Flesh Dance

Even as I write this I’m being watched, listened to, monitored by them, the men and women I watched become monstrosities. I’m documenting this simply because I fear that if I don’t, I won’t get the chance. The situation I’m currently in is a very delicate one, so I’ll make this quick, but make certain that I don’t leave out anything important.

It all began back in the fall two years ago when The Kronin & James Company first started up. It was a psychiatric ward, a place where mentally diseased or depressed people could go to get “fixed”, only, that’s definitely not what happened. Long story short the patients were experimented on. Their minds were changed, chunks of brain removed and replaced with bits of machinery or simply thrown away. Limbs were hacked off and rearranged, sometimes extras were added. The “children” at Kronin & James even went as far as attempting to splice genes, mixing up the way humans were supposed to function and creating monsters. All of this was really without purpose; Bertram Kronin and Aleksander James were just two very rich men who wanted to play with the way humans work. I also happened to work for them. Mind you I didn’t do the actual fiddly, human modification stuff; I was behind the scenes, running errands and so forth.

Anyway, the best way to describe the things created would be to call them shapeshifters, or shifters for short. In the category of shapeshifters there are a number of different creatures of varying creepiness and danger. The first being what is known as a skinwalker. A skinwalker is basically just your average shifter that can change from one form to another. The only difference between these and the ones in legends is that instead of just morphing from shape to the next, they shed their skin, sort of like a snake, but not at all like a snake. There is the berserker which is your average werebear. There are the arachnes, which are for all intents and purposes, spider people. We have the wendigos, humans that were forced into cannibalism and eventually turned into massive, gangly, flesh-gobbling beasts. And lastly there are the rokurokubi. The rokurokubi are beautiful Japanese women that have insane rubbery necks, and for some, detachable heads. These don’t really do much but they’re slightly off putting as they enjoy nothing more than to watch people sleep. Imagine waking up to find a curious decapitated noggin on the pillow beside you, or a head slithering through your window with a hundred feet of neck trailing behind it. There are a few other monsters of which I won’t go into detail. They were created poorly and were too unstable to survive. Although to their credit, some did go out with a bang, literally. The building had a whole city’s worth of monsters, locked away in prison-like cells.

After about a year there was a particular case, a case that stood out to everyone, and with good reason. A new patient, a man named Gregor checked into our facility. He admitted himself, but there really didn’t appear to be anything wrong with him. Never the less, he was extremely adamant that he had some deep seeded issue that needed to be worked out. With this particular case my boss had asked me to sit in on the experimentation so I could, “See what the company was all about,” Whatever that meant. Either way since she was in fact, my boss, I did what was asked of me. Since I began working there I always assumed what they did was just some sort of glorified shock therapy, but when I arrived I saw something very different. The man, Gregor, was full of holes and wires, and he was strapped tightly to an old wooden chair. They had peeled back the skin on some parts of his arms and hooked cables directly into the muscle. His head was shaved; holes were drilled through his skull for direct access to the brain. And it appeared as if they had completely removed the top of his head, and then crudely stapled it back on. The poor man looked completely listless.

The lead technician flipped a switch and Gregor convulsed wildly, chokes and dollops of black foam spluttering from his open mouth. I stared in abject horror but neither of the specialists even blinked an eye. Gregor’s back arched away from the chair and he began to scream, the skin on his chest and stomach began to pulse and pull, like a wild animal trying to escape. All at once Gregor let out a final soul-ripping scream and was ripped apart from the inside out. A great beast tore out of him, splitting him almost completely in two. It was a scelero, a massive demonesque monster, a lover of human flesh and a killer of all in its path. It stood at about 9 feet tall and had brown grey skin, pulled tight so that all bone and muscle protruded. It’s heaving ribcage stretched the skin so that you could almost see its lungs and erratically beating heart. Long, thin arms dangled from its sides with sharp talons scraping the floor beneath it. The beast’s face was small, had tiny black eyes but a huge gaping mouth, filled with crooked yellow fangs.

It lurched forward and took a swipe with its great arms, taking hold of one of the technicians and bit into his abdomen, ripping out his midsection and throwing him into the wall with a sickening thud. The creature then snatched up the other specialist and tore into her, tearing out large chunks of flesh with lunatic strength, and swallowing them whole. The beast lunged at me, pinning me to the wall and stared me dead in the face. Using its claws, it made a clean cut in the palm of its hand. It then looked at me, almost smirking, and pressed its hand into my mouth, holding firm until it was sure I had ingested a decent amount of its dirt tasting blood. And then it took off, staggering violently down the corridor. Why it didn’t just kill me, I’ll never know. But hey, who am I to question the authority of a flesh-eating monster?

After that the monster did rounds of the whole building, releasing all the others and devouring any why got in its way. And then they mobilized, they broke out of the facility and poured into the streets, murdering people and sending the town into chaos. People running in and out of their houses, tripping and stamping each other into the ground, and traffic jams for miles. Not really sure where to go just yet, I just began to run, anywhere and as fast as my legs would take me. My vision began to spin and shake and my legs went out from under me at the first chance they got. I squished myself up against a building, trying to get my bearings and not get crushed to death by stampeding pedestrians. After a few deep breaths the dizziness passed and I took off again, home was safe, that’s where I had to get.

I continued on my way, dodging the panic and confusion as best I could when I found myself at a dead end, various monsters of all kinds closing in on me. They seemed particularly entertained at the way I swayed as my vision faded in and out. They were about ready to make a feast of me when the scelero from K & J fell from the roof above, blocking their path. The monsters looked confused and a bit offended. The scelero responded by simply raising its hand and showing them the dried gash on its hand, the same gash it had brutally crushed into my mouth. The beasts began to howl or laugh, and they scuttled away, jumping from rooftops or just rampaging through crowds of people, flooding the streets with copper stinking red.

When I finally arrived home I could barely see or move my limbs. I burst through the doorway and fell onto my hands and knees. My sight went red and my whole body began to shake. There was massive pressure building in my chest and I collapsed to the floor gasping for air. It was then that I felt my ribs break and my skin begin to dance. Just as had happened to Gregor, a great beast erupted from my chest, bits of viscera and flesh painting the adjacent walls.

And here I am now. Kronin & James’ limited resources could never have predicted that the shifters were any sort of contagious; and really it’s not as bad as I made it out to be earlier. I feel, strong, incredibly strong. I am power. I am fear. I am awe inspiring; and I know what I must do. There is a thought in my head, ringing as if it were being shouted in my ear. My mission in my new form. My objective.

We’re taking over the world.