April’s flash is Spring, and this invites thoughts of lightness, new beginnings, new starts – nice happy things. Unlike the book I’m just about to re-read, Stephen King’s Pet Semetary. It was the first horror book that I read, and I read it as a sort of dare to myself. I couldn’t believe that someone could write a story based around dead pets and make it that scary. Well some of you will know how wrong I was. From then on I was hooked on Stephen King and he is still my go to author when I have the time, and need a good read which I know I will become immersed in and always enjoy.
My short piece, Death by Testing, in Dark & Fluffy II, is, I’m sure influenced by the great man himself. Read it here for free!
They wheeled him through the DNA activated doors on the latest model of the Crimiport trolley. He wasn’t gagged, he wasn’t blindfolded, and he wasn’t strapped down. There was no need. As part of his sentence he had already had his tongue removed, his eyelids had been glued open and he was paralysed by drugs.
He could still feel pain of course. That was the whole point.
As a tried and convicted perpetrator of seven child rapes and murders, he had received the maximum sentence. Death by human testing. Vis-à-vis, new developmental drugs would be tested on him as a precursor to him being subjected to a lethal dose of DBP, death by pollution. He would then be autopsied by the best medical minds of the age. The results would be analysed, and the findings used to develop drugs to help mankind deal with the increasingly lethal, and biggest scourge of the 23rd century.
Pollution.
The senior of the two porters, Bab, propped up the convict, tapping the base of the trolley a little too harshly and stared at the convict in an intimidating way, a little longer than necessary. His rooky assistant Erron watched his every move.
Erron had only been in the job a month, but this was already his second maximum sentence prisoner. He looked up to Bab, respected him, and was keen to be as good as him at the job, and it was the best job he’d ever had. The bastards deserved everything that they got, and it made him feel proud that he and Bab were part of that.
The professor gestured for them to lift the prisoner onto the stark stainless-steel table, well slab really, that sat in the middle of the white clinical room. As Bab and Erron lifted him, Bab threw a serious glance at Erron
‘In my grandad’s day they tested drugs on animals. Rabbits, monkeys and the like.’
‘Barbaric,’ Erron responded breathlessly. Bab had told him this before, but he would never remind him.
‘Come on now, I haven’t got all day,’ remonstrated the professor.
And even before Bab and Erron had left the room, the testing had begun.
Janet Stock 