessive experiments.

Zraeli got out of bed, fetched his torch and went to the window. He pointed to wherever he spotted movement in the shadows, trying to see what made such noises. He could barely make out the forms. Either they were too dark or too fast. Zraeli whispered a prayer; let it not be the latter. And whatever they are, let them not be dangerous.

Well, the high points of the night was when one of the creatures almost got into the house. It scared the living night lights out of one of his daughters who was sleeping in that room. She claimed she’d seen the creature, said it was a cross between a Dimetrodon (when Zraeli asked her what that was she said it was a prehistoric mammal-like reptile) and a slug-a giant slug. The emphasis here people is giant.

That was the final straw. Zraeli didn’t think it was wise to wait one of those things broke into the house and made a meal out of one his own before he gave their owner a wake-up call.

He got to the neighbors house which was just next door. After a few moments of knocking on the door and unable to evoke a response from the resident, Zraeli tried the knob. The door opened on the first try like it was still midday. More like it wasn’t locked at all.

            “Hello,” he called. His voice returned to him empty and pregnant with weird possibilities.

He stepped into the dark apartment. It was against his better judgment. The room reeked of ungodly odors-laboratory chemicals and a musty stench which meant the house had not been cleaned out in a while.

            “Kirk? Kirk! Are you in here?”

Notes to myself:

Zraeli found a note on the table from Kirk to whom it may concern. It described an experiment gone awry. He’d trapped DNA from fossilized skeleton of a Dimetrodon and tried to see if he could reinvent these reptiles by combining their DNA with slugs’. Finally, when he couldn’t control them anymore, (they reproduced quicker than he could keep count) he’d set them loose around the house. And now, something else had happened their bite was contagious. Anybody who suffers a bite from any of the creatures (his creatures) will be transmuted into one of them.

Zraeli had not finished reading the notes (there were about five pages in all. The last one could have contained a Remedy or a cure of sorts) when he heard a shrill scream. It came from the direction of his house. It was the voice of one of his daughters. It was the scream of someone who had just stumbled on their won obituary in the evening papers. It was the sound that only somebody who had looked their own death in the eye could make. Zraeli tossed the papers containing the last notes of Kirk away and scrambled for the door.

A monstrosity with a human head and a prehistoric reptile’s body slithered into his path and rammed into the door. Zraeli stared at it for what seemed like eons then, surprise tipped over to familiarity. Kirk? Kirk is that you?