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FIIThe Death Experiment
Humanity, in my opinion, is the foulest creature walking this planet.
Now, before you try to dismiss this as mere misanthropy, let me make one thing clear: I do not hate humanity, nor do I hate the achievements of great men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They are exceptions—proof that not all humans are foul. However, I do believe that humans, by nature, are careless creatures. No matter how cautious one may try to be, carelessness is an inherent part of human nature.
And sometimes, that carelessness can lead to evil that cannot be undone. Because of such carelessness, twelve years ago, I witnessed how I almost became the devil himself.
And it all happened in less than twenty-four hours.
Twelve years ago—right… I’ve had both good and bad years in my life, but twelve years ago was by far the worst. It was a relentless conga line of misfortune directed straight at me.
First, our family pet died. Then, I was dismissed from the police force after unintentionally accepting a bribe. And lastly—the worst misfortune of all—my younger brother was murdered.
For two years, a psychopath named Liam terrorized Arizona with a series of some of the most gruesome and disturbing murders in the state’s history. The bastard was essentially an unstoppable train of violence, mowing down anyone in his path. Day in, day out—young or old, stabbed or butchered—it didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was killing. He didn’t care how people reacted.
You know Michael Myers, right? Liam was like that—no motive, no reason, nothing. He just killed, and that was what made his crimes so disturbing. He didn’t kill for money. He didn’t kill for enjoyment. He just killed.
Ultimately, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. While awaiting trial, he was transferred to a different prison far from my city. Aside from the fact that he was locked up, I knew nothing about him—no details, no prison location, nothing. But knowing he would die, I stopped tracking Liam and focused on rebuilding my life.
Weeks passed as I searched for a job. I hired consultants, asked friends for suggestions, yet I made no progress.
That was until my old friend Henry entered the scene.
Henry was always a strange fellow—like Lord Voldemort from *Harry Potter*, minus the whole dark wizard thing. He had the highest grades in every subject—science, math, English, you name it. Yet, after graduating from college, the next thing we heard was that he was working as a cashier at Walmart. Then he disappeared for a few years.
When he returned, he was the owner of a private but large-scale biology lab, partnered with various research facilities worldwide—even some sponsored by the government. As the head scientist of the laboratory, he suddenly reached out to me—nearly two decades after we had lost contact.
Henry was not the only person from the lab I knew. His younger and supposedly *smarter* brother, Harvey, led a more public life. In fact, I had known him since he witnessed my brother’s murder—the very case that sent Liam to the slammer. Ever since that day, we had been fast friends. Meeting him was what ultimately led Henry back into my life during such dark times.
Harvey may have told Henry about my situation—how I lost my job. A casual conversation about life gradually shifted to my financial troubles, and he quickly figured out that I had been struggling ever since losing my position as a policeman. He pitied me but also mocked me for the mistake that had reduced me to an unemployed, good-for-nothing scum of the earth.
But the moment I mentioned I was an ex-cop, his expression changed. His interest *piqued*, and he told me that, as an ex-cop, he could actually solve my money problems.
And that solution was to work at his biology lab.
At first, I was skeptical. When he mentioned the position of "Assistant," I assumed he had mistakenly thought I was a biologist or expected me to conduct experiments and write reports on DNA or some shit. But it turned out to be much simpler than that—I was to be a *watchman*. My only duty was to patrol the vicinity and ensure no trespassers entered the premises.
That’s when my suspicion first kicked in. A simple watchman job for a laboratory? It sounded too generous. But I needed the money. And as if Henry could read my mind, he immediately proposed a decent salary—with one condition: I had to stay at the lab and perform my duties without returning home until the scientists decided to halt the project.
That was the first major red flag. If they needed a watchman to stay on-site, it meant the lab was somewhere far—isolated.
The second red flag? This wasn’t just a research facility. Maybe it was on the surface, but something else was going on—something that required secrecy. And for some reason, they wanted *me* to be part of that secret.
I accepted the offer for two reasons. One, obviously, was the money. The second? To find out what the hell they were actually doing in that lab. Everything Henry had told me so far screamed that something fishy—something immoral—was happening there. They weren’t hiring me for *protection*; they were hiring me to keep their secret *hidden*.
Then Henry asked for my home address.
That’s when I noticed the third red flag. They weren’t letting their workers *drive* to the lab. They were *bringing* them in. That meant they didn’t even trust their own employees enough to know the lab’s location. They intended to keep it that way.
But I had no choice. No matter how suspicious it all sounded, my money problems were suffocating me. I needed this job.
That night, Henry returned to the lab and sent me a message that the rest of his partners would be waiting for me outside my home at 4 o'clock. Immediately, I went to bed and dreamed about my younger days.
What woke me from my restful sleep was the sound of rain and thunder at 3:30 A.M. took a warm shower, got dressed, and waited in the rain until a small white van stopped in front of my doorstep. From the driver’s seat emerged a man wearing a scientist’s coat. Without hesitation, I hopped in and noticed the GPS directing us to an address I had never heard of—an hour outside the city.
Soon, we left the district of skyscrapers and entered the depths of the Arizona wilderness. A few cars followed us for a while but eventually veered off toward another city. Our vehicle, however, didn’t stop for another ten minutes until we turned onto a dirt path.
Five minutes later, we arrived at a checkpoint—an actual checkpoint, in the middle of nowhere. The sight of it felt like something out of an *After Humans* documentary, where nature begins reclaiming abandoned buildings after humanity ceases to exist. But then, the gate opened.
