The lab where I work is not a regular sort of lab. We wear protective equipment and do decontamination protocols to ensure that anything on the inside stays there, and doesn’t escape.

Proteon’s Level Eight Consumer Medical Products Division is what it’s officially called. But for those of us who work here, we just know it as “THE PIT.”

We are on the furthest floor down from the main level - far away from the gleaming offices of the thirty-ninth floor - where suited executives discuss business portfolios while sipping lattes and smoking cigars.

Despite its name, THE PIT is well-lit, at least. The bright fluorescent glow of the lamps overhead cast everything in a stark, shockingly electric white. You almost have to shield your eyes from all the reflective polished steel surfaces belonging to high-tech equipment. Everything from stirrers, hot plates, precision balances, incubators, microscopes and pH meters - all top of the line.

I’m not supposed to talk about what we’re working on down there, in THE PIT. But I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. Not to me, anyways.

We did experiments down there. Things I deeply regret.

Our assignment was to create a biological solution to assist people with weight loss. The idea was to design a genetically modified tapeworm that would help people reach their desired weight, then could be drawn out with a biologically implanted trigger.

It sounds disgusting, I know. But you’d be amazed what people will do to lose weight.

I was shocked to see a human volunteer amble into the laboratory one day. He’d been forced to sign several NDAs and was told not to say a word about THE PIT to anyone.

The man was over three hundred pounds, and he was eager to try the new treatment we were offering. Even when we told him what it was, he didn’t flinch. He just agreed enthusiastically, asking how the worm would be implanted.

After the procedure was finished, the man stood up from the steel examination table looking excited. He said it was the first day of the rest of his life, and he couldn’t wait to see the results from the treatment.

It took all of my effort not to throw up, just thinking about that worm squirming around in his belly, sniffing for food.

Since I was assigned as lead for the project, the man was given my work cell phone to call in case of emergencies or issues with the worm. We didn’t anticipate anything unusual - we had simply modified the worm’s genes to exit the body when we told it to. But still, this was experimental, and I was a little worried about testing it for the first time on a human. I had been working at Proteon for long enough to know better than to ask questions, though. The last whistleblower at the company had met an untimely demise.

Weeks went by and the subject reported weight loss in excess of fifteen pounds. He was thrilled by the results.

Only a few more days remained in the trial, and a few of us in the lab were joking around, saying how it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to lose a few inches ourselves. Working in a lab doesn’t afford a lot of opportunity for exercise, after all, and it’s hard to stay in shape.

I wasn’t the first one to swallow one of the worms. Kevin did it, and then Lisa, and then Rebecca. I felt an odd sense of peer pressure to join them.

“C’mon, Jake,” Rebecca said, prodding me with her elbow. “Imagine what it would be like to look fifty pounds lighter…”

She said this while looking at me flirtatiously. We were both on the bigger side, and I thought about the two of us looking fit and skinny, having sex in the back of her Jeep Cherokee. She would definitely let me have sex with her if I was skinny, I thought.

With that idea in my mind, I held up the worm with my forefingers and dropped it down my gullet, like a kid during recess trying to impress the cool kids. Except we had all done it. We had all ingested the creatures designed by untested science.

And we were all about to pay the price.

For a little while things were good.

I started to lose weight, slowly at first, then a little more every day. Despite eating ravenously at times, the fat continued to burn away, disappearing effortlessly. I wasn’t exercising or doing anything different from my usual routine. If anything I was eating more - feeling like no matter how much I shoved down my gullet I was always hungry.

Despite feeling tired and hungry all the time, I was encouraged by the weight loss.

Just like our subject, I found myself stepping on the scale and seeing I had shed fifteen pounds in a matter of weeks.

As I stepped off the scale, though, I felt something stirring inside of me. The worm, I assumed. But it felt larger now, like a python uncoiling itself and yawning as it awoke for the day, hungry for a meal.

That made me feel unsettled, but I tried to ignore it and went about my day, going to work as usual. I attempted to reach the subject of our experiment, but he didn’t pick up the phone. It was the second day in a row he hadn’t answered.

“He’s probably busy with a hot date,” Rebecca said.

She was looking good. The missing weight around her face was already noticeable, and despite her colour appearing slightly grey, I thought her ass was getting a nice sort of peachy shape to it.

“How about the two of us go on a hot date?” I asked her, feeling impulsive and more confident than I had in years. “Le Château, tonight at eight?”

Her cheeks coloured with a rosy blush.

“Hell yeah,” she said, smiling and showing her tiny teeth and tall gums.

Her glasses fogged up as we kissed behind the centrifuge, and I told her I’d pick her up at seven.

That night I went to her apartment to pick her up, and knocked on her door.

She opened up, appearing a little green.

“Come on in,” she said, gulping. “I just need a minute. I’m not feeling well all of a sudden.”

I went in and sat down, feeling not so great myself. It was just hitting me at that moment, a sensation like I was spinning while standing on top of a very tall building.

Sitting down hard on the couch, she plopped down beside me. She set her hand down on my leg and I noticed dully that something was moving around underneath her skin, burrowing like Bugs Bunny.

It didn’t even register to me that I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been, when I saw the same thing was happening to my own arm. I felt my face and noticed it was moving as well, deforming and bulging with the movements of parasites underneath. Not one worm, but many of them. And they weren’t just in my stomach anymore, now they were everywhere.

“Your face,” Rebecca sputtered, her eyes glazed over and moist with tears. “Your face is moving…”

Whatever these things were, they were multiplying. And they were making us brain dead as they chewed on our greymatter.

“Call 9-1-1,” I said to Rebecca, feeling more afraid than I’d ever felt in my life, as I saw something begin to tear a hole in her cheek. The face of a worm peeked out as it gnawed and clawed to free itself.

All I could feel were the teeth of a thousand parasites, growing larger by the second as they fed upon my flesh. And their mother in my belly, a six foot snake uncurling and shifting with displeasure.

Getting ready to start gnawing at the bars of its flesh-cage. To escape to greener pastures.

MAD

TCC

YT