Young Writers Society

10/20/08

027 – Parents

I don’t know anything. I’m telling you.
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Well turn the damn thing on!
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Yes, and I am telling you I am completely prepared to go on record and say I didn’t do it.
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I have a good lawyer. The snide comments are not appreciated.
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Yes, I am aware of that, but…
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Completely uncalled for. I’m telling you -
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*screams* Oh my… Oh… Please, stop. Agh, stop! It hurts!
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Geez, what the hell? I’m trying to cooperate with you guys. No! Don’t let him near me again! What the hell?
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I can’t move my fingers! Fuck, man. I can’t move my fingers! My lawyer’s going to…
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Okay! Okay! Please… I’ll tell you want you want to know, just… stop…
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No! I didn’t, okay? I didn’t get any money. All from the bottom of my heart. No damn money, okay? All I did was open the fucking door!
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Yeah, the door!
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I am telling you the truth, man!
* * *
They busted me. I knew they probably would when I did it, but I didn’t care. Pretty noble of me, eh? Fat load of good it’s done me.

I’m the janitor in building 4, or at least I was. My beat was the third floor. Reproduction level. They called it the “womb room”. It creeped most of the help out. Rooms on rooms of these tubs of embryos. They were growing Mutts there. They were growing their army.

It was an easy job. The hygienists did most of the work; I just emptied out the garbage cans, mopped hallways and collected a check every month. I had a silence waiver I had to sign and they frisked me down every time I went through the door, but it wasn’t that big of a deal.

One night, my inspector chucked my shoulder as I collected my art from the metal detector.

“Gonna have to be reassigned soon, eh?”

“What?”

“They’re shutting down the womb. Didn’t you hear?”

Turns out they decided to let the Mutts reproduce on their own, but they needed to re-engineer them to do that. They didn’t shut down the womb room (had to keep making them in a way they knew worked) but I did get reassigned. I went down four floors to sublevel 2. Still the same tasks, but the scenery was a bit more exciting. Now I could see what those little jelly beans in the tubs grew into.

It’s not pretty. They kept them in clear Plexiglas cells, rows and rows of them. The cells were supposed to be soundproof, I guess, but they weren’t entirely so. Every so often, a whine would leak out, though it had probably started as a howl. The Mutts don’t seem to do anything in halves.

It was scary. They looked like humans mostly; they had our faces and limbs and such. But there was something about them that just wasn’t right. Their tongues freaked me out especially. They were flat and long, like dogs’. It doesn’t sound all that bad if I just talk about it, but if you ever saw a dog’s tongue hanging out of a human face, you’d know what I mean.

Freaky stuff, the entire place. I was weird like that. The womb room didn’t bother me, but I was weirded out by the other guys’ favorite. They had females in there, that’s why I think the others liked sublevel 2: the Mutts weren’t provided clothes. Study purposes or something. Sick bastards.

It was a female that got me into this mess, wouldn’t you know? Not the way you’re thinking (she was a Mutt and I don’t swing that way) but because she had her baby in front of me.

It was and they had a heavily pregnant Mutt under observation. Subject 0412, but they called her the Balloon because of how fast she swelled up. Shorter gestation period or something. There was a doctor there (can’t remember his name… young guy) and I was sort of chatting with him when the Balloon started going into labor.

The doctor didn’t notice at first, it was so subtle. I only noticed because I was dumping the trash into my cart. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her move and her stomach had a weird shadow on it. The doctor saw me squinting at the Balloon and laughed (I think he made some comment or other) but then he saw it too and he knew what it was. The Balloon grimaced ever so slightly. The shadow (must have been caused by the baby poking her stomach out from the inside) disappeared and the baby came shooting out. Most horrible thing I ever saw. I’m not squeamish and I know what birth looks like (I was there for all three of my kids’ births). That was just some strange travesty of birth, the way it happened. It was so fast and the blood spewed everywhere. And the baby was ugly as sin. Babies aren’t all that cute when they first come out, all wrinkled and squished and covered with gore, but that thing was just ugly.

But, you know, it was hard to tell from the way the Balloon acted. She hadn’t made any noise when the baby was born and she caught it as it came out. Then she pulled it to her breast and cradled it with her huge arms. Those Mutts are big; even the smaller ones are ripped like bodybuilders. I thought the baby was going to be crushed. The doctor didn’t though. He’d seen this before, I guess, because he didn’t seem alarmed. He just picked up the phone and rang up his superiors, all the while jotting down notes on his clipboard.