The driver pulled up in front of what appeared to be a garage, with a keypad mounted beside it. He entered a combination, and the door slowly lifted to reveal an iron door. Above it, a phrase was inscribed:
**"Memento Mori."**
I stepped inside and found myself in a small laboratory, filled with scientists analyzing human anatomy and various biological specimens. Animals were caged, bacteria suspended in cylinders. The entire room resembled an oval-shaped parliament chamber, but at the center stood something that made me freeze.
A man was tied to a chair. He wore a prisoner’s jumpsuit, his expression caught between peace and pain. A wave of resentment surged through me.
**Liam.**
Henry approached me with a knowing smile, as if he understood exactly what kind of history I had with this man. Trying to calm me down, he handed me a cup of tea.
“What is he doing here? And what is this place?” I asked, keeping my voice steady.
“For your first question—he’s our test subject. And since he’s a death-row inmate, nobody gives a damn about him," Henry said. "As for the second question—this is a biology lab.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And what does biology have to do with human experimentation?”
*"Not much, but when I say biology, I don’t mean human biology, anatomy, or whatever. Those subjects are covered in hundreds, thousands of textbooks,"* Henry said, glaring at me with a serious expression.
*"We are exploring immortality."*
*"Wow,"* I muttered—both because he expected me to believe this *wow*, and because they were actually doing this *wow*.
Henry then showed me multiple anatomical diagrams of the human body along with various bits of information that had led him to explore the concept of achieving immortality.
According to Henry, there were historical accounts from olden-day France, during the era when the guillotine was used for executions. The executioner, after placing a severed head in a basket, would sometimes ask the deceased for a response—at which point the head would allegedly blink. Theories suggest this was due to rigor mortis, but Henry claimed it was far too common to be dismissed as just that.
From there, Liam developed a theory: before death, there exists a state in which a person is neither fully alive nor dead—a kind of *purgatory* between life and death.
This led to another theory regarding near-death experiences. Liam believed that all those who reported such experiences may have entered this *purgatory* state, meaning that while they were still alive in some form, they were also simultaneously dead. Stories of people waking up in coffins hours after being declared dead were also considered possible cases of this phenomenon.
The lab’s goal was to investigate this state by inducing it and studying its effects on the body.
They had developed a drug using complex chemistry—one capable of stopping the heart while keeping the subject conscious. Henry explained that if Liam could enter this state under controlled conditions, they might be able to uncover crucial aspects of it by monitoring his brain activity, air circulation, and blood flow. The ultimate goal was to find a way to sustain this state in a manner that allowed humans to function normally, potentially unlocking the key to immortality.
It was a bizarre concept, but it didn’t matter to me. I was just a security guard ensuring no one entered the premises. No science knowledge was needed.
Henry told me he wanted me on duty six days a week, from 6 AM to 9 PM, and gave me a list of housekeeping rules.
Patrol routes included patrolling both outside and inside every 20 minutes, with a 10-minute break every 40 minutes. Lunch was scheduled for 12 PM, dinner at 7 PM. Breakfast had to be eaten before patrol began. Lights out at 11 PM. Any sound outside after those hours was something worth investigating.
Another 20 minutes were spent going over more rules—no touching lab equipment, and most importantly, no touching the lab rat. Since today was my first day, I was given the opportunity to explore the lab before my shift started tomorrow.
The lab was located in the middle of nowhere, but according to the scientists, urban explorers sometimes stuck their noses into the place. Since they weren’t exactly conducting ethical experiments, explaining their work to outsiders was difficult. So, they hired me to make it look like I was a state-appointed patrol officer, tasked with guarding the private facility.
The laboratory operated 24/7. Most scientists worked four days straight, taking on various roles, before getting a three-day break. For the sake of secrecy, many stayed in the dorms within the lab during their shifts and only traveled home on their days off.
That was the basic housekeeping routine of the lab.
The experiment started at 9 a.m. t usually involved Liam being put into a coma while the scientists used a display device to show images of what he was experiencing in his half-dead state—like some kind of dream-reading machine.
Due to human limitations, Liam could only remain "half-dead" for up to five minutes before being given a ten-minute break each time he "resurrected."
I watched as the first experiment began. Liam lay motionless, and the scientists stared at the monitor, waiting to see his dying dream.
He was walking down an empty corridor, surrounded by shifting colors. We saw a projection of him looking at two figures in the space between life and death. This kind of experience was common for people who had been on the verge of dying. Henry had met several individuals who described similar dream-like states when they were near death.
And that was the key—Henry intended to use this state, and Liam’s condition, to explore the in-between. Perhaps there was something there that had yet to be understood, something left unexplored in the liminal space between life and death.
The first experiment ended, and the projection was recorded onto a VHS tape. Scientists with expertise in magic, mythology, and religion would later analyze it to decipher what they had witnessed—heaven or hell, limbo or purgatory?
In the first experiment, Liam’s dream projection depicted him walking through a corridor of swirling colors.
The second and third experiments played out in a similar way. Each time, half-dead Liam wandered through a realm of colorful darkness—an ever-changing corridor of shifting hues.
The first time, the corridor was black. The second, red. The third, green.
This liminal state between life and death kept shifting, but one thing remained constant: when Liam reached the end of this purgatorial corridor, he was always faced with two passageways—one illuminated just enough to see, the other shrouded in pitch-black darkness.
