Lab Rat

by: AnneriaWings

Everything was black, and then white. Clouded by a sense of panic were endless thoughts of desperation racing through my head as I squinted at the two silhouetted figures looming above me, a bright glint of saw-toothed metal in each hand. Denial, frustration and sheer terror drove me to try to escape – but all was futile; the slick steel examination table refused to let me go. No, I begged in my head. This was absolutely not happening… not again.

"Mom, Dad, no!"

The larger form grinned. His smile widened until he began laughing in a hearty, booming voice, absently twirling the serrated blade in his fingers. He didn't mean to do this. He didn't know. He was oblivious to what they were about to do – they both were, right?

"It's me! I'm your son, D—"

"Hah!"

The smaller of the two turned her gleaming, red eyes to me. Desire for something much more torturous and slower than what I anticipated streaked across her calm features. Chuckling mirthlessly, her upper lip curled into a cruel sneer.

"So?"

As that simple monosyllabic response brought the whole world crashing down, she raised her arm. Murder and torture dripped from the sickening grin splitting both of their faces, and there was nothing I could do.

The flash of metal briefly blinded me. Mom and Dad slowly started hacking me to pieces—

I woke with a strangled scream.

Bolting upright, the first thing my body registered – besides my pounding heart, which had leapt straight up into my throat – was a losing fight with gravity. Reeling unsteadily for a moment with a yell, I pin wheeled my arms before toppling down to my side. I landed on a hard surface at least a foot below from wherever I'd been laying with a hard thump.

"Agghhoooww." A muffled groan worked from my throat through a set of heavy gasps for oxygen, my entire body aching. "What…" Gritting my teeth and keeping my eyes clenched shut, I made no attempt to move from the uncomfortable and awkward position I'd landed on. Every inch of my head pounded and felt like someone was striking the edge of my skull with a hammer while the rest of me felt like I'd been hit by semi. The lingering flashes of the nightmare still clung to the back of my mind like a faint whisper, the edges of that small burst of adrenaline all that remained. I could feel a wave of cold sweat sliding down my forehead and neck.

But struggling to ignore it for now, I simply remained where I'd fallen for a moment, trying to adjust to the pain and allowing the remnants of the dream to fade away for the most part. A dream, I thought. It'd only been a dream.

It's not real, I told myself as I kept my eyes closed, fighting to catch my breath and calm down my racing heartbeat. Just a dream. Not real.

Wait – heartbeat?

I blearily opened my eyes against the glare of indoor lights that slammed against my vision. Blinking a couple of times to get everything into focus, I swept my gaze across my surroundings. The dark brown swirls of a wooden coffee table were closest from my face, one of the legs squashing against my nose. At this same time I became aware of the soft carpet that pressed against my cheek. I glanced up, seeing the bottom of a long, pale sofa.

The living room?

I slowly sat up, struggling to free my limbs from a tangle of blankets that'd fallen off with me and wiping the thin sheet of sweat from my face. I let my eyes flick around the room for a moment, now used to brightness of all the light – there were only a couple of lamps on nearby, each one emitting a soft yellow glow that didn't quite light the entire room. I noticed that the living room windows were pitch-black behind their curtains. I glanced up at the small digital clock that rested on a nearby table. 3:43 A.M., it read.

But remembering what'd driven me to open my eyes in the first place, instinct made me lift a hand into view, and getting a glimpse of my own flesh and not a white glove satisfied at least one corner of my brain. Even so, I gently pressed a pair of fingers on the side of my throat and waited patiently for a response. Sure enough, a quick but steady pulse was there, twitching just under my skin. Human, I observed, not a ghost.

But despite everything that was tentatively 'normal,' for now, there was something missing. I hadn't been human before. With each second that ticked by, the thought coalesced into something much more sensible. I'd been a ghost; it was the last thing I'd remembered… I was sure of it.

My eyes narrowed in thought. Something was off. Very wrong. But what was I missing here?

I rubbed my temples with a pained scowl, both in an effort to relieve my headache and to clear my jumbled thoughts. I tried to remember yesterday, my eyes set in a concentrated glare as a picture-like image of some sort of fight with Skulker slid across my brain. Then there was that weird confrontation with my mother, and then the Ops center… and those weird blob-ghost things… My parents—

Parents.

