Cvs minute clinic kapolei

Left a bag on my coffee table while going to the bathrooms. Came back to them spilled all over the floor and my 6mo puppy having a feast.
I know they have a lot of salt and onion powder. Should I take her to the vet?
• ⁠Species: Dog • ⁠Age: 6 months • ⁠Sex/Neuter status: Female/in tact • ⁠Breed: Miniature Poodle • ⁠Body weight: 9.5lbs • ⁠History: • ⁠Clinical signs: • ⁠Duration: Just happened a few minutes ago • ⁠Your general location: US • ⁠Links to any test results, X-rays, vet reports etc. that you have:
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So I've really been wanting the summer internship, but everything I apply to doesnt work out... I finally heard back from one, and she said she could offer me a position in the fall but not the summer. Which is a bit upsetting..
I already work at least 15 hours a week in the fall, and plan on taking 15 credit hours of classes, while also volunteering one night a week. She wants me to commit a minimum of 8 hours a week to this internship, which I feel like I could make work. But I'm also worried it might be too much.
I really want to get into a competitive grad school (clinical psychology), and I feel like this internship could help since she's the president of my state's psychological association. But, I'm in tears right now thinking of how stressful it might be and just wishing I could do it over the summer instead. I already volunteer with my lab weekly, do research on my own, and a minute PhD prep program. So it feels like I'm doing a lot, but I'm constantly afraid there's more I could be doing.

So my mum has been staying over and she had some essential oils that the cat knocked over. Only around 5 drops came out and I ran and picked her up. I washed her with water because I’m out of cat shampoo. Will she be ok? I’m not sure what breed she is but she’s mostly white with black splodges and she’s round 1 year old. Not on any medication or anything
• ⁠Species: cat • ⁠Age: 1 ish • ⁠Sex/Neuter status: female, unneutered • ⁠Breed: I’m not sure • ⁠Body weight: 20lbs maybe? • ⁠History: no history • ⁠Clinical signs: none yet • ⁠Duration: 5 minutes ago • ⁠Your general location: England • ⁠Links to any test results, X-rays, vet reports etc. that you have: none
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I’ve been trying to figure out what’s going on with my body for a few years. Joint pain and redness in my hands, wrists, and feet, Raynaud’s (more recently, didn’t get confirmation from a doctor til today), random multi-week episodes of hives/rash, fatigue, always feeling like I have a fever even if I don’t…
I had been waiting to meet with my PCP in July, but someone suggested I go to urgent care the next time I have symptoms just to get the ball rolling.
I haven’t gotten any results back yet, but I just wanted to give a shout out to the UC I went to - as soon as I finished listing off my symptoms and mentioning that I have Celiac Disease, both the nurse and the doctor gave me a knowing look and explained that when they put my symptoms together, it does sound like it could be something autoimmune. Or it could just be related to the CD. But they said that they wanted to take it seriously and do some blood tests, referred me to a rheumatologist, and gave me a round of steroids to see if they help at all.
I had seen a rheum last year for the same issue but all the blood tests they ran (which were just re-run) were negative. I also wasn’t having any symptoms by the time I could actually go in to see the rheum. I don’t know whether that would make a difference or not, though.
I got more validation in the 20 minutes I was at the clinic than I have in like 15 years with my 3 PCPs over the years. My last PCP shrugged and told me that I probably just got arthritis early (I’m 31F, was 29 at the time) and welcome to aging.

This may be kind of long and I apologize in advance but here we go.
​
I am 20 years old. First pregnancy. I was going to this OBGYN when I was about 16-17 with some issues with my period. She was awful with the exam, refused to update my mom or even let her back in the room with me (Even though I asked for her, and did not want to go without her).
After the exam with this OB I was bleeding for about 2 weeks after and was in a lot of pain but they refused to see me again to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent it. The exam was brutal, no warnings, no idea of what was coming next, my pain was ignored. They finished and the nurse even was rude leaving the door open while she told me "Hurry up and get dressed and get out"
I had gone back to get the implant (In your arm I forgot what it is called) and it had come out on its own a little while later. She refused to believe that it happened and just replaced it saying she never had a client who has done that before and I needed to be more careful. The second one stayed for a year before once again coming to the surface and I had to go to a different clinic to get it removed because the OB office again refused to believe me.
I had called the OB office in my city (so I didn't have to go to a different city 30 minutes away) and they transferred me automatically to her because I was established with her despite protests and wanting to see a different doctor.
​
I was having issues about a month ago now with huge cramps and being bedridden because of them. I had called this OB's office hoping for any sort of advice or maybe a move up or something. They had told me to call the OB ER because they hadn't seen me yet so there was nothing they could do. Okay fine. I called the OB ER and got told because Ive never been seen for my pregnancy that I couldn't be seen by them and I had to go to the actual ER. I went back and forth in between these 3 places before finally giving up, not being able to get a clear answer on where to go or anything. So I dealt with the pain.
Then I They called me again today to tell me they moved my appointment to next week and I was still with that doctor, despite asking for a different one.
​
So with all that in mind although I am 20, I am not listened to at all by this doctor or their offices. So can I take my mother into the room with me? Can they refuse to let her like they did when I was 16-17? If so what can I do to make myself more comfortable? Can I refuse to go back with them unless they let my mother back with me? Is there any clue on why they wont let me transfer doctors despite there being different doctors in that office?
