Chapter 1
The air was musty, leaving a bitter taste on the tongue. Perhaps, bad enough to make the gag reflex cut in as if to say, “You need to get out of here or I’m going to make you hurl whatever you ate last until you can’t take it anymore.”
Dustin, just shy of twenty, lay glued to a reclining bed with rough, worn leather straps, the kind found on any medic’s gurney or hospital bed when someone needed restraining.
“Why are you doing this? Where’s my brother?” he screamed, urging those around him for answers. His taut cheek’s outlined his face as he spoke. His hair stuck to his forehead, not knowing if it was from sweat or the strap across it. His feet dangled off the end of the gurney, unable to accommodate his six-foot-three stature. In his family, he was short compared to everyone except his mom.
The room looked like a mirrored, black-screen sports dome. Images flickered around in strobe-light flashes, jumping around the black television panels throughout the room. There was a loose connection behind the screen that someone was looking for.
Are they going to live feed this online, Dustin wondered, feeling like a guinea pig. He thought maybe he and his brother were being held for ransom. But why?
“Are the monitors connected now?” a crackled voice impatiently spoke through speakers. Dustin couldn’t locate the speakers or the sound that resonated all around him.
What surprised him most as he lay there pondering some fading thoughts was why there wasn’t an echo vibrating after the man spoke?
“Almost… there are still a couple bugs in the video feed I want to work out,” said a man standing on an aluminum painter’s ladder, where a four-by-four section of the ceiling was off, above Dustin’s head. He slid the panel back into place. As he climbed down, he said, “Let me check some of the wiring under the floor one more time.” The floor made a snapping sound as he lifted a panel, softly setting it down as though it was thin glass that could easily break. He stepped down and started playing with some wires and connections where Dustin wasn’t able to see but could catch some of his movements from the corner of his eye.
“Hurry up… I want to try this out soon!” the man said again through the speakers with urgency. His breathless demeanor was as though he wanted to push a button but was told not to; however, his finger was hovering over it beckoning him to push it.
“Hey... get me out of here; you’ll regret this if you don’t get me out of here,” Dustin, still strapped to the reclined bed, screamed, his voice growing hoarse from the hours of yelling or perhaps days, he wasn’t sure anymore. Four or five people stood around in the room; he couldn’t be sure of the number, his head couldn’t turn enough to get an accurate count. He was still groggy from just waking up after a sedative began to wear off. On top of that, a sharp pain in his left abdomen wouldn’t let up, and he had no idea if it was where he was repeatedly kicked or from the straps resting tightly against him. He also wondered if they did something to him physically while he was out.
The majority of the people in the room wore lab coats to announce they were doctors. The thought of a mad scientist popped in to his head, and he smirked. A man who wasn’t in a lab coat stood closest to him in case he tried to untie his straps. Dustin felt as if he had been abducted for an alien experiment. He had no idea how close to the truth that was, except for the alien part.
“Where’s my brother?” he shouted with the little bit of energy he had left. He noticed at some point that there were electrodes attached to his body; he couldn’t see them all, but he could feel some attached to his head. Wires led underneath the bed or at least Dustin thought that’s where they led.
“Your brother is safe as long as you do what we ask; nothing will happen to him, and we’ll set you both free very soon,” the voice said over the intercom, drowning out the others who were gathered close by, having an unfamiliar discussion on material that sounded foreign.
“Please, just let us go,” Dustin said halfheartedly, knowing that wasn’t going to happen. The stale odor in the air intensified as Dustin’s senses ebbed back. He couldn’t quite be sure which was going to make him vomit first, the thought of the smell or the actual smell that emanated around him. He wondered what could possibly be so important that they would kidnap his brother and him. These people looked like professionals because they were wearing lab coats and because of the way they spoke, not that Dustin would feel more at ease if they were wearing matching jerseys. He started to feel a slight relief, thinking maybe he was in a real hospital and there was some type of accident, and they had never made it out of the plane.
He pondered how long he’d been there. It made no sense; he knew for sure a limo picked his brother and him up from the airport. When Dr. Niles contacted them from the University of Chicago, she said, “You guys have great potential.” Then she asked them to come to the University to help her with some breakthrough technology she was working on. Maybe this was the breakthrough technology. “This isn’t a great way to treat your guests,” he thought.
They flew in late at night, arriving at ten-fifteen Saturday night. He remembered the limo driver saying, “We should stop at a couple casinos in the area.” There were envelopes in the limo with their names on it—each envelope contained one thousand dollars. Dustin celebrated with his brother; there were mixed drinks and beer stocked in the mini refrigerator of the limo. Everything was amazing to them because they were from a small town without much. The next thing Dustin knew he was strapped in this weird psycho bed, staring at a mirrored dome. What time is it? he wondered.
