Panacea

You are what you eat.

 

Victor was not an addict, or that’s what he thought. He consumes some Furtive because he wants to, and he can stop anytime. “Yeah, it can be harmful to the body, but what’s a little harm when there’s enormous pleasure?” he thought to himself. “I can as well control the side effects.” What Victor didn’t know was that he wasn’t in control. He had previously heard about some Z-list gang that called themselves “The Dred of Society.” The gang had four members; Michael, Stanley, Lase, and Troy. Michael, the leader of the gang, had a crazy idea about consuming a fistful of Furtive, knowing fully well that a single Furtive is capable of causing different parts of the body to swell involuntarily as a side effect. Some people take the drug without having any complications. The majority have died trying to catch the soaring (a term used for getting high) using the Furtive. Those who don’t die either have side effects or none. Unlike The Dred of Society, Victor had side effects. His belly would get bloated about seven inches longer and five inches wider. But he studied some science courses at his university. He had figured out how to mix some hydrocortisone with water, which he would swallow right after taking the Furtive. This prevented the side effects.

 

Michael told his gang members that they could become something better if they took enough of the drug. “We have no side effects, look at what we can do when we catch the soaring, I can see long distances, Stanley can easily punch the wall without feeling pain, Lase has got longer hair, and Troy, well I don’t know about Troy, he hasn’t shown any signs yet, but you guys get me.” Lase didn’t agree, she thought it was too risky. “This isn’t burglarizing someone’s home or stealing drugs from a lab. I can risk those, but this isn’t something I can risk.” She had just served a month in a penitentiary home for stealing vibrators and d****s from an exotic shop. “Relax Rapunzel, we’ll just swoosh in and swoosh out.” Stanley cuts in with a condescending tone. Michael somehow found a way to convince her. They each consumed a fistful of Furtive and they were fine. Better yet, they felt great as they as well were catching the soaring.  Michael could not only see things from far distances, but he could now see-through things, it was as if everything was translucent from his view.  Stanley got stronger physically, Lase could stretch her hair out to any length she wanted, and Troy? Well, Troy still didn’t exhibit any change. He wasn’t mad at it though. All he wanted was to catch the soaring. Getting high was enough for him. He was the type of guy one would describe as laid-back. He was nonchalant about everything without being offensive. The only time they had seen him angry was when Stanley spiked his drink with some Furtive. Troy was surprisingly furious, and everyone was shocked. Other than that, Troy was chilled.

 

The gang had a scheme. They plotted to once again sneak into the old abandoned lab. This was where they first discovered the Furtive. They would break into hospitals to steal drugs that can be used abnormally to catch the soaring. They used the drugs by themselves and sold them on the streets as well. The Dred of Society became heroes to junkies. Stanley, who stumbled on the drug first had thought the drugs were aspirins he could use for his headache, so he swallowed two of them. His headache was gone, and his head felt lighter. It wasn’t until he bumped into a trolley and mistakenly spilled some liquid in a glass jar onto his left hand, that he realized he was high. He saw a vapor-like atmosphere emerge from his left hand and laughed. He thought he was seeing things. Lase screamed as she glanced at Stanley’s hand and noticed it was melting. Stanley had spilled some sort of acid on his left hand and couldn’t feel the pain. After they put two and two together, they figured it was the aspirin Stanley consumed that made him numb to the pain. And so, they gathered all they could.

 

This time around, they planned to steal everything and make as much money as they could.  They snuck into the old abandoned lab and bypassed all the signs that asked to keep off. This was when it started. Michael's vision began to blur as if he wore eyeglasses and didn’t wipe them clean. Lase’s hair started itching her, and Stanley felt his joints ache. It only got worse. Michael's vision blurred until he lost his sight. He freaked out. A lot of dandruff fell off Lase’s hair as she scratched her head. She noticed blood on her fingernails and began to freak out, she grabbed a pair of scissors on a work table close to her and began to cut all her hair off. Stanley’s bones became weak and he couldn’t move anymore. He also freaked out. Nothing happened to Troy who also seemed to be freaking out from the horrors he was seeing his friends go through.