My eyes widened as the single word snapped into my head. Suddenly a flash of unconscious fear whirled through me, freezing me in place on the carpet as I was assaulted by a flood of memories. They seemed to come out of nowhere. They were like those dramatic flashback scenes you see in movies – the kind that race around in sequence with no real detail, but they added to a big swell of emotion.

That emotion was pure, unbridled dread. An involuntary shudder wracked my sitting form, a shallow breath catching in my lungs. Memory after memory flashed by like photographs… a stinging pain in an alleyway, fuzziness, and then blackness. Waking up down there, in the basement lab. Watching my parents. Pleading – no, begging – to be let go. A hard smack to my face, shouting and anger, more fuzziness, and then everything was pain.

That was… part of the dream, wasn't it? I wondered in my head as my mind struggled to catch up, not realizing I was still holding my breath. Unconsciously, my hand crept up to gingerly touch the side of my face, a small corner of my mind truly questioning the other ninety-nine percent that tossed the notion aside as absurd. Ridiculous. Impossible, I mentally scoffed. My parents wouldn't really…

I shuddered. Beneath my fingers, I felt the light yet obvious bruise that stretched across my cheek.

Pieces of the confusion and questions racing through me dulled and faded away to mere background noise as I froze, my brain and body beginning to run on autopilot. I carefully lowered my hand and placed it against my chest, wincing at the sharp ache that darted down over my torso. Numbly, I sat up a little straighter on the carpeted floor and used both hands to gently lift up my T-shirt. I closed my eyes for a moment, cold fear already seeping in, dreading what I would see.

Swallowing heavily, I forced myself to take a deep breath and looked down.

The world slowed to a stop.

A large, slightly bloodstained bandage snaked tightly around my abdomen. It hurt. Just by moving the wrong way, a sharp pain sliced and chewed throughout most of my upper stomach and wove deeper into my chest, just above my breastbone and down underneath my ribs. I didn't need a closer inspection to tell that, underneath all of the bandages, a large expanse of skin was swollen, bruised and still bleeding.

The small bundle of white fabric fell from my weak and unmoving hands, my breath quivering for just a split second.

No.

That was the only thing running through my head at the moment – that simple word that meant so much more, an impossible suspicion brewing around in at least one corner of my mind. A small, humorless scoff slipped through my lips. "This is insane," I whispered aloud to no one, letting my back gently fall against the couch and closing my eyes. "It's just from some ghost fight." This was just some sort of remnant from that little nightmare, along with a very coincidental set of regular injuries. It wasn't real. My… my parents wouldn't…

Mom and Dad did this…

"No," I mumbled in a quiet voice. The thought had flashed across my brain before I could stop it. Pieces of an impossible, horrifying memory continued to flicker around and coalesce despite my mental protests, everything weaving together in my head until it was vivid and extremely real. "No, no, no, no."

Suddenly I heard a loud scream of fear, and my eyes snapped open. I was there, in the lab. I could feel the cold steel of the operating table again, the bright lights, my parents laughing, the thick smell of antiseptics and ectoplasm, the tiny glint of a needle before it—

"No!" I hissed, clenching my teeth together as the flashback/dream/whatever-it-was disappeared, vanishing into nothing like it'd never even occurred. I was not going to let that kind of unconscious anxiety take over again. Breathing uneasily and crawling back up onto the couch – wincing in pain as I did so – and ignoring the tangle of blankets at my feet, I continued to shake my head slowly from side to side. I wasn't in denial because it wasn't real. That hadn't happened. That would never happen. – I absolutely refused to believe it… it was impossible.

Even so, I gingerly placed my hand against my abdomen, mind still numb. A wince passed through me at the pain.

I was there.

No.

It had happened.

No – it was a dream.

It wasn't a dream. Mom and Dad were nearly laughing with excitement at their experiments as they began to cut me to pieces.

"Shut up shut up shut up."

They wanted to do this. 'You're evil. You're a ghost. A monster,' she'd said. They… they'd meant it. Both of them—

"Stop," I whispered, clutching the sides of my head, not realizing I'd brought my knees up to my chest even though it hurt immensely to do so. "Stop…" I said again, even quieter. Clenching fistfuls of black hair, I forced a rock-hard lump in my throat back down to where it came from, my heart pounding heavily in my ears, the physical pain in my chest excruciating, my mind working so hard to ignore the false truth. "Stop it, stop it…"

"Danny?"

