Song to listen to: Zombie
The lights find their way into my eyes, and I roll over onto my back groggily. My stumach sinks in painfully, very little remains of the bunny in my stumach, there's a warm tantalizing aroma in the air, along with what must be a weeks worth of piss and excrement. How long have I been sleeping? When was the last time I'd slept? I run through memories in my mind, finding that it had been since the last time I'd had a full belly.
I sniff at the smell, letting it draw me in, and flip over onto my stumach to hunt it. I stop mid stride when I see the cats eyes, the cats, I feel disgusted with myself as the memories before I'd fallen asleep return to me, I pull up into a sitting position.
Their skin clings to their bones, they shiver slightly in exhaustion and fear, their pupils dilated, even in this blinding white light. They haven't been fed since being put in here, I glance at the window, it's a different set of scientists, two younger females, one darker skinned, and the other has honeyed brown hair, both have stuff artfully placed on their features, enhancing them to some extent.
Both are bored, and flipping through old footage, one wonders if she can get away with checking her social media again, and steals a glance at the other. Neither had expected me to wake up today, I was the furthest thing from their minds as they politely discussed a tv show they were both kind of interested in, but too "busy" to watch. Each kept coming up with an extra grievance as to why they hadn't seen it yet, the conversation resolving into who was more busy. I can imagine what the last few days have been like, pretty conversation while these animals starved right in front of their faces.
Uncaring, indifferent, was this a sign of power? Or is it simply a lack of feeling? I look closer at their expressions, trying to read their deeper meaning, as the young male had (what I assume was) last week. And... they look miserable, every feeling behind the dark haired females thoughts are accented with a deepened sadness, there's something she's trying to forget, but it still causes her emotional pain. The honey brown one is a little more obvious, her thoughts betraying a blood test she was still waiting on the results for. Both upset, both feeling shame at their hidden feelings.
With their complete indifference to me, I walk slowly and reassuringly towards the cats, they shiver more violently the closer I get, the older one giving a distrustful growl. I place each hand and foot on the ground carefully, trying very hard to convey that I mean them no harm. My stumach squishes so hard with hunger, it's making me nauseous, but I refuse to be hungry for the cats.
Finally, I'm close enough to reach out a hand, they're so tired that they let me touch them, the older cat growling in protest, but does nothing. I step a little closer, and rub my hand gently over the older one's fur, following the contours of her body. Her skin is so thin, she's so thin, I gulp back some saliva, duel pains in different regions of my torso are at war with each other, the one centered in my heart not unlike the feelings of the darker skinned female behind the glass.
It's painful to look at them, I don't quite understand why, so, I back away from them, and return to my usual spot in the center of the room, and lay down, facing away. I stare at my hand, the smell of the older cat lingering in it, still makes my mouth water. I lick my hand, trying to wash the smell off, it makes my stumach flip and twist with each new stroke of my tongue. I fight against the fantasy trying to play in my head, I don't want to see the cats, lifeless, and my heart squeezes almost as painfully as my stumach is aching at that image. I shove it away. No, even if it meant my stumach would be full and no longer in pain, I refuse to kill and eat them. I hear a mild gasps and a quick scramble before a button is hastily pushed.
"How long has Zed been awake?" It sounds like the young Male has walked into the room, his eyes look tired but alarmed, set a little deeper into his head from the last time I'd seen him, dark circle betray sleepless nights. The honey brown one wonders how he'd look if he'd just wear makeup up,
"He just woke up!" She tries to smile distractingly, tilting her head nearly unconsciously to enhance it slightly. "Exactly as you walked in." She touches a hand to her Male coworkers arm, trying to pull his attention from me, her social media still pulled up on her personal tablet sitting in the crook of her arm. The darker skinned female hastily hands her tablet to the young male coworker and promptly leaves,
"You guys, have fun! Thank you for relieving me so soon sweetie." She pats the male coworker on his shoulder before stepping out the door, it closes noiselessly behind her.
He stares, dumbfounded, at the honey-brown haired female, and steps away from her to remove her hand from his arm with an expression close to disgust.
"When Dr. Humbert comes in here, I'm not going to cover for you." A memory of him asking this coworker out and being turned down harshly flashes through his mind. She pouts,
"Zed really was only awake for a second." He eyes her, and holds his thumb to the tablet, it recognizes the new user and switches over to his account. He take a few steps further away from the female, to the other side of the small rectangular room, pulling up the footage from before he entered into the room.
"Wait, you do-" she reaches for his tablet, and he pulls away from her reaching hand, cutting her off midsentence, and annotates in his notes the time and date I woke up.