 

This happened two weeks ago, nobody knew what happened to The Dred of Society as they never returned from their raid. “Maybe they were caught by the authorities,” some street urchins said to themselves as Victor walked past them going home from the grocery store. One of them had each side of his cheeks swollen, the other had a really long neck. He figured they were having a conversation about the gang. He didn’t care about any of the rumors, all he wanted was more of the Furtive. “What if they have been caught? Should that stop us from catching the soaring? We should all be thinking about how to get these drugs. Someone else needs to step up.” And then it hit him; “Eureka,” he said to himself as he arrived at the front of his apartment. “What if I step up myself?” he turned the doorknob of the apartment and left it ajar while he remained at the entrance of his home deep in thought.  It was a neat studio apartment with abstract paintings on the wall.  Victor had a proclivity for collecting abstract artwork. He proceeds into the average-sized room and stares at a particular painting. It is as if the painting is staring back at him. He staggers backward and then gains his balance, walks over to a small well-polished wooden dining table with a bottle of water and some comic books on it, pulls one of the chairs tucked in, and seats. Victor grabs the bottle of water with one hand, while he dips the other into one of his jacket pockets. As he pulls his hand out of his pocket, he swings it upward to his mouth and two pills fly right into it. After drinking water, he says, “I’m doing this because I want to, not that it has a hold on me.” Everything turns purple in his eyes as he smiles ploddingly with his mouth agape.  He leans backward hard on the seat and then falls to the ground. His eyes flicker as he passes out. Then everything went black.

He found himself in a poorly lit classroom. It was flooded with water that rose to his ankle. A strange sound seemed to be coming from behind the door of another room. He thought it was music he heard. He makes his way towards the sound and pushes the door open. As he proceeds, he sees a group of middle-aged men and women. They all had musical instruments they were playing. With stoic looks on their faces, they played like they were compelled to do so. Victor felt a force pull him toward one of the ladies playing the violin, and as he stood before her, she kept on playing. It felt like she didn’t notice him. He notices a difference. She had increased the pace at which she stroked the fiddle stick on the strings of her violin, the music got louder and the rest of the musicians picked up the pace as well. There was something about this one lady, her hands were bleeding. He looked up to her and his amazement, she still wore a stoic look on her face. He was trying to figure out why she didn’t respond to stimuli when he noticed her right cheek had changed form. Her cheek seemed to be facing the wrong way, it was dropping? Victor goes even closer and as he leans towards her to get a better view, her eyes shift in his direction without moving the rest of her face. He jumped away from her as he shrieked. It was when he looked at her again he noticed that her face was melting. The music got even louder than it was, they all played their instruments even faster. Still confused, he noticed the lady’s melting face was forming into something he felt he recognized. It didn’t take long for him to discover that it looked like the same painting on his wall. As soon as he realizes this, her face forms a spiral and a force pulls him into it.

 

Victor opened his eyes and gasped for breath. He got up on his butt and gazed around as if he had lost memory of where he was. “Ugh, weird a*s dream.” As he slowly gained consciousness, Victor stood on his feet and gave himself a hard slap on his face. He shrugged and he was back to normal. “That was one hell of a soaring I caught there.” He thought to himself. Just after he picked up his chair and tucked it back into the table, he walked over to the abstract painting and stared at it for a few minutes, then uttered; “I’m so breaking into that lab.”

 

Night time comes, and Victor makes his way to the old abandoned lab. He ignores all the signs that asked to keep off as well.  It was dark inside. Luckily his phone has a flashlight. As he pulls his phone out of a pocket from his jacket, he feels a sharp pain in his head. “Stupid headaches,” he said. He places his hands on both sides of his head and his phone drops mistakenly. As he hurriedly went after it, the flashlight illuminated something he hadn’t noticed. It was a door that led to another room. He gulped as he picked up his phone which now had scratches on it, unlocked the door, and entered. There were rats all over the place.  He noticed that this side of the lab had more advanced equipment than the other. As he went further, he stumbled upon four tall glass tubes. They were all of the same size, seven feet tall and four feet wide. There seemed to be some sort of purple liquid inside of them. As he got closer, he noticed there was something inside each tube. The structures looked like… “They’re floating, are those humans?” Before he could confirm what he saw, he heard a voice behind him. “Yup, yup they are.”  As he turned around to look at who it was, he saw the bottom of a fire extinguisher and once again, he blacked out.