Shoes were screeching against the pitch-black floor as the people in doctors’ coats shuffled around him with charts in their hands.
“Okay, we’re all set,” a man said, stepping out from the floor, wiping sweat off his forehead and holding a small flashlight.
A woman stood after messing with some controls under Dustin’s gurney. “Let’s do a worm test,” she said, staring toward a wall. It was probably where the man who spoke through the intercom was standing, Dustin thought.
The doctor behind the wall stood up, looking at a row of monitors and buttons. Most of the equipment was stainless steel, barely out of the plastic packaging. Everything still had a fresh new scent. Some of the monitors recorded Dustin and his brother’s brain activity, heartbeat, and physical reactions. At the center of the control room, mounted on the wall, was a television screen that ran the scenery that was going to play in the dome room. On another screen, there were program options and commands to add pictures or scenery that posted on the main screen continuously, like an intricate spider’s web. Most of the add-on commands pasted themselves together as the movie played in the room like a virtual reality, artificial intelligent program that pieces the movie together for a smooth transition of what is playing inside the dome.
His twin brother was in another room strapped to a chair with electrodes attached but for a completely different reason. Inside both rooms, live video cameras were set up that fed to the control room. Underneath the movie feed was a monitor panel with a distinct touchscreen used to regulate the injections of different type of drugs they were experimenting with. They could also increase and decrease the drug doses to both twins.
“Worm test? Are you going to force worms down my throat?” Dustin snapped.
Everyone walked out of the room, and the room went dark, a glint of light seeped in from the top of the ceiling.
A large, long, oval blob-shape slowly moved around the small dome room, trying to escape off the screen. Everything else in the background disappeared into darkness. The color of the worm started dark venetian red and endlessly changed. Dustin recollected a thought of a lava lamp as he watched. The long 3D oval circled around and up the dome, mimicking a worm. Dustin now understood the name.
As it made its way toward the top of the dome, the image circled around faster and the body moved fluidly as though it was squirming. Suddenly, the worm changed directions and started moving vertically, disappearing underneath him and showing back up on the walls.
The effects are amazing, he thought as he remembered he was still strapped to a bed and should stop being amazed by the image.
As the worm made its way down to the floor, it floated underneath him like a fast-moving cloud in the sky. He felt a weightless sensation as if he was floating in the center of the room with nothing underneath him. There was a tinge in his stomach that told him if he fell he may die or it could have been the actual pain he was feeling. Any other time he would be thinking, “This is how I would want to play video games from now on.”
The worm faded away, and a forest started to appear on the screen. The scenery started off transparent, then became more pronounced. Dustin started moving forward as though he was walking through the forest. The ground had a natural, thin indecisive, dirt pathway that he followed inertly. He heard grass rustling as he moved forward. Trees brushed softly against each other in the sky as wind wisped through. Bustling limbs rubbed against the branches of their neighbors; hollow noises followed, to say hello to each other. The wind swayed the pampas grass on the far-off ground in waves, comparable to a crowd waving out of sync.
The video repeatedly pushed him forward through the forest with a set end point. Crickets’ loud chirps echoed in the distance. Every once in a while, grasshoppers flew past his face. Dustin tried to swat them away as if they were right in front of him. Red-winged black birds hovered through the forest with him; their singing bounced off each other as they repeated their song. Frogs croaked from afar; he thought that if he could go left he may run into the pond where their home was.
Why did this forest appear to go on forever? he wondered. Water held tightly to the leaves on some of the maple trees, showing it just finished raining. A cloudy haze came from the ground as the moisture evaporated. He looked up at the trees; the branches blocked the sunlight from getting through. As the wind blew, light escaped through the leaves in rays that burned his eyes. At this point, he started having a hard time differentiating from reality and the video.
A sensation of water dripping on his head came over him as dew dripped off some leaves. A mosquito buzzed close to his ear. He tried swatting at it, but a strap kept him from doing so. He couldn’t believe this feeling; he thought about how surreal the video made him feel. The only thing that kept him from walking through the forest were the straps that held him down.
“Alright, check complete,” a voice spoke, startling him as the lights came back on in the dome room.
A doctor came back into the room and stood over him with a needle, ready to put an injection into his IV drip. He didn’t even notice being attached to an IV until she injected the shot into the bag.
“What’s this?” he asked as he violently struggled.
“It’s to help you concentrate on the images; don’t worry, nothing harmful.”
“Okay, out of the room,” the voice shrieked curtly.
She departed the room, and the large door closed again. The dome went dark, and the video started playing stars. He was moving through space. More like the beginning of Star Wars, he was expecting words to start telling a story. The bed reclined a little more to an almost flat position.
All the doctors met up in the control room to watch as experiment number four started. Everyone anticipated the start-to- finish data.