Please Im looking for any kind of help. I am so scared of being caused to bleed again, or worse. I have been trying to figure this out for the last month I've had to wait for this appointment to even come up. I don't know what to do.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly. “Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way. He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them. The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement. When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly. The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces. In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning. I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him. I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly. “Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way. He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them. The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement. When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly. The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces. In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning. I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him. I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly. “Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way. He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them. The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement. When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly. The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces. In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning. I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him. I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly. “Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way. He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them. The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement. When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly. The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces. In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning. I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him. I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly. “Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way. He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them. The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement. When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly. The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces. In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning. I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him. I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I have a video, can someone take a look for my own peace of mind until we can get him to the vet?
Species: Cat • Age: 3 or 4 the shelter thinks (he was recently adopted) • Sex/Neuter status: male/neutered • Breed: domestic shorthair • Body weight: 15 lbs • History: has FIV • Clinical signs: Coughing once a day today and two days ago • Duration: lasts a few minutes • Your general location: Denver CO

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly.
“Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way.
He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them.
The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement.
When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly.
The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces.
In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning.
I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him.
I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly.
“Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way.
He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them.
The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement.
When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly.
The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces.
In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning.
I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him.
I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly.
“Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way.
He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them.
The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement.
When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly.
The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces.
In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning.
I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him.
I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly.
“Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way.
He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them.
The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement.
When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly.
The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces.
In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning.
I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him.
I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly.
“Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way.
He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them.
The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement.
When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly.
The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces.
In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning.
I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him.
I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly.
“Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way.
He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them.
The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement.
When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly.
The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces.
In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning.
I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him.
I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

I should have known the job was too good to be true.
Make two hundred dollars a night to sit in an undisclosed location from sun down to sun up. No previous experience required. Non Disclosure to be signed before hiring. Candidates who break NDA will be sued for breach of contract. Must have a strong constitution and high moral fiber. Interested parties call (number below)
For a college student who was struggling to pay tuition, car insurance, and keep food in the dorm fridge, this sounded too good to be true. I looked at the party offering the service and discovered that I knew them. Doctor Crandler was a BioMed teacher who had a bit of a reputation for being out there. He was said to conduct experiments after hours in the science lab and if he hadn’t had tenure, it was pretty likely that he would have been fired. These were all rumors, of course. I’d had Doctor Crandler last year for entry level human biomes and he was a delight. He turned out to be a huge Romero fan and loved to talk about zombies and old horror movies. We had really hit it off, and when I called the number, he sounded happy to hear from me.
“Oh thank god, I was hoping someone reliable would call. I’ve lost three this week, and I’m beginning to think I’ll have to stoop to drastic measures.”
Whatever drastic measures were, Doc C didn’t elaborate.
He just told me to come to the science lab at five fifteen sharp.
“And not a minute later!” he added before hanging up and leaving me with more questions than answers.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but two hundy was two hundy, and that would be able to put something in my body other than ramen noodles this week if the job was legit. So, about four thirty, I hopped on my bike and made my way across campus to the Verner May Science Building. It’s a huge old brick building that's been on campus since the nineteen forties. They say its been home to a lot of famous research and more than one questionable clinical trial. I had started to wonder if Doctor C was gonna try to experiment on me, and that's why he was being so secretive. I decided that if that was the case, two hundred was not enough. I had enough trouble scoring ladies with my pizza face and I doubted having four arms or two heads would help matters much.
I stepped through the doors at five o'clock sharp and Doctor Crandler looked up excitedly.
“Prompt as always! I remember that from my classes. You were always early, and I like a student who is punctual. Come this way and let me show you what I’m working on. Before we start out though,” he set a Non Disclosure Agreement in front of me and I looked over it before signing my name to it. It was pretty standard stuff. Don’t talk about what you see, don’t talk about what I’m working on, don’t tell the media, don’t post it on the internet (guess I messed that part up), yada yada yada. After that, he tossed a black hood onto the table and told me to put it on.
I hesitated, not having asked him anything about what we were doing yet.
“You’re, uh, not gonna experiment on me, right Doc?”
He laughed, but it didn't sound particularly merry.
“No no, my boy. I would never experiment on you. I have specific parameters and I'm afraid you just don't meet them.”
I wasn't sure whether to be glad or insulted, but I put the hood on either way.
He led me through a door, down some stairs, outside, back inside, and then down more stairs. Finally, we came to our destination, and when he took the hood off, I was in a little room about the size of your average dorm room. Inside was a table, a chair, and a glass jar with something floating inside. It was roughly the size of a spud, though if it was a potato it was one of those big ole Idaho job. I'd say it was about two feet tall, maybe half a foot wide, and it just sort of floated there placidly.
“This is your job.” Doctor C said, pointing to the jar.
“What? Just watch this thing? Easy peasy!” I said, not yet understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Just watch it till I get here to relieve you. Be careful, it's very tricky. It may try to get you to let it go. Do Not let it go under ANY circumstances. For that, I'll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”
I put out a hand, being a man who signs deals with a shake, and Doctor C pumped my arm one good time before saying he was going to leave now.
“I'm going to lock you in. If you have to urinate, there's a bucket in the corner. There are snacks and water in the mini fridge over there, though I would prefer it if you don't take your eyes off that jar.
I started to protest about having to wizz in a bucket, but I just nodded and told him not to worry about it. A deal was a deal, as my old man liked to say, and when he left, I heard the door lock behind him. So, I settled in and took out my phone as I surfed Reddit. I kept an eye on the jar, looking up about every thirty seconds, but mostly I just sat there and tried not to fall asleep. That was the hardest part. It was so boring, just sitting there for ten to twelve hours, and I made a mental sticky to bring coffee tomorrow. Doc had some snacks in his fridge, but Kale chips and pita chips with hummus are not what a man desires when he's trying not to zonk out.
