Trust me, there’s nothing more I’d love to do than completely out my employers. They’re powerful, and from what I can tell, corrupt and dangerous. I don’t know the reach of this organization, and truthfully I’m scared to find out.
What I can share with you all is my journal. The company encouraged us to write in journals to “self-reflect” but I can generously say it’s more to preserve our humanity. That, or to document our own destruction of our sanity. It was a bad company in hindsight.
We studied people. Strange people. We got the folks that were essentially deemed beyond repair by the typical and otherwise “good” companies. We paid our subjects, and in turn we got quite a bit of cash from unknown but probably nefarious people. It paid extremely well. I didn’t think much of it at the start. Hell, I had student loans to pay and a place to live on my own.
We had a few “successes” but we also had a morgue with enough capacity to fill a small town. Many of the higher-ups referred to this place as a “healing lab.” What a joke.
I could complain like an experienced trade worker about the job all day, but you should see this for yourself:
August 20th, 2023:
My fourth week in, and I finally got to work alongside the doctors and be witness to some of these trials and experiments. It was better than porting around distraught and unstable patients.
I was told to observe a session with two doctors. Dr. Steele, and Dr. Desjardin. Steele would turn his nose up at me every chance he got. He didn’t seem to like the fact I was a “mere student” three months ago. Desjardin was a whole lot nicer, but he seemed numb inside.
The part of the lab where this session was, essentially was an interview room like you’d see police and detectives interrogating criminals in. I merely had to be off to the side and watch.
The lab brought in the patient- a woman in her late forties that looked well dressed, but a bit disheveled. She had to part her messy bangs a few times before she introduced herself: Miriam Cotton. Though most of the paperwork later on would strip her humanity away and she was dubbed as Patient 12C. That was the next patient number in line, after all.
Miriam was different from the others that I’d heard stories about. Most were viscous, drugged out of their trees, or completely insane. In fact, she came here willingly. Miriam wanted us to help her to help others. She had an interesting reason, too.
She claimed she has seen God, and that he has spoken to her.
After the interview Desjardin was puzzled, and Steele ruled her out as a schizophrenic and hardly worth his time. Selfish prick.
Interestingly enough, she was allowed to leave the lab after the first session. Most were put away in one of the dormitories. I’m curious how this case will go.
August 22nd, 2023:
Miriam came back to the interview room. She even brought me some cupcakes, and asked about my day.
Steele and Desjardin asked more questions about “God” and what he wanted from her. She devoutly told us about how he saved her from death, and wanted to seek out those who claimed to help the helpless.
Things became a bit bizarre when she described his appearance. According to Miriam, God wasn’t the robe-wearing saint with a beard and a cross.
God appeared to her as a giant fetus with seven eyes. He spoke into her mind, as he had no mouth. I could hear Steele chuckle under his self-righteous breath. He probably intends on loading her up with antipsychotics and calling it a success. Desjardin looked much more interested but concerned.
She was then assigned a dorm. She had some of our personnel escort her to grab her belongings from wherever she was living and move in. She accepted without hesitation. In fact, she was excited. I felt a bit of joy, too. She seemed weird, but friendly.
On her way out, she looked at me and said “He sees the good in you, young man.”
It was unsettling. The way her gaze hit me was as if I was being watched from somewhere else.
August 23rd, 2023:
I was actually the one in charge of checking up on Miriam in the morning. She had settled in nicely for the most part. She was as polite as ever. She was required to get the typical physical and psychological screenings, as well as an MRI. She didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it, but she rationalized it as “part of the journey.”
Desjardin told me to inspect her dorm room. He said it was protocol, but I had a bit of reservations about doing it. Steele didn’t like that. He chewed me out! He claimed he could have me kicked out of the company if I didn’t pull my weight. Fuck that guy.
My reservations were right, however. A bloody stench hit me in the face as I approached the bed. I found the source fairly quickly, too.
Painted on the ceiling were seven eyes. The paintbrush? Unfortunately I found it shoved between the bed and the wall- a freshly used tampon.
I don’t want to believe Steele, but he may be right.
August 25th, 2023:
I was brought into the section of the lab where they review the results of the screenings, as well as showcase photos of X-rays and MRI’s and the like.
Most of the doctors looked dumbfounded looking through all of the papers but they all collectively agreed on one thing; Patient 12C was dangerous and needed to be treated with intense care. She would be locked here for a while.
Some of the doctors and scientists alike were fascinated with her. Proposals of experimenting with multiple types of drugs and substances were flying left, right, and center. It was almost as if they wanted to do it for fun. She seemed like a confused, middle-aged woman to me. It felt wrong.
Eventually I saw the papers and immediately I knew I wanted little to do with this individual.
She didn’t have any issues physically, in fact, she was healthier and stronger than pretty much all of us. Good heart, lungs, flexibility etc. I eventually looked at the MRI scans and almost fell out of my chair.
Her brain was deformed and broken up. Dead center of the brain were seven lumps shaped like eyeballs. How was she even alive?
August 26th, 2023:
I was told I’d also be staying in a dorm. The staff dormitories were much more luxurious than the ones we gave our patients. I got myself situated pretty quickly and went about my duties for the day.
I was tasked with escorting Miriam to get a full body MRI done. She seemed confused as to why, and I empathized with her. I told her it was redundant but apparently necessary. She took my compassion well and we talked about our days. She kept making comments about how friendly I was compared to the others which I took with stride.
I prepped her for the MRI and she went through it without much resistance. We got the results scanned and printed immediately in the same room as her this time. The doctor took one look at them and was visibly stunned. He pointed me to the scans and stormed off. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or angry.
