horror (583)

It was on our twenty first birthday that he escaped, the headline read: “Gone! Twenty One Years of Science in the Making.” Being a promising scientist myself, the news was a disappointment to the scientific community, any project that had been taken on for that time scale was on the brink of discovery. The article was about Project Nighttime Murder, a project dedicated to altering the genes of the human body enough so, that a particular child could eventually advance far enough in the evolution of mankind to know when nighttime murders would occur, before they happened. At night the boy would dream of murders, visions of what was to come. The night my brother escaped was the night he saw himself commit a murder.

Unlocking the door, the stench hit me first. It was sickening, rotten flesh decaying slowly in the heat of the apartment made me vomit in my mouth. I’d never smelled a corpse before, and I didn’t know where the stench came from until I saw the dead woman’s body. Blood was everywhere, on the walls and carpet, in the bathroom where she lay, head smashed into the side of the bathtub, a bone in her leg was sticking up out of her flesh, the gleaming white contrasted sharply against red rotting muscle. I knew now what the curious stain on my apartment ceiling was. Professor Jane Adams, one of the scientists who was an activist for the creation of Project Nighttime Murder, lay deceased in front of me. I turned toward the door, hand over my mouth, and saw myself looking back. Standing in front of me was a man, a man that was an exact replica of myself, but with blood stained hands. Living two floors below me was Professor Harrison McCoy, founder of the project, now dead. I hit the floor in a dead faint and awoke in my apartment. I don’t recall screaming, but the landlord later told me he had heard me, and came to my aid.

Immediately I set about gathering my things, I went straight to my lab and began the tedious process of finding the cure to my brother’s insatiable desire to kill. I called everyone involved in the Project and discovered that indeed, I had a twin who was the test subject of the Project, and when he dreamt of his own killing spree, his body was obligated to fulfill it. Something was terribly wrong with my brother and I was the only one who could help him. Hour after hour I spent laboring over the right chemicals that would reverse the years of genetic mutations that had occurred in his body. I was so close to the cure, so close to saving my brothers life. But unfortunately I was also too late, it was my life or his, and when I saw his reflection in the glass vials sitting at my desk I knew I had to kill him in order to save myself.
That was five years ago, I recently came across some new information that I’ve never known existed. My brother wasn’t the only taken; another child was too, a young man that now probably needed a cure just as much as my brother would have. The factors I needed to complete my quest for the cure was time, and of course a test subject. Time I now had, all I needed was my test subject. Today my wife is due. The doctor says we’re having twins.