The Balloon’s baby was the test subject for a family experiment, to see how the Mutts would react to a baby. We knew they were smart (they communicated with humans and one another), but we still didn’t know how they would react in family groups. The Balloon had a mate, big male that could have torn you apart with his nose hairs. The test was how he would handle his offspring or if the whole thing was a bad idea.

I wasn’t actually there for when they first introduced mom and baby to that hulk. I’m glad, too. Ugly as the little tyke was, I saw a lot of him on duty for a few weeks and he grew on me. He grew a lot. I called him Little Balloon, what with how he stretched out and got bigger and bigger. Babies grow fast, but that was ridiculous. But still, I was fond of him. It didn’t want to be around when they sent him in like a lamb to the slaughter with his brute of a father.

As it happened, I needn’t have worried. It turns out that Mutts are great parents. The two of them, the brute and the Balloon, were the happiest parents you ever saw. Every time I passed them, they were fawning over the kid, playing with him or just holding him together.

Like I said, I grew fond of them. It was hard not to, seeing them care so much about something, rather than being the mindless howlers in their cells like the others. But it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Then the day came when I was mopping the floor and a doctor passed me with a syringe and two more doctors with tasers. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention until I heard one of those leaking howls. It was quiet, could have been even a squeaky shoes or something, but when I glanced up, there was complete chaos in the cell.

The doctors had tasered the Balloon and her mate and were talking Little away with them, but it wasn’t exactly happening the way they wanted. Balloon and the male were fighting the effects of the electric shocks and were coming after the doctors with bared teeth and twitching limbs. And the Little Balloon wasn’t too happy about being separated from Mom and Dad. He didn’t have teeth yet, but he was strong and he kicked and gummed the doctor holding him for all he was worth. The doctor seemed to find this annoyingly amusing and was laughing a little even as he tried to peel the little bugger off his arm.

I moved forward, trying to see what was going on and next thing I knew, the doctors were all piling out of the cell and I had an armful of squirming, clawing kid as the doctor unburdened himself. Before I had time to protest, the doc plunged the syringe into the tyke’s thigh. Instantly, the wiggling thing with his fingernails in my wrist became a limp, heavy, moist weight. His breathing evened out and his head thumped against my shoulder. It was as if I were holding one of my own children. I shifted him a little on my arm (not really realizing it; parenting does that to you) and he just felt right there, drooling a little on my shirt.

Then the doctors took him away from me and his dad beat one fist against the divider between us. I jumped at the motion and my shirt was cold and wet. Them mom and dad were quiet on the ground with the slightest of twitches as they shook off the electricity. They had stopped beating themselves against the clear partition, but now they were watching their baby being taken away with serious expressions.

But the doctors didn’t seem to notice. The one holding the empty syringe looked down at his arms, which bore half-moon gum marks up and down the length of them. He chuckled a little.

“Fighters from birth,” he murmured to me, in a voice that wasn’t quite pride, but wasn’t disgusted either. “Excellent.”

“What’re you going to do with him?” I asked, watching them inject another syringe into his thigh. My wrist hurt from where he had scratched me and I rubbed absently at it, only to come away with blood on my fingers. The doctor noticed the smears and leaped forward.

“It broke your skin?”

This seemed to cause general alarm among the doctors and in a whirlwind of movement, they were whipping out a first-aid kit and trundling off with the baby and in general forgetting the entire episode. It was as if they were trying to forget what they were doing and were avoiding my questions. That became really obvious when I asked again what was going to happen to the Little Balloon and they brushed it aside with words of concern about me. Apparently Mutts could carry diseases like dogs (had a bunch of germs in their mouths or something). I didn’t buy it. Those things were raised in a practically sterile environment. It would have to be a pretty damn sneaky disease to get to anybody in there.

But I didn’t ask anymore and they didn’t saw anymore. My wrist healed just fine and for the next few days, we all pretended nothing had happened. Balloon and her mate sulked in their cell and watched everything through hooded eyes, but they attacked their walls quick enough if the doctors got close enough. I learned to stay away from their cell. I didn’t like to see the expressions of grief – expressions that were all too human - on their faces as they sat together.

One night, I was hurrying with my job, trying to get home early. It was my son’s tenth birthday the next day and my wife and I were going to throw him a surprise birthday party the minute he woke up. So we had to get everything ready the night before. So I was really rushing and distracted and so the lab assistant really scared me when I saw the figure by the Mutts’ cell.