Liam’s first break happened at lunchtime. While the scientists went to the cafeteria, I stayed behind in the chamber. As soon as the room was empty, I grabbed him by the shirt.
“How does it feel to die over and over again, you bastard?” I growled.
Silence. For a moment, I wondered if he even knew how to speak—if he was mute, or if whatever the scientists had done to him, combined with whatever he had experienced in purgatory, had shocked him to the point of needing recovery. It didn’t matter to me what had happened to him or how he felt. In my eyes, he was nothing but a repulsive monster.
One of the scientists noticed me screaming at Liam, who must have thought I was there to feed him. The scientist handed me a sandwich for Liam to eat. I passed it to him, his handcuffs restricting his movements, though he could still shuffle his feet. Watching him eat only made my anger flare even more.
"You killed a man, and you still want to eat, you motherfucker?"
"Why are you so mad, sir?" Liam asked, his voice polite—far more polite than I ever expected from such a heinous prick.
It made me even angrier. This time, I lunged at him, throwing punches. Scientists restrained me, discussing how horrible he was but reminding each other that they shouldn’t be hitting someone who was part of their project.
As soon as I told my side of the story, they all went silent. At first, they looked as if they were about to dismiss me, but instead, they gave me a warning, and everything seemingly ended well.
I decided to patrol to clear my mind—to forget that prick.
Now, I regret taking this job. And yet, at the same time, I feel something new inside me, something that makes me want to stay. Satisfaction. It’s like a drug. The satisfaction of watching Liam die, even if temporarily—watching him suffer, being violated and studied—it was intoxicating.
As I patrolled, I grinned, waiting for the next experiment to begin.
–
The scientists returned to the lab at 1, an hour after the lunch break. They did witness a small tantrum I caused by throwing the sandwich I was supposed to feed to Liam on the ground. However, they chose to ignore it (or perhaps they assumed Liam’s vulnerable position made it seem insignificant) and proceeded with their practical work.
The scientists began discussing their theories and observations. The prevailing theory was that this was some kind of ‘dying dream,’ linked to the consciousness of the mind. They debated the truth behind what the projector was displaying—whether the events on the screen were simply manifestations of Liam’s mind rather than an actual state between the living and the dead.
Theologists couldn’t provide a definitive answer. Some believed Liam was experiencing purgatory, while others took a more scientific approach, arguing that what we witnessed was both explainable and inexplicable at the same time.
Buddhist afterlife concepts played a significant role in this experiment. It was theorized that in his half-dead state, Liam had traveled to the Buddhist Hell. According to theologists, at the end of a soul’s journey, seven gates determine its fate.
The problem was that despite conducting multiple experiments, the only noticeable difference in each corridor Liam saw was the color. There was no clear pattern, and we couldn’t provide him with guidance since we all knew he was either in a dream-like state or truly crossing into the realm of the dead. No matter what happened, it was impossible for us to contact Liam while he was under.
Liam described feeling completely empty. He could speak, touch, walk, and perceive his surroundings in his ‘half-dead’ state. However, his vague description made it difficult to determine if his soul was truly traveling. More importantly, we didn’t know whether to believe him or if he was simply humoring us.
The night experiments began at 6 P.M. or the first time since the experiments started, Liam appeared genuinely disturbed. While he had been calm during the earlier daytime sessions, I saw something different in his eyes—an unshakeable fear.
And it disgusted me.
The screen projected Liam’s perspective once again as he went under. But for the first time, we noticed a change in his ‘vision.’
He was running. Not walking—running. Despite being ‘dead,’ we could hear his heavy breathing.
Two minutes passed. Three minutes. Liam didn’t stop. In fact, his pace quickened, and so did his labored breaths.
At the five-minute mark, he suddenly awoke, bolting upright from the seat—only to be restrained by me, making sure he hit his head against the bed in the process.
“Why are you frightened?” Henry asked. His calm and respectful demeanor only made my nerves twitch.
“I was being chased,” Liam muttered. “Something was after me.”
Liam turned to the monitor, watching as his brain waves visualized the scene—a corridor, but this time, he was running. There was no sound.
“There was no sound?”
“You heard something?” I asked, calmer this time.
“A scream. A crazy scream,” Liam said, his voice unsteady. “It felt like… a demon was chasing me.”
And for some reason, I wished I could have seen the face of whatever the hell he claimed was chasing him—and taken great satisfaction in watching him be consumed by it, alive or not. I wanted him to feel what I had felt. What he experienced, what he envisioned in the realm between, was exactly how I had felt for months—being chased, being followed by something disturbing and gruesome.
I had the same things happen to me.
A nightmare of guilt—the embodiment of guilt—chasing me, dragging me down, possibly to hell.
Perhaps this was a sign that Liam felt remorse for killing my brother and others. If that was the case, I had to kill him. The idea that such an infernal existence sought redemption sickened me. My rage wasn’t complicated—it was justified.
As I mentioned, watching his nightmare was extremely satisfying, but the faces of the scientists told a different story.
The scientists replayed the footage the screen had projected.
But without any solid evidence, we had no choice but to send Liam back into the realm. And I, angrier than before, crossed my fingers, hoping for an accident—something that would finally send Liam to hell for good.
Liam closed his eyes, and we injected the medicine again.
The screen once more projected what he was seeing. At first, he was walking normally—for a few minutes, at least.
Then Liam started running again. This time, something felt different. We could tell something was wrong as his physical body, lying next to us, began to contort—his face twisted in agony, his body going rigid, almost as if rigor mortis had already set in. That was when my pleasure at watching him suffer turned into fear.
