A Preview of “The Creation”
I’m excited about my new series, a dark thriller set in the Amazon of Venezuela. I’ve completed the first book in the series and have started on the second and plan to release both sometime this year.
Without giving away any of the plot and concept away (yet), I’ve decided to post a short chapter from the first book. Keep in mind this has been sent out to beta-readers and will be going through one more final draft. That being said, welcome to The Facility. Hope you enjoy it!
A Preview of “T
Zachary Morley sang the guitar solo to Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times” as he rolled his chair across the seamless white tile floor. The hard crunch of electric guitars and Robert Plant’s wailing shrieks overpowered the blips of hospital equipment – computers, monitors and electrical devices unable to keep tempo with the song.
At the chair’s arrival, with one too many forced foot thrusts to counteract the sheer mass Morley had become, he pulled himself up into a standing position.
Set on a roll-in table was a large glass sphere held in place by a metallic pedestal. It was filled with a viscous liquid, a two foot almost alien-like mass of grey tissue suspended at its center like a deflated basketball. Thick tubes connected to the sphere from above, entering the controlled environment with smaller tubes hanging down, connected to the growth.
“Think this little guy knows what it means to be alone?” Morley asked.
A heavy set Venezuelan woman in white, germ mask strapped over her face, did not reply. Not that Morley had expected her to. They never sent him help that could speak English.
As if they couldn’t afford the additional cost.
“After we finish here how ‘bout we head on over to my place?” He laughed, his entire body shaking from the effort. Remaining sane could be a task in this country, he had discovered, and Morley had never been one for multi-tasking.
The assistant’s eyes darted from him to the large glass sphere. As least this one had some meat on her, he thought.
“Quieres el pollo?” the assistant asked, Morley catching only the final word.
“Yes, pollo. Pollo, pollo, pollo. Let’s do the pollo again,” he sang to the tune of the Time Warp, motioning for her to get on with it.
She approached the aluminum counters against the back wall of the room, fiddling with the latch to the crate set on top. Out came a chicken, its feathers pressed flush against its body. The assistant closed the crate, deftly placing the bird against the metal counter, one hand wrapped around its body.
With the other, she lifted a heavy butcher’s blade.
Morley turned his head. He hated this part of the job.
The metallic thwank of metal against metal was as harsh as a hand lifting the needle from a record player.
“Over here,” he said, keeping his sight away from the limp and headless body dangling from the assistant’s rubber gloved hand.
She finished feeding the pollo through the Blender, a small chamber with precision blades that ground the chicken – meat, bones, feathers and all – into a pasty mulch.
At the glass sphere, Morley hummed along to the next track on the album, a song he never remembered the name to. The warm paste remains of what had moments ago been a live chicken moved through the tubes and began its descent within the sphere.
“Open wide,” he said, unable to control his laughter.
The assistant pulled down her mask. Several thick black hairs lifted from her upper lip like a spider’s legs.
Morley thought he might throw up.
“Que es esta brujeria?” she asked.
Though Morley spoke no Spanish he thought he understood what she was asking. At least in principle. He decided for the easy answer, after all, she’d have no one to tell. Not after today.
There was a reason he was assigned a new assistant every day.
“It’s a stomach. A human stomach. And we’re feeding it.”
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