 

Some moments later, Victor gains consciousness, with a banging headache. He opens his eyes and, in a haze, he sees a young man in front of him. This person seemed unsettled. Pacing around and soliloquizing, it seemed as though he was infuriated. “Err, excuse me?” Victor said as he tried moving towards this person. But he couldn’t move, he was firmly tied down to a chair he was sat on.   “What’s going on? Please get me out of this...”  He gets interrupted.   “What’s going on, you ask?” The young man said, turning to him as his back was previously facing Victor. “Well, the world is changing you see, and I believe we are changing with it. But we are too slow. My father once told me science can be the end of the world just as it was the beginning. I thought he was crazy, you know? I mean, I‘m more inclined to the fact that there is a higher power. I believe the beginning was all God. Do you believe in God? Nah, you don’t have to answer that, you look Presbyterian. You see, my father thought he could evolve human beings with science.  There is something called meiosis, it’s a type of cell division in sexually reproducing organisms. I don’t have to explain the details of how it works, but my father thought that if he could figure out how to control cell division to an extent, it could enhance us humans. He thought if we could duplicate the right cells to the right parts of our bodies, we could be stronger, faster, smarter.” The young man pauses and chuckles. Victor had a puzzled look on his face, he didn’t know if he should interrupt him, he wanted to get out of there as he didn’t care about the drugs anymore. The man continues, “He used his sperm cells for research purposes and my father figured it out. Well, he figured out most of it, not all of it. He created a drug made out of his sperm.  He tried it on lab rats, but it didn’t quite go as planned. Yeah, their cells duplicated, they grew sharper teeth and got bigger. But it was temporary. My father couldn’t figure out how to make it permanent. Sigh! So I took over. I first tried it on humans, using his method. Everybody likes to get high, so I put some mushrooms in it and sold it to the public, anonymously of course. And you dumb f***s don’t ask questions, you see the anomaly in your body after consuming the drugs and just call it a side effect. Pfft! I mean, I knew it wouldn’t work my father’s way because that isn’t what God has planned for us. You see, God asked us to be fruitful and multiply.  And that was why I resonated with my father's research. Duplicating cells. I figured that to carry out God’s purpose for us, we have to multiply ourselves. In other words, clone ourselves. That was what my father was missing.  Now with further research, I know I can do this, I am almost there, I know it.  For now, I’ll just keep selling my father’s drugs to get some money to fund my research.  I think it’s funny y’all been swallowing my dad’s nut. What do you think? “He looks at Victor who has a disgusted look on his face. Victor was discombobulated, he could barely speak. “Wh... who…who the hell are you t…t…to de…decide what humans are to become?”  he asks shakily. The young man responds, “Oh my bad, I didn’t introduce myself, my name is Troy Davids, and you are?”  Victor couldn’t believe what he heard. “Troy Davids? Aren’t you a member of that gang, The Dread of Society? Damn, it’s you right? We heard you and the rest of the gang were missing, some of us thought you were arrested. I should have known you and the rest of your coven were up to no good.” Troy bursts into a burst of loud laughter, it was so loud and uncontrolled it seemed he was mad. “You think those good-for-nothings were a part of this? You give them too much credit. He then points his finger to where the four tubes were. “That’s the rest of them, or what is left of them. Look at them float. They were never my friends you see, I was never in a gang. That’s some kid stuff to me. I don’t need the backing of a cult to progress. I merely became friends with them for this purpose. I have planned this for years, and nothing is going to stop me now from fulfilling God’s purpose.”  Victor spits on the floor. “You’re sick.” Troy ignores him. “Oh yeah, if you were wondering who has the fourth tube, that’s just my dad in there.”

