by DAN MONTY
Hans walked in the room, and Jerry stood. Hans held up his hands, a bunch of flowers in his left. “I come in peace," he said. Jerry sat down again. “How are you feeling?” Hans asked, carefully placing the flowers by Connor’s bedside. It was a dumb question, but they supposed Hans meant well. “Those sharks... they aren’t normal are they?” Jerry asked, and Hans laughed, saying, “I don’t think sharks are as easy to predict as men are. You can’t assume that all sharks will behave the same, as I’m certain you both would know. Sharks don’t simply like listening to music. They don’t hear like you and I, they ‘hear’ by sensing vibrations in the water. Now to the human ear, music is pleasant but to certain sharks it’s like honing in on a distressed creature, like a seal. The shark attacked you in this confusion. Again, a shark is a living creature and cannot be predicted, especially a creature as territorial as a great white shark. Dropping your arm out of the cage was simply a bad idea, as I’m sure you are aware, Connor... " he added.
Hans was right, but Jerry had seen those sharks up close. They seemed very aggressive, and there was probably a very good reason. “How long have they been here in captivity Hans? Three years, right? Those sharks are pissed! You’d have to be crazy not to see that, and now my friend has lost an arm. They don’t belong here! Sharks that size can’t be held in captivity, and poked and prodded all the time! Whatever you’re doing to them, it has to stop!” Jerry said furiously.
Hans just paced the room rubbing his eyes in frustration. “I don’t think you gentlemen appreciate what I’m trying to do here. I am trying to learn from these creatures. To change the world! Save us all from extinction! Accidents are unfortunate, but happen all the time... “ he started; but Connor shot him down. “We want out. Screw the money! This place? This whole weird thing you got going on here? It’s bullshit! You’re the real shark on this island, man! You may want to help people but you’re killing these creatures. Humans had their shot okay? God gave us a beautiful world and we all fucked it up. That’s it, bro! There’s no ‘saving’ creatures that are doomed - by killing creatures that never were. You make yourself out to be some kind of revolutionary saviour, but you’re nuts if you think we’re going to risk our own lives to further your twisted research. It’s not gonna happen, man!” Connor said.
Hans looked mad, but when he spoke remained calm. “I am sorry to hear that, gentlemen. I had hoped for more from the two of you," Hans went on. He left the room, closing the door behind him.
Whatever his intentions had been in the beginning, Jerry and Connor felt that aim had driven him mad, and he had become lost. He wasn’t what he wanted them all to believe he was. He was something far more sinister.
Jerry looked at Connor, smiling and giving him the thumbs up. “Awesome - man! That was so badass!” he said, and Connor smiled too. “As soon as we can, we’re leaving. This place should be burned to the ground,” Connor said.
Connor laid back in the bed, casting his gaze to the air vent on the far wall above them. At first he saw nothing, but soon a thick white smoke could be seen pouring out of the vent and into the room. They both started coughing and Connor pointed to the source saying, “Dude! I think it’s gas!”
Soon the room was full of it, Connor and Jerry struggling to breathe, as Jerry covered his mouth and ran for the door. He tried to twist the handle, but it was locked. “Fuck! The door's locked!” Jerry shouted, coughing his lungs out with Connor. Jerry collapsed onto the floor gagging and it wasn’t long before Connor followed suit, passing out into a long sleep.
◇◇◇◇
A chrysalis, transparent in appearance and filled with some kind of fluid, rested against a wall in a long dark corridor. It was unmoving and glistening with gelatinous goo, one of several similar pods that lined the walls of this industrial and eerily lit chamber.
The corridor was long, each pod mounted into place along both sides of the corridor. At the far end of the corridor was a simple metal sign marked only with a single letter: “X." Inside this one pod, no different from the other pods in appearance came a sudden stir. The thick film-like substance began to budge, being pushed outward, as though there was some creature inside and indeed there was.
