Tripping the Tale Fantastic Read online

  George lifted the cage and put it into an isolation chamber that resembled a large humidicrib, like that used in hospital maternity wards for premature babies. The rabbit scratched at the floor of the cage with its forepaws and made a few feeble hops before accepting its futile situation.

  John went to another shelf, this one lined with plastic specimen jars. He picked one that had Itch v.5 written on it in black marker and put it next to the rabbit cage. Then he sealed the isolation chamber and put his hands into the rubber access gloves that lay limp inside the chamber wall.

  “Ready?” George asked.

  John nodded and George slid back a hatch in the top of the cage. The rabbit made a skittish jump, as if sensing something sinister afoot. John opened the specimen jar and dropped it in the cage. George slid the hatch into place again and he and John stepped back to watch.

  The fleas sprang from the jar, drawn to the intoxicating smell of rabbit blood. The rabbit’s nose began to twitch faster and it shook its head as one of the fleas leaped into its ear. Then the rabbit scratched its neck, first with its left leg and then its right.

  A moment later the rabbit began to squeal. It hopped up and down in the cage, almost tipping it over. One of the rabbit’s eyes went first, bursting like a gooseberry squished between invisible fingers. Blood splattered against the cage and speckled the rabbit’s white fur. More blood vomited from its mouth and then the second eye ruptured. The rabbit let out a long shriek and fell on its side, its back legs kicking out and leaving red claw marks on the casing. Its skin stretched and veins became visible beneath its fur.

  A savage rigor shook its body and its mouth yawed, the exposed teeth giving it a predatory look. More blood ran from its ears and its anus began to swell, inflating like a fluffy white balloon. It burst with an audible pop, spraying the cage with gore, and the rabbit was all but still, its paws jittering in final death throes.

  Fleas sprang about the cage, as if celebrating the murder of an abhorrent dictator.

  “Just over two minutes,” George said, holding up the stopwatch so John could see its display.

  He nodded. “Even quicker than some of the rats. An excellent result.”

  For the next four hours John worked with George to conduct other tests and compile more data for their report. As the wall clock circled past five p.m., he found himself becoming jumpy and unable to concentrate.

  At around quarter to six, George stood up and stretched. “I think I’ve had enough for one day,” he said. “I’m going cross-eyed.”

  John turned in his seat and tried to look distracted. “I might need to come in a bit late tomorrow, so I think I’ll put in another hour or two.”

  “Okay. Don’t fall asleep at the desk—you might break something expensive.”

  That was George’s standard witty remark whenever John worked late. Another thing John wouldn’t miss about Brayshaw Biotech.

  “Bye, George.”

  George pressed a button and the door opened to the adjoining change room. After he’d walked through, the door whispered shut again. John listened for the familiar hiss as George fumigated his suit. He watched the clock tick through another minute and heard the faint sound of footsteps and the clicks of the outer door opening and shutting.

  Using that final click as his cue, he stood up and went to the rows of blood-spattered cages. He scrutinized each, looking for the liveliest flea colonies. The two most recent rat tests appeared to be the best options; the cases swarmed with minuscule brown-black bodies.

  He picked up the cases and studied each carefully to ensure that neither the hatches nor the mesh had been compromised. Then he stacked one upon the other and pressed the button to exit the laboratory.

  He put the cages on a bench and stepped into the fumigation chamber. He sealed the door and connected the eyelet in his suit to an airhose that hung down from the wall like an elephant’s trunk. When that was done he pressed a button and the chamber filled with white gas. After ninety seconds an exhaust fan activated and sucked the gas back out. Water then sprayed down from above, washing the condensed gas from the suit’s shiny surface.

  Back in the change room John stripped off his suit and hung it on the hook provided. He also took off his jacket.

