UnCommon Bodies: A Collection of Oddities, Survivors, and Other Impossibilities (UnCommon Anthologies Book 1)

by Michael Harris Cohen

  All of the modification and fiddling had left her without a need for sleep and, because she didn't need it, she couldn't force herself to unconsciousness. It wasn't for a lack of trying, however. She wanted to be able to lose track of time and her surroundings instead of constantly analyzing the information coursing through her brain and a stream of numbers and data flowing across her vision due to the implant. Once the brain surgery had been completed, she'd overheard the operating scientist speaking with his assistants. The conversation filled her with a sense of dread because she realized that their plan for her was not going to end with her as a happy and well-functioning member of society, so she'd devised a plan of escape.

  She'd calculated it would take them several minutes to get organized and give chase, so she'd disabled the tracking device implanted in her organic arm. She had to bite into her skin to rip out the tiny bead that lay just beneath and crush it. She'd welcomed the pain because it had been such a long time since there had been any sensation.

  She wasn't so naive as to think that they'd not come after her. Several billions of dollars were invested in her creation. Intact, her value soared, and even higher if they harvested her artificial heart, the catalyst to set her escape in motion.

  The heart they'd given her was, in a sense, unbreakable. They'd discovered the breakthrough when her body did not reject it. Anti-rejection drugs weren't necessary and the excitement felt around the lab when the tests came back was palatable. The scientists wanted to take back that which they had given, and she realized that once they'd removed it, her part in their experiments would be over. She could function without her limbs, but without the heart and her brain, she'd cease to exist. She knew they'd want to take her brain and tinker around with it to see if it had anything to do with why her body didn't reject the implanted organ.

  Scanning the horizon for anything that would provide cover or even tools or metal to do repairs currently ranked high on her priority list. If she could restore her leg, she could run instead of the shuffle walk that she was presently using. After continuing for several miles in this manner, she spied a group of buildings clustered together and made her way to them. Her lips curved into a satisfied smile upon reaching the pavement surrounding a small housing complex. A small paved road led into the remote neighborhood, and she marched down it with renewed purpose to her gait. The grinding of her broken ankle was much more audible on the pavement than the sand, and the vibrations more pronounced as they staggered their way up her leg.

  Many of the houses she passed had an unfinished look to them and were vacant, but she finally found one with an attached garage. There were curtains in the open windows that moved with a slight breeze. Removing the exterior portion of the ocular implant, she blew into it in an attempt to remove most of the debris that had collected. She didn't want to chance scratching the membrane beneath, so, very carefully, she replaced the external device and rotated it 20 degrees to activate the infrared sensors within. Seeing only the heat signature of a small animal inside the house, she entered the nearest open window, the sill groaning under the weight of her surgically modified body.

  Rotating the implant to its original position, she took in the new surroundings. An open floor plan showcased a modern living space. A large television monopolized most of the space in what she considered the living room that also held a tiny bistro style table and two chairs. There was a rather worn love seat and a bookshelf containing pictures of a man with a dog.

  She frowned when she realized she was in the living space of one of the scientists who performed many of the experiments on her. Doctor Keller was the cruelest of them all, refusing to see her as anything except sub-human when he was the reason for all of her modifications. Noticing another picture hidden behind Dr. Keller's, she picked it up. It was one of her and him, together.

  In the picture, she smiled into the camera while he did not, and his arm was wrapped around her possessively. She stared at the familiar couple as unwelcome memories flooded her consciousness. The onslaught of so many emotions in rapid-fire succession nearly brought her to her knees as her breathing became short and rapid. She remembered being an impoverished college student and signing up with The Neural Society. They promised to pay her tuition and expenses in exchange for participation in various experiments and research.

  The moment she met Doctor Reese Keller flashed vividly, and the course of their relationship ran through her mind like a movie on fast-forward. She recalled falling in love with him and secretly making love in the laboratory at night, unaware that he was recording their trysts. When she discovered he didn't reciprocate her feelings, it was devastating, but not as crushing as when she realized he was not only using her to fulfill a physical need.

  He had kept notes on her emotional state of being when they began altering her with their mechanical parts. He wanted to know if her reaction to his cruelty would be lessened as she became more cybernetic and less human, at least in his mind. Discovering his notes about their relationship was the pivotal point during the experiments when her memory had broken, in a manner of speaking. The pain of the mechanics coupled with her emotional distress shut her mind down. She'd compartmentalized her feelings and forced herself to forget their relationship until now. The moment she discovered the photograph of the two of them together, it all came back.

  The restoration of her memories played havoc on her electrical sensors, and she struggled to regain control of her wayward emotions. She needed to figure out if anything inside the house might be of use to repair her leg and eye. She would have to worry about her broken and misled heart later. Taking several deep breaths to regain some semblance of control, she blinked to clear her organic eye of the tears streaming from it.

