Scary Stories and CreepyPasta's!

Phase Three (Operstaion Stingray In Effect)

The truck ground to a halt. "Home sweet home, maggot."

A gun butt jammed into my bruised ribs, and I fell out onto the pavement. Blood and mucus ran down my mouth, and I spat between clenched teeth. The inside of the hood smelled like rotten meat, like I was in my own little world of death.

"On your feet." Gloved hands squeezed my broken collarbone and hoisted me to stand. I wheezed and hacked up something that tasted like rusty iron.

I shuffled along the pavement, the shackles on my swollen ankles and wrists only giving me a few inches of movement. There was a hole in the hood, and I could see a few things. Bright lights, guard towers, armed soldiers with dogs. Fifty feet in front of me the man in the bowler hat walked toward a large set of double doors. The doors opened as he stepped through, and the guards inside saluted him.

The gun butt struck me again, and I picked up the pace. As I walked through the double doors, I could read what was printed on them: DRS-117.

I stood naked in a fluorescent room while a guard sprayed me down with freezing water. He turned the hose off and laughed at my shivering form. "Rat in a sewer," he said, and tossed me an orange jumpsuit.

I was led to a cell the size of a closet and shoved inside. The heavy door slammed shut, and I looked around. The room was completely bare, save for a stone toilet in the corner and four surveillance domes in the ceiling. I sat down on the cold metal floor and put my head between my knees.

"No sitting," a voice said from somewhere, and a jolt of pain seized my body. Electrical current ran through the floor, and I struggled back to my feet. I stood, paced, stood again for what must have been several hours. I tried to lean against the wall, but the floor zapped me again. My feet were numb. I staggered and swayed and fought to keep my balance. Finally my legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the ground. I braced myself for the pain.

The door opened. "He wants to see you."

Two guards led me through a maze of brightly lit corridors. Men in lab coats and military uniforms hustled to and fro throughout the facility. When they passed me, their eyes would dart downward, avoiding my gaze.

We came to a long hallway with a door at the very end. As we approached, I saw another man in orange step out, flanked by his own set of guards. My vision was blurry and distorted, but there was something familiar about him. I squinted and focused as he drew nearer.

Brian.

"Oh my God, Brian, are you okay?" I shouted as we passed each other. His head lifted, and I got a good look at him. His face was sunken and hollow, covered in bruises and fresh scars. His lips were white and cracked, and part of his ear had been torn off. But it was his eyes that frightened me. Dark and empty, the soulless eyes of a man being broken apart. He looked through me instead of at me, and then turned his head back down. The guards pushed me forward.

We entered a tiny room, and I was strapped to a metal chair. The man in the bowler hat stood with his back to me, facing the wall. There was a long silence.

"The human animal," he said, "is a remarkable creature. Not for his inventiveness, or his reason, or his ingenuity, or any of the other fabricated qualities for which he congratulates himself. No, the human animal is remarkable for one reason and one reason only: his sheer capacity to delude himself. Specifically, his ability to pretend that he is not an animal. He imagines that he is above the natural world, separate from it. He creates a fiction of laws and morality to convince himself that he is a being closer to the gods than to the filthy earth. But man is not made of air. He is made of meat, and he screams when that meat is torn from him. He cowers when threatened and groans when beaten. Man is an animal like any other, and there is only one law that governs animals: the right of the strong to rule over the weak."