"I wish you the best, really." His expression is smug, and her irises shrink slightly with fear. She steps back, and takes her personal tablet out from under her arm, and exits out of all the apps she has running on it, and takes the work tablet out of her borrowed coat pocket. Another male coworker, older than the one in the room, but still younger than the older male one, enters the room, peeping only his blonde head into it.
"Somebody page?" His smile at first friendly, but changes when he reads the room.
"Yes, call in Dr. Humbert, her subject just woke up." The young male politely informs him, with just the hint of his smugness leaking into his tone.
The other male nods and eyes the honey-brown "chick",
"You aight?" He asks in an almost concerned tone, the female waves away at him, " I'll tell you about it later."
'There might not be a later for me'. Her mind goes back to the blood test, 'If I do have cancer, and with this minor mistake, she might have me terminated.'
The blonde male internally shrugs and exits the room to call in the Older female, his footsteps fading faster than others with his wide strides.
The atmosphere is thick in the room, her fear and sense of rejection making both of them too unco6to speak to one another. The younger male's feeling of revenge cools and he wonders if he should try to interject for the honey-brown haired female. He internally fights with himself as his guilt grows in putting another human being in the position to die. Self preservation wins out, he hopes that the older female will follow her barely veiled conviction that I'm a female and sacrifice the honey-brown to me. I roll over the idea in my head, I don't particularly like the idea of killing things, I am starving, but I doubt she'd give me someone with genetics, I wonder how that smells...
I hear her overly excited thoughts before her foot steps, what has she done? I'm baffled at what I'm hearing, her excitement shines bright in her eyes when the door opens, the younger male looks up, and is taken aback by her chipper mood. The honey-brown female feels a slightly relieved, exiting out of her account on the tablet, and handing it over to the eager hands of the older female who has to place her finger over the scanner twice in order to get a proper reading to unlock her account. She hums excitedly, I fight the urge to go over to the cats and stand over them, the younger male already knows my secret, and one human is enough. Who knows what her twisted mind would come up with to test out my "hearing" abilities.
The male's fear for his life grows at her excitement, and is almost too afraid to ask what it's about. A cart's wheel catches on the tough floor outside my room, a cage containing a creature whose thoughts are so disjointed, confused, hungry, and above all angry, are so tangled up, just trying to listen to them gives me a headache.
"What test do you have planned today?" The younger male probes.
The cart stops outside a hidden door to my right, in the opposite corner to the cats, I allow myself to lift my head in it direction, she already knows I can hear outside my box, she is still impressed by it, and shakes her head in awe. The younger male has noticed the tightening fear in my expression, but since this face is a new one, he hasn't been able to pinpoint what it means quite yet. The door to the cage is pulled up with some effort from a grizzled old human, a muffled noise in his heart increasing a little with the pressure, he takes a hit from an inhaler before straightening up, and presses a button on a remote he removes from his back pocket, and the primary door into the chamber before my room opens. The half starved drugged up creature walked carefully into the room, snuffling at the floor in curiosity, she can smell the female cats lingering scent, the old man watches with mild impatience.
"You'll see." The older female smiles at her tablet, eager and intent to not miss a single moment of her 'genius'. I could see her remembered frustration at me sparing the cats, she'd thought long and hard after I'd gone to sleep how to inspire any sense of violence from me.
'Maybe she'll defend, maybe that will be better than her being a killing machine?' Was her new hypothesis, the older female knew she wouldn't be able to have me be loyal to her, but if she could prove that I could be loyal to anything, it might prove that I can be trained, that dragons themselves are intelligent enough to be trained instead of just releasing them onto who ever the need killed in this war.
The thought of being trained to kill for any of these humans sparked a new feeling in me, not unfamiliar, as I have something else who mirrors this emotion close by.
"D%$& dog, get in there." The old man grumbles, tapping at the cage, the dog lurches forward into the compartment, her tail between her legs, she lashes back and snaps at the newly shut door behind her. The old man grunts and presses a different button on the controller and hold it up to his mouth, a speaker in the window room turns on. I hear duel voices as the old man states,
"Subject is clear to enter the room." He places the remote back in his pocket, closes the cage door and pushes the cart away, not caring in the slightest about the dog he doped up before bringing it over to my room.
The younger male stares at the older female, she calms herself and as she presses the button to open the connecting door, the wall behind the crazed female dog pushes her into the room, the younger male looks back at his tablet, conflicted again.