I sat bolt upright on the couch at the careful, quiet voice, my despair vanishing like it'd never even existed.

Holding my breath, I slowly turned my head and stared at my father.

The dim yellow glow of the lamps reflected on his huge, towering orange form. Standing in the kitchen doorway, he blinked groggily for a moment before a look of shock crossed his features. "Danny?" he repeated, clearly surprised. "You're awake?"

I simply continued to stare at him, frozen in place, my mind blank and devoid of any potential verbal response. On the inside, something was wrong. It took me a second or two to try and figure what it was, but when I did, it took all of my self-restraint to keep my body from jumping off the couch and running out of the room. A primitive little corner of my brain urgently nudged the fact that he was one of them – one of the two who had tied me down and cut me open down there last night… and my instincts screamed for me to bolt. His hazmat suit was like a giant orange warning flag waving across my face.

Remaining where I was, though, I swallowed thickly and licked my lips. Finally I managed to nod my head.

Dad looked down at his feet as thick, palpable awkward tension floated through the air. A cookie and a small glass of milk were in his hands. "I… uhh… came up here for a late night snack," he mumbled. "I didn't know you'd be up."

"I… b-bad dream," I breathed.

"Oh." He switched the cookie to his other hand and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "Umm… how are… your bandages?" he asked quietly, wincing at his own words.

I let my eyes flit downwards to my stomach, where a few tiny stains of dark red bled through my thin white T-shirt. "They… hurt." The tiniest hint of anger sparked deep down inside me, underneath all of the thick dread that was slowly building by the second, but it wasn't much. I would have scowled wryly if I could find the right muscles to do so. Duh. You tried to gut me like a fish. How else would I feel?

Dad shifted nervously on his feet. He reached over to the counter beside him and set his forgotten snack down. "Umm… I-I should… probably look at those, see if they need to be changed," he said, his voice nearly inaudible. He cautiously began to approach me.

("You're dead, Phantom. You shouldn't even care.")

NO! My instincts shrieked at the flash of powerful and deadly memory that instantly raced across my brain. (Dad walking towards me, scalpel in hand, an eager look on his face.) With a fearful yelp, I instantly scooted back down the side of the long living room couch. A sharp series of aches bit into my injuries at the movement and I hissed in pain.

Dad froze in mid-step as I desperately tried to move away from him. A pained and stunned look crossed his face, his eyes glistening. "Danny, I—" he began, swallowing. "I need to look at your bandages."

(We're gonna tear you apart, you filthy ghost.)

"No," I mumbled.

(Molecule)

He strode forward again, hesitantly rounding the coffee table to get me. Scooting back, my eyes widened as a fresh wave of panic raced through my chest. "No, s-s-stay away from me!"

(by molecule)

Quick, slideshow-like bits of last night flew across my brain, rapid and unhindered, as I shivered and continued to stumble back away from my father. Lab. Scalpels. Ectoplasm. Needle. Pain. Blood. Fear.

"Danny, please…"

"Get away!"

(by molecule!)

I couldn't restrain the terrified scream that suddenly tore from my throat as Dad reached to gently grab my arm. My balance totally thrown off for a moment, I fell back – painfully – onto the carpet as he took a small, hesitant step back.

Through the relative darkness of the family room I could see the lost look on my father's face, meek agony that marred his expression, but I was too wrapped up in my own unconscious panic to care. "Son," he said softly, backing up a little further, his voice cracking at the end, "please. You're bleeding and I… I want to help."

Very, very close to hyperventilating, I shook my head.

"Dad? What's going on?"

Both of us froze at the feminine voice. I was still in the midst of a near-panic attack, my back pressing into the floor where I'd fallen. I was having a hard time breathing, my chest heaving fast as my lungs worked to try to pull in enough oxygen out of the air. Fighting to get control of my shallow breathing, I strained my eyes through the dark over at the top of the stairs to see Jazz leaning over the railing, worry clear on her face.

"Danny?"

"Wh—Jazz?" I twisted around to glance at my dad. Pain and terror still rushed through me as I sat up a little straighter, still instinctively wanting to scoot away from him. "What…" Slowly, my common sense managed to wrap back around me and dominate over most of the irrational fear. A hint of embarrassment and guilt followed as I backpedaled. I didn't know what to say. "I…"

Jazz made her way down the stairs, sending Dad a wary but understanding look. "Dad, I… think I should take it from here," she said quietly.