The screen, which displayed his brain's visual feed, started to change. The previous recordings had shown him staring straight ahead, never looking back.
But then, there was a moment—he turned around.
For the first time, we saw what was behind him. Liam’s journey into the world of the dead was not a solitary one.
Something was chasing him.
"Some*thing,*" I’d say, because I had never seen a creature like this before.
At first, it resembled a newborn baby. But it was *not* a baby. Its body was slender, long, unnaturally tall, and legless. Instead of walking, it used what I assumed were its hands to crawl toward Liam.
Then Liam started running again. This time, the camera focused on the creature—meaning Liam was literally fleeing while keeping his eyes locked on whatever was pursuing him. Just imagining his posture—his face and body moving in different directions like a broken machine—sent chills down my spine.
Whatever those creatures were, they were not just a single entity. From the darkness behind Liam, more of those abominations began to chase after them like spiders. They weren't confined to the ground—gravity seemed irrelevant to them. They were chasing Liam from all sides of the wall. An entire army of abominations had started to hunt him down.
The creatures resembled something from *The Exorcist*—a demon from it, to be exact. They were a grotesque mixture of human centipedes and the horrors from every terrifying movie. No film could truly describe how disturbing those things looked.
The creatures began to multiply, perhaps finally revealing the full extent of their numbers. One thing was clear—they were all following, chasing Liam, hunting him.
Then, in the distance, something faster and more similar to the other creatures leapt forward and grabbed onto Liam. We recognized this creature as the leader due to its similar features, though it was faster and more powerful despite its smaller size. In an instant, it brought Liam to the ground.
Much like a scene from *Alien*, the leading creature clung to Liam and stared directly at him—and then at us. The creature spat something onto Liam's face, which covered him, and the screen with it.
We were confused, staring at the screen in stunned silence. However, that silence was shattered when one of the scientists yelled out, pointing to where Liam was lying.
He was choking on something. The scientists rushed to surround him, desperately trying to remove whatever was blocking his air. Was it saliva, or had something else gotten into him? We didn’t know, but we knew he was choking, and the scientists were trying to save him.
As the scientists tried to reposition Liam, he suddenly threw up. What came out of his mouth was a black goo—something that looked like vomit, yet it was slimy and alive.
We recoiled in disgust at the sight. As soon as Liam stopped throwing up, the slime began to move, almost as if it had a mind of its own.
The slime leapt up and attached itself to Liam's face. As the scientists released their hold, the slime grew and covered his entire face. It then began to move down his shoulders, engulfing his upper body.
By the time the slime reached halfway down Liam’s torso, it leapt again, this time attaching to one of the scientists' hands. It spread over his body as well.
The slime that had enveloped Liam completely covered him. His screams were muffled, but his struggle was obvious—he was trapped, unable to escape the suffocating mass.
That was when all hell broke loose. The slime on the scientist’s body leapt onto the next person, doing the same thing. People tried their best to remove the slime covering their friends' bodies, but instead of being removed, touching the slime only caused it to consume the person who touched it.
Liam fell to the ground, struggling to escape his immovable situation. It felt as if I were witnessing a sentient jellybean. Muffled noises echoed, and that was when the others, who had been contacted by the slime, were completely covered as well. All of them dropped to the ground, unable to move as their legs were bound by it.
The slime jumped to my right hand, and instinctively, I knew that if I didn’t act, I would meet the same fate. With the pure instinct to get rid of it, I grabbed a knife and immediately sacrificed my hand, fleeing the scene.
Bleeding and twitching, I was heading to the infirmary, but what stopped me was the scene unfolding from the experiment zone.
The slime that had covered my hand stopped moving, which meant it wasn’t the slime that was causing the movement that engulfed the scientists and Liam.
They were struggling to escape.
Scientists from other parts of the lab rushed to the experiment chamber, attempting to puncture the slime, but to no avail. The more the slime was damaged, the more it jumped, attacking the other scientists and dooming them to the same twisted fate. The few survivors of the slime fled the scene, escaping the lab.
And as soon as they ran out of the lab building, that was when I ran out too.
—
Twelve years have passed since that day. I now have a prosthetic hand, which is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that I can at least manage to live normally without any major problems—make food, type things like this. My physical features became interesting to the people I made new friends with, and that relationship eventually led me to a job as a hotel receptionist.
Ever since that day, the police have been coming to the laboratory to speak with the survivors and try to figure out how on earth they could get rid of the slime covering the scientists and Liam. They tried every method possible, and as a last resort, they blew up the laboratory. But what they found in the debris were the slimes, with the imprisoned people desperately trying to escape.
One year has passed, and their movement hasn't stopped. The people consumed by the slime continue to move, desperately trying to break free. Surrounded by the slimes, at the center, the largest slime is the one that consumed Liam. His slime shakes the most.
It felt as if they were clinging to hope for survival, hoping they might somehow manage to escape. What they don’t know is that they cannot leave. We tried methods stronger than human hands, but nothing worked.
They are still alive, trapped in the slime, desperately trying to escape. But the sheer bizarreness of the case led the council to decide to bury them in the ground, along with the damned lab.
The police ultimately placed a no-entry sign where the lab once stood, preventing anyone from discovering such a monstrosity.
And ever since that day, I have nightmares.
Liam reached out to me before he was completely covered in slime, staring at me with a hate greater than the hate I once had for him.