Without thought or provocation, the dog bolts at the cats, I'm slow with hunger, and never needing to move so fast, I'm only in time to grab the dog by one of it's back legs as it shakes the older cat in it's mouth. It holds onto her as I yank at her leg more, baring my teeth as she stares at me. Her brain is unable to register the danger I pose and she growls through the bloodied cat in her mouth. I'm putting off enough murderous smell that the younger female cat is more afraid of me than she is of the dog holding her companion in it's mouth. It's no use, I lament and break the dogs leg in my mouth. She screams in pain, dropping the older cat. Her chemical infused blood filling my mouth, it tastes so bad I let go of her leg to spit it out. She rounds on me and bites my face, I feel pressure, but it's not strong enough to break my scaly skin or even cause me pain.
It doesn't feel right with the odds stacked so far against the dog, even when I'm in such a weakened state. She tries gnawing on my face, and I carefully hook my thumbs into either side of her mouth when her teeth get close to my eyes, and apply pressure, her tongue lolls out and she pulls away from me, confusion temporarily more powerful than her chemical induced rage. I release her only to spin and smack her in the face with my tale, she stumbles back and for a moment I'm able to think. I circle around her to stand over the bleeding and thankfully, still living older cat, with my back to the younger cat. The memory from the first thought the younger male had of her, flits across my mind. She is a beautiful dog, I agree, with long patterned fur, milky white under her top jaw with tan dots where her eyebrows are, that same orange-like tan mirroring itself as it separates the white from the black on her face leading down to her beck. I can smell that she's not fully matured, and her paws are too big for her body. I can't bring myself to hate her.
Hate, yes, that's the word I was feeling earlier, I displace the feeling I have for the older female human and direct them at the dog in a vein attempt to get her to see reason. Her eyes are fully dilated, and she pants against the almost painful pumping of her heart, not a sliver of her irises can be seen. I try growling at her, my two vocal cords vibrate, and the air is pushed out through the thrumming slots on the bridge of my nose.
If the hair on her neck could've stood up any straighter, it would now, fear shoved the confusion out of her mind and she try's to growl in response to me, but the air escapes from her lungs soundlessly. Her heart is already tearing itself apart, it's sounds being muted by the blood filling her pericardial sac. If I don't end up killing her, she will die soon anyway. I have nothing to gain by killing her, she's pumped so full of chemicals that I'd never be able to stumach eating her. My attempt to dissuade her back fires, and she lunges forward to bite me again, her teeth clamping down on my shoulder so hard, her right fang breaks under the strain, but she holds on, her mind refusing to acknowledge the pain. She is bigger than me, but not by much, I'm slightly imbalanced when she shakes her head, and in that moment, she releases me and shoves her way past me to grab the cat I'm trying to protect. I grab her by the scruff, and her teeth close on the outlying fur on the older motionless cat. The fur slides between her teeth, I lift up onto my back legs, the muscles rearranging themselves for bipedal and walk forward, the dogs claws scrape at the ground futilely. I twist everything from my waist up and fling her away she rushes me, her teeth clacking past my head, I'm holding her with my arms, she snaps at my neck.
Blood and spittle flick onto my face from her gnashing maw, and she shoves against me with increasing desperation, her anxiety growing, everything in her mind is a blur, I can feel her pulse weakening on my palms, and every part of her that touches me. There's a choice I have to make, the older female will not stop sacrificing these animals to me, and either I let this dogs death be in vain, or kill her and have her live in my brain. I know it's not the eating of the animals that gives me their consciousnesses, the bunny was aware of me eating her body, but she no longer felt any connection to it, that after she had died and joined my inner thoughts, her corpse was no longer part of her sense of self.
Would it be kind to kill this dog? Or do I crave to kill her based on the different scent all the living things I've come to know have?
Even as her body's smell repels me, the living smell inspire my inner hunger. I want it, I want to, to consume that delightful smell. But I don't want that to be the reason that I choose to kill her. I want to be better than what the vile older woman thinks I should be.
Without much thought, I pet the dog's head as reassuringly as I can, as she shakes my entire frame in her verbosity to kill and eat the cats, my mind shying away from a sound that has been weakening and finally stops behind me. I do my best to change my sent into what it was when I had been trying to show the cats affection earlier, in what feels like days ago, or perhaps even another lifetime. I grip the dogs head on either side with my hands, holding it in place, I open my jaws and separate her skull from her spine at the base of her head. Her essence flows into me, I feel disgust at the euphoria this gives me, it gives me great relief, and when her eyes roll back into her skull, I can feel her confused mind in the back of my head when she smells herself outside of what she now senses is her self. With her mind now rational, she takes in all the sights and smells I observe as the eyes on her body glaze over.
