Breaking Imhullu

The Diary of Meriwa Short [Project Imhullu: Subject 30B] March 20, 2019

To whoever finds this and decides to read it,

Okay. So, I feel the need to write this down tonight. I have no idea why I feel compelled to do this, but I'm just going to roll with it because I obviously have no one to talk to.

I need to get something off my chest.

It's something I've known my whole life. I've known it since my horrific early days at the Arctic facility called Imhullu.

Dumb name, I know. 'Imhullu' comes from the Babylonian creation myth called Enūma Eliš in which the evil goddess Tiamat was defeated using a weapon named Imhullu. Who knew mad scientists had poetic streaks and interests in ancient mythology which they used when naming their state-of-the-art murderer making factory? Imhullu was the place where I was beaten and experimented on and forced to fight and—

Shit. I'm getting distracted.

Stupid two for one cocktail night.

Anyway, monsters are real.

That's what I wanted to write down, what I need to get off my chest. For centuries, humanity has fought these evils in secret. The government has always surreptitiously funneled money into researching and combating the terrors of the night: lycanthropes, other shapeshifters, vampires, witches... even goddamn demons. All of Tiamat's original eleven species of creatures are real, and there are hundreds of other monsters too. Humans often call them cryptids or ghosts or aliens or whatever. Few people realize their tax dollars actually go to fighting these evils, and while relatively normal people are busy obsessing over places like Area 51, the real shit goes down above the Arctic Circle at Imhullu.

That's where my first home was. Imhullu.

To fight these monsters, my siblings and I were genetically engineered and trained to hunt from the time we could walk. We weren't born. We were grown in artificial wombs.

"You don't birth weapons. You make them."

At least, that's what our handlers told us. Love was weakness. Kindness was weakness. Weapons don't worry about ethics or morality or kindness or love. Weapons just maim and kill, as we were trained to do. The enemies would show us no mercy, so we shouldn't show them any either. To dehumanize us, we children at Imhullu were given no names, only numbers representing our place in the production sequence and a letter corresponding with our genetic model. They said that we engineered children, called Hunters, were neither Marduk, the divine savior of the world and creator of humanity, nor Lullu, the human savior from the creation myth.

We were simply Imhullu, the weapon used to defeat Tiamat and her monsters. We were constructed to play a very important role in this myth, but we were also objects, tools employed to fight the darkness. Defective, useless objects are always cast aside because in the great battle of humanity versus the monsters, faulty weapons couldn't be trusted.

So, at Imhullu, defective children were thrown away... scrapped... killed.

I guess normal people would say Imhullu's defective kids were killed, though my brother 08A wasn't defective. He was the best. Zero Eight Alpha was Imhullu's most efficient killer and most loyal and trusted soldier...

Until he turned on them and helped me escape, saying something about how Imhullu was sucking away my humanity and compassion and turning me into a monster before he ushered me into the plane that would carry me away from that horrific facility. My brother gave his life for mine.

I miss my brother.

I miss Pop. He took me in once I escaped and—

Damn. I made myself sad. Hang on. I need to grab a napkin so I don't ruin this cheap ass paper. And, why in the hell are these tiny little rectangular napkins so awful. They can't absorb anything. Anyway, crisis averted.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

Diary.

Sorry! This diary entry wasn't supposed to be about my sob story. This is only about how monsters are real and how people should wake up and realize that fact. Monsters are evil but so is the Imhullu Project, which the humans run. Humans have been using child soldiers and murdering with wanton abandon. And so have the monsters.

So yeah... that's about it.

Everyone is garbage, and monsters are real. You should trust no one and repent if you believe in higher powers because either Imhullu or the monsters will win this war, and normal people don't want either of those bad guys to win.

On second thought, don't repent if you don't want to. I don't give a shit.

Oh! What I do give a shit about is money. I need is a job.

I need money. Otherwise, I can't afford more whiskey and French fries. Ah, hell. I got ketchup on my notebook. I guess that's a sign that I should shut up and finish my fries.

Bye.

Xoxo

Meri