"Wa... up..." calls a weak and croaking voice in the distance, the words seemingly bouncing off my mind as a heavy blanket of sleep clings to my addled mind. I feel something tap at my face, withered and leathery it weakly smacks my cheek as though to coax me while failing to hit much harder. I let out a soft groan, my dry mouth and mounting headache leaving me wondering just how much I had drunk the night before.
However, try as I might I simply couldn't remember the night before. With each attempt to dredge up the memories I feel them slip from my mental grasp, everything beyond the mid-afternoon sitting in my apartment with a book simply falling away like grains of sand through parted fingers.
"Mr...ughes..." calls the voice again, the croaking of the elderly male sounding more stern than before. After a moment I hear the clicking of heels of some hard floor, the sound growing closer before suddenly coming to a stop inches away from me. Suddenly, I feel a palm strike my face with no small amount of force as my face begins to sting with an intense heat and pain.
Groaning in pain I begin to open my eyes as the lids seem to fight me at every step. A concrete floor sits beneath me, the freshly laid ground covered in flecks of saw dust and errant pieces of plastic and plaster. A harsh light bares down from the ceiling above, the power white fluorescent revealing the visible wiring and insulation within the partly constructed walls.
Looking ahead I slowly begin to bring my head up, my gaze starting at the pair of four inch tall strappy black heels tapping impatiently at the floor in front of me. Tan and athletic legs trail up from the tiny tall shoes, the woman's calves and thighs. A tight black PVC skirt rests rather high up the woman's thigh, the faint hint of a set of lacy black panties peeking into view from my low hunched over position. A black Jeston crop top tightly wraps around her fit and slender torso, the laced up top revealing her taut abs and straining to contain her overwhelming large bust.
Long auburn hair hangs is voluminous waves around her freckled shoulders, the faint scent of honey coming from her as I inhale deeply in an attempt to wake myself up. Her face would be cute if not for the death glare she is shooting me with her piercing gray eyes, her petite nose scrunching up and her plump lips grimacing as she goes to strike me again. I flinch slightly as the oddly familiar young woman in her early twenties reels her arm back, her faint yet athletic musculature flexing momentarily as she braces for the swing.
"Silvia dear, don't break him before we've even started" the croaking voice calls, coughing slightly as he goes to clear his throat. The woman doesn't seem to react, not paying head to the name. "Rebecca!" he snaps, the woman jumping in place as she shakes her head slightly as if snapping herself out of some trance. Pivoting in place she giggles nervously wringing her hands as she flounces deeper into the room.
At the far side of the room stands a stooped old man, an aging and fraying lab coat hanging from his withered frame. The sides of large thick glasses can be seen behind what looks like a repurposed welders mask, the large metal sheet and reflective visor hiding his face as well as providing some form of protection from passing pathogens. His bald head seems to shiny in the light from above, his blue gloved hands fiddling with glinting surgical tools.
An elderly woman sits next to him, her body wheezing and seemingly barely conscious as she rests in a wheelchair. She appears to be close to a hundred years old, her wispy white hair having thinned to the point you can see her pale wrinkled scalp. Multiple blankets and shawls cover her decrepit frame in an effort to keep her warm and comfortable in the freezing room around us. Her dulls brown eyes look up at the fit and youthful young woman, tears forming in them as she appears to slowly fall asleep.
As the auburn haired girl approaches the slouched doctor he reaches up to touch her face, the athletic young woman recoiling with a scowl quickly followed by a pained look before glancing at the wheelchair bound old lady.
"I know dear, I know..." the man coughs, shaking his head. "Not quiet her chosen paramour am I, not that I couldn't be..." he muses, deftly spinning a scalpel between this fingers before placing it down on a small metal table behind him. "Big muscly meathead, hung like a..." he chuckles, the young woman blushing with an annoyed pout. "But then, how would we complete our testing? How would we..."
"Who are..." I groan, struggling to move my arms as I find something thin and tight bite into my wrists and ankles. As I try to move I feel the seat beneath me shift, the metal legs screeching across the rough concrete floor.
"Oh, there you are Mr Hughes" the man chimes, the mask twisting to look at me. "That was his name right dear? At least the application said..."
"Yeah..." sighs the young woman, rolling her eyes in annoyance. "Ya know, 'less he lied or something then I dunno..." she grumbles, biting at her lip as she speaks and as the old man shakes his head.
"Don't worry dear, once we've perfected this we'll find you... us something perfect. I do miss your more poetic way with words" the man sighs longingly, looking to the now sleeping older woman before shaking his head once more.
"Who... where am I..." I wheeze, struggling to shift the heavy steel seat towards the door to the left of me and towards the back of the room. Every inch in a struggle, exhaustion still gripping me and mounting further as I find my efforts diminishing by the second.
"He's a feisty one" the man chuckles, his hand tapping his mask as he tries to cover his mouth out of reflex. "I wonder which one he should...
"That Nicole chick should be..." the young woman begins to mutter, the old man perking up at the note. He attempts to snap his fingers, the gloves leaving the sound coming out in a rather dull elastic whimper.
"Fantastic! Bring her in!" he chirps, the young woman shrugging as she turning to prance out of the room. "And bring some of the colored pencils and paper too! The good ones!" he cries after her, the sound of her heels clicking off into the distance. The old man soon returns to me, approaching my seat before leaning down to get on what I can only assume is eye level.
"Sorry about my wife, she hasn't been the same since the procedure you see" he explains, listing his head from side to side. "I'll fix it up once we perfect things though, but giving her a more youthful body has certainly helped us... secure more test subjects like yourself."
