An Eye For an Eye
By: John Keith Bone
“Sebastian… Wake up, little one….”
The Professor’s voice filled my ears as I attempted to retreat back into the kind abyss of sleep.
“It’s almost seven. Time to wake up…”
My eyes fluttered open to see him standing over me. His white, tendril-like hair fell before his face in a cascade that cast horrifying shadows over his features. The scientist’s demeanor was different… He had something in mind… The set of his jaw was stiff and his eyes were alight in that way he gets when he’s about to-
“N-no, Professor…”
“Father.” He corrected.
“Father, please… Not another test… I don’t want to do another test…” I pleaded. I knew this would be to no avail… This man had no heart… But I always tried to be talk him out of whatever he wanted. For the last two years of my life, this so-called “man” had forced me into his twisted “Experiments”, all the while calling me his son… I was six years old the day he took me to his home in Terra City. For the first month or so, everything seemed normal. He woke me daily at eight o’clock to go on long walks, and talk about science. He liked talking to me about science… But I suppose at some point, he decided to take these talks to the next level. He began using me as a lab rat. His intention –or at least what he claimed to be his intention- was to create a super anthro. I was meant to be that anthro…
“Please, Sebastian… For your father?” he coaxed in a devilishly kind voice.
This made me angry… I was small, but his tests had brought my body to unnatural levels of strength. I used this now, tearing my wrist from his grip and shoving the tall man away. Although, even at the age of eight, I knew I hated this man, I didn’t mean to put so much power into it. He left the ground for a moment, and connected with the far wall, collapsing a shelving unit of unidentifiable tools an jars of organs. As they fell upon him, the sickly smell of formaldehyde and iron filled my over-sensitive nose.
My own fear was palpable in my chest as he slowly rose up from the pile of debris that was his temporary resting place. His deep blue eyes, cold as ice, pierced right through me. His voice changed into that of a devil about to devour the soul of it’s unwilling host.
“You wish to resist?”
“F-father, I-“
My voice was cut off by the sudden impact of his palm on my throat. He had done something to himself… He was faster than me… His steel grip clenched my larynx and began to hoist me upward, making my feet dangle a solid foot from the floor.
“This test… Will be the final step in your transformation… You will be complete…” The Professor explained to me as his fingernails began to tear through the flesh beneath my onyx fur, threatening to rip my throat out.
“C-Complete…? You think whatever you have in mind will make me complete!? You’ve wrecked me! I’m a freak because of you!”
His grip tightened even further, causing a spurt of blood to choke me.
Is this a test of survival? If it is…. I’m going to die here… This freak is going to end my life so early… I don’t stand a chance….
“Tell me, Sebastian… Do you think you can kill me?”
“No…”
“Do you want to kill me…?”
This caught me off guard. Was he trying to trick me? Did it matter…? No… He was going to kill me anyway…
“Yes… I want to kill you…”
A smile cracked his disgusting face, milky face.
“Good… Try…”
“Try?”
The Professor suddenly cocked his arm back and released me in a throw that shook my entire frame. A loud crash was audible to me and a strange crushing sensation suddenly shot up my back. I tried to cry out, but it came as more of a choke. Bits of concrete patted my head and shocked me from my state. I was suddenly conscious of distance between me and The Professor, and a gaping crater in the wall behind me.
My god… Q, what have you done to yourself!?
As I struggled and quaked back to my shoeless feet, I began to cough up a strange fluid. It was black, thick and smelled of…. Oh god….
“My blood…. What have you done to my blood!?” I demanded once my fits were quelled.
“How do you think you survived that little throw, Sebby? It’s not only your blood I’ve hardened you… Your bones, muscles, and other such structures have been altered… You’re made of tempered steel, my boy…”
My hands balled into fists. He’d been messing with me in my sleep… Bastard….!
“I’ll kill you!!!” I roared as my feet pounded the floor to cross as fast as my powerful legs could carry me, my fist cocked back to put a hole between his eyes. But, naturally, my attempt was proved futile as my strike was batted with the back of his palm, his eyes closed, and I was suddenly slammed into the wall behind him. His grip was at my throat once again and his iced gaze drilling holes into my young rodent-esque features. He seemed to be exploring my eyes.