  Quickly locating the door leading into the garage, she scrounged for anything that she could use. After a frustrating search through a toolbox that yielded nothing helpful in reconstructing her ankle, she noticed the garage was too small to hold a vehicle. She pushed against the wall and then used her weight to move the built-in shelf, which swung open into a small chamber with just enough height clearance to accommodate her without having to bend. Feeling her way along the right inner wall, she located a light switch and turned it on, the illumination revealed rows of instruments, including an extra exterior ocular prosthesis..

  After sliding the extra device into her pocket, her first concern was the ankle. Once repaired, she could work on the optical device and hopefully clear the membrane over the socket. Reaching up to her eye, she rotated it counterclockwise 45 degrees to activate the x-ray protocol and examined her damaged ankle. She'd have to look at the leg in several stages due to the scratches interfering with her vision on that side. The head-up display that appeared showed her what had broken, and she began working on reattaching the severed vascular hoses first. With shaking hands and rummaging through the set of instruments Dr. Keller had in his hidden room, she put together the parts like a puzzle. Making swift work of the leg, she moved onto the eye, using aerosolized air to remove the dust particles, then she looked through the remaining supplies for a solution. In her haste and nervousness, she almost dropped the outer portion of her eye. She was becoming increasingly worried that she wouldn't be able to fix it. She'd never realized just how much she'd become dependent on the implant. Huffing in irritation and anger when she couldn't find a replacement membrane, she replaced the outer device and examined the instruments she wasn't familiar with.

  One, in particular, caught her attention and she gingerly picked it up with thumb and forefinger. Gazing at it with her cybernetic eye, the head-up display revealed a circuit board, one much faster than currently installed in her circuitry. There were a few things on it that the display didn't recognize, and it gave her pause. The connectors were oddly shaped, and she was unable to find a power or reset button. The lack of an on/off switch bothered her. She liked having a failsafe in place and the idea that there possibly wasn't one made her extremely uneasy. She thought it prudent to upgrade, i
f possible, especially in her current situation, but that would require disabling her systems. What if she couldn't work through the agony sure to follow once the circuitry allowed her pain receptors to work again? What if the upgrade gave the scientists exactly what they wanted: control over her mind and body. Her memories had just returned, and that was another risk she wasn't sure she wanted to take for fear of losing them again. Her sense of self was important to her and, regardless of how inhuman she felt, she was still just that: human.

  Knowing that once they found her she would be so many spare parts, she eyed the circuit board to see what she could understand of its mechanics. The new circuit board had a processor that was much faster than her current one, which would enable her to force her organic and biomechanical parts to move in sync at a closer speed to each other. The advantage of that was something worth considering, and her mind reeled with the possibilities. Taking a calculated risk and holding her breath, she quickly opened her scalp flap and removed the board inside. Excruciating pain filled her mind and washed over her newly awakened senses. For several seconds, all she knew was agony, and she suffered in the silence that followed. Her eye bulged with the shock of it, and a scream escaped her throat before she could silence herself.

  Removing the circuitry had stopped her cybernetic parts from functioning, save her heart. Her cybernetic limbs floundered around on the floor of the chamber. After what felt like an eternity, she regained enough of her faculties to slide the new circuit board into place with a soft click. Nauseated and gasping in pain, she waited impatiently for her systems to reboot.

  Once all systems were on-line, the pain faded as quickly as it had come. Nausea, however, did not, and she spat on the floor when her mouth flooded with saliva. She scanned through the new features in the installed hardware and noticed a new option for enhancement.

  Upon investigation, she was pleased that she could upgrade without doing significant changes to her organic body. Once finished, she gathered the instruments and placed them into the small unused tool box for carrying, and left the garage.

  Searching the rest of the house, she discovered the bathroom and washed up a bit before heading out. Dust coated her exposed skin. Glancing up into the mirror, she sucked in a horrified breath as she took in her appearance. Her once glorious mane of white blond hair was now sheared from her scalp, giving her the appearance of dandelion fluff. Her face was gaunt, almost skeletal, and her skin sunburned by her trek. Her eyes...oh, her beautiful blue eyes. The right eye had been completely removed, and a visual prosthesis placed there. The black plastic and steel stood out in sharp contrast to the crystal blue of her remaining eye, from which tears streamed uncontrollably.

  She allowed herself a few minutes to wallow in the shock and disappointment of her lost beauty before running lukewarm water into the sink. She used a white washcloth hanging next to a towel to gently scrub her skin clean. Once finished, she looked at herself once more in the mirror, squared her shoulders and went in search of clothing that could cover up her cybernetics. Luck was on her side when she found the closet. There was a ball cap she could steal along with a pair of sweatpants with a matching tee. They hung on her loosely, but tightening the drawstring in the waist kept them from falling off.

  Snagging the toolbox on her way out, she decided against following the road to a populated area and left the cluster of houses to continue her travels through the desert. Her leg moved well, and she moved at a much quicker pace than before. She didn't want to run and alert anyone to sudden movements or plumes of dust, so she elected to walk briskly through the desert.

  Her heightened senses helped her avoid detection, looking and listening to everything around her. Save for a lizard and the roadrunner hoping to make it supper, she passed several miles without incident. Hearing a vehicle, she focused sharply in their direction and heard a familiar voice.