“What video are you going to play?” one doctor asked.
“I’m going to go with number two butchery scene.”
“Okay, but that might be too much?” another doctor questioned. “He may not survive.”
“That’s okay; we can always get more twins,” he stated, comparing the man in the chair to recyclable trash.
A movie started playing in the dome. Dustin was walking up to an old rickety house that sat in tatters. Cedar siding barely hung onto the outer frame. A groaning noise came from the house as wind churned against the wall. He walked up to the wooden screen door that was hardly held up by the hinges. A shrieking noise was unbearable as he started opening the door as if someone screeched their nails on a chalkboard.
He stared at the main solid wood door, painted a dirty white or it was just old and faded; moreover, he noticed gouges in the lower corners showing the original wood color. He wasn’t really looking at the gouges in the door; the video was pronouncing them to him as if it wanted him to see these details.
He slowly opened the door and took a step onto the foyer that reverberated the sound of wood. A flashlight turned on from his hand showing his other foot meeting him in the foyer, confirming he was on faded dark red wood flooring. The dim flashlight moved up waist-high, leading his way. He looked straight ahead from the foyer to some old wooden steps. The railing hung almost sideways, barely attached to the steps as the flashlight slowly moved. The dark wood stain finish was worn from continuous use in the center of the steps. Toward the top of the stairs, his flashlight gleamed on a liquid that resembled fresh blood, which dripped down the steps slowly, as cold maple syrup onto pancakes.
“What the fuck is this?” Dustin murmured hoarsely. An alarming feeling came over him; he could feel it in his gut. He undeniably wanted to stay away from upstairs no matter what, the thought urged him in the back of his head.
The flashlight moved slowly left of the stairs, allowing the stairs to fall back into darkness. He started moving forward with the flashlight. Creaks under his feet grew louder as he moved into the living room. He stared at the cream-colored floral wallpaper and noticed sections torn and worn away.
His hand moved the flashlight over to the television, showing a black and white show. “The Munster’s,” he said under his breath with a wry smile, thinking that was a perfect show to be on at that moment. What didn’t amuse him was the blood dripping down to the floor from the front of the screen, forming a thick puddle.
What didn’t make sense was that while he was outside it felt like morning or early afternoon, but now it was pitch-black outside. The flashlight reconfirmed his thought as it moved up the dark tattered curtains; maybe they were red or brown, he wasn’t sure. He did notice the shutters were closed, slowly rasping on the window frames, giving off a curt squeal from the wind that echoed through the house. That’s weird, he thought. He could actually feel the wind. Once more the musty, now putrid, smell burned his nose, making his nostrils flare at the thought.
The thought of not wanting to be strapped to the bed anymore came to mind. He tried closing his eyes but pressure kept them from shutting.
“His heartrate is skyrocketing,” one doctor said, watching his vitals on a screen.
“That’s fine; we want to imprint a deep image into his head,” another doctor urged.
There’s no furniture, Dustin recollected as he started walking toward the kitchen, which was on the opposite wall to the front of the house. As he took a step through the kitchen’s threshold, he noticed golden, faded linoleum squares broken off and chipped away. The flashlight immediately started panning the room from the left where a stove sat and moved to the right looking at cabinets with blood-stained handprints on them. He moved the flashlight down a little to expose more blood resting in the sink, overflowing on the counter to the floor. Blood dredged marks on a light brown countertop to show someone was forcibly dragged from the kitchen, maybe trying to grasp at something.
As the flashlight made its way across the kitchen, he could hear flies buzzing around his head and could almost smell and taste the blood on his tongue, he tried not to gag. How could this be a video? he wondered. The scenery felt so real.
His flashlight made its way to the dining table to the right of where he stood. A body sat in one chair with his throat reduced to nothing. Another person sat next to him in a chair, chewing on the dead man’s arm and not paying attention to the light flashing on him.
That’s so weird, how did they do this? he pondered. “I want to get out of here!” Dustin yelled, trying to free himself from the straps once again.
Under several doctor’s tongues, the thought of why crossed their mind, thinking the real show is yet to come.
Right after Dustin yelled, the man stopped chewing on the arm as if he could hear his voice speaking out to him. In the light, hidden teeth showed their sharpness, like dog teeth. A piece of flesh or muscle hung from his mouth, his face caked in thick blood, hair greased back. He noticed a glint of red in his hair that obviously was not his hair color. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his chest was covered in hair. To be honest, he looked more like a crazed gorilla.
The man with the flesh in his mouth stood and looked at Dustin with his beading protruding eyes as if to say he was his next meal. The flashlight turned around, forcing him to walk away, starting back toward the living room.
The hair on Dustin’s neck stood up; he could sense the man’s obscure breathing on the back of it, following him, but he couldn’t look behind himself no matter how relentlessly he tried. His goosebumps only grew worse.
