deep breaths and pulled opened the elevator doors.
The sunlight from the dawn was stunning.
Jean Cowell looked around at the chaos that had once been his laboratory at Bio-Gen headquarters. Bottles and beakers were smashed into glittering jewels around him, ground beneath padded feet during the night. A foul stench emerged from some of the spilled chemicals, and his notes blew lazily in the breeze venting from a busted window. He picked up one of the pages and read through it, smiling at the work it had taken to prove his hypothesis.
He had tried to prove so many things in his life. Sighing, placing the page on the counter near the back of the lab, he realized the time for tendering proof was almost over. In fact, much of what he considered reality had been shattered like the glass that clinked beneath his shoes. When the very fabric of reality, of belief, was broken, no theoretical proof would ever put the Humpty Dumpty god of the real world back together again. Waking life had warped into mythology. Nothing would ever be the same.
And this thought kept clanging in the brilliant man’s mind, a wake-up call for what was to come.
He had once been a wise man, his mind adroit and quick. And he had attempted to be a good man, albeit without much success. The bugaboos of his true self haunted him throughout his life—his taste for rich foods and wine, his dependence upon marijuana to lull him to sleep, and his taste for young men. The younger, the better.
His mind turned to Christian, the latest of his purchased boys. Christian was so appreciative of every small kindness, every shower, any small bite of food, that Jean found himself trying to go further with this gamin. He wanted Christian off the streets, someplace safe and warm, and he had invited the boy into his life, only to be refused. One more disappointment in a long series of disappointments.
There were no longer any safe places, he had to chide himself. There was no place to hide. If you ran away, where could you run? How do you escape from yourself?
The night had been terrifying, a flurry of teeth and claws and blood. But he had survived it. Many had not. The urges that had compelled him during the night were primitive, animalistic, and, to Jean, completely terrifying. His basest needs had taken physical form during the nocturnal hours, the need for food, for sex, for sheer physical ecstasy. With these guarded secrets unleashed, he had felt true power, unlimited excitement. He had tasted blood and semen, licked at wounds and inflicted new ones upon others who had challenged him. His true inner self was on full display for the world to see.
It had demolished all those carefully built walls that had protected the world from his real conceits.
And it hadn’t been a pretty sight.
Moving to his desk, he took a seat near the broken window, relishing the cool breeze that trickled across his sweat-soaked, naked skin. He sighed, opening the drawer.
In his mind, he thought of the ways he had survived over the years. He remembered the death camp of Auschwitz, remembered his friends and relatives fed to the ovens while he had assisted the Nazis in their repellent experiments. Had he been so different fromthem? He thought back to the men in his life, and the boys who had eventually replaced them, their faces growing ever younger, always more innocent. He saw the day that the U.S. government approached him, the day he had signed the contract that had certainly damned his soul for all eternity.
And he saw Christian’s face, his lean body, the way the boy looked when Jean handed him the measly twenty-five dollars. The boy was probably ruined now, his purity discarded like a shucked skin.
Picking up his journal, he wrote a few lines on the final pages, a last gasp of humanity before he ended everything.
“I am only a man, with a man’s weaknesses,” he scribbled. “The world is a terrible place, and I have made it more so. How many have died so far because of what
The sunlight from the dawn was stunning.
Jean Cowell looked around at the chaos that had once been his laboratory at Bio-Gen headquarters. Bottles and beakers were smashed into glittering jewels around him, ground beneath padded feet during the night. A foul stench emerged from some of the spilled chemicals, and his notes blew lazily in the breeze venting from a busted window. He picked up one of the pages and read through it, smiling at the work it had taken to prove his hypothesis.
He had tried to prove so many things in his life. Sighing, placing the page on the counter near the back of the lab, he realized the time for tendering proof was almost over. In fact, much of what he considered reality had been shattered like the glass that clinked beneath his shoes. When the very fabric of reality, of belief, was broken, no theoretical proof would ever put the Humpty Dumpty god of the real world back together again. Waking life had warped into mythology. Nothing would ever be the same.
And this thought kept clanging in the brilliant man’s mind, a wake-up call for what was to come.
He had once been a wise man, his mind adroit and quick. And he had attempted to be a good man, albeit without much success. The bugaboos of his true self haunted him throughout his life—his taste for rich foods and wine, his dependence upon marijuana to lull him to sleep, and his taste for young men. The younger, the better.
His mind turned to Christian, the latest of his purchased boys. Christian was so appreciative of every small kindness, every shower, any small bite of food, that Jean found himself trying to go further with this gamin. He wanted Christian off the streets, someplace safe and warm, and he had invited the boy into his life, only to be refused. One more disappointment in a long series of disappointments.
There were no longer any safe places, he had to chide himself. There was no place to hide. If you ran away, where could you run? How do you escape from yourself?
The night had been terrifying, a flurry of teeth and claws and blood. But he had survived it. Many had not. The urges that had compelled him during the night were primitive, animalistic, and, to Jean, completely terrifying. His basest needs had taken physical form during the nocturnal hours, the need for food, for sex, for sheer physical ecstasy. With these guarded secrets unleashed, he had felt true power, unlimited excitement. He had tasted blood and semen, licked at wounds and inflicted new ones upon others who had challenged him. His true inner self was on full display for the world to see.
It had demolished all those carefully built walls that had protected the world from his real conceits.
And it hadn’t been a pretty sight.
Moving to his desk, he took a seat near the broken window, relishing the cool breeze that trickled across his sweat-soaked, naked skin. He sighed, opening the drawer.
In his mind, he thought of the ways he had survived over the years. He remembered the death camp of Auschwitz, remembered his friends and relatives fed to the ovens while he had assisted the Nazis in their repellent experiments. Had he been so different fromthem? He thought back to the men in his life, and the boys who had eventually replaced them, their faces growing ever younger, always more innocent. He saw the day that the U.S. government approached him, the day he had signed the contract that had certainly damned his soul for all eternity.
And he saw Christian’s face, his lean body, the way the boy looked when Jean handed him the measly twenty-five dollars. The boy was probably ruined now, his purity discarded like a shucked skin.
Picking up his journal, he wrote a few lines on the final pages, a last gasp of humanity before he ended everything.
“I am only a man, with a man’s weaknesses,” he scribbled. “The world is a terrible place, and I have made it more so. How many have died so far because of what
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