Lifers 5

The following day Martins returned to his basement to run more tests on the rat. That was when he noticed the first signs of change. ‘Well look at you,’ he said bending at the waist. ‘Someone’s been overeating.’ But on looking at the rat’s food and water supply he noticed it hadn’t actually been touched. This he also noted down, but again didn’t see as important.

Martins reached into the cage in order to retrieve the rat, but in doing so was set upon and had to remove his hand quickly from within. Then once again he reached in, and once again he was fought off. Up until that moment he’d regarded the rat as placid, almost docile. ‘Okay, let’s see how much you’ve changed shall we?

He took an untreated rat from the cage the test rat had been taken from the day before; he then put the two together. No sooner had the new rat touched the bottom of the cage than it too was attacked. The newcomer did it's utmost to defend itself but only managed to bite the front paw of it's much bigger attacker, although in doing so it did sever two of it’s toes.

Martins reached in once more, this time trying to separate the two. But on this occasion he wasn’t attacked, he was merely warned off. Heeding the warning he looked on as his rat gained the upper hand and began to feed on its victim, burying its snout eyes-deep in the gaping wound it had caused whilst the smaller rat squealed in pain.

After five minutes the carnage ended and the test rat avidly cleaned itself of the others blood. Martins looked closely at the injury it had sustained during the encounter and noticed a slightly bloody foot, but the wound beneath seemed to have healed. He lifted a magnifying glass for a closer look and noticed the severed toes already starting to re-grow.

Taking out his journal Martins entered the entire events of what he’d just witnessed into it; he felt his formula was now ready for its first human test subject, and who better to test it on, than he? The violence that had manifested in the test rat he knew he could control, after all… it was a mere rodent. He on the other hand… was a pure genius.

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Martins spent the next few days preparing his basement lab for a visitor, and also hour upon hour reading through his journal. Eventually he came to the conclusion that there was no solid reason why the tests shouldn’t be escalated. And although he wanted to be the first of this new breed, he thought it better to have a guinea pig, than to actually be one.

Not really knowing where he was going to find a volunteer he put on his coat ready to go out, and in an attempt to disguise himself a little, he wore a hat and tucked his dark shoulder length hair inside it. Martins had also put a small bottle of chloroform and a white rag into one of his pockets, just in case his volunteer didn’t really want to volunteer that enthusiastically. Climbing into his Oldsmobile he set off heading southward, and before long he came upon the small town of Chesapeake.

The time was eight o’clock in the evening and the air temperature had dropped to a miserly four degrees. Martins parked his car on the edge of town, and after climbing out he hunched up the collar of his coat and dug his hands deep into his pockets. He began walking head-down along Maccorkle Avenue, and after a few hundred yards came upon a small dimly lit bar and entered.

Putting on an Irish accent he ordered a cold glass of beer and carried it to a seat in the corner of a small booth that faced the door. As he drank he peered over the top of his glass eying up the Clientele. There were two people sitting on barstools, with a third person stood around the other side of the bar. Three possible applicants for the role of guinea pig.

The first of the candidates, as Martins now looked upon them, was an elderly gent who drank a dark red liquid from a short glass. He was wearing a grey flat cap and a worn brown tweed jacket. The man looked to be in his mid-sixties with about five day’s worth of grey stubble covering most of his life-beaten face, (too old).

Candidate number two showed a little more promise, he was also male and looked no older than forty; he had greasy black unkempt hair covering his ears and again was unshaven, but only by a day at the most. His features looked chiselled and hard-worn, with facial bones that protruded almost beyond the skin, sinking his eyes into his skull. His shirt collar was unfastened revealing a narrow neck and a large Adam’s apple. He looked, thought Martins, very capable of handling himself, (could be troublesome if matters got out of hand).

Candidate number three was a female of around thirty-years of age. She had a pale skin tone with long dark hair; her lipstick shone bright red, and her eye make-up looked to be overly done. She was wearing a red sleeveless cotton dress which was cut low at the front to reveal her cleavage. She wasn’t drinking at that particular time, although a small empty glass sat before her. She was however watching number two very closely; she was a working girl, a prostitute, but above all... (she was a possibility).

He didn’t see it when number two looked back at the woman, and with a sharp sideways movement of his cadaverous eyes and slight jolt of his head; he'd pointed the Irishman out to her.