As the light moved toward the stairs, Dustin still didn’t want to go up them. He still had a feeling on his neck that the gorilla man was still right on his back. The flashlight panned the wood railing on the left of the stairs; it looked like the railing could fall at any moment. He wondered if he would fall with it.
He slowly started climbing the stairs, hugging the wall on the right. He could hear the floor cry out with each step he took toward the second floor, expecting the floor to give in at any moment. The flashlight gleamed down the hallway to his left, after he made it safely to the top. The light then flashed to the right. He started moving to the right of the hallway. The carpet was a dark green. The wet blood squeezed under his shoes as he continued to walk, resonating to his ears after each step.
On the wall to the left, a couple of family pictures hung in frames. He thought the pictures looked normal. He was expecting the group photo to have body limbs hanging out of their mouths in unison. The flashlight disappeared off the photos, vanishing back into darkness.
Light led him to the first closed door it came to on the right side of the hall. His hand showed up slowly guiding it opening.
“The bathroom,” he caught himself whispering. As the flashlight navigated into the room, he noticed scarlet water in the bathtub. A red shower curtain half torn down only hanging by a couple silver round rings. The curtain wasn’t red at all; it was clear but stained in crimson blood. The flashlight moved closer to the bathtub, then the curtains swayed as his hand opened it the rest of the way uncovering body parts stacked in the bath with half melted ice keeping them cool.
“What the fuck is this?” he questioned.
The flashlight quickly turned left to show a woman standing over the bathroom sink brushing her teeth with a bloody smile, using a decapitated finger, blood dripping down her chin as she smiled.
Dustin thrashed again, trying to get free from the bed. What is wrong with these people? Who made this? he wondered.
“His heart rate jumped again as did his blood pressure,” a doctor said with alarm.
“This is great; this scenario is working much better than I first anticipated,” he said, smiling broadly.
Dustin, strapped into the bed, wanted say something but felt the lady standing over the sink would have seen him for some reason. As the flashlight turned to go outside the room, he was half expecting the gorilla man to be waiting, but he was gone. The beam of light continued down to the last room on this side of the hallway. The door opened, light peered in to see two kids sitting at a tea party table with pieces of intestines and liver sitting on their plates with blood in their teacups.
The flashlight turned around and started moving down the hall to the other side of the house. He passed the stairs, continuing down the hallway. The movement of the light slowed as it passed an old mahogany lowboy with a long-jagged military knife laying on it. He stopped to pick it up and heard a low screeching rubbing noise as the blade dragged off the table. That’s normally a weird place for a knife, he thought, but with everything else he has seen that was the least conspicuous thing he found.
“Okay, start the forced REM medication,” the lead doctor spoke sharply, watching the man strapped down on the bed struggle even more.
“Yes, sir!”
He slowly came up to the only door on this side of the hall. He heard a splash noise as he stepped into a puddle of blood as he crept closer to the door.
What is the point of this? the man wondered as he lay chained to the bed watching this realistic movie unfold in front of him!
His flashlight shook a little to show the door was locked. A clinking noised followed as he tried jiggling the handle open. He felt the vibrations of the doorknob on his hand. It finally gave in after a couple more failed attempts.
He stood at the threshold of the last room. The light pointed at the crusted dark red carpet and then inched its way farther into the room, only showing him the floor. About twelve feet away, the light came to a stop at a man’s feet facing his direction covered in blood. It made its way up the body and then stopped at his face; however, he was chewing on a leg that covered his face. The flashlight leisurely dropped back down shining on the floor.
He saw the feet rapidly moving closer to him. He could hear and feel the vibrations as he made it closer to him. The light flashed up back to his face; he was only inches from his face. He could feel him breathing on him intensely. It was his brother, standing face to face with him. He found himself continuously stabbing the knife through his brother’s chest, blood pouring out of his body as he hit an artery.
“What the fuck is this?” Dustin, strapped to the table, asked groggily right before he fell to sleep.
“His heart rate is almost in heart attack range,” a doctor said, looking over to the screen.
“Is he in REM sleep yet?” he asked, talking to another doctor.
“Yes… it just…”
“Give them both the adrenaline boost, now!” the lead doctor clamored.
“They both just flat-lined.”
“This is exactly what I wanted. The twin killed his brother, amazing...” he shouted as though he was a mad scientist.
“Yes, but we don’t want them killing themselves,” one of the doctors said in frustration.
“Yes, that does defeat the purpose,” he finally conceded, “but how amazing is it to see someone kill their own brother and not even know it was real?”
“Next, we need to find a way to keep them from killing themselves afterward.”
One of the doctors wanted to say, “It would be easy if you didn’t give him the adrenaline boost.” But he knew better than to say anything.