My father gave a single, hesitant nod and then looked at me, still keeping his distance. Through the dim light of a nearby lamp, I could clearly see the ache in his expression and his tired eyes.

"Your… your mother isn't taking… this… well," he said slowly, voice wavering. "She hasn't left the lab since… since…" He closed his mouth, unable to finish. It wasn't necessary. All three of us already knew when he was referring to. Since you and Mom had freaking tortured me to Hell and back.

I shifted uneasily, looking away.

"Uhh…" The awkward tension was back. "I'm just gonna… go," he mumbled, and then looked at Jazz. "He still needs his bandages changed."

As Dad slowly left the room (not before grabbing his snack) and headed back to the lab, obviously seeking escape, Jazz helped me off the floor. I numbly collapsed back on the couch, running a hand through my black hair. My side burned in protest but I tried to ignore it. I was at a loss. I didn't know what to do.

What just happened? I wanted to ask. My mind was slowly shifting from a blank state to a completely confused mess – it raced with questions, churning in every direction with different emotions. My parents had stayed down on the lab? Why? What were they doing? More importantly, my brain pressed, what was going to happen next?

My thoughts were too much to handle at the moment. I needed to take a break and calm down. I decided to break the silence with the first thing that popped into my head.

"So… they know, don't they?" It wasn't really a question.

"…Yeah." My sister nodded after a moment, a strange expression on her face. "But I… still don't know how they're taking it all," she sighed. Her voice was careful, restrained to hide some sort of hidden emotion.

"Oh."

The floor suddenly looked a lot more interesting. I stared down at my feet, vaguely noticing my hands were trembling a little, and narrowed my eyes slightly as I managed to get control of myself. It was a moment before I looked up at my sister again. "Uhmm…" I began, my throat feeling unbearably tight at what I wanted to say next – but I just had to know. "What… what happened down there, Jazz?" I asked. "After I… passed out, I guess."

Her face was dark as she avoided my eyes. She was quiet for a moment before speaking. "I don't know," she whispered, clenching her fingers against her lap. "I'd gotten home late tonight, around ten… I… I heard someone screaming down from the lab as soon as I walked through the door." She closed her eyes, obviously not wanting to remember. "I was running down the stairs before I'd even thought about it. I saw the… Mom and Dad were just standing there, and I think it was Mom who'd screamed because you were… you were unconscious, as a human – and they'd practically ripped open your entire chest, a-and the blood…"

I couldn't speak.

"There was so much blood," she said quietly, her voice almost a whisper. "I think Dad had already started to get you out of the… the restraints while Mom just stood there, but I'd shoved them both away… I was just screaming for them to stay away, and I had to stop all the bleeding after I got you upstairs.

"Thank god that none of the more serious injuries transferred from your ghost half. They'd… b-broken some of your ribs, I think, but the swelling was down and they'd nearly healed by the time you woke up… Your body probably just… focused all of its energy on getting over just that. And… Mom and Dad haven't left the lab since."

We were both silent for a few more long and precious seconds; the only sound heard was the ticking of the living room wall clock before Jazz spoke again. "Dad shouldn't have come up here," she mumbled. "I'd set my alarm for 6 A. M. to check your wounds and change your bandages. I guess your yelling just woke me."

I visibly cringed at the flash of memory. "…Sorry about that," I said quietly.

Her eyes suddenly hardened. "Don't be," she insisted, that odd expression slowly fading into a more familiar mask of pain, guilt, and sorrow. She bit the edge of her lip and glanced away, shoulders tensing a little. "God, Danny, I—…I'm so sorry," she finally said in a broken voice, letting out a sigh and looking on the verge of tears. "I'm the one who should be apologizing."

I blinked. "Why?"

"Because none of this would have happened, if… if I hadn't been away." She chuckled morosely. "Of all times I decide to go to the library for the entire day…"

"Jazz," I began, swallowing at the threat of more unwanted memories, "it's not your fault. You didn't know…"

"But I should have known."

"But you didn't." It was ironic – I was the one trying to console her. The way my mind was spinning in unhelpful circles, it should have been the other way around.

"There was… nothing you could have done."