#entertainment
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Humanity, in my opinion, is the foulest creature walking this planet.
Now, before you try to dismiss this as mere misanthropy, let me make one thing clear: I do not hate humanity, nor do I hate the achievements of great men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They are exceptions—proof that not all humans are foul. However, I do believe that humans, by nature, are careless creatures. No matter how cautious one may try to be, carelessness is an inherent part of human nature.
And sometimes, that carelessness can lead to evil that cannot be undone. Because of such carelessness, twelve years ago, I witnessed how I almost became the devil himself.
And it all happened in less than twenty-four hours.
Twelve years ago—right… I’ve had both good and bad years in my life, but twelve years ago was by far the worst. It was a relentless conga line of misfortune directed straight at me.
First, our family pet died. Then, I was dismissed from the police force after unintentionally accepting a bribe. And lastly—the worst misfortune of all—my younger brother was murdered.
For two years, a psychopath named Liam terrorized Arizona with a series of some of the most gruesome and disturbing murders in the state’s history. The bastard was essentially an unstoppable train of violence, mowing down anyone in his path. Day in, day out—young or old, stabbed or butchered—it didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was killing. He didn’t care how people reacted.
You know Michael Myers, right? Liam was like that—no motive, no reason, nothing. He just killed, and that was what made his crimes so disturbing. He didn’t kill for money. He didn’t kill for enjoyment. He just killed.
Ultimately, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. While awaiting trial, he was transferred to a different prison far from my city. Aside from the fact that he was locked up, I knew nothing about him—no details, no prison location, nothing. But knowing he would die, I stopped tracking Liam and focused on rebuilding my life.
Weeks passed as I searched for a job. I hired consultants, asked friends for suggestions, yet I made no progress.
That was until my old friend Henry entered the scene.
Henry was always a strange fellow—like Lord Voldemort from *Harry Potter*, minus the whole dark wizard thing. He had the highest grades in every subject—science, math, English, you name it. Yet, after graduating from college, the next thing we heard was that he was working as a cashier at Walmart. Then he disappeared for a few years.
When he returned, he was the owner of a private but large-scale biology lab, partnered with various research facilities worldwide—even some sponsored by the government. As the head scientist of the laboratory, he suddenly reached out to me—nearly two decades after we had lost contact.
Henry was not the only person from the lab I knew. His younger and supposedly *smarter* brother, Harvey, led a more public life. In fact, I had known him since he witnessed my brother’s murder—the very case that sent Liam to the slammer. Ever since that day, we had been fast friends. Meeting him was what ultimately led Henry back into my life during such dark times.
Harvey may have told Henry about my situation—how I lost my job. A casual conversation about life gradually shifted to my financial troubles, and he quickly figured out that I had been struggling ever since losing my position as a policeman. He pitied me but also mocked me for the mistake that had reduced me to an unemployed, good-for-nothing scum of the earth.
But the moment I mentioned I was an ex-cop, his expression changed. His interest *piqued*, and he told me that, as an ex-cop, he could actually solve my money problems.
And that solution was to work at his biology lab.
At first, I was skeptical. When he mentioned the position of "Assistant," I assumed he had mistakenly thought I was a biologist or expected me to conduct experiments and write reports on DNA or some shit. But it turned out to be much simpler than that—I was to be a *watchman*. My only duty was to patrol the vicinity and ensure no trespassers entered the premises.
That’s when my suspicion first kicked in. A simple watchman job for a laboratory? It sounded too generous. But I needed the money. And as if Henry could read my mind, he immediately proposed a decent salary—with one condition: I had to stay at the lab and perform my duties without returning home until the scientists decided to halt the project.
That was the first major red flag. If they needed a watchman to stay on-site, it meant the lab was somewhere far—isolated.
The second red flag? This wasn’t just a research facility. Maybe it was on the surface, but something else was going on—something that required secrecy. And for some reason, they wanted *me* to be part of that secret.
I accepted the offer for two reasons. One, obviously, was the money. The second? To find out what the hell they were actually doing in that lab. Everything Henry had told me so far screamed that something fishy—something immoral—was happening there. They weren’t hiring me for *protection*; they were hiring me to keep their secret *hidden*.
Then Henry asked for my home address.
That’s when I noticed the third red flag. They weren’t letting their workers *drive* to the lab. They were *bringing* them in. That meant they didn’t even trust their own employees enough to know the lab’s location. They intended to keep it that way.
But I had no choice. No matter how suspicious it all sounded, my money problems were suffocating me. I needed this job.
That night, Henry returned to the lab and sent me a message that the rest of his partners would be waiting for me outside my home at 4 o'clock. Immediately, I went to bed and dreamed about my younger days.
What woke me from my restful sleep was the sound of rain and thunder at 3:30 A.M. took a warm shower, got dressed, and waited in the rain until a small white van stopped in front of my doorstep. From the driver’s seat emerged a man wearing a scientist’s coat. Without hesitation, I hopped in and noticed the GPS directing us to an address I had never heard of—an hour outside the city.
Soon, we left the district of skyscrapers and entered the depths of the Arizona wilderness. A few cars followed us for a while but eventually veered off toward another city. Our vehicle, however, didn’t stop for another ten minutes until we turned onto a dirt path.
Five minutes later, we arrived at a checkpoint—an actual checkpoint, in the middle of nowhere. The sight of it felt like something out of an *After Humans* documentary, where nature begins reclaiming abandoned buildings after humanity ceases to exist. But then, the gate opened.
