For A Star To Fall

Chapter 11: Animal Lover

Chapter 11

The video that started to play on the laptop screen surprised both Jordan and Emyle, though in her case, she did not show it. It showed a room, but the vantage point was rather weird, showing a more of a top view than anything else, as if the camera was positioned on the ceiling or on a wall. If so, then this would have been the footage recorded by a security camera, Jordan thought. But it was still strange, because the video was in full colour and had abnormally high resolution for footage taken by a normal security camera. It was in such sharp focus that Jordan could just make out the titles of the books that lined the bookshelf that spanned the other wall of the room. Darwinism and the Expansion of Evolutionary Theory, he read one title among the entire hoard.

This whole room looked familiar to Jordan somehow. Had he seen it before? Of course, the vantage point was messed up because of where the camera was positioned, but he should be able to figure out where this was located in the facility. “I’ve seen this place before, Emyle,” he told her. “I think that this is Dr. Valin’s private lab. He brought me here when he first took me in. It was a long time ago, but I still remember, though it’s a bit bigger now, with more tables, I think. Look here.”

Emyle followed his pointing finger to the bookshelf that leaned against the opposite wall. On closer inspection, it did not only hold books, but also ring files of varying colours and thickness. And on the far right, there were more peculiar things that occupied the space on the shelves. There were cages and tans that contained things that moved, flying, slithering, jumping, hopping critters. A snake, scales glittering an unnatural violent green, coiled itself comfortably on a tree branch that had been placed in its tank. Jordan squinted a little. Was that a hamster? No, its ears were much too long. A rabbit? But, no rabbit had such bright, neon-like colour. “Wow,” he said finally, “I didn’t know Dr. Valin loved animals so much.”

To Jordan’s surprise, Emyle deigned to reply to his trivial remark, saying, “No, he did not. I do not think that this is what you have assumed it is.”

She gazed pointedly at the shelves directly above the ones where the animals were kept. Jordan had to restrain himself from catching his breath on a gasp when he saw what she was talking about. Placed upon the shelves were rows upon rows of glass jars, looking like they were covered by air-tight stoppers. All of them were filled about three-quarters of the way with some unidentifiable viscous liquid, in which even stranger things floated. Jordan could not make out their exact outline, but it was morbidly obvious that he would not want to know. The murky, slightly-blurred shapes looked a little like random body parts of animals and other disgusting things. There were claws, teeth, some bits of fur, maybe a rabbit’s ear. There was even one filled to the brim with white, hairless shapes that kind of looked like the dead bodies of baby mice. The rows of jars stretched back into the depths of the shelves, the grotesque floating shapes disappearing slowly into the darkness the further back he looked. And Jordan almost could have sworn that he saw a severed human hand floating around in one of the jars.

“Okay, okay, okay. I take that back. Dr. Valin definitely does not love animals.” Jordan screwed his eyes shut, trying in vain to banish the creepy, gruesome images he had seen from his mind. Giving up after a while, he opened his eyes, kind of hoping that his brain had just made everything up in a sudden fit of morbidity. But the images continued to assail the backs of his eyes relentlessly

Wishing desperately for a brief reprieve, Jordan turned his gaze to Emyle. Her back was ramrod straight and her posture even stiffer than before as she sat there, still doing her best to put as much space as possible between herself and him. But, apart from the fact that her eyes were darker than before, she seemed otherwise unaffected by the eerie, disgusting scene on the laptop screen. Then Jordan berated himself for being a coward. Emyle could remain unaffected by images that had the ability to make him—a guy that was supposed to be tougher than her—sick to his stomach. Yes, he was being a little sexist, but it was still cowardly of him.