11-apr-98

We see the interior of a dank circular laboratory. Grids of flashing lights and cabling line the metal walls. The floor is littered with chunks of flesh, tendon-laced intestinal tubing, and splashed with gore.

The man in the chair reels back from the big viewscreen, dismayed by what he sees there. He is hunched over. The skin down his back has split open, and a greyish-white mass of flesh is ballooning out of it. The mass is pulsing, and fleshy tubes are slowly oozing from of it, piling to the floor, with the ones already there.

This man is undergoing a metamorphisis. His body is slowly being converted to that of an unknown creature, and he has been searching frantically for a way to halt the process before he loses control.

On the opposite wall of the laboratory leans his assistant, slumped near the floor. A blue-skinned creature vaguely resembling an elephant, with a long toothless mouth like a vaccuum cleaner. He is bloated, sweating and feverish. Tears trickle from his eyes.

He serves his master with devotion. He used to serve other functions, but at this late date, all his master has assigned him to do is keep his laboratory rooms clean - by eating all the flesh that is being secreted from his master's body. He stares into space and slowly chews on a snake-like tube of meat that runs across the grey cement to his master's back.

The man throws up his weak arms and screams in frustration. His assistant convulses in shock. At his stress, the tubes sliding from his back spew out with increased force. The assistant chews frantically, picking up the pace to appease his master, staring petulantly at him.

The man leaps up out of the chair and begins walking around his labs. He is going insane. It wont be long before the transformation takes him. His assistant gets up to follow him, and then spits out the tubing.

I become the assistant. I walk ahead of my master, who is wandering aimlseeley around the rooms of his house with his hands behind his back. I begin climbing up some stairs to a second floor.

Over the handrail I see my master go down on all fours. He continues to crawl as his torso elongates into sections like an accordion, and his legs become doglike. His head becomes huge and round, and bends upwards. He is babbling to himself.

I don't care any more, I have given up on my master. The stages are clear, I've seen this sort of thing before. From everywhere at once, I hear him say "I ... remember ... something ... my ... old ..."

I float out a second story window and direct my fall to land on the porch railing outside my house. The pitiful master emerges from the downstairs living room and steps onto the porch with paws. He has become a large black cat wearing a necklace.

He continues: "... math ... teacher ... used ... to ... tell ... me." He sits and looks up. In the dim forest night I can see the whites of his eyes glowing supernaturally as he stares at me. He says:

"Quack. Quack. Quack. QuaA-" and vomits a thin white stream of liquid onto the board of the porch. He continues to try and speak, but the convulsions only increase.

"QuaA-" Vomit.

"QuaAA-" Vomit.

I float up into the air, leaving him to his death. I know that the white liquid is the final stage of the transformation. His confused glowing eyes follow me, while he continues vomiting and trying to speak.

I am about fifteen feet in the air above him when he tries to leap up and grab my feet with his claws. I can see his white eyes shoot towards me from the deck. In his agony he wants to be held and comforted, but that would only spread the disease.

I yank my feet up and he falls back to the deck with a thud and continues to vomit. I drift up into the night sky. I have left him.

Then I wake up.

Fun, huh.