The driver pulled up in front of what appeared to be a garage, with a keypad mounted beside it. He entered a combination, and the door slowly lifted to reveal an iron door. Above it, a phrase was inscribed:
**"Memento Mori."**
I stepped inside and found myself in a small laboratory, filled with scientists analyzing human anatomy and various biological specimens. Animals were caged, bacteria suspended in cylinders. The entire room resembled an oval-shaped parliament chamber, but at the center stood something that made me freeze.
A man was tied to a chair. He wore a prisoner’s jumpsuit, his expression caught between peace and pain. A wave of resentment surged through me.
**Liam.**
Henry approached me with a knowing smile, as if he understood exactly what kind of history I had with this man. Trying to calm me down, he handed me a cup of tea.
“What is he doing here? And what is this place?” I asked, keeping my voice steady.
“For your first question—he’s our test subject. And since he’s a death-row inmate, nobody gives a damn about him," Henry said. "As for the second question—this is a biology lab.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And what does biology have to do with human experimentation?”
*"Not much, but when I say biology, I don’t mean human biology, anatomy, or whatever. Those subjects are covered in hundreds, thousands of textbooks,"* Henry said, glaring at me with a serious expression.
*"We are exploring immortality."*
*"Wow,"* I muttered—both because he expected me to believe this *wow*, and because they were actually doing this *wow*.
Henry then showed me multiple anatomical diagrams of the human body along with various bits of information that had led him to explore the concept of achieving immortality.
According to Henry, there were historical accounts from olden-day France, during the era when the guillotine was used for executions. The executioner, after placing a severed head in a basket, would sometimes ask the deceased for a response—at which point the head would allegedly blink. Theories suggest this was due to rigor mortis, but Henry claimed it was far too common to be dismissed as just that.
From there, Liam developed a theory: before death, there exists a state in which a person is neither fully alive nor dead—a kind of *purgatory* between life and death.
This led to another theory regarding near-death experiences. Liam believed that all those who reported such experiences may have entered this *purgatory* state, meaning that while they were still alive in some form, they were also simultaneously dead. Stories of people waking up in coffins hours after being declared dead were also considered possible cases of this phenomenon.
The lab’s goal was to investigate this state by inducing it and studying its effects on the body.
They had developed a drug using complex chemistry—one capable of stopping the heart while keeping the subject conscious. Henry explained that if Liam could enter this state under controlled conditions, they might be able to uncover crucial aspects of it by monitoring his brain activity, air circulation, and blood flow. The ultimate goal was to find a way to sustain this state in a manner that allowed humans to function normally, potentially unlocking the key to immortality.
It was a bizarre concept, but it didn’t matter to me. I was just a security guard ensuring no one entered the premises. No science knowledge was needed.
Henry told me he wanted me on duty six days a week, from 6 AM to 9 PM, and gave me a list of housekeeping rules.
Patrol routes included patrolling both outside and inside every 20 minutes, with a 10-minute break every 40 minutes. Lunch was scheduled for 12 PM, dinner at 7 PM. Breakfast had to be eaten before patrol began. Lights out at 11 PM. Any sound outside after those hours was something worth investigating.
Another 20 minutes were spent going over more rules—no touching lab equipment, and most importantly, no touching the lab rat. Since today was my first day, I was given the opportunity to explore the lab before my shift started tomorrow.
The lab was located in the middle of nowhere, but according to the scientists, urban explorers sometimes stuck their noses into the place. Since they weren’t exactly conducting ethical experiments, explaining their work to outsiders was difficult. So, they hired me to make it look like I was a state-appointed patrol officer, tasked with guarding the private facility.
The laboratory operated 24/7. Most scientists worked four days straight, taking on various roles, before getting a three-day break. For the sake of secrecy, many stayed in the dorms within the lab during their shifts and only traveled home on their days off.
That was the basic housekeeping routine of the lab.
The experiment started at 9 a.m. t usually involved Liam being put into a coma while the scientists used a display device to show images of what he was experiencing in his half-dead state—like some kind of dream-reading machine.
Due to human limitations, Liam could only remain "half-dead" for up to five minutes before being given a ten-minute break each time he "resurrected."
I watched as the first experiment began. Liam lay motionless, and the scientists stared at the monitor, waiting to see his dying dream.
He was walking down an empty corridor, surrounded by shifting colors. We saw a projection of him looking at two figures in the space between life and death. This kind of experience was common for people who had been on the verge of dying. Henry had met several individuals who described similar dream-like states when they were near death.
And that was the key—Henry intended to use this state, and Liam’s condition, to explore the in-between. Perhaps there was something there that had yet to be understood, something left unexplored in the liminal space between life and death.
The first experiment ended, and the projection was recorded onto a VHS tape. Scientists with expertise in magic, mythology, and religion would later analyze it to decipher what they had witnessed—heaven or hell, limbo or purgatory?
In the first experiment, Liam’s dream projection depicted him walking through a corridor of swirling colors.
The second and third experiments played out in a similar way. Each time, half-dead Liam wandered through a realm of colorful darkness—an ever-changing corridor of shifting hues.
The first time, the corridor was black. The second, red. The third, green.
This liminal state between life and death kept shifting, but one thing remained constant: when Liam reached the end of this purgatorial corridor, he was always faced with two passageways—one illuminated just enough to see, the other shrouded in pitch-black darkness.
Liam’s first break happened at lunchtime. While the scientists went to the cafeteria, I stayed behind in the chamber. As soon as the room was empty, I grabbed him by the shirt.