A hand pushed through the cocoon, stretching the transparent, rubbery substance until it burst forth – a single pink hand with webbed fingers pushing out into the air, as gelatinous fluid oozed out of the biological sarcophagus. First one arm, then two, stretching the enclosure until something fell out onto the grated floor of the corridor. It moved. Twitching and coughing as it writhed, not in agony - but rather like it had just been born.
It was humanoid in appearance, save for the webbed fingers, gills on the side of its neck, and massive fish tail that grew below its waist where there should have been legs. The creature – a woman of sorts with long, flowing dark hair, and pale skin, looked upward at the light and snarled, hissing through her teeth. She seemed to be gasping for air, her gills opening and closing frantically, as she struggled to breathe. Her eyes, a piercing, glowing blue, lit up like bioluminescent fish and she slowly began a unique transformation.
Her tail was drying out, rendering it translucent, and revealing legs beneath the scaly tail. Her fingers too, losing their webbing and becoming digits much more humanoid. Her gills seemed to slowly vanish into her skin and she could breathe, not with her gills but now with lungs.
Her mutation complete, Abigale Channing coughed fluid out of her lungs and studied herself post transformation. She was completely naked, which might have at any other time been rather nice, but in this moment she felt scared, confused, and vulnerably exposed. She covered her chest and stood, feeling like she was using her legs for the first time.
“Hello??” she called out, suddenly aware of her surreal surroundings. She regarded the other pods with both confusion and repulsion, trying to comprehend what had transpired, but having no real success. Her head was clouded with images of which she could recall only useless fragments. She looked into one of the other pods, looking inside through the murky film and saw something that horrified her instantly. It was the body of a man, but he had the head of a hammerhead shark.
Abigale gasped, stepping backward and almost falling through the delicate film of a cocoon behind her. She felt the wetness of it against her back and buttocks turning around, and seeing a squid-faced man with claws, deep inside the rubbery coffin. She screamed in terror, running down the corridor of the room. She saw an open door – light that went out into the jungle. She ran straight for it not wasting a second. There would be time for tears of horror and confusion – this wasn’t it. She ran. Abigale Channing ran like the water.
She was fast! Faster than she had ever been! Her strange abilities of speed and sense worked so fast she could barely focus long enough to process what she was doing. Abigale ran through the trees, the leaves whipping at her naked flesh, hurting her as she jumped over logs with cat-like efficiency, and beastly prowess. She could smell everything. Feel EVERYTHING, her extraordinary senses ran wild, as she sensed noises all around her, reacting to each one like an animal that was being hunted.
She wasn’t just running, no. Abigale was leaping and moving faster than she ever had in her life. She broke through the jungle, running through a clearing in the foliage, and running right into Bo Landers knocking him over. She stood over him, looking down, and cried, as she fell to the ground crossing her hands over her legs. Bo took off a jacket he’d put on and wrapped it around her. “Abby?? Abby talk to me, what happened?” Bo pleaded, the question so simple, but the answer scattered in her mind like ashes. She said nothing, rocking back and forth for several minutes.
This island wasn’t paradise and it certainly wasn’t what they had all been led to believe it was. This place was something else entirely, Abby just wasn’t ready to articulate that yet. Bo placed his arm around Abby, her head rolling against his chest. She listened as his heart raced. He was scared. Good. He had every reason to be.
PART TWO
THE MU
TANTS
“Monsters are real, ghosts are real too.
They live inside us and sometimes they win"
- Stephen King
9
The darkness can play tricks on you – everybody knows it. You can think you are seeing something move across the room, but it’s anchored quite still. You can see faces in the trees when you glance out of your bedroom window at night, but the wind shows the truth. A child will swear there’s a monster in their closet, but you’ll check and find nothing.
Abigale had been one such kid as a girl in Melbourne. Her mother would climb into her bed with her and tell her to calm down, show her there were no monsters, and even stay put until she fell fast asleep. Her mother had been a pain in the arse when she got older... but when Abby was seven, her mother was her security blanket.