“I know…” He declared in a low tone.
The drop that followed his declaration brought his finger to his lip in a pensive look.
“Yes… Yes, that is what you need….” He mumbled distantly.
I knew that look… That tone…
“Macroevolution” was his word for it. This next experiment, whatever it was, would alter my exterior… My physical being… Like my arms or legs… He’d never done anything so rash, but now… This look… This resolve… He’ll do it.
I had just begun to get up again when his right hand slid out of the pocket it always seemed to rest in, producing the one thing that terrified me more than anything else in the entire lab. The Syringe. It’s contents were always a mystery to me… Before I could react, it’s sharp edge found it’s way to my jugular and I found myself wandering through the darkness of my own subconscious. Horrible images of dissection flashed through my mind’s eye for a while, but ultimately I found myself staring into a mirror at my own reflection. Something called me… Called me to touch the glass over my face… As I did, it cracked. The grooves split my face into three quadrants… But my eye… My eye was….
“Magnificent, isn’t he?” Q’s voice was distant and distorted. Most likely a side-effect of whatever sedative he’d filled me with… Another man’s voice came. I couldn’t recognize it at all. A stranger…
“Impressive, Q. Tell me, how did you do it? What are it’s capabilities?”
I decided to force my eyes open, but the glare from the stage lights I was sitting under made me squint. After a moment, my eyes adjusted to the intense light and I was just able to make out four shapes. A fifth was standing only two paces to my left… Q… He was talking about how “It could all but read minds”. I didn’t know what h was talking about, but as I studied the shapes, their features became clearer. Much clearer. The man to the far right, sitting slightly forward in his seat with grayed stubble dotting his chin and neck was Ian Harlacker PhD. He graduated from Yale with high honors and a degree in Theoretical Genetics. To his left sat Dr. Regenald Jones. A tall man with dark eyes and a missing left ring finger. His wife of twelve years cleaved it off with a kitchen knife the night she found out he was sleeping with his secretary. The man held a degree in Hematology from Harvard… The next was a young man, about twenty four, but his hair was already receding. He was a prodigy from Michigan University, holding a degree in Osteology. His name was Ryan Woolf… The final man was almost Q’s age… Dr. Harold Manchester. Degree in…. Neurology. He’s never had friends besides The Professor… Poor guy…
How do I know all this? I’ve never seen these men in my life! But it’s so clear… I know them….
Q’s eyes fell upon me. As if reading MY thoughts, he began to explain.
“It’s your eye, my son. You can see into their minds. You know them, don’t you?”
My gaze drifted into his, the question obvious on my face.
“What have you done to me, Father?”
He smiled and held a mirror to me.
“I have completed you, my son.”
I had seen so many horrors in the last two years… I thought I’d seen everything… But I was wrong… So horribly, horribly wrong… The reflection I saw in that slab of glass was not me… It had my face… Most of my features… But that eye…. The left eye… It wasn’t mine… My eyes were blue! But this… It was red… The whites had turned red!! No pupil… No iris… A…. Symbol…. The symbol of sickness… The symbol of pain… A biohazard!!!!
I cried out in absolute terror at the sight of this “macroevolution”… I was a freak… A real freak!!
“May we, Professor?” Woolf asked. Q nodded in response.
The four men began an approach on me, but I wasn’t about to allow them to fulfill their desires. Not on me… Not now!
“NO!!! BACK AWAY!! LAVE ME ALONE!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, but they wouldn’t listen. Their hands began to wander my features…. I was just an object to them. The result of a fellow scientists many years of hard work and experimentation. I was just a lab bunny… My struggle mostly consisted of biting their wrists or fingers when they came close to my face, due to the steel restraints on my wrists and ankles, anchoring me to that damn chair… Eventually I just gave in and began sobbing… I couldn’t escape… I just wanted to die… To disappear into some happy dimension without fear or pain or this insanity Q called “scientific progression”.