The weird little thing in the jar didn't help much either. It was boring. All it did was float there, but I guess thats not quite true. Sometimes I would look up and find it looking at me, its weird brown body seeming to watch me. It couldn't really be doing that, since it didn't have eyes, but I still felt very seen as I sat there on my phone. I made a note to bring a charger too, but luckily it lasted till the doc came back, and he smiled as he handed me my two hundred dollars in cash at the end of the shift.
“Do you feel anything? Any headaches or nausea?” he asked.
I told him I didn't and he invited me to come back tomorrow night.
I told him for sure, and left two hundred bones the richer.
I kept watching the little science project for the next week and ended with an extra fourteen hundred bucks in my pocket. I agreed to do it seven nights a week, and as spring began, the nights got a little shorter too. Soon the sun was going down closer to eight, and I didn't have to show up till seven thirty or eight o'clock. Getting a couple of hundred bucks for ten hours of work was boss, and I got a lot of Raid Shadow Legends played and Reddit scoped while I sat there and collected mulla for sitting on ass.
When I arrived Tuesday of the next week, however, something had changed in my little potato cash cow.
The thing had an ear.
Doc sat me down and as the hood came off, he asked if I noticed anything different about the little blob. I looked at it critically, but couldn't really see anything different. Doc didn't really like this answer, and told me to look harder. After a few minutes of coming up with nothing, he sighed in exasperation and pointed.
“It has acquired an auditory openings for vocal registration.”
The look I gave him must have told him all he needed, because he just shook his head and tapped the tank.
“It has an ear hole.” he said, and I finally got it.
After some looking, I realized what he was talking about and he seemed pretty proud of himself.
“We've been working with chemical stimuli and had a breakthrough when it finally developed some form of communication peripheral.”
“How do you know it can hear you?”
It was his turn to look puzzled, until I pointed out that it didn't have any way to let them know if it could hear them.
“Well, it kind of wiggles around when we talk to it or play music. It hadn't done that much before, so we think it must be able to hear us.”
He left after that, and I made sure to turn the volume up on my videos so the little dude, or dudette, could listen too. It definitely bounced around a little, dancing in the water a bit as it moved around in its glass tank. I thought it was a little funny, and turned the volume way up as it wiggled and wobbled.
By the end of the week, it had two ear holes and some little baby ears to go with them.
The Doc told me to take a week off after that, saying they had some experiments to run on the little thing, and I told him to call me back when he needed me. I took some time and spent a little of my money paying bills and settling debts. By the end of the week, I was praying for a call from Doc C, and Sunday night, he obliged.
“I could use a set of eyes next week, if you're free.”
I told him I'd be there, and pumped my fist in excitement.
When he took the hood off monday, he was rewarded by a “whoa” of interest from yours truly.
The little sucker had a toothless mouth that it seemed to be opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I came in Sunday to find that it had grown it. It's pretty interesting stuff,” Doctor C told me, “Has it spoken to you before tonight? Some of my assistants claim it has spoken to them by way of telekinesis, but you don't seem to have suffered from any of the symptoms they've talked about.”
“Thankfully not, Doc. All the little guy does is float and make me money.”
Doc C nodded, looking thoughtful before leaving and locking me in for the night.
I had just brought my phone out to start scrolling Reddit for the night, when I heard a muffled voice from somewhere. I looked up, thinking someone was outside the door, but the door was solid wood. I looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't accidentally butt dialing someone, but thats when I heard the slight tap from in front of me. I looked up to see the little potato thing as it bumped the glass with its body, its toothless mouth forming words from behind its prison.
“Hello? Are you there?” it asked, its words muffled by the water and the glass.
I looked at it, not sure if it could even hear me when I responded, but when it floated back a little, I guessed it probably could.
“Hello, you sound different than the good doctor or his friends. Are you someone new?”
“Not really,” I said, half laughing, “I've actually been here watching you for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” it said, very interested, “You must be the one I couldn't reach. I'm glad we can finally speak properly.”
I sat my phone down, leaning in a little closer as I watched the little brown thing float in the off color water that held it.
“What do you mean? You only just got a mouth.”
“Yes, well, there are more ways than one to communicate, aren't there? I've been trying to touch your mind for weeks, but you don't seem overly receptive to my advances. Thus, I had to find alternative means of communication if we were to speak.”
Its voice, despite being muffled by the glass, was very smart sounding. Little dude was the smartest floating potato I had ever met, though the list was just him for the moment. He sounded like the doc a little. He used a lot of big words, and sounded like he knew a lot of stuff. I put my face a little closer to the glass as I looked at him, watching him float there, and wondering what he might know?
We talked a lot that night. Well, I talked a lot. The little just kind of floated and listed, throwing something out every now and again. He wanted to know where he was, how he had come to be in a fishbowl, and what the Doc intended to do with him? I didn't know most of these things, and I told him that. He didn't seem too thrilled with that answer, but he still kept talking to me. He asked about me and what I was studying and what sort of things I liked to do. I didn't pick up my phone much that night. Instead, I told the little guy about myself and we talked for hours about nothing in particular.
The clock said it was about four am when the subject finally turned to what he really wanted.
I wish now that we had just kept talking about me.
“So, despite the fact that you cant leave this place, you could still take me out of this tank, right?”
I snorted, “Why would you want to? It's really not much better out here than in there.”
“True, but I would very much like to experience life outside my bowl. I lack hands or I would do it myself, but you could help me out.”
“Sorry, little dude,” I said, and I found that I was kinda sorry, “you're a good hang, but I promised the Doc that I wouldn't take you out. I think it was one of those papers I had to sign to get this job.”
