Ex Vitro

The gas was musky and seasoned with an aliquot of sea salt like the smothering aroma of rubbing alcohol. Along with a bitter, sulfuric taste. This wasn’t ordinary gas. It sought after people, as dealerships seek customers, and all kinds of people if it got the chance. But most especially it went after Mikey Julyan. It wanted him very much. The billow had mailed a love letter to Julyan’s nostril warehouse and the letter had unsurprisingly put his tense system on high alert. Burning his nose hairs. His body, his only body, shuttered at the prospect of meeting this apparition. Whimpering. He should’ve fled, but he in his infinite wisdom had ignored the red flags and turned a blind eye to his innate emergency protocols, as if he was corrupted and bought off. He’d have little time to regret this decision later.

While Mikey was operating a washer-like centrifuge machine, his buddies were cooking poison in the biosafety cabinet and snickering about girls in their classes. And Mikey would be the nominee to cover their asses. His lab partners, Tyler and JJ, were carelessly mixing liquids and fine powders without referring to the real instructions, so they were as clueless as dodo birds at the helm of an attack submarine. Then the two clowns had peddled to another task while their monstrosity brewed and frothed until a cloud had engulfed the cabinet’s empty space. By the time they noticed, it had already evolved into the elephant in the room. A substantial mastodon indeed. They were the janitors of the lab amidst the desolate evening (per the professor’s orders) and this was their responsibility. Meaning that the university could punish them – perhaps repatriate them to their older, unsympathetic parents – if so much as a smudge was found on equipment or the laboratory itself. Hooray for science.

In this situation, the reasonable and morally-sound student has a number of ways to mollify supervising technicians and lab professors. Such as to immediately report the incident, sound the alarm, and evacuate the building.

These knuckleheads opted for the lazy and cowardice way instead.

-Mikey, you’re the senior in the room. Do something about it, JJ piped.

-We should report this.

-No, not a good idea. I’d like to stay out of trouble, thank you very much. JJ tapped his foot like a jackrabbit. He was usually anxious.

Unlike JJ, Tyler wasn’t visibly distraught, at least on the outside. But he was pensive as always. Mikey knew his friends were a stubborn and superstitious bunch who served as an unprecedented example of brainless stupidity. It’s no use appealing to common sense when they had none. And their solution was predictable. Before they peeped, he offered to spew a fire extinguisher on the cloud and ventilate the neutralized smog through the building’s flue ducts. They silently agreed.

At the present time, Mikey was unknowingly a lamb to the slaughter. He stood by cabinet’s hood and ticked a countdown off his fingers, planning to commence on number 3. His sweat trickled to the linoleum floor and he gripped the pressure vessel in the crook of his elbow and his gloved hand pressed against the translucent shield. It was humid in the room. This cluttered, indifferent school property with pipework in the ceiling (designed like gutted mackerel bones) and bulky benches in the center and bio-gadgets surrounding him. And the acrid scent that slithered from the cabinet. His only consolation was the pathetic support of his friends, who were hiding behind the entrance and peeking through the jamb.

Waiting to maroon him in case something goes south.

-You got this! JJ whispered. His sorry-excuse for pals flashed their thumbs up.

Mikey wanted to do the job quickly, sparing no time for the gas to knock him dead. It was worse that he wasn’t wearing a PPE mask (they had goggles though, good for the eyes but not the heart). He repeatedly sucked in deep breaths, a technique he learned as a former beach lifeguard, and he readied himself to prop open the hood. He clenched the handle, intending to pull it up.

JJ and Tyler rushed inside and gently shut the door and they hissed at Mikey to stop what he was doing. He ladled the fire extinguisher canister to the floor and padded to them. They explained that someone was approaching from down the hall.

-Guys, this is dangerous. We can’t just wait for the person to leave. What if the gas leaks and we suffocate in here?

-I’ll take that risk, JJ said. Do you WANT to get caught?

Mikey didn’t respond because, for once, the idiot could be right. Even though his suppressed subconscious was implanting imaginings of an opposite scenario. That he was going to endure a very painful demise. He furtively wondered how to escape twiddle-dee and twiddle-dumb.

They peered through the door’s glass panel and watched the figure emerge from the blind corner. It was a comely woman, strolling past them to a chromium elevator. Likely oblivious to their presence and preoccupied by personal matters. Carrying a manilla envelope. Her auburn curtain bangs, swishing in tandem with her stride, caught Tyler’s leering attention. He confessed that she was hot as hell, despite the dowdy lab coat that covered her backside.

When the corridor was empty again, they all sighed in relief and slouched against the drab wall.

-That was close, Tyler said.

-Yeah but what if there’s more people here? What are going to do?

-I don’t think so, JJ remarked (scratching his earlobe like a rabbit). It’s late and she’s just an anomaly. A student who might’ve forgotten something. Afterall, I saw she was holding paperwork.

But there was something ineffably off-putting about the woman in Mikey’s view. She even looked familiar.

They idled for a moment, staring at shelves of electron microscopes and silently reevaluating their strategy. Not daring to look at the dynamic smoke. The apathetic gas. It bustled in the cage, rapping the confinements, and grew thicker in density like the coagulation of blood serum. Calling their names and teasing them like a bully.

