His body had settled down to a normal state at last. Or at least that was what they told him. Onew didn’t remember much about what had happened. He remembered feeling like steel clamps were squishing the sides of his stomach and like acid was being poured down the back of his body but other than that he had no recollection of the events that had transpired. It was a blank slate with the faint etchings of the past that were too shallow for him to read. Sometime during the rush his feet had left the floor and he had floated down a very dark tunnel - which he knew; he’d been on his way to destination nowhere.
When he had awoken he was in his room again. A mountain of pillows had surrounded him like the snow that surrounded the tip of Mount Everest which wasn’t all too unusual. Dr. Park had always favourite him over the other boys for reasons that both held true and strong individually; for reasons that he would never willingly admit out loud any longer.
Despite the pillows cushioning his aching body, though, he still felt uneasy. It might have been the fault of the stitched up laceration cutting down the center of his abdomen. Or it might have been the fact that he’d enlarged his dysfunctional family and hadn’t even been conscious to beg the doctor to let him meet the new addition. He was somewhat ashamed to admit that he had groveled at the doctor’s side in one of his maddened, drug enhanced states after giving birth to who knew which number baby. It wasn’t easy letting go of something that was a par t of you. And his donor and the woman whose organs allowed him to nurture the embryo to the deformed body it probably was born with.
Which number had that child been? Three? Four? The ratios tagged to Onew were totally out of wack… If it weren’t for Dr. Park’s affection for him and constant pampering he probably would be behind the locked doors with the other failures whose corpses were fermenting in their own filth.
Lucky, lucky him… He was a pedigree breed in a pack of mutts. Too bad it didn’t change the fact that he had to go through insemination processes just like the rest of them. He’d heard once somewhere that they did fertilization with bulls sometimes. They would cage them up into tiny areas and arouse them by putting an “attractive” cow in their line of vision. From there, the bull would get so excited that he would try to mount the female, even though she was divided into a separate pen and out of reach. In that one instant where he raised onto his hind quarters, though, the vets managed to get a whole load of sperm which they would sell off to the person with the most suitable bovine and highest bid. Onew felt a bit like that. Unlike the other experiment boys he was that cow; he was the cow that received the prized sperm of the mightiest bull with the biggest, sharpest horns.
Top notch.
It was oh so fun being number one.
If only.
His special treatment was limited to an extra caring touch from the big boss, unfortunately. He never got to meet his children, or breathe fresh air… What he received was an unbelievable amount of dislocated and broken hip bones and crushed pelvises. He got to sit through hours and hours of pain where sometimes it got so unbearable that he had difficulties swallowing his own saliva. He got to withstand cramps that grew so intolerable that he actually gasped with each twist of his body. He got to wake up to puddles of blood in his ironed pants (one of the “valuable” aspects to his high standing) that were such a bright red that he was still too terrified to stare at it for more than just a quick moment. He got to live with the fact that the father to his demented children was the man who was murdering and plotting and manipulating the innocent and playing God when he was nothing but a mere mortal.
Special all right.
When things started to look extremely dull, the depressing atmosphere was interrupted by the squeaking of the door hinges. A welcome distraction until Onew realized exactly what came with the faulty door. He should never have gotten his hopes up because the line of people that filed into the room with their intimidating sneers and haughty expressions. They held absolutely no care in the way they shoved the door open, letting it pound loudly against the rubber ball that stopped it from hitting the bricks directly. The sound echoed around the bare room, throbbing painfully in Onew’s ears.
The groomers were here at last to brush their dog.
“How are you doing?”
And here Onew thought he was facing a pack of educated individuals.
Dr. Park sidled over to the bed where his prized pooch was bound into a stiff position thanks to the aching in his limbs. His hand breezed over the small beads of sweat permeating through the thin tendrils of his wispy hair. One small touch made him wish he was back in that coma of his. It had been sweet once… He was sure of it…
There had been a time when he’d been able to watch a sunset with his body entangled with his; the wood patio beneath his feet trying to shove splinters into his toes. Birds used to trill at him in jealousy over what they weren’t able to obtain with their mates.
Yes… There had been a time like that… Too bad those times were gone like his memories of what had happened during his moment of spastic reactions to his labour.
Were his lips moving? They seemed to be doing so at their own free will… But why? Oh… Dr. Park was speaking. What other promises would he be spewing now?
His palm had settled on his cheek during his absence from reality, adding to the sweat already congesting the area.
“It’s beautiful… The baby… So tiny.. It was missing a hand, but it was almost perfect Onew… Almost. You’re delivering better each time…” Dr. Park cooed.
How could a baby be perfect if it was missing a hand? That wasn’t perfection. That was the side effect of a twisted man’s sadistic fantasy. It didn’t even really matter that it was missing a hand, though. It could have been perfect even if it had been missing a foot or a hand or even a nose. What made it imperfect was the fact that it’d come from his body. His body. His. His. His. And his sperm… That man’s… That man’s. It was so disturbing and endearing how perfect this imperfect being was to him. He couldn’t even imagine how he’d feel when he met his handless child and all its limbless siblings… Thinking about it only strengthened his longing to reunite his family (as messed up as it was).
Were all of them even still alive?
Onew couldn’t stop himself from wondering all the possibilities of the infants’ futures. If they were mistreated as badly as the ones who suffered to bring them into this world than he rather give his life than be forced to consent to breeding any more.
Silly… Dr. Park worshipped those things way too much to hurt them…
“You’ll start the process again in two weeks… That way you can give me another beautiful child… Like what we always wanted.”
Nausea.
It was threatening to make itself noticeable. It rattled his ribs and moved higher and higher up his chest till it lodged in his throat, stopped only uvula which was straining from the push.
This had never been what Onew wanted. He had – at one point – wanted love, a relationship, a family to call his own… He’d dreamed passionately about starting his family long ago before he’d even known of Dr. Park’s plans to open this additional section to his fertilization clinic. If he’d known how twisted his brain was he would have left him before plans of eloping had come up in the situation. If he’d even had the slightest inkling of what he’d had planned… He would have never listened to his convincing words after the loss of…
“We finally have a family,” Dr Park continued.
If Onew had known, he wouldn’t have caved into agreeing to any method like he had because if having a family meant this he didn’t want it anymore.
Even with the repulsion nearly consuming his entire consciousness he had to answer. He couldn’t allow Dr. Park to babble about his once sublime dreams of the future as if it was the victory they’d been waiting to complete them. This was so far off from what he had wanted. So far off from the perfection he had envisioned.
He wanted desperately to move his lips and ask since when their family included a dozen plus kidnapped boys and the lives of people who still had so much yet to live for. But his tongue hung limp between the loose clamps of his teeth. Half of it plastered to his mouth like a big, useless muscle that resembled him in ways that were too eerie to ponder for more than a moment.
What was the point of being a pedigree pooch when you were trained not to bark?