  He looked at his watch and saw it was a few minutes after six. He doubted he would pass anyone on the way to his car, but there was no sense taking a chance. He put the first cage in the crook of his elbow and balanced the second cage on top of it. He covered both with his jacket. The corners looked a tad suspect, but so long as the cages’ gory contents were not on show he figured he’d be okay.

  He took a deep breath to slow his heart and clear his mind. As he was about to press the button to exit, the door swished open and he found himself face-to-face with George.

  George’s eyes darted from John to the bundle in his arm and back to John again. In that second, John saw himself as George must have: mouth open, eyes stunned, and the ridiculous geometric shape of his jacket seconding the guilt written across his face.

  He expected George to say something cinematic like, “John ... John, what are you doing with those cages?”

  But George only tensed into a crouch, as if to lunge at him. Then he gave the jacket a doubtful look and licked his lips. The outer door hissed shut. George extended his arms. “Give me the cages, John.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  George made a grab for the cages and John tucked them in tight to his body, as if they were a pair of footballs. The men eyed each other, grunting as they took part in a delicate yet determined tug-o’-war. George was older than John but his sinewy forearms had an alarming strength and John could feel one of the cages being slowly pried from his grasp.

  But then George’s sweaty hands slipped off and John stumbled backwards, colliding heavily with the wall. He pushed off and screamed in George’s face, “You want to kill us both, you fucking maniac?”

  Doubt and fear flashed in George’s eyes. Seeing his attention diverted, John launched his knee as hard as he dared, mashing George’s testicles. George looked at John with an almost Caesarean expression of betrayal—et tu, Brutus?—and fell against the wall with both hands cupping his groin. John waited for him to collapse, but instead he emitted a furious noise and staggered to his full enraged height again, eyes aflame.

  He made a grab for the cages, and John thrust one into his hands. George blinked at it, astonished, and John headbutted him.

  The chief scientist rocked back, blood already spurting from his nose, and fell full-length onto the hard floor. The lid popped off the cage and George found himself eye to eye with a dead rat. He batted it away and clawed at his face, screaming the scream of a living dead man.

  John stooped to pick up his jacket and slapped the outer door’s exit button before George could make another rush for him and before the fleas decided to migrate. He needn’t have worried about George, however; as the outer door slipped shut again, he saw his former colleague making a lunatic rush for the fumigation chamber.

  John draped his jacket over the remaining cage and walked at a quick but sensible pace toward the front door. He mused that he might be able to sell Davison Enterprises some extra information: results on a human test subject. What would that fetch? An extra million at least. Maybe two. He passed no one in the corridor and the parking lot was empty. He got in his car, putting the cage carefully on the passenger’s seat, and slammed the door. I did it, he thought as he started the engine. I might actually pull this off.

  Paranoia tormented his mind as he backed the car out. He half expected shouting security guards to explode from the front door and try to chase him down. But when he turned right and joined the flow of traffic, an opiated grin stretched across his face.

  “I made it,” he said.

  When he pulled over at the delivery point he glanced at the car’s in-dash clock, which put the time at 6:26. The park bench where he was to make the trade was unoccupied. He didn’t know what his contact at Davison
Enterprises looked like, but the evening had grown chilly and few souls haunted the park.

  He pondered how to best renegotiate the deal. Perhaps he would leave the cage in the car until his contact made some calls and secured the extra cash. John scratched absently at his hand, just below the little finger. Then he felt a sharp sting behind his ear, where his hairline met his neck. He slapped his hand down hard and raked it back until the sting site was under the tip of his index finger. He pinched his finger and thumb together and held them up in the dying light.

  The flea lay motionless for a second and then started to move its legs. John closed his fingers again, but the flea jumped away and disappeared, its size providing perfect camouflage.

  With a trembling hand John lifted his jacket away from the cage. The lid was still in place and the mesh appeared undamaged. He almost let himself feel relief—to entertain the idea he had been the victim of an almost impossible coincidence—when he saw one corner of the cage had cracked, leaving a gap between the side of the casing and the lid.