 

Victor couldn’t believe what he heard. He thought, “If he could do that to his friends and his father, what is he going to do to me?” He stares at the tubes while Troy turns away from him and faces a computer adjacent to the tubes. Troy seemed to be punching in some codes into his computer, a countdown timer appeared on the screen.  “You know I can’t lie, they kind of grew on me,” Troy said while fixated on his computer. “Lase, Michael, and even that douchebag Stanley. I met them at an underground party where I went to sell some Furtive. They were the first ones I saw that didn’t have side effects to the drugs. I mean, everyone at the party was high on it. But those three were just high. No elongated or swollen parts of their body. Michael and Lase already knew each other, Stanley was just a prick that grabbed Lase’s a*s and it lead to a fight. I tried to stop the fight but as soon as I cut in, the bouncer kicked us all out. They were high so the situation was funny to them. They laughed at themselves, I laughed with them. Stanley called a truce and apologized. A conversation led to another, and that’s how I found out they had heightened senses because of the Furtive. I thought to myself that if I could study these people and figure out why they don’t get side effects, I could get closer to fulfilling God’s purpose. I became friends with them and watched them closely. I planted ideas about stealing drugs from an old abandoned lab in their heads. It was all going according to plan until they overdosed the Furtive. Stupid people swallowed fistfuls of Furtive. I don’t even understand how they never knew I wasn’t taking the drugs as well. I would always hide or throw the drugs away, but those guys had a proclivity for getting high so they just took it, and now, they float.” He says while staring at the tubes. “But, oh well, it is what it is. Once I click on my computer and the countdown starts, the process of turning these four into a hybrid of meiotic recombination begins. In other words, they will merge and become one giant creature with heightened abilities. This is for the Lord's work. At this point, Victor had found a loose end on the rope he was tied with and started untying himself. He started indulging Troy so he wouldn’t suspect anything. “Creating a single creature out of all of them contradicts your motive to multiply, doesn’t it?” Troy smirks and responds, but is fixated on his computer. “Yeah well, I can always duplicate the creature, can’t I?”

 

Troy clicks his keyboard and a countdown for sixty seconds pops on the screen. “Once this countdown is over, the hybrid will emerge a new creature as it has been baptized in my holy water. But you, well my plan for you is different.” He turns around and sees Victor has somehow untied himself, about to get up from the chair. He rushes over to Victor and tries to grab him. Victor kicks him away and punches him. He is bigger and faster, so he keeps beating until Troy can’t move. Victor then makes his way to the door of the lab, but the door is locked. Troy had resiliently gotten up quickly and was already behind him.  He jumped, wrapped his arms around Victor's neck, and pulled him back. He choked Victor until he passed out, again.

 

Victor wakes up some moments later and this time, he isn’t on the floor or tied down to a chair. “No, no, no, not this. You can’t do this to me. Get me out of this tube!” He sees Troy on his computer through the translucent tube. He sees him restarting the timer for the countdown. As if Troy didn’t hear Victor, he continued on his computer. “I’m something of a scientist myself,” Victor says. “I can help you; we can work together. You see I figured out how to stop the side effects of the Furtive with some hydrocortisone. If you release me, I can show you how I formulated this remedy. It can be helpful for your research!”  Troy chuckles and responds. “Hydrocortisone, huh? That makes sense. But why would I need a remedy? Why would I want the panacea to my perfection? I thank you for the suggestion, and I will consider it when… sorry… if it is needed. But right now, I have other plans for you.” 

 

He punches some code on his computer and the countdown begins again. Victor felt something wet beneath him, it felt like it was rising. He looks down and notices a purple sticky goo rise above his ankle.  He screamed for help, but it was all to no avail. When the liquid had risen to his chest level, he stopped panicking and was still. Victor started weeping. As the purple goo rose to his chin, Troy stood up from where he was sitting, raised both his arms in the air, and said; “First Corinthians twelve verse thirteen; For we were all baptized by one spirit, so as to form one body.” Victor finally gives a loud cry just as the liquid covers his mouth, and then his whole body. Just like the other four, he floats.

 

 

 END