As the hours passed and the tears ran dry, I suppose I fell asleep, for when I woke, I found a resolve. I knew something had to b done… This man… Professor Q… He had to die… No longer would I allow him to molest my body… To change me as he wished…
“It ends tonight… Father…” I mumbled into the bloodied sheets of the operating table that served as my bed.
Eyes closed, was I waiting. Waiting until the professor would be off guard. A rarity it was but I’d managed to find that even he had his moments. Moments where the psychopath thought he’d won. Where he would pause in the middle of study and look down upon me with pride and insanity dancing in his eyes. It was within these few slates of time, my mind became open and averted from what was to come. Instead I’d find myself plotting escape. I’d imagined every possible route, every nook and cranny but only to have the same outcome.
That is up until now, for alas tonight would be the night I pulled it all together, all but one piece from the puzzle remained and Q: he was that missing piece. Now listening I could hear it; the silence as various beakers were put in their holders, flasks were shelved, and utensils were tucked away into drawers. My fur stood on end at the shuffling of feet from upon the other end of the barricaded door. Two bolt squeals and one lock-shift later, the door flew open and he entered the room.
“You know my son, you’re the talk of the town….Every university wants in on my discovery…My accomplishment…They said I couldn’t do it...” He was inching closer to me now.
My right eye slid open, and I rose from my curled position. The professor continued to rant.
“That one….What was his name? Ah, yes a mister Eugene Fitzgerald. He dare accuse me of blasphemy!...”
His shoulders were taught. I looked up and over the man’s shoulder to see that the door was still open. Turning back to the professor, his figure was beginning to shake. A corrupted visage twisted his face into a leer of melancholy proportions. He began to chuckle lowly. I knew this type of behavior. He was about to indulge into another triumphant state. One where he would begin to boast about all that he has done. How his putrid little games were going to be the ‘pinnacle of this century.’ How I was to be the breaking point into a new realm; the birth and beginning of a new age.
“Blasphemy?' Before what, 'God?' A God repulsed by the miserable humanity he created in his own image? I will not be shackled by the failures of your God. The only 'blasphemy' is to wallow in insignificance! I have taken the refuse of your God's failures, and I have triumphed!”
He was talking to himself but I did not miss the slither of his right hand into his pocket. He was going for the Syringe.
"We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement!?”
I tensed up. Now standing on top of the table I watched steadily as the man removed the oversized needle from the inner holdings of his lab coat. I could feel my mouth go dry, and I could feel the second-nature fear that had trained itself to rake my body at the sight of the object. I but tonight I had no room for fear.
“Ah…But you son….You know better than anyone how hard I’ve tried….How much I’ve done for you, for the both of us.”
I found a small snarl escape me. How dare this monster portray us as some sort of duo. ‘Us’, there is no ‘us.’ My left eye began to crack open as I felt a unknown yet openly welcome sensation of hatred and blood lust enter into my veins and with its decent, light on fire each fiber of my being.
“Father…..You said that would be the end…I’m complete now…why-“
My words would forever hang lost amidst the atmosphere, for an unforgiving grip took hold of the scruff of my neck and sent a sharp pain down my spine. I winced and in an instant my nose sat but mere centimeters from the face of he who was my creator.
“Shh now Sebastian..You should know that a scientists work is never done.”
I cried out as I was slammed down onto the operating table. This was it. What I’d waited for. If I didn’t fight back now I could kiss what was left of my life goodbye. I turned my head to right and as hard as possible, sank six teeth into the wrist that had me pinned from the back of the neck. With a loud grunt, he grip let up by a few fingers but a few was more than enough. I wrenched my shoulders forward and hopped down from the table. A blow to my left ribcage sent me flying across the room and into a rack of unidentifiable liquids. The substances slickened my fur, and clattering noises and smashes echoed around me but I did not pay attention to the chemicals that may or may not have been mutating my body in some way.
“The eye Sebastian!...Use it!..Use its power!”
I had no idea what he was talking about but a sickening crack was made know as I took a hard hit to the jaw. This time I was sent crashing through an empty cabinet. Had the professor been testing on himself again? Just when did he become so fast? Pushing through the wreckage I bit down hard, and claws extending, I sprang upward and ran towards him. I ran at full speed; my feet thudding against the floor beneath me but as if in slow motion a flap of white crossed my vision and I was caught off guard as I was whirled around and tossed to the opposite side of the room. I was flying through the air when my left eye flew open.