“No one has to know,” it said, its voice kind of sneaky as it pressed its brown side against the glass, “you could take me out for just a second and then put me right back in.”
“No,” I said, looking at the door like I'd been doing something wrong, “I...I really shouldn't.”
“Please,” it begged, “You have no idea what its like to live in your own filth. Now that I have a mouth, I can constantly taste the stagnant water I live in. It's pure hell.”
“Dude, stop it. That's not cool. You know I can't take you out, I told Doc I,” but then it did the last thing I would have expected.
It started to cry.
I don't mean it was pretending to cry, the thing started loosing these tortured sounds that made me think of someone going through a bad break up. It sounded super hopeless, and it began to bump it's body against the side of the tank. I picked up my phone and tried to ignore it, but its hard listening to something just cry and cry like that. I had a room mate once who just kinda gave up after his girlfriend dumped him and he just lay on his bed and cried until his parents finally came to get him. I never saw ole dude again, but I can still hear his sobs sometimes when I close my eyes.
It was heartbreaking, and infuriating, and I wanted to console him as much as I wanted him to shut the hell up.
“Please! Please just let me out! I can't stand this anymore! I need to get out! I need to get out! I NEED TO GET OUT!”
It yelled and screamed and begged and cried for another hour and a half, and when the key turned in the lock, I was never happier to see the Doc.
Doc C looked at the little creature in the jar and asked me what had happened?
“Nothin,” I said, “It started talking after you left and then when I wouldn't let it out, it started screaming and crying.”
Far from being angry or disturbed, Doc C seemed amazed. He started studying the thing through the glass, before I reminded him that I was done for the night and needed to leave. He pulled himself away begrudgingly before handing me my money and putting the sack back over my head. I found an extra hundred in the pile that night, for my suffering I supposed, and thought about not coming back that night. The blubbering and crying had been a lot to handle, but I couldn't deny that the money was good and it was helping me pay down a lot of my outstanding debts. Another month of this, and my rent would be paid for the next year. Another two months and my credit card would be paid and I could afford that new flat screen for the living room. The things wailing had been a lot to handle, but what was a little more next to financial freedom?
I made sure to pick up some earplugs before I came back the following night and that's how I spent my next week.
In that week, the little creature grew an eye and four small fingers, two on each side of its body.
The night I arrived to find it had an eye, it told me all night how I looked like a kind person, and how it didn't understand how I could just sit here and watch it suffer. The earplugs helped a little, but it seemed like I could still hear it through the plugs. It would start out trying to talk to me, trying to flatter me, trying to reason with me, but we would always end up with it crying and me trying to ignore it. It became harder and harder as time went on, and every night seemed to be a battle to not open the tank and let it out or to just flip the table and smash its tank into a thousand pieces.
In the end, it always came down to the money and I always managed to stop myself from doing something stupid.
It was a Tuesday when something I hadn't considered happened.
Tuesday night started out just like any other. Doc C brought me into the room, took off the hood, and there sat the little creature in its glass prison. It smiled at me, and I could see a couple of teeth breaking the gums. It had six fingers now and they made it look a little like a bug as they wiggled energetically. It still had only the one eye, but the beginnings of a nose had started to form under it. It was a repugnant little thing, and as the Doc left and I settled in, I kept my mind on the money, reminding myself that I just had to power through tonight.
It would be over in ten hours and I could go back to my room and sleep.
It spent the next ten hours talking, pleading, crying, and trying everything it could to gain its freedom. Well, that's not quite true. It never tried to threaten me. It probably realized that such a thing would have been pointless. It could no more have hurt me than my two year old nephew could and had decided on a different gambit. When it started its piercing wailing again, I popped the ear plugs in and shut most of it out. The plugs tuned the thing down to about a two, and made it easier to ignore. I was just thinking that I might treat myself to some really nice noise canceling headphones and forgo the tv for another week, when I saw someone familiar in a piece of Reddit News.
I almost dropped the phone as I read over the article, not sure what to make of it.
“Doctor Joseph Crandler arrested after trying to buy biological materials from an undercover agent.”
The picture showed Doc C looking very unhappy as he was led away in cuffs. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him leave in the night before, and the article that followed didn't cheer me up. He had been buying materials from his experiments from some disreputable people, and finally he had put his trust in the wrong one, or maybe the right one, I guess. The agent had arrested him and they were holding him for questioning.
I felt a cold chill as I looked over at the little freak in the tank. Was this the sort of experiment he'd been buying materials for? I had never thought to question if this thing was something the college had sanctioned or not, and now I realized that I might be part of an illegal experiment. They'd be coming for me next, me and this thing, and they'd assume I was the Egor to his Doctor Frankfurter or whatever.
As the creature wailed and thrashed, my brain started putting blocks together that it should have a few minutes ago.
My biggest problem wasn't that they would think I was involved, it was that if they didn't come and the Doc didn't come, then I would have no way out of here.
I was trapped with this little crying dude for god knew how long.
I thought about calling for help, but that could be bad too. What if they thought I was part of this? I'd have a hard time convincing them that I had nothing to do with this when they found me with the evidence. What's more, all the Doc had to say was that I was his assistant, that he had paid me, and I'd be in the same prison chow line as him.
I started looking around the room for escape routes, but there was nothing but the very locked door. The little creature kept asking what was happening, but I just kept ignoring him. There were no windows, no other doors, not even a vent to squeeze into, like in the movies. All the while, the creature wailed and pleaded to be released. It knew something was wrong, and it wanted to be set free. It could help me, it could get me out of here, it could do anything as long as I would take it out of the tank.