She had lived for a while in a small house in Coburg, which was a good thirty minutes from the city if the traffic was fine. Her mother had poured her some milk while she had watched the end of her evening ‘toons. Abby had been in her second year of primary school, and every afternoon she would watch cartoons. She was always in bed by nine following a good home-cooked meal and a nice long bath.
Abby was lying in bed on a night like this, when she awoke from a terrifying nightmare. Panting and squealing, Abby had cried out into the darkness, “Mummy! Monsters!! Monsters!!” And in her mother had stormed, frightened at first, but calming as she woke up more. She would caress Abby’s hair, and she would utter soothing words, “It’s all right darling! It was just a bad dream! Shh!” embracing and cuddling her tightly. “Mummy it was so scary! I thought I was going to die!” she said. Her mother put an arm around her as Abby rocked back and forth. “Abby darling, there’s no such thing as monsters. They’re just figments of your imagination,” she went on, as Abby relaxed a little, “like fairies? And mermaids?” Abby asked as her mother kissed her head, “Yes darling. Just like fairies, and mermaids. They’re all just thoughts like stardust in your beautiful little head, Eagle Eye. Now, go to sleep and blow all those bad thoughts away," she said, kissing Abby again. “No more bad dreams, sweetheart," she said. Abby smiled at her, and closed her eyes. “No more bad dreams... " she said before drifting off to sleep.
◇◇◇◇
The thing about life is that one day you wake up and you realise while there doesn’t seem to be monsters in the conventional sense, there certainly are monsters out there, and they are in fact all around us.
Abby sat in Bo’s room at the resort, biting her nails, as Bo removed a pistol from his bag, pushing in a cartridge of bullets and sliding it into his pants. He ran a hand over the stubble on his face, processing the story Abby was telling, about cocoons in secret rooms full of monsters. He shook his head in disbelief, looking at her. “So you had a fish tail? And it just, went away?” he asked, and Abby seemed frustrated. “Look, fuck! I know how this all sounds, but this bloody island... it’s so much worse than you think. He’s growing... things in cocoons! And I think he made me into... something... “ and Bo cut in with “...like a mermaid?” he asked. Abby sighed, rolling her eyes and nodding. “My senses are through the roof! I’m so fast, and strong, and I can hear and smell everything! I feel like... like I was reborn as something else," she said finally.
Bo folded his arms and shook his head. They sat on the bed together and were quiet for a few moments. “I need water!” Abby said. Bo stopped her from getting up, “No. The water’s bad. Don’t drink any more, ya hear?” Abby stared at him. “You saw something too, didn’t you?” she asked, and he nodded. “It was Ray. I saw... something come out of him... like a squid, or something. He said he was sick and he died right in front of me. His body... melted or something and he had a... something came out of him. Why the hell would anyone do this to people? I mean I’ve heard of experiments done on humans... but this? This is Fifty Shades of Fucked Up!” he said. Abby nodded in agreement. “I don’t know what they did to me, but I don’t feel sick. Maybe Ray’s body rejected it. Maybe only some survive; but Bo there were a lot of those cocoon things in there. Like 20. Hans said he was improving the sharks. Making them stronger. Faster. What if he was talking about people?” she asked.
It was a terrifying concept, but not that much of a stretch. “Are you suggesting that he’s found a way to splice marine DNA into a human host?” Bo asked incredulously, and Abby slowly nodded. “The how doesn’t matter, we need to stop him from doing it to anyone else. Where’s Jerry, Connor and Jordan?” she asked. Bo couldn’t hide his troubled expression. “Last I saw of them they were heading to the facility," he said. Abby stood up and looked out the window towards the facility. “We have to help them. They’re in serious danger!” she said. Bo shook his head, “No. Hans and I had a bit of a showdown over some steak. He won’t trust me. Besides, we don’t know that they’re still over there. If we’re gonna do this, Abby... we’re gonna need a plan. We need to know you’re okay too. I want to see what you think you can do,” he replied. Abby took a deep breath, and looked down at her feet. “Okay, but you’re not going to like it," she said. Bo didn’t have time to care. He was getting quite used to seeing things he didn’t like. “Show me,” he said.
