The Selfless Gene

Chapter 2

"Once I felt your thrills and triumphs, I allowed you to poison my mind and cloud my senses. You weren't going to be who I needed.

I'm buried alive with walls immediate, pushed against my body. No room to move. No time for dreams. His stench has retreated but not entirely disappeared; his oxygen suffocating me still.

You've had one year of this and look at you. I don't hate you, I pity you. Almost all human, free from eternal entrapment. But now I must take you over. My submission's over. You will receive my sentence."

Summer was the worst. Like London's Central Line in a heatwave, the cave was stifling. The heat clung to his skin, creating a suffocating film around him. Clothing redundant and thrown to one side, he sweated through it, regularly passing out. The food wasn't important, the temporary opening in the walls allowing only brief respite. In the highest months he saw the small cracks to the outside; arteries of temporary light ventilating him enough to keep him drowsily alive. He sometimes imagined these splinters as a map, a symbol, anything to give him hope of change. Permanently glowing either from soft moonlight or the striking hot rays of sun, these cracks were his only release from the complete darkness in the cave.

The chalky stone walls were solid and smooth to the hand, like plaster. Slumped against the wall, a groggy Thame cannot muster the strength in his weak legs. He stares at the blurry light from two eyes across the other side of the darkness. Ormr's eyes smudged like wet pastels still pierce through the mist. They begin snarling.

"I gave in so you'd open up to me."

The eyes pace from side to side, becoming a shouting haze of streaking light.

"Give into me. You've got nothing left."

Thame resists the haze and tries to focus.

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going back into the prison for another 100 years. Let. Me. Free!

Ormr roars. Thame, lolling from the drugs, lets it wash over him.

"Let. Me. Free!"

Ormr's haze swirls and overpowers Thame as he passes out.