Jazz sighed tiredly. "I know, but still." She offered a small, sad smile, the very corners of her mouth quirking upwards. I couldn't return it.

"Are you still gonna change the gauze and stuff?" I asked after yet another moment of silence, remembering what Dad had said a few minutes ago.

Jazz shook her head. "I'll need to change them in a few hours. Dad was just being a little protective and paranoid. That's only a little blood showing through – not enough to be worried about – but I'm glad he was concerned." Her face twisted down into a scowl. "I just… wish he would have at least tried to apologize," she muttered darkly.

All was silent for a few seconds, her words sinking deeper than they should have. I don't know what triggered the sudden flare of emotion, but suddenly something almost audible seemed to snap within my mind. I sat up a little straighter, my eyes set in a weak glare. "What would've been the point?" I snapped. "I mean, it's not like Dad could just waltz in here and be all, 'Hey, Danny! Sorry for destroying your self-esteem and then trying to dissect you alive last night; lemme change yer bandages!'" Imitating my father's booming voice was a failed attempt, but it was about as sardonic as I could get. I didn't care how I sounded.

My sister blinked, taken aback by the scathing edge to my voice, but I ignored her as a turmoil of different emotions collided together in my heart, each one curling together into one giant black ball. Everything I'd tried to force down suddenly came into focus again – this… this wasn't something where they could just say 'sorry' and move on. They'd captured me, ripped me open, had openly stated that they despised me… but I hadn't worked hard enough to try and stop it. The whole reason it had happened was because I simply existed. And now, in their eyes, I was just some strange, half-ghost thing…

Nothing would ever be the same from this point forward.

My eyes trailed down to my bare feet as ice started to creep up into my chest. There was a swell of an almost sickening realization of what they'd done to me last night and it drew a sharp, ragged gasp from my throat. Everything seemed to hit me again all at once, the memories fresh and raw. "Th-they… oh god," I whispered, a shuddering breath freezing in my lungs. I swallowed heavily while my throat felt constricted. The cold, nauseous feeling of 'I can't believe this is happening' slammed around in my head and sank into the pit of my stomach, painfully reverberating throughout me before crashing back together into my heart.

"Danny? Are… you okay?" My sister asked gently, but already knew the answer.

I opened my eyes with a deep sigh, feeling my vision blur. "No," I muttered sharply, refusing to look at her. "No, Jazz, no, I'm freaking not okay. I've just been tortured to near-death, Mom and Dad hate my ghost half with a burning passion, and now they're either so guilty about it or hate it so much that they won't even talk to me and everything – everything – is ruined and nothing is ever gonna be the same again and… and… it's all my fault!" I let my head collapse into my hands to cover my face, quiet tears already streaming from my eyes.

Through the chaotic mess in my head, everything boiled down to just one simple question: why?

Why?

"Why?" I whispered, slowly wrapping my arms around myself – which hurt – and squeezing my eyes shut. "Why did all this have to happen?"

I heard Jazz sit down next to me and put a consoling hand on my shoulder. "I don't know," she said quietly, obviously at a loss of what to say that would offer any help. For once she was completely silent, not having any psycho-babble or therapy-like talk to feed my seriously messed-up brain.

I would have had it in me to understand had the overwhelming anguish been absent. But there was almost nothing left, the full force of a panicked type of grief already working its way into my chest. I felt disgusting with terror and guilt as despair twisted around in my heart like black mud. Our family had been destroyed.

Jazz shifted next to me, unable to do anything as she helplessly watched me break and fall apart. She hesitantly wrapped an arm around me into a gentle half-embrace. "…I'm… sorry," she mumbled.

But I barely heard her even as I let my forehead fall onto her shoulder. Shudders shot through me with each quiet sob that wracked my body. I could feel my sister's concerned and sympathetic eyes on me, but I didn't care. My thoughts were hardly coherent enough to even remember to breathe through my tear-laden gasps, let alone feel any embarrassment as I was reduced to a broken, whimpering, pathetic mess.

I continued to cry like a ridiculous child, too wrapped up in my misery to feel shame until what seemed like hours passed. Utter physical and emotional exhaustion eventually took hold, and the fact that it was nearly four in the morning did not help at all. With Jazz still quietly by my side, my eyes fluttered closed as I drifted off to sleep with one solitary thought echoing through me.

I don't know what to do.