Right In Two

Warning: Graphic imagery and language.

The park bench is painted with frost and I curse Dr. Fillmore under my foggy breath for dragging me out here this early. I look up and let my eyes rummage through the multiplicity of stars, the morning light only just beginning to peak out in the faintest hue over the horizon. A hand on my shoulder pulls me out of my whimsy and I turn to see Dr. Fillmore. 

“God, you scared me. Why don’t you have a coat on? It’s freezing-” 

“Come with me, now,” he says before turning around and walking briskly towards a pair of headlights. I barely have the time to blink before I get up and hobble after him. 

“Doctor, you’d better have a damned good reason for getting me out here this early in the cold, I’ve got a meeting with the advisory board about my thesis in two hours.” I say as I close the door to his car. He says nothing. He tells me to buckle up. I barely have time to do it before he slams on the gas and spins the car around the empty parking lot and flies around the corner and down the street. 

“Woah! Slow down! What are you doing?” He doesn’t answer and I have a hard time keeping steady in the passenger seat. My arm grips the handle on the inside of the door as he runs through a red light, the other cars barely having time to stop. 

“Jesus Doctor, slow down! Tell me what’s going on!” He speeds through a stop sign. 

“Enough!” I scream. “If I’m going to die today you better tell me why first!” 

“You won’t believe me if I told you.” he says, the finality of the sentence as frightening as his driving. 

“Jesus Christ.” My grip on the door handle numbs my whole arm. 

After what seemed like an eternity he turns into a parking lot of a building and comes to a stop with squealing tires next to a door. He gets out. I’m still holding on to the handle, hyperventilating. 

“We’re here.” he says through the windshield. I take a deep breath and get out, thinking warmly of the walk home later. Dr. Fillmore takes a key out of his pocket and unlocks the steel door and goes in. I don’t. The door closes. I look up and around at where I am, getting my bearings. The building looks nearly condemned and there’s no sign of life around. The doc opens the door again. 

“Hurry up.” excuse me, what? 

“No. You got me up at five o’clock in the morning and dragged my ass out in the cold, then drive like a psycho to a creepy building. I ain’t going anywhere until you tell me what the hell this is all about.” I’m hot now, my blood close to boiling. 

“Please Carson. I need you to see this.” It’s under the old light that I notice the bags under his eyes and the pale tint of his skin. His stare pins me down and begs me in desperation with eyes like that of a madman. 

“Fuck,” I mumble under my breath and follow him inside. 

When he leads me into the laboratory my rage shifts from anger to a forlorn pity. The large room is dark and messy, with papers and food wrappers littering the desks and floors. A waft of feces emanates from what must be the bathroom. Sleeplessness covers the walls in papers with strange equations and imagery that looks like something out of a lovecraftian novel. 

“Doctor…” he goes to a door to the back of the room and puts another key in a lock and turns it. Then he turns to me. 

“I need your help Carson. I need you to convince me that what I’m about to show you is real.” he says. I begin to say something but immediately get cut off by the sound of high pitched squeals as he opens the door. I know the sound. Mice. It must be where he keeps them for experimentation. Accompanying the squeals is a metallic rattle. 

He waits for me at the door. Something deep within me tugs me backwards, begging me to turn away. But my curiosity overrides the instinct. I slowly walk towards the door, my legs feeling heavier than they are. The room is dark. He hits the light switch. 

On a steel table the cage sits within another, reinforced with chicken wire. The cage on the inside is full to bursting, and a growing pile of viscera surrounds it as mice are forcibly squished through the space between the bars. 

“Jesus Christ! Doctor, what the fuck is this?” 

“Carson, look at the cage.” 

“Why do you have so many in there? Get them out!” 

“Carson! Look at the fucking cage!” My mouth hangs open in disbelief. He’s really gone off the deep end. 

“I’m leaving!” I say putting my hands up and quickly pace towards the door. 

“They’re reproducing by fragmentation!” he yells at me, and my feet get nailed to the floor. I turn and look at him. 

“You’re…I’m sorry doc, what?” 

“Goddamnit Carson, why do you think there are so many in the cage! I’ve discovered a way to make mammals reproduce by fragmentation!” My mind hurts at the suggestion as it tries to process the words he just said. 

“Fragmentation.” 

“Yes!” 

“Like a blackworm.”

“Yes exactly!” 

“You’re telling me that they’re splitting apart asexually and growing new versions of themselves, like a fucking starfish.” 

“Come and see for yourself!” 

I want to leave. I want to go straight to the board and tell them of this madness. Instead, I my feet slowly take me towards the cage. My stomach curls as the horrific mayhem before me as blood and guts pool at the edges of the cage within a cage. Finally, a single mouse manages to squeeze out of the stressed bars which have begun to snap under the pressure. It lands on the plastic floor of the second cage and quickly begins to seizure. A ringing in my ear mixes in with the deafening sounds of suffering and I taste vomit as I watch the mouse split apart on its own. Almost instantly the wriggling halves sprout little appendages and fresh pink muscle bubbles to the surface, where hair instantly starts to grow. Within a minute, I see two mice where there used to be one. 

“Sometime between a minute and an hour they will split again. I have been unable to slow the process.” The doc says. 

“How…” 

“I need your help Carson. You need to help me.” I mumble out some words but I’m not even sure what I’m saying anymore. The doc continues. 

“We need to kill them. All of them. I need you to help me throw them over the bridge.” 

I look at him, then back at the cage. I nod. Yes. Yes we fucking do.

The cage is getting heavy. By the time we get to the car, the floor of the larger cage is already full of mice. We force it in the back of his car and he drives. This time, I was the one telling him to go faster. 

Cars swerve out of our way as we race towards the bridge. By the time we get there we’ve got two squad cars on our backs, the lights and sirens adding to the maddening squeals of an unstoppable growing mass of mice in the backseat. 

The doctor smashes through the toll booth and we drive on the yellow line, scrapping cars as we go. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I don’t recognize the person looking back at me. 

We come to a stop and get out. The cops are probably yelling at us, telling us to get down on the ground. Just as we manage to pull the cage out I feel something hit my shoulder and leg and I go down. I look at the doc and I see blood gushing from his neck. He tries to say something through the bubbling red and though I don’t hear the words I know what he says. With every ounce of strength I have I lift the cage over the edge of the bridge and let it fall. I look over and watch it splash into the cold gray river and sink into oblivion. My body falls to the ground and I see figures coming over me, holding pistols. 

I bring my hands up in front of me and see that the tips of my fingers have been chewed up by the wild mice. Must have been when I lifted the cage. I let my hand fall fall. A heat like fire emanates from my belly and my insides scream and so do I. And in that final moment, as my eyes feel like they’re being pulled apart, I look up at the stars, their light identical, so many of them, and I decide that they’re all the same.