The brain scan looked the same. Miriam looked at it and began crying. Not sadness, tears of joy. She excitedly grabbed me with a considerable amount of strength and pointed at me.
“He’s here! He’s watching you!” she kept enthusiastically repeating herself.
In an unsettling turn her joy turned to ecstasy and she began to…go to town on herself in the room. I decided to let it be for a bit while I looked at the rest of the body’s scans.
They differed from the day before. Her insides looked weaker, like she’d aged ten years. Her strength was there, but her internal organs looked like the ones someone in their sixties or even seventies would have.
I snapped her out of her own fun session on the ground. She apologized. She remained delirious and muttering things about how “God is on his way” and the like.
She thanked me, giving me a hug that almost crushed my rib cage after I escorted her to her dorm.
August 28th, 2023:
She’s been getting MRIs daily, and having the same reaction. Her organs are giving out, and the thing inside her brain is now growing.
She attacked Dr. Steele when he tried to snap her out of her delusions. He’s nursing two broken fingers and a bite wound. Miriam is now locked away in one of the basement dorms. It’s closer to that of solitary confinement. She’s in a jacket and tied to a toilet so nobody has a reason to approach her to relieve her.
She’s aging on the outside too. She looks like she’s in her sixties on the outside as well. Her hair has begun falling out and her skin is drooping heavily. She looks like she shouldn’t be alive. I’ve been thinking about that for a while now so I took my lunch outside of the lab and grabbed a newspaper from a nearby burger joint.
I immediately went to the section that would leave me with more questions than answers.
I found her obituary. Miriam Cotton had been pronounced dead after falling off a cliff during a hike. August 14th, 2023 She left behind her husband. They had no children.
Flipping the paper over I found a story about a body missing from the morgue. It didn’t reveal which body but it was easy to put together.
Patient 12C had been resurrected by “God.”
I brought the paper back with me to show Dr. Steele and Desjardin. They were both dumbfounded. Steele deduced that they were going to begin experiments. I’m scared to find out what he means by that. Surely it’s for the worse at this point. What are we doing to these people?
August 29th, 2023:
It was horrible. HORRIBLE.
Dr. Steele should have his license revoked at this point.
First, Miriam was electrocuted and her organs were monitored. She didn’t react until the doctors turned it up to a voltage that was fatal. Then she shrieked.
“Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt me!” she screamed as she thrashed in the chair. It was brutal. Everyone observing this was stunned as her body began regenerating from the electrocution damage. It took twenty seconds exactly for the damage from the electricity to heal.
Dr. Steele put me in a “time-out” like a child when I protested hurting her. I don’t want to piss off whatever “god” is inside her brain.
Dr. Desjardin threw his lanyard away and walked out of the lab. A few others followed from what I heard. I wanted to do the same, but I had no other prospects at this point.
After my timeout was over, which was three hours, I wanted to be assigned to a different patient. I was denied. We lost staff and this task took “utmost importance” according to Steele.
On the same day, I was tasked with delivering epinephrine to the doctors who volunteered to administer it to Miriam. I watched from the cameras as they injected her twice over ten minutes. She began to wail out, the sound nearly inhuman. She sounded like a beast in agony.
She cried out “God has left you all!” “God has died for you!” “What have you done!?”
I asked Steele how much they dosed her with. He nonchalantly said 18mg total. That’s almost double the lethal amount. When I protested he simply said “she’s dead anyways, isn’t she?”
The apathy enraged me, and I stormed off. This wasn’t “healing” this was torture.
If I don’t get reassigned, I’m quitting in two days. That should be enough to cover my bills for a few months at least.
August 30th, 2023:
I woke up to the alarms going off. I immediately hopped out of bed and got dressed, ready to escape this hell. Fuck the extra pay, I needed my soul back!
Doctors and other lab workers alike were screaming, some were covered in blood. Some were missing limbs. I went on instinct and ran towards the main exit of the lab. One of the doctors who ran past me yelled that Patient 12C had escaped.
She was restrained in the basement with a straightjacket and tons of steel doors down there. Yet she somehow got out.
I wanted to leave her be anyways, so I jogged alongside one of the doctors asking for an explanation. Before he could begin an elongated arm emerged from the vent above me and grabbed him. Whatever grabbed him threw back the top half of his head at me. I was too scared to fully look at it. Was it poor Miriam?
As I made my way closer to the entrance I realized I was seeing less and less of my peers. Did I get out late or was I the only one who was going to make it out?
I heard Dr Steele’s voice ahead. He sounded weak and in pain. Can’t say I had much sympathy at this point.
I rounded the corner and he was crawling on his hands towards the exit. He had lost his right leg. He had his lab coat tied around the stump but it was still leaking a blood trail.
He demanded someone carry him out of the building, then turned his attention to me. He demanded I pick him up but before I had the chance to flip him off and bail someone emerged from a vent in the ceiling.
Miriam. She had changed. She had too long of limbs, skin so thin you could see the muscle and organs inside. Not only that, but seven eyeballs sprouted from her face and sides of her head. She seethed, as now all nine eyes locked on me.
“Thank you.” I heard the words in my mind.
I’m not sure, but I want to say it was God.
All I remember is the thing that was once Miriam slashed open Dr. Steele’s chest and gouged out his eyes before I ran. I screamed and wailed as I ran into the hot barren land.
I never went back to the lab.
I want to say that God might be real, and that God thanked me for putting that poor woman through hell. In truth, I feel the lab was responsible for the hell they inflicted upon the woman that was one Miriam Cotton.
I intend on turning myself in, and maybe I can take a few of the people from the company down with me. I mean, what’s one more prison, right?