“How does it feel to die over and over again, you bastard?” I growled.
Silence. For a moment, I wondered if he even knew how to speak—if he was mute, or if whatever the scientists had done to him, combined with whatever he had experienced in purgatory, had shocked him to the point of needing recovery. It didn’t matter to me what had happened to him or how he felt. In my eyes, he was nothing but a repulsive monster.
One of the scientists noticed me screaming at Liam, who must have thought I was there to feed him. The scientist handed me a sandwich for Liam to eat. I passed it to him, his handcuffs restricting his movements, though he could still shuffle his feet. Watching him eat only made my anger flare even more.
"You killed a man, and you still want to eat, you motherfucker?"
"Why are you so mad, sir?" Liam asked, his voice polite—far more polite than I ever expected from such a heinous prick.
It made me even angrier. This time, I lunged at him, throwing punches. Scientists restrained me, discussing how horrible he was but reminding each other that they shouldn’t be hitting someone who was part of their project.
As soon as I told my side of the story, they all went silent. At first, they looked as if they were about to dismiss me, but instead, they gave me a warning, and everything seemingly ended well.
I decided to patrol to clear my mind—to forget that prick.
Now, I regret taking this job. And yet, at the same time, I feel something new inside me, something that makes me want to stay. Satisfaction. It’s like a drug. The satisfaction of watching Liam die, even if temporarily—watching him suffer, being violated and studied—it was intoxicating.
As I patrolled, I grinned, waiting for the next experiment to begin.
–
The scientists returned to the lab at 1, an hour after the lunch break. They did witness a small tantrum I caused by throwing the sandwich I was supposed to feed to Liam on the ground. However, they chose to ignore it (or perhaps they assumed Liam’s vulnerable position made it seem insignificant) and proceeded with their practical work.
The scientists began discussing their theories and observations. The prevailing theory was that this was some kind of ‘dying dream,’ linked to the consciousness of the mind. They debated the truth behind what the projector was displaying—whether the events on the screen were simply manifestations of Liam’s mind rather than an actual state between the living and the dead.
Theologists couldn’t provide a definitive answer. Some believed Liam was experiencing purgatory, while others took a more scientific approach, arguing that what we witnessed was both explainable and inexplicable at the same time.
Buddhist afterlife concepts played a significant role in this experiment. It was theorized that in his half-dead state, Liam had traveled to the Buddhist Hell. According to theologists, at the end of a soul’s journey, seven gates determine its fate.
The problem was that despite conducting multiple experiments, the only noticeable difference in each corridor Liam saw was the color. There was no clear pattern, and we couldn’t provide him with guidance since we all knew he was either in a dream-like state or truly crossing into the realm of the dead. No matter what happened, it was impossible for us to contact Liam while he was under.
Liam described feeling completely empty. He could speak, touch, walk, and perceive his surroundings in his ‘half-dead’ state. However, his vague description made it difficult to determine if his soul was truly traveling. More importantly, we didn’t know whether to believe him or if he was simply humoring us.
The night experiments began at 6 P.M. or the first time since the experiments started, Liam appeared genuinely disturbed. While he had been calm during the earlier daytime sessions, I saw something different in his eyes—an unshakeable fear.
And it disgusted me.
The screen projected Liam’s perspective once again as he went under. But for the first time, we noticed a change in his ‘vision.’
He was running. Not walking—running. Despite being ‘dead,’ we could hear his heavy breathing.
Two minutes passed. Three minutes. Liam didn’t stop. In fact, his pace quickened, and so did his labored breaths.
At the five-minute mark, he suddenly awoke, bolting upright from the seat—only to be restrained by me, making sure he hit his head against the bed in the process.
“Why are you frightened?” Henry asked. His calm and respectful demeanor only made my nerves twitch.
“I was being chased,” Liam muttered. “Something was after me.”
Liam turned to the monitor, watching as his brain waves visualized the scene—a corridor, but this time, he was running. There was no sound.
“There was no sound?”
“You heard something?” I asked, calmer this time.
“A scream. A crazy scream,” Liam said, his voice unsteady. “It felt like… a demon was chasing me.”
And for some reason, I wished I could have seen the face of whatever the hell he claimed was chasing him—and taken great satisfaction in watching him be consumed by it, alive or not. I wanted him to feel what I had felt. What he experienced, what he envisioned in the realm between, was exactly how I had felt for months—being chased, being followed by something disturbing and gruesome.
I had the same things happen to me.
A nightmare of guilt—the embodiment of guilt—chasing me, dragging me down, possibly to hell.
Perhaps this was a sign that Liam felt remorse for killing my brother and others. If that was the case, I had to kill him. The idea that such an infernal existence sought redemption sickened me. My rage wasn’t complicated—it was justified.
As I mentioned, watching his nightmare was extremely satisfying, but the faces of the scientists told a different story.
The scientists replayed the footage the screen had projected.
But without any solid evidence, we had no choice but to send Liam back into the realm. And I, angrier than before, crossed my fingers, hoping for an accident—something that would finally send Liam to hell for good.
Liam closed his eyes, and we injected the medicine again.
The screen once more projected what he was seeing. At first, he was walking normally—for a few minutes, at least.
Then Liam started running again. This time, something felt different. We could tell something was wrong as his physical body, lying next to us, began to contort—his face twisted in agony, his body going rigid, almost as if rigor mortis had already set in. That was when my pleasure at watching him suffer turned into fear.