After searching the little room again and again, I finally just sat and tried not to go crazy.
My phone will make calls, but I have no idea how to tell anyone to find me or even if they could. I tried to explain to the police what was happening, I even mentioned Doctor C, but I think the dispatcher thought I was high. They started hanging up on me when I called back, and if they trace my number, all their going to find is my dorm room, which is empty. Luckily, I have a charger on me, so I can keep calling out and trying to get someone to help me.
I checked the fridge, and there's enough bottled water and snacks in there to last for three or four days. Less if I feed this little bastard, but I'm not even sure what he eats. I've never been given any feeding instructions for him, and I'm not going to waste my food on this squalling thing. I threw a tarp over him, but it isn't doing anything to dull the screaming. It sounds like he might have grown more mouths because I can hear his shrill little voice from every angle as it bounces off the wall.
One things for sure, if it doesn't stop screaming soon, I'm going to give him some kind of release.
If it goes on much longer, I'm going to wrench the lid off that tank and stomp the life out of him.
If someone doesn’t come soon, I’m going to release him from his suffering forever.

Lots of thoughts going through my head right now ... thankfully I see my therapist in a few hours: I officially sent my letter to my clinic and am scheduled for my endo next week to start HRT. I signed the consent on Friday so I've known I was getting my letter for almost a week, but knowing it and actually seeing it are 2 different things. Then I finally got it at 8am this morning, cried for a good 5 minutes in the parking lot, and have been fighting back tears of joy all day at work. But at the same time so many new feelings are hitting me. I've known since I was 8 (currently 36) BUT I have failed to transition at least 3 times already for various reasons. I have never been more sure of anything than wanting this, and being ready to follow through, and actually having a support system this time to help me instead of going it alone, and yet ... at the same time I have also never been more unsure about wanting something, and feeling like im not ready for this, and of course the every present AM I REALLY TRANS?!? nagging in the back of your mind ... I have always wanted to be a woman (on the "if I woke up as a woman and just had to hit a button to go back to a guy," test, there is a 0% chance I hit that button) and yet now that I will be and am closer to being one than I ever have been my brain is rebelling against me. Which is where the internalized transphobia kicks in, you will never be good enough because you wont have periods or be able to have kids and whats the point of transitioning if you cant do those things, you are fat and ugly and have super thick facial hair which is impossible to shave. you will always look like a man in a dress. You have no sense of color making doing make up impossible. you are tone deaf so you will never be able to do voice training. SHUT UP BRAIN AND LET ME DO WHAT I WANT!

Morning rose with the sun shining down past the bundle of bamboo. The song of birds could be heard far away, as everything laid dormant. Close to where Eientei stood; still retaining most of its infrastructure, was everyone who had survived another blood moon night.
Sumireko woke up, feeling groggy as she rubbed her eyes and stood up. She looked around and found Rumia next to her. She recalled what had happened last night, how Rumia nearly lost control again and killed someone. Fortunately for everyone Sumireko still had the White Rose on her, even if she still doesn’t know why it reacts under a blood moon.
“What a night.” She thought. “You think that we could have at least one night in Gensokyo without anything happening. But then again, it is Gensokyo.”
She looked over to her left, finding another figure who laid on the ground. Her hair was a dark auburn, with a pair of wolf ears and long claw-like nails on her hands. She looked to be sleeping peacefully; as though everything that happened last night never happened. The only issue however is that she didn’t seem to have anything to wear, which caused Sumireko to look away upon realizing that fact.
“And another person who we ran into along our travels too. It feels like everytime we go somewhere we find an abandoned place, meet someone new, then fight bad guys and nearly die in the process.” Sumireko thought, looking around to see if anyone else was awake. “I guess I should go wake the others since I’m up.”
…
Kagerou Imaizumi was sitting inside the clinic on a small stool, her body covered up with a cloak given to her by Satsujin after he and everyone else woke up. Many of them were still injured so they went back inside knowing there would be supplies and medicine which can heal them up in a jiffy. Currently Wakasagihime was keeping her company, as was Kosuzu, and Sumireko, while the others were looking for whatever medicine Eirin made that could heal all wounds in seconds.
“I’m so glad you’re okay Kagerou.” Wakasagihime said while hugging her friend as tight as she could with tears of joy. “To think that you were the giant wolf all along.”
“I-I’m glad to see you also.” Kagerou, feeling her lungs being pressed together thanks to the sheer strength the mermaid had. She didn’t want to push her friend away though, so she remained quiet about it. “It’s a good thing that I didn’t mistake you for food or something.”
“So, what do you know?” Sumireko asked, wondering if the wolf girl had any recollection of what happened last night or anything prior. “Do you remember what you did during the blood moon?”
“Um, not really… I do remember when everything turned to chaos about a month ago. I just remember finding refuge with some other youkai who I knew from the Grassroots Youkai Network. We were fine at first for a couple of weeks; hiding in a cave big enough to hold about 10 or so of us. But then one night one of us noticed the area outside turning red like it did before, only this time someone got curious and checked it out… Then the next thing I knew I myself was fleeing for my life out in the open, trying to avoid looking at the light’s origin.”
“But you did anyway, didn’t you.” Kosuzu asked. “That’s when you turned into that beast.”
Kagerou nodded. “I have the ability to turn into a werewolf on full moons. Normally I hate it because I end up so hairy. But I guess the red colored moon amplified that somehow. I really don’t remember what happened afterwards, but when I reverted back to my normal self, I didn’t have anything to wear, and I could recall the aftertaste of rabbit… I must’ve eaten a lot of people during those nights… You must hate me because of that.” She said in a down tone.
