Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
This is my entry into the Finish the Story Contest. The prompt, or start of the story, was written by @f3nix and is highlighted below in quotation to differentiate between their work and mine. The idea of the exercise is that I finish the story, and try to do it in 700 words or less. This week I've hit the word limit, completing my ending in 698 words.
With the best intentions
beginning by
"A double toast! At your brilliant timing, for the second damn time."
The nurse spoke turning his gaze to the parking lot, beyond the window whose bars, swallowed by rust, had lost all their decorative hypocrisy. His cheerful lashing tone clashed with the fixture of his gaze elsewhere.
The lump of words channelled along the patient's Eustachian tubes like a sticky egg liqueur, while the neodymium lamp commented on the phrase with a quick moth’s flicker.
Through the steel bar on the side of the bed, her bleary, half-closed eyes returned to her the image of a lanky shape exiting the bedroom.
She wondered why she had only been noticed now, only now despite the endless carousel of drowsiness in which she had fallen for eons. A never-ending display of Chinese lamps, swarming with the nightmares of a painting by Bosch.
The impetus of thirst coagulated in a guttural moan, insufficient to make the sarcastic human crane turn back towards her.
The sound she emitted reminded her of a documentary with a koala, forced to walk on hot coals during a forest fire. It was something she had seen with Lucian that last night spent together before she left in secret heading to the clinic.
I had to fix it for us, Lucian. For once only, maybe the right one. And instead, look where I fucking got myself.
A sudden laugh tried to make its way. The spasms brought to her mind the horrible awareness of those tubes that, like worms, were violating her body. She had not noticed but two figures were now observing her from the edge of the bed.
"Rise and shine, Ms. White. You had a car accident just a mile away from the clinic. Fortunately, on his way back home after the shift, Valery noticed the wheels of your vehicle in the ditch along the avenue. We had to operate you urgently, a lung had collapsed and we had to contain internal haemorrhage in the abdominal cavity. It was not easy but someone up there decided that your day had not yet arrived."
As he spoke, the doctor's eyes stared at her in dullness and, at the same time, darting with curiosity.
She would have said that some of her saviour’s facial muscles - not all the necessary ones - were struggling to reproduce a slow smile. The attendant loomed from behind the doctor's silhouette, tilting his head silently to one side.
For God’s sake, tear all this stuff away and just give me a damn glass of water. Then I'll pay you what I owe you and leave.
She would have shouted at them, but the only breath filtering from her broken mouth didn't even sound like a koala moan anymore.
"Yes, I understand the curiosity, Ms. White." The doctor's eyes now reminded her of those of an abyssal fish.
"You have crossed the border and turned to us to participate in the pharmacological trials and, may I add, further to helping medical progress, you have also come because we pay fairly well."
A wet and repeated slap against the floor, in a point her eyes couldn’t reach, seemed to smear those statements along the washed-out walls. Through scarcely oiled winches, the human crane behind the doctor leaned forward in her direction.
"Well, Ms. White, notwithstanding the circumstance, you will be pleased to know that we have decided to still include you in the program. You will earn your fair compensation, after all."
Perhaps because of the narcotics, the doctor's face kept changing as if his features were playing hide and seek in the blind corners of her perception. A sound came from a low point close to the bed, similar to a badly restrained gurgle, while the doctor quietly turned away.
"You will have your money, despite your unfortunate condition or, perhaps, thanks to it," he said in a last laconic murmur.
Just Beneath the Skin
Ending by
Raindrops clung to the needles of the pine trees. Hanging like fat translucent plums in the still mountain air.
Unit 25678 watched the sun dip from the cloud cover, emblazoning the horizon in a lurid crimson welt against the upper atmosphere.
This weather and atmospheric effects made him feel strangely full inside, igniting an odd nostalgia in his mind, calling to his human side.
Further in the woods stood a red brick building, hunched forlornly at the mountain's foot.
Kristtorn bær medical facility.
He engaged all systems. Silicon heated as he flexed his hands, Kevlar skin tightened against knuckles.
Clara White lay helpless, like a fish flapping on the shores of night.
She couldn't tell what state she was in, she couldn't move her head. At least they had removed the bandages from her face and mouth.
A half empty glass of water sat next to the bed. She strained against the bed sheets but it was useless.
"Nurse, I need some water" she croaked in a guttural spasm.
The words faded as the dying light slanted through the window.
Something gurgled just out of view. She felt a viscous warmth swim through her, a cloying chemical balm. Whatever this drug was they were testing, it felt like being coddled in a tight leather skin.
The room swam in a myriad of colors. The neodymium lamp next to her bed flickered and then blazed into full beam. The feeling of warmth increased and Clara White faded away.
"How do we proceed with the White subject doctor Parker? Due to her injuries the genetic enhancement therapy has shown a 100% efficacy."
The bespectacled doctor looked up from his desk. "We continue as planned, nothing has changed."
"But she shows signs of full mutations."
Doctor Parker held up his hand, cutting the air like a knife.
"Nothing has changed." He spoke each word slowly, cutting the air each time. "The council do not care about collateral damage. Our job is to document any regeneration of tissue for report to the council medical board."
"But what about Mrs White?" We can't leave her in this state of mutation for the people of this world to discover."
Parker softened his voice" Things happen with this type of therapy Jim, you know that. You know what you signed up for. If Mrs White's metamorphosis doesn't stabilize we will have to destroy the evidence."
Unit 25678 paced the perimeter of the building.
Security was lax at this facility. This operation was running on the basis of 'out of sight, out of mind.' This type of inter-dimensional field research was a new slant on the councils outreach program. They thought no one knew about it.
He halted his patrol and stared through a frost stained window.
A doctor stood up from behind a worn mahogany desk, his face turning into the field of view as he studied a report.
Unit 25678 recognized that face, Aldernan Parker, chief of the research arm for the council's genetic manipulation program.
Bingo!
Glass shards arced in a crystalline rainbow as he dived through the window. Pieces tickled his Kevlar skin, feeling like that first scratch of an itch in the morning.
Doctor Parker spun, eyes bulging when he saw the array of cybernetic enhancements this intruder displayed. Parker glanced at Unit 25678 face, the only part of him fully unmodified.
"Robert?"
Unit 25678 grinned and knocked him out with a swift punch.
"You're coming with me you fucker!"
Unit 25678 stared down at this half-woman, shifting the unconscious Parker on his shoulder. Her eyes pleaded with him as she opened those scaled lips to reveal a large reptilian tongue.
"Water, please."
Her still-human eyes darted to the glass next to the bed. He lifted it to her mouth, some of it dribbled over her snout.
The intravenous tubes gurgled and she gasped. "No!"
He flicked the switch to stop the machine from administering the genetic mutagen.
He undid her bindings and removed the intravenous tubes.
A council chief of research and a viable genetic polymorphic. This was going to be a double payday.
He flicked the switch on the transporation tablet. The dimensional portal fizzed into being.
The end.
All images used in this post are either my own original digital art or creative commons licence, credited beneath the image. If you have enjoyed this sci-fi short story, you can check out my homepage
