Story #2! Summary follows.
Every time I run my hands through my fur I can feel the scars covering my body head-to-toe. Sometimes they criss-cross and I like to think of the lines like archaeological dig findings. And here on the hip is the scar from collecting a liver sample, the newer one intersecting is from the liver extraction. Oh! Over there! Is that the incision they used to insert the shunt into his brain? By God, I believe it is. Huzzah!
"Prom?..." I stare wide-eyed into the sink, my hands quaking just inches from the tap. My chest tightens and the panic bubbles up and out my throat in blazing green ribbons. "P-Prometheus! Prometheus, HELP!"
Out of the tap creep the damnedest creatures I have never seen in my school texts. Ones with twelve legs and searching, sentient feline eyes; some slipping out and plopping against the linoleum like big fat slugs of cooking grease. Above the sink is a small poster of an elephant balancing on a tightrope. I focus on that until the bathroom door swings open.
He crosses behind me, searching the bathroom uselessly, slamming open the stalls before setting his hands on my shoulders to follow my gaze to the yellowing poster. "Th-the sink," I whisper, knowing he won't see anything but my careless waste of water.
He turns off the tap. "Mistoffelees, there's nothing there."
I look down and amaze at my hands, not covered in slugs and critters, but angry red and hot... scalding, actually. The depths of my flimsy stomach turn and before I have time to even duck my head into the sink I'm vomiting all over myself. "Oh my- Misto! Bloody hell! Here..."
Holding my shoulders, we turn towards the stalls together and he ever so carefully sets me down in the cleaner of the two so that I'm sitting with my back against the wall. "I'm so sorry, Prom," I choke when he disappears to get something to wipe off the vomit. "I know the Sheyanne Games were today-"
"We'll just have to miss them," he sighs. I feel terribly guilty but too nauseous to focus on anything but the violent trembling knocking up and down my spine and the burns on my hands. The tap turns on again. "Do you want me to get an attendant?"
No, I want to say, but I can't seem to find my voice. So I lean over and puke into the toilet as response.
"You're puking blood." He's over my shoulder now, I can feel his eyes watching me with insatiable curiosity and hear the borderline manic tone in his even voice. Not so much with the brotherly worry we came here with so much as the objective scientist he's become... at my expense. "I'll bring you to the infirmary."
I manage, with no little shock, to climb to my feet on my own; when I reach my full height I'm faced with the mirror image of myself- well, as much of an image as you can get from a carnival mirror. A tall, muscular tuxedo cat with green eyes and an uneven mouth reaches out to support me. It's on the way out of the washroom, passing by the full-length mirror, that I see how far apart our twin image has drifted.
I see a sick, underweight and mangy thing clinging to my twin's arm. His fur has fallen out in thick patches around his small, frail body. Blood trickles down from his... my dull blue eyes.
A very unfunny and cruel carnival mirror image.
We have to pass by the dormitory to get to the elevator which takes us to the first floor of the centre, we can hear our friends hollering and chatting excitedly as they put on their gym clothes and sneakers. Prometheus tightens his grip around me until it hurts and all but carries me passed the door. My retching draws attention. "Hey, guys, why aren't you getting ready?"
The cat, ironically named Brain, catches up to us, sporting his homemade "Who Needs Two Hemispheres" T-shirt. He spots me and sighs irritably. "I'm bringing Mistoffelees to the infirmary."
"Of course you are— say, why don't you join us after you drop him off? You'll just be sitting there anyway, and we can't win the Tug-O-War without you. I wanna cream those test-tube kids this year."
I can feel Promethus's heart race in his chest: he's itching to drop me right here and yank the rope right out of the other team's paws. So, straightening myself as best I can against the nausea I push away from him to stand on my own. "You can go ahead, Prom. I can make it there on my own."
With wide eyes he stares at me, his paw absently pulling at his grey lab shirt. "You… you're sure, Misto?"
"Yeah! I'm already feeling better; I just want to go make sure it's nothing to be safe. I'll come watch when I'm done, you go get ready." My paws instinctively wrap themselves in the hem of my shirt to keep from shaking. Bile creeps up my throat and I swallow it back and dig my claws into my palms.
"Awesome! Let's go get ready!" exclaims Brain and pulls Prometheus into the dorm before he can change his mind.
"Thanks, Mistoffelees!"
Once they're out of sight I allow myself the luxury of steadying myself against the wall and place a hand to my stomach. It's hard and full of blood— which isn't as scary as it sounds as my stomach isn't that big to begin with. With a breath for strength I push myself forward to the elevator.
Stumbling down the hall I pass the other dormitories, each one housing a different class of Sheyanne's finest test subjects.
The ones closest to the elevators are the lab's pride and joy: the Test-Tube babies. Each of these cats are genetically engineered and born to many of the researchers here. They all look pretty normal at a glance, but take one look in their rounded irises, see the bleed of their pupils into the surrounding ghostly colour and you know they're a new species altogether. I don't know what was done to them, but I do know that and they're notorious for outperforming the rest of us. Though a legless sloth could kick us to the dust.
Next are the Tweakers. These cats are a mess of different, unclassifiable tests; from kittens who will physically never grow up to cats who've had their brains sliced down the middle and now have two separate functioning brains. All of them have one "tweak" to them that makes them more or less unique to the group.
Then there are what I like to call Scrambled Eggs, these are the subjects of various brain surgeries and behavioural manipulation. There's one tom in there who literally never gets scared— he physically can't get scared! Ironically he's very timid by nature. Very nice to the rest of us.
Last but not least are the Twins. This is mine and Prometheus's dorm; everything and anything regarding differences between twins are tested on us. Did you know that a cat's response to being socially isolated is based on upbringing and not genetic resilience to social deprivation? I can personally say from experience that it's absolutely true.
I've been here for 12 years, since Prometheus and I were 4 and our mum needed money to feed the rest of the 8-kitten litter. They offered a bit of money for her to let them do a couple harmless tests on us, then they offered her a number she couldn't refuse to take us into the lab indefinitely.
She took the payday and wailed as she signed us off to the hands of the researchers. Prometheus was chosen to be the baseline and the next day they cut me open. After a month of tests I had completely forgotten what my mother looked like.
When I reached the Test-Tube room my stomach spasmed and fell to my knees and I purged my belly of blood in front of the door for all to see.
No one protested but instead watched me pitifully. "When was your surgery?" one of them asked, walking up to me in her Sheyanne branded polo shirt. I couldn't keep myself from staring at her butchered eyes; the pupil exploded like a star in her right eye.
"Tuesday," I gasped and cringed when she gently reached out to run her finger along a faded scar trailing from my temple to the back of my ear.
"You should get yourself to the infirmary," she advised before disappearing back into the dormitory, shutting the door behind her. Behind me a bunch of Scrambled Eggs broke out into a mess of chanting and skip-staggered to the washrooms.
With a tired breath I pushed myself up and stumbled the last few feet to the elevators.
Well, that's the perfect start to a great, well-rounded feel good story, no?
Mistoffelees and Prometheus, twin tuxedo toms, are sold to the Sheyanne laboratories to be a part of their various experiments and studies. When a test goes awry and all Hell breaks loose, Mistoffelees is offered a new lease on life... if he can push pass the abuse the laboratory marred him with and survive life beyond the scalpel.
This summary was a little short but I didn't want to risk giving much away.
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