“What is it that you wish for most Sebastian? Do tell me: Have you got it in you to kill me!?...Prove it! Prove to me that you want me to die!”
At his words I looked up and all became clear. I saw red. Instead of my back hitting the wall I been thrown at I found myself landing foot first against it. I pushed off ricocheted my way across the room slamming into the man’s slender frame. The professor’s arm shot out and I found myself involuntarily react. I caught his fist with the palm of my hand and with the other I impaled him in the gut. This time it was the professor who was sent flying. I watched and dashed after his body. The syringe he’d previously had within his grasp now skidded out the door along with the professor as well.
“Yes…That’s it…let your anger be the fuel to your-“
His words were halted by me leaping on top of his chest. I heard the wind come rushing out of his lungs and I took hold of his neck. His warm blood leaked down my arm as my claws mercilessly dug themselves deeper and deeper into the pale flesh.
“Father….ha..haha”
I did not know what sort of strength overcame my being, but it was then that I slung the professor into through the air and into a nearby cryogenic chamber. The bits of glass cascading over his now limp figure, but he did not remain that way for long. He stood to his feet and came charging after me with a look of hunger and excitement.
“Yes! Yes!” He bellowed, whilst he launched a kick at me.
I caught his ankle and with two sharp movements I could hear the bone snap. I let go and watched as the professor all but beamed at me.
“Ah..ahahHahHAHAHah…” His voice broke in several places as he cackled.
I ran towards him and threw a punch but I bewailed in agony when I was caught by the upper elbow, and my arm was yanked behind me. My face met the floor in an unwanted grace and I could both feel and see the blackness that ran down my sure to be broken nose. But I did not stay down for more than a second for fear of imminent death. Wrenching my arm and turning quickly, I found myself lying on my back, staring up at his twisted, insanity-ridden face. His eye twitched and his smile remained. He began to lift his fist once more to smash my face in once again, but my shin found it’s way directly into his crotch. The impact caused him to falter and allow a knee to bend. Wrapping four fingers about his knee cap, I collapsed it, bringing the demon professor to a straddle over my chest. His back arched forward, bringing his neck to me. I took hold of his collar with my left hand and threw him to the side, leaving a sizable crater. In the split second of flight that “Father” had just been through, he’d lost grip on The Syringe. I was up, swiping the object out of the air and rocketing my body in his direction.
“Questo è dove finisce!” I shouted in Italian. (This is where it ends!)
The needle buried itself into his cornea, bringing out a shriek of pain. I held it in for a moment, savoring the twists of his features into a terrible cringe, then let out a laugh that all but matched his own. I paid no mind to this, but allowed myself another moment to taste sweet victory. As my thumb slowly pressed down on the over sized plunger, more Italian dripped from my lips like venom.
“Abbattuti dal vostro esperimento ... Sei veramente patetico ....” (Felled by your own experiment... You really are pathetic...)
“That may be... But at least I was a sucsess.... They will remember me...”
Not very classy for somones last words... But, he went cold.
I stood up after a moment, staring down at Father’s limp, lifeless shell of a body. I’d killed him... He was gone... Now what...?
After a few minutes, I figured it best to go find a boys home. A short search of the lab yielded a small roll of bandage gauze that I used to wrap my new eye, so as to make sure that nobody ever had to see it again... As I stumbled my way down the road, the rain soaked my fur through... It was freezing, but I felt wonderful! I was free! No longer was I to live in fear of Professor Q! Even in my elation, my body was weak and quaked with every step I took. I wasn’t sure how long I had been walking when I saw her... She drove a large, scratched up minivan of some kind and came to a screetching halt when she saw me. The kindly hedgehog woman scrambled out of her car and bolted for me. In her embrace, I finally felt a sense of security... Safety... I didn’t know who she was, or what she did, but I knew she was going to be my saving grace... This woman was the beginning of my new life... My better life...
