The man sat hunched over his typewriter, typing away as quickly as he could. Every so often, he would glance over at the paper next to him, ensuring that all that the information it had to tell was being transcribed with as much precision as possible. There was no time to waste. But as much as he tried to stay focused on transcribing the paper, his anxiety was growing more and more. He found his eyes going away from the paper in fromt of him, darting around the room. His heart raced faster. He didn't understand why. Surely, one should be perfectly safe in the privacy of their own home. There was no danger to him here. No danger of being discovered.

Just to be certain, he stood up and moved shakily to shut his office's door. He lived alone, but for some reason tonight made him especially terrified. As if to reinforce his fears, the pitter-patter of rain began outside and was soon followed by an almost unearthly crack of thunder and lightning. He drew a sharp breath inward, and slammed the door shut.

Cool it. Just a thunderstorm. You're fine, you're fine. He thought to himself. He turned around.

In the chair where he had just been sitting a moment ago, someone new was waiting.

A small man with short, dark brown hair and glasses had reclined in the chair. He held a shovel in his hands, turning it over as if he was inspecting it. Upon seeing that he had been noticed, a dark smile grew across his face. "Oh, hello there!" he introduced himself. "West. Herbert West."

"The fuck are you doing in my house?!" the man spat back.

"Nothing much, really," Herbert picked a speck of dirt off the shovel's handle, tossing it onto the floor. "It just came to my attention that you were up to some very fascinating work in the field of genetics. As a man of science myself, I was hoping to...discuss some of your ideas."

"I'm not going to talk to any random guy who just appears in my house!" the man shouted.

"What other choice do you have right now?" Herbert reached for the paper that the man had been copying from, and began flipping through it. "Is this your work? Intriguing...this is really fascinating. One of the best papers I've read in a while."

"Yeah, that's mine. What, you want to steal it or something, Mr. Science-Man?"

"That's West, thank you. Doctor West," Herbert kept on flipping through the pages, "Yes, this is quite good. I understand there was a very talented geneticist working in France, in this same area of study as you, about ten years ago. Perhaps you've heard of her? Her name was Caroline Plantier."

"Uh-huh, yeah, I've heard of her. What's your point?"

"Well, it just seems to me, that your ideas are rather derivative of hers." Herbert looked him dead in the eye. "So derivative, in fact, that they could be considered plagiarized."

"THAT'S IT!" the man screamed. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR BULLSHIT! YOU JUST APPEAR IN MY HOUSE, ACTING LIKE YOU OWN THE PLACE, AND THEN YOU'VE GOT THE NERVE TO INSULT MY LIFE'S WORK ON TOP OF IT. YOU'VE GOT FIVE SECONDS TO GET OUT OF MY HOUSE BEFORE I SHOOT YOU!"

Herbert laughed. "With what?" He started riffling through the drawers of the desk he sat behind. "I don't see any gun in here. But if you've really got one, feel free to try, I suppose."

"You little-!" the man dove over the desk at Herbert, but only fell onto an empty chair. Herbert had disappeared in an instant. The man pulled himself quickly to his feet, his head still spinning. Muttering his entire vocabulary of curses under his breath, he looked dizzily around the room.

But the spinning in his head soon turned to a dull pain as he felt a large, blunt impact all across the back of his head. He fell to the floor, barely having enough consciousness to turn over and see Herbert now standing over him.

"You really should know, Plantier hasn't published anything new since 1976." Herbert dug the shovel's end up against the man's neck. "Quite frankly, her work is outdated. So is yours."

The man could barely draw the air to speak one last time, the pressure on his throat was so much. "You bastard..."

"Plagiarist."

The man wanted nothing but to scream as the pressure turned to unbearable pain and his world went dark.