I’m not saying anything about this person. I got caught, not them, and I don’t want them caught. I’m not a squealer and anyway, what we did was right, I think. But I’ll call them a ‘he’ and we’ll name him Bob.

Bob jumped when I wheeled my cart by, but he didn’t try to hide or anything. Instead, he walked over to me and started talking in a low voice.

“They killed it, you know,” he said to me. I looked up at him. Who begins a conversation like that? And he was really close to me, almost whispering, and it was late. I confess, I was a little weirded out. But Bob didn’t seem to notice my expression of weirded-out bewilderment and continued in the same urgent low voice.

“Yeah, they killed it and now they’re going to kill them.” He pointed a finger at the two Mutts in the cell. They caught the motion and the Balloon lifted her lip in a silent snarl. Or maybe it wasn’t silent. I couldn’t tell through those walls.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Mutts!” Bob waved a hand wildly. “Those doctors killed the baby with their experiments and now they’re going to kill the parents in the same experiments.”

I had a hard time believing that. I had seen how excited they were at Little Balloon’s birth. But then, I had also seen how they had stuck those needles in him. I looked at the Balloon. Her baby was dead. I tried to imagine the little guy gone and had a hard time with it.

I’m not a Mutt-lover. I wasn’t one of those rights activists or something. I’ve been around these things and I know they’re not human. I’ve seen how they’re created. But the whole thing just didn’t seem fair. It comes of them having those human expressions.

“I need you to do me a favor,” Bob said.

“What favor?”

“A small favor, but if we get caught, you could go to jail for a long time.”

“What favor?” I persisted. But I hadn’t said ‘yes’ yet.

“I need you to open the emergency exit door at the top of the stairs and hold it open.”

“Is that all?” I looked around. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to let them out.” Bob pointed at the Mutts. “When the fire alarm goes off when you open the door, I punch in the override code for the Mutt cells and they’re out. You just hold the door open so they can get outside.”

I grabbed Bob’s arm. “Are you serious? You’re going to let these monsters out into the world? They could kill people! That’s what they’re made for!”

Bob pried my fingers loose. “There’s a reason this facility is built so remotely. If they’re smart, the Mutts will go away from the people. We can’t just leave them here to die.”

“What makes you care? Are you some kind of activist or protestor?”

His silence let me know I was right. I grabbed his arm again, tighter this time, and pulled him close to my face.

“Listen. My family lives in the nearest town. If any one of those Mutts is stupid enough to go towards the people and they hurt my family, I’m blaming you and you won’t like that.”

Agreeing to this was crazy, I knew it then. But I also knew the Mutts didn’t deserve to die just so some sick scientists could dissect them or whatever. They were just too close to human. My letting them out would be the same thing as, oh, letting dogs out that were lined up to be shot for no reason. What as being done wasn’t right and all I had to do was open a door.

Obviously it wasn’t all that easy or I wouldn’t be here in jail. I opened the door and Bob let the Mutts out all right. I don’t know how he got past the security cameras. I had borrowed a lab coat and gloves and had covered my face when opening the door to hide from the cameras. It might have worked too, if the male Mutt hadn’t gotten ahold of me. Rather than run all the way to freedom as he trailed behind the group, he tackled me as he barreled out the door. He beat me up bad. I definitely would have died, but the Balloon pulled him after her to escape as the sirens came. Had he not banged me up, I could have made my escape. Maybe. But as it was, I was found laying in a pool of blood, with plenty of incriminating DNA to identify me.

I never saw Bob again. I never saw the Balloon or her mate again. My family is fine, if just worried about me. And me, I’m in jail. My wounds from the Mutt brute are healing, but I don’t know how much more of this questioning I can take.
* * *
*panting*
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*panting*
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Give me a second to answer, would you? Oh geez… *grunts*
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Like you care.
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Fuck the treatment. Fuck you. *screams* Damn it!
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No, that’s all I’m telling you.
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Whatever. Do your worst. It can’t hurt much more than it does now. And I can’t tell you anymore.
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*screams*
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A/N: *whew* This is the longest "Mutts" so far. Seven pages in Word. O.O

Anyway, I realized just how long the "related items" list at the top of the page is getting and it's going to get a lot longer if I continue this way. Any suggestions as to how I can cut that all down? Maybe go back and collect them into collections of 10 or so? Hmm... Really, guys, I'd love any suggestions you all will send me. Otherwise that list is just going to get ridiculously long. It already is... *sweatdrop*