Harrison
Epstein
Mouseskin
The police sirens were
blaring and the coroner walked out of the Washington Research Facility with a
few paramedics carrying stretchers in tow. It seemed that a cold air had
settled around the city the last few weeks. Detroit was not exactly a crime
free town, but the recent string of murders shocked even the warried residents
that had lived there for years.
One could tell by the
look in Coroner Michael’s eyes that he was growing tired of his job and this
case really wasn’t helping. “Same as the last 5 I presume?” said Detective
Morales, “Yup” the coroner replied. “Physically restrained and then sliced up
from their nose to their toes, multiple slices varying in size and not consistent
with a knife wound, still no leads I would assume?” The coroner was right,
there was nothing to go on, and the people attacked didn’t even seem to have a
solid connection. The only evidence was that the first 3 deaths were on the
local college campus, 3 fraternity boys, they weren’t really liked as they were
awful to girls and people hated their hazing rituals, because they always
seemed to involve hurting some poor animal. The next were 2 girls from a graduate
program working as interns for the veterinary clinic, well that’s not entirely
accurate, the body of the second girl was not found and the first girl had been
missing for about a week before her body was discovered. The most recent was a
night guard and a research scientist at the Research facility. The police had received
a call that was something along the lines of a “help, someone’s here!” and then
silence, like the stereotypic horror movie call.
Back at the station
Morales and Michael were discussing the most recent murders. “What could the
motive possibly be for all the horrendous deaths be?” the Coroner said. “Revenge
maybe?” The detective responded. “There doesn’t seem to be any solid
connection, the only thing I can think of is the attack at the vet clinic and
the research facility both deal with animals?” “Well what reason could someone
have for killing people that help animals?” The coroner argued “the Washington
Facility wasn’t exactly known for their kind treatment of the things they test
on, just last week a third animal cruelty charge was brought against them,
could this killer think of themselves of some sort of hero for animals?” “Morales”
The detective responded, “don’t you think we noticed that? So we checked the facility
and the only things they have been testing on the last few months is rats and
the occasional cat”
In any case the two
stayed up all night looking for more connections with little luck. By the
morning the coroner was going over the death record when a call came in, not
wanting to wake the detective he answered the phone. Before he could say
anything a man’s begging was heard over the phone followed by a loud clank as
if the phone had been dropped. The sounds after sounded like someone ripping an
old shirt in half followed by screams.
“Tell me exactly what you
saw” the detective said to two young girls sitting in the examination room. “I
told you already, we heard screams and stayed in our rooms, when we didn’t hear
anything my sister stayed in the room and I snuck into my dad’s closet and
grabbed his shotgun” “then what” said the detective “then I heard a sound on
the stairs so I turned and shot, whatever it was survived because I heard a squeal
and then something running off, that’s when the police arrived.” The two girls had
already had enough trauma for a lifetime, their older sister was one of the
woman at the vet clinic that was still missing, Melody Boot. Now their father
was gone too and they honestly feared for their own lives. The detective took
the older of the two girls into the other room to continue discussing in
private and left the younger one to make her way back to the waiting room. She
worried to herself if her sister was still alive, the argument they had before
she left felt unsolved. Honestly she wished it wasn’t her father birthday, she
got him this really tacky scarf. The other two sisters, the girl included had
snuck their dad’s credit card and gotten him a nice shirt and pants.
Since two of the victims
had connections with the Boot family the detective decided it would be best to
keep a squad car at the house in case the killer returned. Michael remained at
the station to go over more evidence.
Morales was in his car,
alone, as he decided a partner was unnecessary for something as simple as a
house watch. At about 3am he noticed the light in the downstairs left window
come on and the silhouette of a woman was there, he put his hand on his gun
then took it off, it was obviously just one of the girls down for a midnight
snack.
At the station Michael
was getting bored and ready to call it a night when something caught his eye. The
logo for the vet clinic and Research facility were remarkably similar. After
searching online he found it was actually the symbol for the local college’s
science program. “What in the world” he muttered to himself. He clicked on the
science program link and it came up with a cheaply made website titled DNA
Cloning and Rearranging, followed by a small list of the “experienced” professionals,
3 teachers and 2 graduate students, a picture showed the two girls who worked
at the vet as well as three professors from the college.
It was now 3:15 and
Morales was nodding off when the light in the kitchen came back on and the
woman’s silhouette reappeared and then walked out again, “weird appetite those
girls have” he muttered.
Searching the names of
each professor online Michael found the same thing over and over again, the men
had all been fired or “retired” from other top universities around the globe
for “abuse of college resources” aka they were using high tech equipment
without permission. It seemed they were all extremely interested in the ideas
of combining human intelligence with animalistic abilities. In each of the
colleges and on the professors pages and blogs it seemed as if they had been
fairly successful with small scale cloning such as a hybrid field mouse and
rat, but their goal of creating a “super human” was never realized. Looking
back at the photo on the college website he felt a pang of hurt looking at the
two girls they were both in matching blue scrubs and smiling beautifully. Their
comments on the site were moving, although Melody seemed more committed than
the other girl, her bio on the site said she “loved to help animals and hates
research facilities that hurt them, even rats and mice, I would do anything to
help them.” The last line seared itself into the coroner’s brain as he frantically
began dialing the detective’s phone number.
At 4:00 the lights had
turned on about 6 times and Morales decided it was time to take a look to make
sure everything was all right. Knocking on the door it swung open, figuring the
girls had left it open for him he walked inside and took a look in the kitchen.
Nothing was particularly out of place, the dishes in the sink were still dirty
but other than that nothing was out of place. “Girls?” He shouted up the stairs
“I know you all are up I have seen you all in the kitchen” Walking up the
stairs he heard a muffled “shhhhhhh!” from the closet. Opening the door he saw
the terrified outline of the younger girl shivering. “What’s wrong, where’s
your sister?” The detective said. But before the girl could squeak out an
answer a low growling noise was heard from behind him and the girl looked even
more scared, but she was looking past the confused detective. Morales turned
slowly feeling a slight warm breath on his neck, his eyes were met with a grey,
leathery face with beady rodent eyes.
The detective’s phone
rang in his car.
This is a movie title screen for when this is inevitably brought to the big screen...
