The bell above the door of "Scales & Tails" chimed with a sickly, metallic tang, a sound that always made Rico’s teeth itch. He glanced up from scrubbing the stubborn grime off the reptile enclosures. His wife, Maria, was behind the counter, her face a mask of polite boredom as she helped a woman select a feeder mouse for her snake.
Rico hated this place. He hated the smell of sawdust and fish flakes, the constant chirping of crickets, and the way Mr. Abernathy, the owner, watched them with those unsettlingly bright, bird-like eyes.
Rico and Maria were trying to make a new start. Fresh out of prison for a robbery gone wrong, Rico was determined to stay on the straight and narrow. Maria, loyal to a fault, had waited for him, and together they’d scraped together enough money for a deposit on this cramped apartment above the laundromat. Mr. Abernathy had been their only option for work. No questions asked, no background checks. That should have been a red flag, but they were desperate.
Abernathy himself was a strange bird. He was a gaunt man with skin stretched taut over his skull, making him look perpetually surprised. He claimed to be a retired veterinarian, but the way he handled the animals felt clumsy, more like a scientist poking at specimens than a caregiver. He spent most of his time in the back room, a place strictly off-limits to Rico and Maria. He’d told them it was for “sensitive procedures” and “quarantining new stock.” They suspected it was just a glorified nap room.
But lately, things felt different. Abernathy had started staring at them, not with the detached curiosity of before, but with a disturbing intensity. He kept asking them strange questions: how much sleep they got, what they ate, how they felt. He even offered them vitamins, weird, oversized capsules that tasted faintly metallic. Maria refused to take them, but Rico, wanting to be a good employee, swallowed them down with a grimace.
One night, Rico woke up soaked in sweat, a terrifying dream clinging to the edges of his mind. He’d been in a cage, surrounded by chirping crickets and the stink of ammonia. Abernathy had been there, his eyes glowing with a feverish light, injecting him with something through the bars. He tried to shake it off, blaming it on the stress of adjusting to life on the outside.
But the dreams persisted, growing more vivid, more real. He started experiencing strange physical symptoms too: fleeting moments of disorientation, phantom pains in his limbs, and an overwhelming urge to burrow.
Maria noticed the change. "You're acting weird, Rico," she said one evening, her eyes filled with worry. "You're jumpy, you're talking in your sleep… You're like a different person."
That’s when Rico decided to investigate the back room.
He waited until Abernathy left for the night, locking the door behind him as usual. Maria stood guard at the front, a nervous watchman against the chime of the bell. Rico took a deep breath and inserted a bobby pin into the complex lock. His fingers, rusty from disuse, worked with surprising dexterity. Finally, with a soft click, the door swung open.
The air inside was thick with the smell of formaldehyde and something else… something acrid, like burnt flesh. The room was a grotesque parody of a veterinary clinic. Surgical instruments lay haphazardly on a steel table, stained with dried blood. Jars filled with murky fluids sat on shelves, containing what looked disturbingly like human organs.
Then he saw the cages.
They were animal cages, but larger, reinforced with steel bars. And inside… inside were the remains of animals twisted and contorted into unnatural shapes. A rabbit with too many limbs, a dog with eyes that glowed like embers, a cat that hissed with a voice too deep for its size.
Rico’s blood ran cold. He stumbled back, his hand landing on a stack of notebooks. He opened one, his heart hammering against his ribs. The pages were filled with meticulous notes, diagrams, and equations. The heading on the first page read: "Project Chimera: Subject Acquisition & Integration."
He flipped through the pages, his eyes scanning the dense text. Abernathy wasn't just experimenting on animals. He was experimenting on people. He was trying to create… something else.
He found a section detailing the vitamins Abernathy had been giving him. They weren't vitamins at all. They were a cocktail of hormones and gene-altering compounds, designed to slowly transform his DNA, to… integrate him with animal DNA.
He understood now. The dreams, the physical changes, the disturbing impulses… He was being changed, twisted into something monstrous.
He slammed the notebook shut and turned, desperate to escape. But as he reached the door, he heard a soft click behind him.
Abernathy stood in the doorway, a syringe in his hand. His eyes gleamed with an unholy light. "Disappointing, Rico," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I had such high hopes for you. But you had to go and spoil the surprise."
Rico lunged, but Abernathy was faster. He jabbed the syringe into Rico’s arm, and a searing pain ripped through his veins.
He stumbled back, clutching his arm. He felt a burning sensation spreading through his body, a terrifying transformation taking hold. He looked down and saw his hands, his skin rippling, scales forming, fingers elongating into claws.
Maria burst into the room, her eyes wide with horror. She screamed, a sound that echoed through the pet shop like a dying animal. Abernathy turned to her, a cruel smile playing on his lips.
"Ah, Maria," he said. "The perfect companion for my new creation. Perhaps… we can integrate you as well."
But Maria wasn't going to be a subject. She grabbed a heavy metal feeding bowl from the counter and hurled it at Abernathy's head. He crumpled to the floor with a sickening thud.
Rico watched, his mind reeling, his body changing. He was no longer Rico. He was something else, something monstrous, a horrifying amalgamation of human and animal.
He roared, a sound that was both guttural and human, a sound of pain and rage. He wanted to attack, to tear Abernathy apart. But he also wanted to protect Maria.
He staggered out of the room, Maria following close behind, her hand outstretched. They fled the pet store, leaving behind the cages, the jars, and the twisted remains of Abernathy's experiments.
They disappeared into the night, two fugitives, one human, one… something else. They knew they could never go back. They were on the run, hunted by the authorities, and haunted by the terrifying reality of their transformation.
And somewhere in the darkness, the experiment continued, the terrifying legacy of Scales & Tails living on in the monstrous creature that Rico had become. They would never truly be free, forever trapped in the grotesque chimera of Abernathy's twisted dreams. The bell above the door of "Scales & Tails" remained silent, but the horror within would echo through the shadows for years to come.
| Mark Antony Raines
Ghostman at Comedy Friendly Zombie Production Ltd |
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