The screen, which displayed his brain's visual feed, started to change. The previous recordings had shown him staring straight ahead, never looking back.
But then, there was a moment—he turned around.
For the first time, we saw what was behind him. Liam’s journey into the world of the dead was not a solitary one.
Something was chasing him.
"Some*thing,*" I’d say, because I had never seen a creature like this before.
At first, it resembled a newborn baby. But it was *not* a baby. Its body was slender, long, unnaturally tall, and legless. Instead of walking, it used what I assumed were its hands to crawl toward Liam.
Then Liam started running again. This time, the camera focused on the creature—meaning Liam was literally fleeing while keeping his eyes locked on whatever was pursuing him. Just imagining his posture—his face and body moving in different directions like a broken machine—sent chills down my spine.
Whatever those creatures were, they were not just a single entity. From the darkness behind Liam, more of those abominations began to chase after them like spiders. They weren't confined to the ground—gravity seemed irrelevant to them. They were chasing Liam from all sides of the wall. An entire army of abominations had started to hunt him down.
The creatures resembled something from *The Exorcist*—a demon from it, to be exact. They were a grotesque mixture of human centipedes and the horrors from every terrifying movie. No film could truly describe how disturbing those things looked.
The creatures began to multiply, perhaps finally revealing the full extent of their numbers. One thing was clear—they were all following, chasing Liam, hunting him.
Then, in the distance, something faster and more similar to the other creatures leapt forward and grabbed onto Liam. We recognized this creature as the leader due to its similar features, though it was faster and more powerful despite its smaller size. In an instant, it brought Liam to the ground.
Much like a scene from *Alien*, the leading creature clung to Liam and stared directly at him—and then at us. The creature spat something onto Liam's face, which covered him, and the screen with it.
We were confused, staring at the screen in stunned silence. However, that silence was shattered when one of the scientists yelled out, pointing to where Liam was lying.
He was choking on something. The scientists rushed to surround him, desperately trying to remove whatever was blocking his air. Was it saliva, or had something else gotten into him? We didn’t know, but we knew he was choking, and the scientists were trying to save him.
As the scientists tried to reposition Liam, he suddenly threw up. What came out of his mouth was a black goo—something that looked like vomit, yet it was slimy and alive.
We recoiled in disgust at the sight. As soon as Liam stopped throwing up, the slime began to move, almost as if it had a mind of its own.
The slime leapt up and attached itself to Liam's face. As the scientists released their hold, the slime grew and covered his entire face. It then began to move down his shoulders, engulfing his upper body.
By the time the slime reached halfway down Liam’s torso, it leapt again, this time attaching to one of the scientists' hands. It spread over his body as well.
The slime that had enveloped Liam completely covered him. His screams were muffled, but his struggle was obvious—he was trapped, unable to escape the suffocating mass.
That was when all hell broke loose. The slime on the scientist’s body leapt onto the next person, doing the same thing. People tried their best to remove the slime covering their friends' bodies, but instead of being removed, touching the slime only caused it to consume the person who touched it.
Liam fell to the ground, struggling to escape his immovable situation. It felt as if I were witnessing a sentient jellybean. Muffled noises echoed, and that was when the others, who had been contacted by the slime, were completely covered as well. All of them dropped to the ground, unable to move as their legs were bound by it.
The slime jumped to my right hand, and instinctively, I knew that if I didn’t act, I would meet the same fate. With the pure instinct to get rid of it, I grabbed a knife and immediately sacrificed my hand, fleeing the scene.
Bleeding and twitching, I was heading to the infirmary, but what stopped me was the scene unfolding from the experiment zone.
The slime that had covered my hand stopped moving, which meant it wasn’t the slime that was causing the movement that engulfed the scientists and Liam.
They were struggling to escape.
Scientists from other parts of the lab rushed to the experiment chamber, attempting to puncture the slime, but to no avail. The more the slime was damaged, the more it jumped, attacking the other scientists and dooming them to the same twisted fate. The few survivors of the slime fled the scene, escaping the lab.
And as soon as they ran out of the lab building, that was when I ran out too.
—
Twelve years have passed since that day. I now have a prosthetic hand, which is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that I can at least manage to live normally without any major problems—make food, type things like this. My physical features became interesting to the people I made new friends with, and that relationship eventually led me to a job as a hotel receptionist.
Ever since that day, the police have been coming to the laboratory to speak with the survivors and try to figure out how on earth they could get rid of the slime covering the scientists and Liam. They tried every method possible, and as a last resort, they blew up the laboratory. But what they found in the debris were the slimes, with the imprisoned people desperately trying to escape.
One year has passed, and their movement hasn't stopped. The people consumed by the slime continue to move, desperately trying to break free. Surrounded by the slimes, at the center, the largest slime is the one that consumed Liam. His slime shakes the most.
It felt as if they were clinging to hope for survival, hoping they might somehow manage to escape. What they don’t know is that they cannot leave. We tried methods stronger than human hands, but nothing worked.
They are still alive, trapped in the slime, desperately trying to escape. But the sheer bizarreness of the case led the council to decide to bury them in the ground, along with the damned lab.
The police ultimately placed a no-entry sign where the lab once stood, preventing anyone from discovering such a monstrosity.
And ever since that day, I have nightmares.
Liam reached out to me before he was completely covered in slime, staring at me with a hate greater than the hate I once had for him.
#entertainment
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| 8,000 mlx | |
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