Mikey feared the glass would burst.

He opened the door and jostled the louts outside and barricaded the door with the latch. Tyler almost protested, but he remembered the danger that still thrived in their science exhibition. So they nodded to Mikey and acknowledged the possibility of total disaster. And, hustling to the self-destructing cabinet, he resumed the unnecessary and nightmarish task of diffusing a chemical landmine. To the wise observer, he was a dog returning to his vomit. In other words, a fool.

The stench had changed during their delay in action. It became bilious, like vomit, and it wrung tears from his lachrymal glands. The smell was deadlier. More acidic. Eating away the olfactory cells that protected him from harm.

If he didn’t act soon, bad things could happen.

On the count of three, Mikey thought, breathing and puffing rapidly. He was drenched in fetid sweat and he worried that his grip would slip during the unlatching, thus dropping and shattering the hood. His head swelled with anguish.

There was no time to rethink anything. Do it now. Now.

-One. Two. Three.

He didn’t consider the corrosiveness of the gas. A fatal flaw. Despite his speed at retracting the shield and discharging the extinguisher foam, the gas lunged at him and clung to his exposed skin. Namely his face. The wafting particles had attached to his pores and dined on the subcellular surface and dug deeper in the sensitive roots of his flesh. Mining for intravenous oil.

From an enlarged perspective, one could witness the languid process of him turning into a stiff. At first his facial features were reddening and bloating in uneven patches. Then parts of him was suppurated, gushing subdermal fat like melted butter (Tyler actually reckoned it was like volcanic acne. With the help of therapy he could recall the memory) and frying him as fresh tenderloin. The gas was fair and unbiased, teething on every acre of Mikey’s exterior with equal and abusive treatment. And the interior as well.

He cried briefly, but his lungs were exhausted of the energy best conserved for staying alive (very ironic). He lost consciousness. And he fell, like a lifeless doll, sprawled on a nearby counter ladened with flasks and tubes. Knocking items in a clattering cacophony as he slammed to the ground.

In a few minutes, the inanimate corpse that smoldered below the swivel chairs would be the charred remains of Mikey Julyan. No longer with us.

Tyler stumbled away and barfed. He couldn’t take the imagery anymore. He heaved and huffed, genuflecting to God and begging to be spared of Mikey’s fate. They were flanked by windows that revealed a closing dawn and a Sun that would shun the plight of a heliocentric believer. He wept hard and secretly asked himself, what am I going to do? It was the first time he’d openly emoted misery before his companions.

He wasn’t watching JJ.

A spell passed and night filled the scene. Tyler was asleep in his own puddle of puke and JJ sat across from him. Near the lab. For hours, he routinely glanced in the room and noted the sight of the cloud. It could’ve been dissipating. Not to overlook, however, that the gas had inflicted severe damage to the lab. The overhanging rectangular bulbs were silenced when the sparks splattered. No smoke alarm beeping or peppering sprinklers either. He incessantly tapped his starboard foot like a jackrabbit and hopped to his feet and paced about the corridor with a stable, nervous expression. He looked impatient.

A noise was coming from around the corridor and he snapped in that direction. It was the woman, now in a darker and more casual raiment. She clacked across the moonshine floor in sneakers. Bearing into his gaze. As their eyes locked, she stepped faster and dived into his embracing arms. They smooched passionately.

-We should kill him too, she said. Tyler twitched in his catacomb dream state and accidently kicked the baseboard that lined the hall. His drool was seeping into yesterday’s lunch.

-He admitted his feelings for you.

She tittered and crawled her lips to his ear. Then do it slowly, for my pleasure …

HEY! WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING HERE? The beam swallowed them like a helicopter’s spotlight and loud footsteps were approaching them. It was almost as shocking to JJ as an artillery ambush. In fact the jiggling keys on the custodian’s belt was exuding the same loudness as gunfire.

They ran. Poor Mr. Julyan could’ve done the same. The girl almost slipped on the vomit, but she regained her traction. It’s no wonder because she was a professional ice-skater. She would never again perform in front of thousands of spectators. Not due to the sprained ankle she’d get from that dicey maneuver.

The custodian was a curmudgeon who jogged arthritically and didn’t waste his time in pursuit of nosy kids. They were gone, so fast. So fast. He wheezed, hands on his kneecaps, and then continued to where Tyler remained in his sleep. This one would be easy.

-HEY. Wake up pal. You’re trespassing on school territory. He flashed the boy with strong illumination and waved it at him to recreate the illusion of straddling daylight.

Tyler woke and blinked lazily. Breaking through with walleyed vision. He stayed mute and he pointed with a quivering arm to the infamous lab. The old fart in his ballcap lethargically glanced at the door, seeing nothing through the glass panel except a darkling paradigm, and he turned to Tyler and asked about the room. Why it was spooky. Tyler didn’t talk. He just pointed at the door, mindlessly, as if his life depended on it. And he was right. As the world would soon be informed, the custodian walked to the entrance and pushed his only protection out of the way.