  "Subject 86-75-309 is in sight and within range. I'll activate the protocol to unplug her." Dr. Reese Keller spoke into the radio he carried, alerting the scientists on the receiving end to expect them within the hour.

  Her enhanced cochlear implant had no issue picking up the startlingly shrill tones of his voice. Fury and rage filled her mind. She relived the moments of cruelty she'd endured while under his control. Fear took her breath and, for a few seconds, she only heard the thumping of her heart in her ears. If he took her back, she'd die. She was going to live out the rest of her life on HER terms, not theirs. She might look like Frankenstein's monster, but she refused to be treated like one or cast aside once they'd gleaned everything from her they could.

  With an anger fueled purpose, she whirled, and headed directly for him, crossing the distance at a far greater speed than he could have anticipated. They'd never let her test her upper limits of speed and strength in the lab, and her upgrades made her almost a blur crossing the desert.

  His gasp of surprise became a slight hiss as her hand lifted him from the ground by his throat. Eyes narrowing as she watched a drop of sweat drip down the side of his terrified face, her lips contorted into a hateful smile.

  "Hello, darling," she said mockingly. "Miss me?"

  Checking to see if anyone else was in the SUV, she chucked him towards the vehicle with a happy realization that they were alone. His back and head slammed into the side, leaving a dent, and he crumpled to the ground, dazed and breathless from the impact.

  "Oh, lover." She paused then said, "Remember when you used to call me that? I'm going to show you what your 'love' has done."

  She studied him for several seconds while images of the many things she'd like to do to his defenseless body slid through her head. He was entirely coated in a sickly sweat, and she could smell the sourness of his fear and distress leaking through his pores.

  Pulling the spare ocular device from her pocket, she grabbed his throat again to lift him up. He tried desperately to break away, his hands beating uselessly against her arm.

  "Let me show you, lover," she said as she pushed the steel and plastic over his eye. He tried to jerk his head away but her grip was sure and strong, and the popping of his flesh was audible as the skin broke. He screamed in pain as his eyeball burst from the pressure of the prosthetic being forced into place. Dropping him again, she stepped back to watch him writhe and claw at his face, attempting to remove the foreign object, his fingers slipping uselessly. The blood flowing from the wound wouldn't allow him to gain purchase.

  "Look at me," she said. "Look at me!" she screamed when he didn't do as she said. Her anger threatened to overcome her other senses, and she wanted to relish these final moments with him. She wanted him to know that his death, while at her hands, was entirely his fault.

  Terrified, he looked in her direction and attempted to focus on her face. The agony was overwhelming, and he was nauseated with it. "Please. Please 86-75-309. You don't want to do this," he plead.

  His refusal to say her name, even in his final moments, to give her back her identity, sent her rage over the edge, and her foot struck his throat, crushing his windpipe. Blood spurted from his open mouth when his teeth sliced his tongue. She leaned down to listen to the final beats of his heart as he lay dying in the sand.

  Spinning her body away from his corpse, she stalked away in her originally intended direction. "My name is Jenny," she said, "not Subject 86-75-309."

  About the Author

  Born and raised in the rural South, books have always been a comfort and joy for Rebecca Poole, so it's no surprise that she's been bitten by the bug to create her own stories and worlds. She uses her artwork to help visualize the characters and scenes she creates digitally to bring them to life on the page.

  She lives in Georgia with her husband and fur children. It would not be surprising to see her attempting to 'rescue' another stray cat, for she might have an addiction to the cuddly critters...

  rebeccapoolewriter.com/

  Saltwater Assassin

  by Samantha Warren

  Summary: Syren has spent her life
as a sideshow freak, caged in a tank of saltwater and gawked at by hundreds of normal humans. She has a secret, though. At night, when the lights are finally off and the fair goers leave, she turns into a human–a mermaid assassin.

  "Step right up. Step right up. Feast your eyes on the lovely, luscious Syren–the only living mermaid known to man. That's it, my dear. Come on, don't be shy."

  Syren watched through the crystal clear glass as a young girl with blond curls peered at her. She smiled and waved, but the child sank back into the arms of her mother. A small part of Syren's heart seized, but she buried the feeling down deep with all the others.

  She was a freak. There was no denying it. Even at the orphanage where Master Opal found her twenty-three years ago--a mermaid child of barely five, living in a tank, cared for by a confused and scared nun. The woman had practically thrown Syren at Opal when he expressed interest in adopting the girl. He raised the strange child as his own, teaching her to embrace the uniqueness and use it to make money. For him, of course, but at least Syren had a home and was treated better than at the orphanage. And she learned to kill. Efficiently.

  Syren's strange gift allowed her to change at night, only as the last rays of the sun faded from the sky. Master Opal had knowledge no one else possessed. He understood her species better than even she did, although he wouldn't discuss how, nor would he tell her if any others like her existed. When she asked, he would simply grunt and continue on as if he hadn't heard her.

  He showed her how to change. Or rather, explained it. He was simply human and had no obvious deformities, unlike all those in his employ. His talent lay in recruiting oddities, running the show, and finding side jobs for his freaks to perform at night.