I set her body down onto the ground as gently as I can, and enjoy the new, and bright personality in my head. She's just excited to be here, even though she doesn't quite comprehend where here is and my heart sinks at how unnecessary it was for her to be here.
I feel the changes still occurring in my body, my teeth change to have more purpose, instead of a mouth nearly full of canine, 4 of them lengthen out into fangs for gripping and tearing flesh off of things. My sense of smell sharpens slightly and my muscle bunch and change to be more predatory, but my newfound hearing, and lengthened limbs remain the same, they're purpose just changing to help with the hunt, instead of being the hunted. The padding on my hands and feet thicken, and my thumb pulls a little further from my fingers. The changes are only mildly uncomfortable, as I try to stay upright as my shoulder blades lengthen.
The older female scientist is extactic, and beside herself with my changes, I'd proven her hypothesis correct, as well as disproved another she had had.
'She doesn't need to eat them to get their abilities?' she mused, annotating the different changes, more focused on my growl than anything, her notes on that were extensive, and as far fetched and overblown as someone that must have something wrong with them could get.
She considered this experiment a success, of sorts, she's doing her best to understand my brief show of affection to the dog, trying to figure out my ulterior motives, the thought that I wanted to comfort the unfortunate animal before I took it's life was no where to be found in her thoughts. Schemes form in her mind, this wouldn't be the last casualty, she glances at her male coworker, wondering to herself what features I'd get from him, switched tabs in her tablet, and started formulating a new plan, involving human subjects and different effects they'd have on my appearance.
'When will they stop trying to halt the progress?' She sighs to herself.
Her hand pausing over the 'keys' on the tablet, she just thought of something she found unpleasant. If she gave her MALE coworker to me, would that change me into a male? She switches back to one of her favorite moments she's annotated while watching me, and traces a finger along my back in the image.
'It won't make a difference.' Her resolve forms up after a pause, and returns to her scanning of the frames during my fight.
The younger Male's thoughts were on a completely different track than hers, he'd painstakingly watched every muscle, every expression, combing through each frame and placing a note and observation with each and every expression on my face. He is currently on the shift in my expression from when I'd gone from trying to pull the dog away by it's leg peacefully, to breaking it's leg to break it's death grip on the cat. His mind is worried, he's already seen everything, but now as he looks closer, the regret is clear.
The younger male is unsure if they should continue their experiments on me, his previous guilt still gnawing at his subconscious, forgotten for now but still changing where his thoughts lead. He feels the glance from the older female, and his best to ignore it, he has a job to do. He weighs the moral implications of testing on a sentient creature, but knows it won't convince their higher ups to cease and desist, remembering seeing another project on repurposing war veterans in a program labeled MA. They've already burned through so many subjects, he shudders, it's a mystery that they keep getting volunteers.
One of his hands started to tremble, his tablet shaking with it, he takes a few breaths, it's against company policy to think about projects that aren't yours he chants to calm himself down. He clenches that hand, and breathing in through his nose and out of his mouth, he refocuses on his work.
All the while I'm trying to get a grip on the thoughts of the dog, she's so different from the bunny, and their aware but indifferent to each other. Wanting control of what they both thought of as their limbs but not understanding why I continued to sit here, our face buried into the dogs fur as mourned her death. It felt disrespectful to move on from her loss, even if she seemed fine with her sudden death. She doesn't remember attacking the cats, her last memories were of her looking up into the older female's smiling eyes, and a sharp pain in her neck. And know she is me, but I am not her, my thoughts are hers, but hers are not mine.
She's unable to feel panic at not being able to move her limbs, because she can feel, and knows that I don't want too, though my tail betrays me and swishes twice on the ground before I pin that down too. I want to keep her in my thoughts, it's making me sad, but her endless positivity is infectious. I want to drown myself in her happiness in simply being, the body didn't matter, my hunger does dampen her mood slightly, but she can smell something "good" nearby. I try not to notice the smell of the older cat's blood, or more revolting, how hungry it makes me.
The female dog knows my reservations, she want to comfort me, but she can't find her tongue. I try to use that small discovery to distract myself, dogs show affection by licking things? I consider doing that and my hunger takes over my mind once more. I feel like growling in frustration, now that I've already given into my frustrations before, my body is eager to express itself in that way again, and the dog isn't helping. Whenever she wanted something, she either made it known, or made it happen. A treat was never denied, she directs my thoughts back to the smell of the cats and I finally give in to one thing she desires.
I breath in deeply, and with all the strength I have, I look at the cats.