  Another bite. This time inside his shirt.

  Terrified tears prickled his eyes. His chin jittered as he felt another bite on his neck and then one on the back of his head.

  First gibbering and then shrieking, he fumbled open the door and spilled out of the car. He got as far as the footpath that encircled the park before his eyes started to pulse and a lightning bolt of pain exploded through his head.

  An adrenaline dam burst and sluiced into his veins. His twitching legs dumped him onto the concrete and he tasted blood in his mouth. All his muscles tensed up in unison and his ears seemed to inflate from the inside.

  There was a tremendous bang as his left eardrum ruptured. The agony was unspeakable, a barrel from hell’s finest reserve. Before John could respond with a scream the right eardrum went as well, filling the canal with blood. John knew he had to be deaf, but a piercing ring tormented him nonetheless.

  His chest and abdomen began to tighten, as if his ribs were crushing the organs within. But he knew from his experiments that the converse was true: the organs were expanding with blood. As he lay there paralyzed in a perfect adrenaline panic he saw an image of the rabbit, its bowel engorging with blood until it blasted out of its anus.

  John’s eyes popped simultaneously, spilling black liquid down his cheeks. Though deaf and blind, he could still see the rabbit and hear its squeal as the flea-venom turned its circulatory system from giver of life to giver of death.

  John Smythwick lay in the park, praying for the vessels in his brain to rupture.

  Frank Redman walked through the park, his beagle Otis straining at the end of his leash. Usually Otis wanted to visit the trees and check for calling cards, but tonight he seemed desperate to get to the far side of the park. When they rejoined the path, Otis doubled his efforts and nearly tugged Frank’s shoulder out of its socket.

  “What’s your hurry, you crazy mutt?”

  The park’s photosensitive lamplights flickered into life and illuminated a man stretched out on his side, his hands clenched into claws. The flesh of his ruptured eyeballs hung on his cheeks. Blood from his open mouth had pooled on the footpath while a second, smaller pond had formed below the seat of his pants.

  Frank clapped a hand over his mouth and reached into his pocket for a phone that sat charging on the sideboard at home. He looked in vain for another citizen before spotting, on a distant street corner, the reassuring light of a public phone.

  Frank started toward it, but the leash pulled taut in his hand. He turned back to see Otis scratching his face.

  “Come on, boy, let’s go,” Frank said.

  ***

  RUI’S STORY

  Bobby Cox & Joanne Yee

  We sat with a freshly poured cup of beer at our glass kitchen table at home. Meifawn was playing with an apple in her hands. After a while, she put it down on the table and looked at me.

  “The most amazing thing happened last week,” Meifawn said with a wide smile. She reached out to poke my arm. “Rui is starting to pick up more language. We talked about boys on the moon!”

  I raised my eyebrows and nodded for her to go on. Meifawn brushed aside some of her long black hair that was blocking her eyes. As she did, the light caught the diamond of her engagement ring. Our engagement ring. Its reflections shimmied on the wall as she spoke with her hands.

  “But first, do you remember Rui? The boy who came into the classroom at the beginning of the year with very little language?”

  “I remember,” I said. “I also remember something about him creating tiny buses on his desk? Was that last week?”

  “Yes!” Meifawn exclaimed. “Those tiny buses were so cute!” She frowned and looked down at the table, then shook her head. “Miss Rose, the teacher is taking away their birthright, their language. I don’t know if I told you this, but after Rui started to make all kinds of buses in so many different sizes and colors, the teacher interrupted him by brushing aside everything he had created. Pop. They all disappeared. Then she forced him to spell the English word ‘BUS’ on the chalkboard.”

  “What? She didn’t take the opportunity to help Rui open up?” I said. “Trying to force English down these kids’ throats like …”

  “Yeah. She yelled at Rui. He looked so sad, upset, and confused. I don’t think she can see very well the creations they make.” Meifawn sighed. “It seems so obvious to me the best way to reach Rui is through this visual play.”