“Hate you? I would never!” Wakasagihime said. “You and Sekibanki are two of my closest friends! I would never hate either of you no matter what!” She said, squeezing her tighter than before.
“T-Thank you…Princess.” Kagerou said, feeling her ribs being crushed. “C-could you loosen your grip now please?”
"Wait, where is Satsujin?" Sumireko said, looking around. “Wasn’t he here not too long ago?”
“I think he went to check on the others.” Kosuzu said.
"Hey." A feminine voice spoke from nowhere.
And there was Satsujin, or rather, Satsuki, who was wearing a new attire, consisting of a black kimono with a cherry flower imprint, along with a hair retouch that made the original's style go from a natural mess to something more sophisticated.
"So, how do I look? I just found this room with a lot of intact clothes, and I figured out I could give myself and him a new coat of paint." Satsuki said, spinning around.
"I don't know why you chose this attire, rather than something that won't mess up so easily." A layered voice said.
"Hey, you should've been glad I took the time to give us some basic care! You haven't changed our clothes in days! Besides, what's so bad about fighting with style?" Satsuki said.
"Whatever. I'm just glad there's something covering me down there at least." The layered voice said.
Sumireko starred with wide eyes, almost in disbelief in the outfit in question. It seemed odd but at the same time it suited Satsujin, or in this case Satsuki very well. Wakasagihime and Kagerou both looked in awe. Kosuzu on the other hand had a much more ecstatic expression.
“Oh my god!!!” Kosuzu said. “You look amazing in that! You look like a refined noble lady. No, better. You look like an impoverished boy who had been turned into a beautiful woman with the help of a kind goddess, who gets taken in by a noble samurai as you both fall in love and get married and have a beautiful daughter together!!! This gives me an idea for a possible story actually! Oh, if only I had my books with me!” She squealed.
Meanwhile, Mary could just admire her partner in crime, unable to say anything. She had her hands clenched together, moving towards her. "You look…so…PRETTY!! AAAAAAAAHHHHH~" She said, screaming like a fangirl, with a full face blush.
Some of the others had similar impressions. Meiling liked Satsuki’s style, Suika gave a thumbs up, Ko could only stare with mild confusion; believing that the person in front of her was supposed to be Satsujin.
The one person who had a much different opinion on the matter was Youki. The swordsman took a good look at the blue-red eyed girl, and how much prettier she was now. It was enough for him to leave the room momentarily, only to return after wiping his nose of any possible blood that might’ve leaked.
Inside Satsujin’s mind, a few of his variants had similar yet mixed feelings regarding Satsuki’s style choice. Satsunyan was one of the few who was very excited.
“Nyah! We look totes adorbs! You go girl!” Satsunyan said.
“Why…are we wearing a dress?” Satsuko asked Sateen.
“Because the fouls of darkness that haunts our very being wishes to make us suffer, knowing full well that the draconic aura of our hearts would dwindle upon receiving compliments that would make us question the many things that make us who we are.” Sateen said in an edgy tone.
“Why…Didn’t you stop her?” Grim asked Satsujin. “No, seriously why?”
“Because it was better than not being exposed.” Satsujin answered.
…
After some recovering and conversations, the group knew the next task at hand: Figuring out where to go next.
“Kosuzu?” Sumireko asked the young spirit. “Do you have any possible idea on where everyone from Eientei went?”
“I wish I knew, but unfortunately I don’t know. When I became a spirit, everyone was already gone, leaving me here alone. I tried checking the entries in hope that there would be some kind of clue, but no.” Kosuzu flipped through the pages of the journal to show that there was no proof of Haru’s whereabouts. “I’m sorry I can’t be of much help.”
“So we’re back to square one.” Suika stated. “We came all the way here, nearly lost our lives repeatedly, and we still have no clue on if all our friends are still in the land of the living.”
“Hey, don’t say it like that. I know they’re still out there somewhere.” Kosuzu said. “Besides, they have Haru with them. I haven’t known him for too long, but I know that he is very capable and very strong.”
“Yeah, and with a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ kind of attitude.” Suika said. “Or in his case: Chop someone’s arm off without giving a valid reason, then stay in their home knowing full well you’re making everyone else anxious just by being in your presence, while having next to no social awareness.”
“Eh?” Kosuzu was a little confused. “What do you mean Suika? Do you know him?”
“Oh… You have no idea.” Suika said in a calmer voice. She reached into her pocket once again, checking to make sure a certain box was still on her personnel.
“Uh…Well anyways. If only we had something to give us a clue on where to go next.” Kosuzu said.
And then flying out of the sky, into the doors of Eientei, down the endless hallways, making several turns around corners, slipping through the crack of the door into the room where most of everyone was in, slapping onto the face of Meiling was a sheet of paper. The gatekeeper took the paper off her face, looking at it closely.
“What’s that?” Cirno asked Meiling.
“A paper… With horrible handwriting.” Meiling said.
“That’s definitely Haru’s.” Sumireko said. “PB?”
“On it.” PB took the paper, making a translated copy and handing it over to Kosuzu.
—
May 4th, Year 202X
Time of writing: 7 pm. Cloudy day. Chance of soft rain tonight.
It's been a few hours since Kosuzu's cremation ceremony.
Not all of us were able to attend, as there were many who were still injured and needed someone to provide care for them. That only left me, Akyuu, and a handful of other people who knew her well.
Akyuu was heartbroken to see her friend die. The whole time while she was speaking she couldn’t stop crying or sobbing everytime she finished a sentence. When she finished she bawled her eyes out and I along with a few others had to go take her to another room.
