Spliced

Chapter 20 - Rowen

I couldn't believe rhino dude bought the story about wanting to get matching splices. Now we had the info to get to the illegal splice shop. I kept a grip on Pacey's hand, hoping she wouldn't run away from me at any moment. Hopefully, that would help keep up the charade that we were boyfriend and girlfriend who were looking for matching splices. The fact that Pacey looked amazing with her hair down helped the case.

She was a kind of sexy that wasn't like Emm. Pacey was gorgeous without the low cut shirts or overly done hair. I liked that she left something to the imagination in her t-shirt and jeans, but I couldn't let her know that. It was no use anyway. I was with Emm and I still wasn't exactly convinced Pacey was anti-splicing since her best friend was a splicer.

She broke the news to me that Illena was her escape from reality. What problems that Pacey had at home, I didn't know and I didn't want to ask. But if I couldn't even think about giving up my time away from my family, I don't know how I could even begin to think that Pacey would give up Illena.

"Well, this looks like the place," Pacey said, stopping in front of a pink stucco house. A giant display of graffiti was on one side and a beat up brown door on the other "Dr. Mac" typed in an old English font.

"Doctor, that's a joke," I muttered.

We walked to the door. To the right was a small, red button with a giant screen above it. I quickly pressed the button, waiting for something to happen. Static came on the screen before it cleared, and we got a close-up of a guy with hair like straw and two different animal ears perched on his head.

"This is Mac, what up?" He reminded me of one of Ashton's old stoner friends who used to get high off of my mom's body wash. His voice sounded like he was confused and right on the edge of laughter. Who the helter would trust this guy to splice them?

"Yeah, this dude gave me your name to see if you could hook us up with some matching splices," I said, trying to smile even though I really wanted to punch the guy in his orange face.

"Aw, no problem, bro, just come on down and Dr. Mac will see you!"

The brown door lurched open, leading down to a set of ancient cement steps and a formaldehyde smell that permeated the air. This time Pacey clung to my arm as we walked down the stairs. It was only about twelve steps before the smell got worse, and we had to hold our breath not to puke. When we reached the bottom, a beaded curtain was draped over the doorway. We pushed it aside and were greeted with an old cellar that could have been out of a horror movie.

Two green barber chairs stood in the middle of the dirty, cement floor, and next to each one was a rusted metal table full of instruments that looked like they were used for medieval torture. On the walls were giant cases that looked like the ones where they kept frozen food aisle in the grocery store. In each case were shelves with glass jars, and stuffed in each one of those jars was a different animal part, some still twitching. They didn't look like the genetically engineered ones that splice shops usually had, but more like ones that could have been cut from real animals.

"Hey, bro! Nice to see you!"

The Mac guy came from behind a tie-dyed sheet draped on the far wall. He looked even worse than he did on the camera. His face was gaunt like he hadn't eaten in days and just about everything else was spliced: cheetah legs, eight octopus arms coming from his shoulder blades, and a torso that looked like a spider. Who the helter would trust a guy like that to splice them? If it were me, I would have run for the hills as soon as I heard him speak.

"Sup," I said giving him the typical nodding greeting.

"So you two are looking to get your splice on?" He put all of his arms up in the air and made a small circle with his hips.