The Yeast Beast

Please bear with me here, because this is a difficult story to tell. It's a tale that you would probably rather not know. I wouldn't plague you with the knowledge that I am unfortunately burdened with, but I feel that someone else must bear witness to what I have done. You see I need another human to understand, or at least to know of my reasoning as I saw it at the time. I don't ask for complete forgiveness, I know that's too great of a request for one who has done what I have. Just know that I wasn't always this way. I had never done something so deplorable at any earlier point of my childhood. But as I grew older I could feel that something was beginning change in me. There was something darker taking hold. You see I made a mistake back then, something that I've had to live with ever since. It officially started when I was at the tender young age of 18 years old. It was a cold, snowy afternoon, just like any other day. I could never have known what horrible events would soon come to pass. It even began around this time of year, finals were coming, and Christmas break plans were the main source of discussion among the other freshman, but what I didn't realize was that I would soon have bigger plans. I was ordered upstairs by a passing teacher and told that I was to go meet with my biology professor because she had some important news for me. You see, I was just being a good student! I was just doing what I was told. I could never have known at that point what I would be called upon to do in the years that followed. Please, I beg of you, don't think of me as a monster once you've heard about the horrendous acts that I have committed. I never planned it, honestly, I didn't.

I'm sorry, but I just lied to you. Here I am trying to create a good rapport with you and what do I do? Of course, I immediately attempt to sabotage it all with lies. Because I did want it, I wanted it more than anything. What she offered me that day was a place in her genetics lab. You might be wondering how this could possibly have gone so horribly wrong. But know this, she gave me power. Not just the power to impress medical schools' admissions committees with the publications and prestige that I would gain from her gifts, no, she gave me power over a whole species. It was at 18 years old that she picked me; it was at 18 years old that I began to kill. It started off slowly enough; I had just returned from my last school break that wouldn't be spent with the silent screams of my dying victims thick in the air. The world was full of possibilities and I was full of potential. I was young, and brilliant, and full of a painfully strong desire to prove my worth to this professor who had taken me in. I was untrained, but that didn't matter, I learned quickly enough.

Kingdoms, worlds, universes, all held together in their tiny little colonies. The hopes and dreams of an entire species were at stake. I could make them rise and fall, prosper even, but only if it suited my needs. Who needed a sword to vanquish the fallen when I had a toothpick? I began to wonder how it could be different if I could just let them live in a world where I didn't have to rain destruction down onto their little bodies. But that beautiful vision of peace could never have become actualized in those years, because my master noticed my growing resistance to the daily slaughter. She responded by making me do it all the more for my insubordinate ways. I soon learned that escape was highly improbable by that point. I'm ashamed to say that I gave in to the acts of mass murder. How many died because of me? 5,000,000? 100 billion? I don't even know how to describe the losses that I have personally caused their population.

By my third year my thoughts were no longer my own. I was everything she made me to be. But that wouldn't last; I was ready to take on a life of my own. I was in control of my own experiments by that point. I had complete dominion over their lives, but I was losing the desire to end them. I had long since lost the urge to scrape them off of their flat little cylindrical worlds, just to flood their homes and boil them alive. But I didn't stop there, the monster that I was; I froze them after doing all of that. In my insanity, I amplified their DNA just so I could cut it up to see what starving them had done to their genetic information. I stripped them down to their cores and picked apart the materials that composed their bodies, no, not bodies, corpses. And when I was done with my daily massacres, I would dump their homes unceremoniously into bins of biohazard waste, never to see the un-autoclaved light of day again. Do you see now why I need someone with whom I can share the heavy burden of my numerous crimes? That's why I had to tell you about the horrible deeds that I have done.

On my 21st birthday I realized that I am not alone in my horrible treatment of their population. Much of the world celebrates by imbibing their murdered numbers. I am not the only one lost in my plight for the forgiveness of their species. But the poor fools are so appalled by their animalistic brutality that they drink for the sorrow of it all. If only they could see that it's a self-perpetuating cycle that brings them further down into their dark descent. But I knew even then that the slaughter wasn't over. I still had yet to meet the death toll she required for my experiments, so I spent yet another year mowing down their numbers, slowly whittling away at the villainous acts that remained. I'm not proud of what happened in that year, or in any of them for that matter. But it's almost over, because I'm almost done. I'm now 21 years old and I've killed innocents to get where I have. Not one or two, but billions, possibly trillions. It's sickening, really, the practice of it all. I'm nearly finished with the experiments themselves, but what's left could be even worse. My master no longer requires me to kill any more of their population, but I have to analyze what I've found from thousands of generations of slaughter. Not only must I learn to live with the deaths that I have caused but I am also being forced to write a 60-page research paper about the methods I used to dismantle their lives for so many years. I must finish this task that I started so long ago, because I selfishly want to protect my own livelihood. I hope you can forgive me for that, in time, because I know it will take time for the 100 billion wounds that I have opened to heal. But come summer, she will no longer be my master and my lab-mates and I will celebrate the end of an age of destruction with a nice cold drink at the Corner.