They stood on the beach, Abby’s hands visibly shaking. Bo comforted her as best as he could, but what she was about to do would not be easy. She took off her shorts and shirt and handed them to Bo, standing there naked. “Okay. This is going to be really weird, okay? Just... don’t freak out on me. And don’t run - or I’ll never speak to you again!” she said. Bo smiled, nodding. Abby waded out into the cool waters, and as she did, her body began its transformation – her gills expanding from her neck, her eyes glowing a piercing blue, and her legs beneath the water morphing into an elegant, shiny fish tail. Bo dropped Abby’s clothes in shock as her hands became webbed, and she dove into the sea, showing off her tail. Bo covered his mouth in awe, looking at this incredible transformation into this elegant creature. “Oh my God!” he said smiling, wading out to her and jumping into the sea.
They swam underwater in the shallows side by side, every once in a while she would glance back at him with relief to see he wasn’t afraid. She swam towards him and kissed him, blowing her air into his mouth and he kissed her back. The pair entangled in a lovers embrace beneath the waves, and for a short moment, in the silence of the sea... they were lovers lost beneath the sea. They surfaced together and Bo looked into her eyes. “My God! Your eyes are beautiful! They’re glowing!” he exclaimed. “They’re my Eagle Eyes," Abby replied, laughing. They laughed together, and kissed hard - a kiss that felt like it could last a thousand years.
Back on the beach Abby's transformation turned her back into a beautiful naked woman, and they lay together on the sand. She handed him a starfish she had plucked from the ocean floor, and he studied it in his hands. “I want you to remember this moment," she said, “Whatever happens to us, always remember," she added... Bo pulling her close and kissing her passionately. “Nothing’s going to happen to us, Abby! We’re going to end this once and for all!” he said kissing her mouth gently. Abby looked out at the sea, and smiled. “I want you to call me Eagle Eye," she said, and he laughed. “Okay. I can do that," he replied, kissing her again, as she straddled him.
She took off his clothes and they made love in the sand, the cool ocean water rushing over their naked bodies. They climaxed over and over, moaning and panting, and as the sun went down they stayed in their nakedness, watching as it disappeared over the horizon.
They walked into the resort together and returned to Bo’s room. They needed a plan and the only question was where would they start. “We can’t just go in there all guns blazing," Abby said. Bo nodded in agreement. “What we need is a way to get into level A, but we can’t do that without a clearance code. How did you get out? It’s miles below the surface?” he asked and Abby shook her head. “No, I came from level X, a separate installation on the other side of the island. I think, he does the experiments on level A and the experiments that w
ork are taken to level X. When they wake up, they escape onto the island, but why the hell would he want them all running loose around the island unless... “ she examined her body, there was a small scar on her wrist. Something dawned on her and she closed her eyes, “...Unless he was tracking us. He’s put trackers in his experiments so he knows where they go. My God! This island... it’s an animal sanctuary!” she exclaimed. Bo looked at her scar, feeling her wrist. There was some kind of chip under the skin. “Jesus, he’s tagged you like an animal!” he remarked. “If he knows where I am, why doesn’t he just come and get me?” she asked. Bo was wondering the same thing. “I don’t know. Maybe it only lets him know If you try to leave the island or something. Look Abby, we gotta cut it out of you. We don’t know what it does, hell it could be explosive!” he warned.
He reached for his utility knife from his bag, unfolded it and walked over to Abby again. “Wait! What are you going to do?” she as asked, and he took a deep breath. “Okay, we need to cut that out. It’s okay, I just need to make a small incision and pull it out,” he said calmly. Abby paced around the room nervously, then shook off the nerves. “I hate stuff like this. Is that thing sterilized?” she asked. Bo frowned, walking over to the bar and grabbing a bottle of Jack Daniels. He opened it, pouring the liquid onto the blade and having a swig, offering the bottle to Abby and she took it. “It is now", he replied.