  I shook my head. It weighed heavily on us any time that someone didn’t understand how special these children were and pushed them to act and try to be normal.

  “But last week I was sitting with Rui in the classroom, and we were looking at an old book called The Little Prince. I was pointing at the pictures and explaining to Rui what some of them were. Planets, moons, and little boys!”

  I smiled at the thought.

  Meifawn took a sip from the beer. “Then all of a sudden, Rui created a little blue boy sitting on the moon! Right in between his hands! It was so clear. And so well-done ...” Meifawn trailed off, smiled, and started to brush off the condensation on the side of the beer.

  I asked, “Did he keep going? Was that it?”

  “That was all,” she said. “Reading time was over, and we had to move on to other things.”

  I frowned. “Wow, just like that? Nobody saw? Not even Miss Rose?”

  “Yeah,” Meifawn said. “Just like that. Nobody saw. They never do.”

  “Never?”

  “Never. Even though she’s a trained teacher, Miss Rose just doesn’t understand. She can’t create life with their hands like we can. None of the teachers can.”

  I nodded. I understood, because I was one of them. Like the children. We were becoming more extinct by the day.

  “Anyway, yesterday Miss Rose was absent and they sent a substitute teacher to the class. He didn’t know how to work with these children. Every time the children moved their hands or arms to communicate or create life, he shouted at them to stop and be quiet.”

  “Wow. They didn’t even bother sending someone qualified?”

  “No. But I was there, so I got to work with them the way I wanted to! The substitute teacher assigned them standard reading from a boring English book. While the kids struggled to read, he fell asleep reading a newspaper! But then I snuck into the middle of the room ...”

  “Ooh, you did not!”

  “I did! I got all the kids’ attention and told them to be real quiet. That I was going to tell them a story ...”

  Heart pounding, there I was in the middle of the classroom, substitute teacher sleeping behind me at the teacher’s desk.

  I got the students’ attention and said, “Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved ... what? What kind of fruit did she just LOVE?”

  Eric raised his hand and said, “Apple,” while a dim form of a Granny Smith apple wobbled in front of him on his small child-sized desk. Noel giggled next to him.

  “Good! Apples! She l
oved apples so much that she would eat one for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner!”

  I stretched my arms out with my fingers splayed as wide as I could make them. With a creaking vibration, a massive tree appeared around me with gnarled roots and hanging leaves. I stood inside the tree, and though it filled the room it did not feel crowded. It became dim and musty and smelled like a forest.

  “I’m scared,” Noel said. “It’s too dark in here!”

  I turned to her and smiled. “It is a little bit dark in here! Noel, can you create more light for us?”

  Noel raised her hands and made a fist while making a flat surface with her other arm. She set her fist on her forearm, and then slowly raised her fist toward the ceiling.

  The room suddenly became much brighter, and sunlight started to stream into the room from above. It became as bright as a sunlit meadow in the middle of a forest.

  “Good! That’s beautiful, Noel.”

  “I’m hungry!” said Gwen. She was always hungry.

  “Oh, yes, it’s almost snack time. Who else is hungry?” I asked the class. Everyone raised their hands around the tree.

  “Wow, everyone. Well, who wants some apples?”

  Everyone raised their hands even higher. I turned to the tree, lifted my right arm, and cupped my hand like I was going to grab something the size of a baseball from a branch. Apples started to sprout from every limb. Great big apples of all kinds of shapes and colors.

  “Go pick one,” I said.

  All the students got up and scrambled to the tree and grabbed an apple each. Noel got a bright green one, Gwen picked one that was red and pink, and Rui picked a gnarled orange one that was sitting on a root.

  Suddenly, at the same moment when a large green apple fell from the tree and plonked on the ground, the substitute teacher crashed to the floor, having fallen out of his seat.

  The tree and all the apples disappeared, leaving only the orange one that Rui was holding.