The P. P. A. Project

Chapter Twenty-One - Roll Over and Play Dead

Chapter Twenty-One – Roll Over and Play Dead

It was about 1987 and I had just moved in with a new family. I remembered liking them a lot because they had a dog. For some reason I was never placed with families that had animals so I took the opportunity to love that little guy like no other.

His name was Skip and he was a little brown mutt, sort of looked like a chow. He had really great brown eyes and always had a smile on his face. I taught him how to play catch and we would play for hours on end. He also wasn’t allowed to sleep on the beds or couches but at night I would sneak him into my room and we would cuddle together.

Skip was the only thing I thought would ever love me unconditionally. He died just a few months before the end of my stay with that family. I don’t remember much about the parents but on some level I was glad he had taken the time to pass while I was still with him. I don’t think they liked him much.

I took him into the back woods where we lived and gave him a funeral including flowers and his favorite dog treats. I knew that if I hadn’t have had that closure I would have wondered, for the rest of my life, where he was, if he missed me and if he was doing ok.

*

“Stop!” I shouted as the monster neared me. I knew this was it. It had to be. He was a massive man with all the fixings for destruction.

And so I waited. And waited. And waited. My eyes were shut so tight that my face was starting to hurt. I’d thrown my arms above my head for cover from his first blow but it never came.

I looked up at the ceiling first and then to the empty hallway. I searched around the entire area and the man was nowhere to be found.

“Hello?” I asked to the dead air. Jacobs had to have been listening still, right?

I turned around to see that the hatch was opened and the lights were no longer red but that dim gray again. I slowly walked around the corner and was instantly taken back by the scene. Along the walls and floor was the gore left from the monster. It was completely destroyed.

“What the hell?” I asked. I then looked down at my hands. They were covered in red. Looking above the mess I had also seen that not only the camera above the mess but each one down the hall had been ripped from the walls.

I knew better than to just stand there and think about it. Thinking would only get me into trouble.

Covering my face, I ran through the slime and decay further towards the area which my parents were being held. I’d felt like I’d run miles before I slowed down and reached a long line of solid steal hatches. There were windows leading into the rooms to expose the creatures in their incubation tubes waiting for the next wave of experiments to perfect them.

My heart hurt for them. I knew they could no longer feel or think but that didn’t make the situation any less sad. I knew this had to be stopped.

There were four, large sections of the underground which contained these prisoners. At the end of the hatches I had seen that there was another row of doors. They’d had chains wrapped around the handles all the way down to the last room on the left. It was a laboratory and I could hear crying from the room.