Flandre’s condition had improved physically, I noticed how her wings have been growing back and forming new crystals, something I didn’t expect to see nor understand. However her mental condition remained the same. Even now, she doesn’t talk to anyone, she won’t eat unless someone spoon-feeds her, and she still keeps clinging onto that container of ash labeled ‘Remilia’. I wish I could do more for her, but…
I don’t know what to do.
I came here to Gensokyo by pure chance, only for my skills to be put up to the challenge the moment The Depraved Incident occurred. I've been working day and night; barely any sleep or time to rest, just to help everyone and anyone who I can still save.
But I still keep failing, I still keep losing those who I wish to save. To think I still call myself a doctor after all of this…
But I still can’t give up, nor can I allow myself to grieve.
I've been considering making an expedition over to Youkai Mountain tomorrow. Because of the tengu village, and the shrine that sits on top of the mountain, there is a pretty good chance that there is some sort of resistance established there. And considering that I could find tougher enemies to deal with before getting there, I've decided to bring two more people with me just in case. The two best options I'm considering right now are Seiran and Aunn. First off, Seiran can use that strange telepathic communications mechanism exclusive to her species she told me some time ago to keep constant contact with Ringo, in case something goes wrong, and second, since Aunn is the more visible face of the Hakurei Shrine aside from Reimu herself, it might make things easier when we need someone to vouch for us.
I'll announce my plan later today to the rest of the team. It shouldn't be a problem to convince them, but if it goes wrong, I'll have to go alone, as always.
…
I̳͍ͭͧ͘͝ ̛̙̜ͪ̏́cͨ͂҉̞̪͘a̛̻̪̐̿͡n̵̨̘͔ͭͥ'̸͆ͪ҉̥͉t͙̹ͦ̈͘͜ ̬͓̊̈͞͡d̴̀̚҉͚̰o̢ͦ͋҉͖̻ ͣͮ͜҉̥̗t̖͍ͥͩ͝͠h̶̙̞͊̑͝i̶͖̤̒̋͝ș̨̞̉͆͞ ̶̶̭͚ͨ̊a̳̮ͣ̄̕͠n̢͖̥̔̀͢y̵͎͍̽ͮ͜mͧ͒͏̡̪̠ó̹̱ͪ͜͝ŗ̑͑͏̠̦e̛̠͈ͫ̿͝.͐ͩ͞҉̥̻ ͍̞̋̏͟͞
—
“...” Kosuzu looked at the last part of the entry with a sense of worry, with feelings concerned over what it could mean.
“Youkai Mountain? That’s where they went?” Sumireko said.
“That makes sense actually.” Meiling said. “From what I know, it is home to the Kappa and Tengu, both of whom are talented and knowledgeable respectively. Plus you also got Moriya Shrine there, which most people can access via the ropeway.”
“Ropeway?” Mary asked.
“Yeah, the ropeway. It’s easy to identify with the little sign close to it. I can’t imagine anyone missing it and attempting to scale up the entire mountain by themselves.” Meiling chuckled.
“Well what are we waiting for? We should head over there as soon as possible!” Sumireko said.
*growl*
Everyone heard the sound of a stomach rumbling. That stomach being Kagerou, whom they all looked at.
“Um… Sorry.” Kagerou blushed a little. “I guess I haven’t eaten much.”
“Even despite what happened last night?” A few thought.
“I guess it is better to find something to eat first; gather up some energy so we are ready for when we depart.” Cirno said. “Now, what kind of food would a clinic have…”
While the others looked for something they could possibly eat, Kosuzu continued to look over the entry again, trying to see if there was something else.
“Is there something on your mind, Kosuzu?” PB asked her.
"I'm worried about something else. The last line of the journal is unreadable. Mr. PB, are you sure you transcribed it well?" Kosuzu said, handing the transcription again to PB.
“Hm… I am certain that I have. Though this is strange, as though it is unnatural…” PB looked at the paper once again. “But then again I have seen similar scenarios in the past with previous companions long ago. Something like this is usually a sign of their mental health waning; the energy to keep running low until they are completely drained.”
“S-should I be worried then?” Kosuzu asked, concerned about what it could mean regarding Haru.
“Hm… Well if there is one thing I can say, and this is based on an old friend of mine… Is that the ones who are the most depressed are usually the ones who are too stubborn to give up. Judging on what I know about this Dr. Haru, he sounds like a man who can be pummeled to near-death, yet gets right back up again just to prove his resilience.”
“What is this old friend you speak of?” Kosuzu asked. “Are they someone you know well?”
“Indeed. I can still remember the first time we met. The journeys we went through, the friends we made, the struggles we accomplished… It is a shame that they went through so much, all because of my value.” PB said. “Perhaps someday, we can meet again, though when it’ll happen remains unknown in my database.”
Kosuzu looked at PB, then down at the entry again, staring at the words for a moment.
"I just wish he is still holding on." Kosuzu thought, clenching her hand in her chest, looking at the sky. "Friend…"
…
A small container with an exciting label of a whole roasted bird being converted into a tiny little pill, referred to simply as “Insta-dinner: An entire full course meal in a single pill!!!”
This was what everyone used to fill up their stomachs. Just one pill and bam! However, Sumireko kept staring at it, not eating it. The rest's appetites were satiated.
Meiling took one with some water, and moments later all the hunger she had felt since yesterday had all but faded.
“Oh, I feel full. I don’t think I felt full in months!” Meiling said.
“I know right! I had to eat like three of these just for my stomach to say that I had enough.” Suika said.
Some of the others were a little doubtful on the effects of the pill however. Sumireko was looking at the small red and brown colored capsule with slight doubt.