The memories come back to me in a rush, my heart beginning to race as the dark void in my mind is quickly pieced together.
I had been at home, simply relaxing in my apartment and enjoying a lazy day with books and browsing the web, when I had decided to treat myself with a little bit of lunch. Despite the filled pantry and fridge with all manner of staples and ingredients laziness had overtaken me, my mind drawn more to the idea of spending what little money I had in my budget on so takeout rather than spending the time to cook.
The name Rebecca burns in my mind, the name of the delivery driver on the app and the name that popped up multiple times as the scantily clad young woman had struggled to find her way up to my apartment. The cute and busty party girl suddenly turning up with a bag full of dumpling and Mongolian beef had taken me a little aback, but the interaction was quick enough for me to not really register that anything was wrong.
The food has tasted slightly off, a little more bitter and with a grainy finish, the odd flavor simply being chalked up to a bad order and a reminder to avoid that particular store in the future. It had only been a few minutes before there had been a knock at the door, the delivery girl coming back to ask if I had seen her wallet.
I had tried my best to help, to explain I hadn't seen it, my eyes growing heavier and heavier by the second. Before I knew it her questions turned from the mundane to the probing, where did I study? How old was I? Did I own the apartment?
The answers slipped from my loose lips as I soon found myself part way slung of the fit young woman's shoulder, my last memories surfacing as I had found myself dumped into the back seat of a large white SUV parked in the underground garage of my apartment building.
"You... what... Did she drug..." I begin to stammer, the gaps in my memory leaving me stammering and stumbling over my own words. The man chuckles as he begins to place his hands around my scalp, inching his fingers around my temples as though to take measure of me skull.
"Well it was mostly me young man" the man says proudly, tilting my limp head forwards as he looks at the top of my scalp and runs his gloved fingers down the back of my neck. "Silvia was a brilliant assistant back in her day... unfortunately Rebecca wasn't the sharpest tool in the..."
The sound of a crying child soon fills the room, the echoing weeping growing louder by the second. The man quickly pulls away from me, turning to face the door as the slender auburn haired beauty pushes a small doughy child, no older than six or seven-years-old, through the threshold ahead of her.
"There you are Mrs Francis!" coos the old man, throwing his arms wide. "How are you feeling? Sorry about this, normally we give you a chance to settle in before getting an update but considering your skills we were desperate to see if..."
"Put... Put... Put me..." the young boy whimpers, his blubbery cheeks red and tear stained as he struggles to sniffle back copious amounts of snot. The man however seems intrigued, inching closer to the young boy as the woman simply drops several sheets of paper and pencils to the floor.
"You understood that, yes?" he man asks on baited breath. "You responded to...What is your name?"
"Ni... Ni..." the boy coughs, struggling for a moment before sneezing. "Blake..." he blubbers, blinking a little as the name seems to strike him wrong.
"No! No!" the man barks, reaching up to run his hands across his own scalp and through his non-existent hair. "Your real name Mrs Francis. Your! Name! Is?!"
"Bl...Blake... Blake!" the young boy squeaks, his eyes darting around in shock as the man shakes his head.
"I suppose we can work with this" he sighs, pointing down to the paper on the floor. "You are an art teacher are you not? Sketch I believe, if my lovely assistant heard you right when visiting your lovely home. Could you draw her for me? Please" the man asks, his final word sounding almost threatening.
The boy ceases his crying for a moment, shivering slightly as he clambers to the ground. Taking a pencil in hand we all watch in momentary amazement as the child begins to draw a striking and expertly proportioned series of lines and framework for a sketch of the young woman in her heels. However, the awe is short lived. Without warning the boy's lines become thicker and less precise, his grip shifting from a dainty yet practiced hold to merely clutching the pencil in a fist.
As disappointed as the man and the young woman look the boy looks magnitudes more distraught, his eyes darting around the page and following his hand as he seemingly can't understand why the skill level has seemingly plummeted in moments.
"Almost remembered her original name" mutters the old man, tapping at the side of his mask. "And the skills were there... at least for a moment. I think we're on the right track with this line of thinking, maybe a little more..."
"I don't... I don't wanna be a... a..." Blake begins to cry, stumbling up to his feet as the young woman grabs him by the arm.
"Thank you dear, can you make sure that young Blake gets home to his parents? I'm sure they would be quite concerned about him by now" the man mutters, still deep in thought. The young woman shrugs, easily dragging the child as he kicks and screams along behind her.
"Whatever" she drones, the sound of her heels and the squealing child soon growing more distant by the second.
"Oh don't whatever me dear, you know what this mean?" he calls out, his voice quivering with excitement. "We are so close, so very very close, to... to... to immortality" he exclaims, slowly beginning to pace the room. "New bodies, new lives in which we can blend in perfectly. Yet still retaining our... ourselves, our minds, our... knowledge" he chuckles, his voice practically dripping with glee at the thought of keeping this one particular skill he had been developing.
The man pulls a note pad from his pocket, jotting something down before turning to me with a start. He jumps a little, coughing for a second before straightening himself out.
"Right, of course" he mutters, evening out the fraying and yellowing lab coat. "You might be quiet the lucky young man, the first to experience my perfected technique" he explains, cocking his head a little. "Assuming that the... no, no I'm sure with some more..."
He pauses for a second, scratching out the note he had just made before making a new one only to scratch that one out as well.
"You know, with this breakthrough, I feel like celebrating" he croons, walking towards the surgical table. "I think I'm going to...
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