TAKE ME TO CHURCH, lee suhyeok

o. may the Lord forgive you.

                                        The core belief of transhumanism — that humans should develop and use technologies that allow them to overcome the human condition, and thereby, become something other and, more importantly, better than human(Hauskeller & Coyne, 2019) — had brought only failure to Lee Byeongchan.

The glucose remains and the mildly sweet scent is yet to come so the rotten meat with rotting fruit lingers in his only child's bedroom. He didn't have to be the first. But he was.

Chains dig around his wrist and his ankles, so tight his skin bleeds. Death sticks onto Byeongchan's skin like something akin to second nature, his precious son. The very first mad carcass, an outcast. And the second, his soft, meek wife.

It struck the man in the head like a hammer, destroying past his hard skull that protected the brain that had gotten him them. Destroying what was left inside of him as a husband and a father. They're the dark reddish-purple coloured blood, that dense fruity smell, the deadly impulse, the absence of any before-thought the moment he injected the serum into Jinsu. The words and the picture burst in on the dawn, catching him off guard.

When he wakes — No... Jolts up next to them, his subconsciousness is tormented daily by the sight. Lee Byeongchan wished he was blind and deaf every time, his body covered in a film of cold sweat because the weather was getting colder—because he knew that what awaits before him was another day of trying.

Trying and trying.

Trying to bring back his family of cadavers. It was more difficult than it sounded, especially when he was the main cause of it. There was something so cruel about cellular biology, no different from the way that it had to have been his own son who became the very first victim.

Maybe someday, with enough time, he'll finally succeed in returning them. Or maybe not.

There was a possibility the landlord would break in and find them, perhaps he'll get his arms forced behind him and get arrested. As long as he kept them quiet, as long as it stayed that way for a little much longer, he would find a way to get them back. And no one is going to find out.

While he removes his week-old dirty and sweat-soaked shirt for a much cleaner one (the dark blue plaid shirt that took three whole days to dry because of the shitty washing job he did), though it was rough on his skin, his brain begins to warn him once again that he shouldn't do anything to the children that had done nothing. He knew the smell lingered. He knows they know, they just don't want to believe it.

Reminding himself to stay as far away from the children as soon as possible once his lessons are over, it was the only way to get through another month receiving his usual monthly salary.

He needed to pay the rent soon, it was hard enough not going to work for the past month out of worry that his family wasn't chained tightly enough. Tortured by the thought of losing them and their humanity, he didn't need their hunger for tender, fresh bodies leaving him too.

He cracks open the only uncovered window in his dirty kitchen; the morning air outside seemed suffocating. He'd become too familiar with the smell of death that clean air had been too nauseating for him.

He stands there, in front of his sink, pulling out a lighter and the last cigarette he has from his pocket to smoke. It takes a couple of tries, pulling at his thumb back on the friction wheel before a little steam of butane gas releases — he fears the kitchen would burst up in flames for a second — and then it's ignited by a spark.

With the cigarette resting in between his extremely dry lips, he hesitates the moment he holds the small flame two inches near the tobacco that is waiting to be lit. He's reminded that his wife hated the smell of smoke, and often commented that it made her sick.