"Oh. The last thing we need is to turn someone here into a giant blueberry and then have them go through a juicer." Sumireko said, reluctant to take the pill.
“I have no idea what you’re referring to.” Satsujin said, taking the pill himself. “You should eat it anyways, because who knows how long we’ll get to eat again.”
Sumireko was going to say that dead people wouldn’t eat. But then remembered a certain ghost and her gluttonous appetite, so she remained silent about the matter and swallowed the medicine.
Now it was time to get ready. Once they leave Eientei, they’ll be making a one way trip over to Youkai Mountain. Some of the group members were doing some last-minute things before they depart.
Youki, Mary, and Cirno were sharpening their blades to ensure efficiency in combat, using the grindstone Mary had found a while back.
"Mary's grindstone proved to be an excellent tool. My sword is as good as new again." Youki said, checking the weapon one last time.
Ko was spending a bit more time with Rumia, resting her head on her lap while Rumia stroked her hair. Gummy and Shanghai accompanied Ko as well.
Suika was chugging down her gourd before the trip.
Wakasagihime and Kagerou were chatting, with Kagerou now wearing a new outfit identical to her old one.
Meiling was in the middle of meditating.
Satsujin was checking on some things inside his mind.
That only left Sumireko, who was standing alone by herself while holding the white rose in her hand. She looked at it, though questioning its existence and purpose. She could recall what Merciel and Su-Wang have told her regarding the rose’s power.
You have to be absolutely certain… Was what Merciel told her.
That would mean you would no longer have it… Was what Su-Wang said.
Thinking about it, she and everyone in their group were very fortunate to not have been killed or corrupted during their travels. If anything happened, then at some point she would’ve had to determine if it was worth using the rose or not. Sure, they can bring someone back to life, but what if by using it now, they waste the opportunity to use it later for someone more important?
As she thought that, she noticed PB and Kosuzu coming back, with the young spirit holding what looked to be a flask containing a pile of ash.
"Why are you carrying that?" Sumireko asked, pointing to the flask she had on her hands.
"I want to ask you all a favor. When we get through all of what will come, and find out where they went, could you please…spread my ashes on what's left of my library?" Kosuzu said, moving over to the front so everyone could hear her.
The room got very quiet suddenly. Everyone turned to hear what Kosuzu just said. They were a little surprised to hear that come from her of all people; some even almost forgetting that the young bookworm who could always be seen sweeping her family’s store was now dead.
Sumireko looked back at the flower again, then at Kosuzu. If she really wanted to she could just hand the flower to her and use it to revive her. It would be easy after all; bring someone back from the dead and be done with it.
Yet… She remained quiet. While everyone knew of the flower’s healing properties, none of them knew about its ability to revive others, save for herself. She only wants to use the rose in case of an emergency.
Someone truly important.
“Sure thing Kosuzu.” Sumireko said in a slightly saddened tone.
“Thank you.” Kosuzu said.
…
Everyone departed Eientei, making their way out the doors of the long abandoned clinic, and out into the morning sunrise that could be seen past the bamboo. For some reason, most of them felt like their journey was slowly coming to an end; just one last place to look and it’ll be over.
One journey ends, and another begins. A quote that Sumireko thought for some reason yet couldn’t recall where she heard it. She had put the rose away, moving her hand over to the locket that was still around her neck.
She looked inside, remembering the smile of her late little sister, before closing it and quickly catching up to everyone else.
“Up next everyone! We’re going to Youkai Mountain!” Sumireko said.
“YEAH!!!” Everyone cheered, following the psychic through the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.
—
Moriya Shrine…
Located somewhere close to the top of Youkai Mountain. The home of two goddesses and a wind priestess…Least, it used to.
Right in front of the shrine, a girl wearing pure white miko clothing had been kneeling down on the shrine grounds, giving a prayer to whomever may be listening. That girl was Yuzuki, the current temporal Shrine Maiden. And behind her was Kasen Ibaraki, currently possessed by the God of Despair Demise.
Inside the Shrine, a voice spoke.
“So… In exchange for this newfound body you gave me, all I have to do is beat up some kids?” The voice asked.
“Why, of course. A man as great as you should have no problem doing a simple task.” Demise said in a charming tone. “Why, the body Yuzuki gave you using her power matches your charismatic personality! I’d say you’re much more captivating than I am.”
“Heh…Those words…You make me blush honestly.” The figure said. “And yet we’re so alike, are we not? We both know that our charm and skills are what put us on the top; having our hands grip tight on the leashes of those we control and manipulate; climbing ladders made of bones of our enemies.”
“Haha…I have to agree with you… After all, to think that an all-powerful being such as you reincarnated into one of the most powerful men of this universe… A shame of what happened to you and your brother though back where we came from. Who knew the other gods wouldn’t agree with your views on the mortal realms?”
“My brother… That reminds me… How is Larry doing?” The voice asked, inside a figure showed a sharp smile.
“Your brother is doing well, Simon… I’d say he’s been getting well acquainted with the Satori, all thanks to the hard-working efforts of Professor Altalune.” Demise said. “A genius man indeed. But nowhere near the level of intelligence or wisdom your brother bears.”
“But of course. And you; with your foresight and your ability to control vibrations… It is nothing compared to the vast power that I now hold once again.” Simon said. “Oh…And one last thing before you go.”
“What is it, oh Omniscient One?” Demise asked.
“How many do you wish for me to kill?”
Demise smiled, looking into the future for a brief moment to get an idea on what’s to come. Then he held out his hand in response.
“Two. No more, no less.” Demise answered.
---
To Be Continued in ACT 2-11: Ropeway to False Divinity
...
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