Short Story
Matt Thompson
Michael
awoke with a start to the thundering clicks and clacks sound of the train
disappearing down the railway. Michael sauntered over to the bathroom and
looked at himself in the mirror. He looked rather trashy with his dark hair
tangled and greasy, add that to the tattered sweat shirt and faded ripped jeans
he was sporting…he was disgusting.
He turned on the faucet and let the
water glide down splashing on his cupped hands and tumbling further into the
sink. He washed his face hoping that he might start remembering things, such
as, where he was, how he got there, and really everything about him and his
life other than his name and the fact that he was 17.
Michael shoved his hand in his
pocket pulling out the phone that was lying in wait. He looked down at it and
saw that there was a new message.
“What in the world?” he pondered as
he opened the message and began to listen.
“Michael,” the message said, “I
know that you have no idea who I am or why I’m calling you, but you need to
run. There are people hunting you because of the information that you have, if
they catch you, they will capture you and soon thereafter kill you.”
He put the phone in his pocket and
wondered what he should do. As if on cue a slew of men dressed in black
tactical gear with guns raised and commands being shouted. At that moment,
Michael lost all interest in debating the issue of the crazy lady’s message,
and he took flight. He ran to the nearest stairwell taking them three at a time
as he heard shots ring out behind him.
He hit the next floor at a dead
sprint looking for any way to lose his pursuers. He spotted a maintenance door
that was about to swing closed and made a break towards it. Michael got there
in the nick of time sliding his hand in the gap and tearing the door open then
slamming it behind him. He jogged down the concrete corridor dodging pipes that
jutted from the walls.
He saw an overweight worker
waddling around in front of him and decided to avoid the man by veering down a
side hallway. Michael reached a door and turned the knob, it spit him out on a
street in downtown and he looked around to orient himself. He knew the city
pretty well because he had lived on the streets after his parents had died in
some tragic accident, the details of which had never been shared with him.
He looked for a place where he
could best hunker down unnoticed. Once he found one Michael slid down the faded
brick wall his back was up against put his head between his knees and thought.
Why was he being chased? Who was the mysterious person looking out for him?
What was the information that he supposedly possessed?
Michael
jumped when the phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to find another
message. This time it simply instructed him to lay low and try not to get
captured. He headed to the town library because it had free Wi-Fi lots of exits
and it lots of people. Once he got to the library he used the phone to connect
to the Wi-Fi and he tried to figure out who was chasing him. He remembered that
the men chasing him had a patch with bold white letters reading Argus. After
some time searching he finally found out that it was the security company that
was used by some big wig medical corporation. What did they want with him? He
put his phone away, looked for anybody suspicious, and left to carry out his
plan.
When he
got to their building it was almost dark. He had waited across the street ‘til
he saw the guards at the front desk change shifts then bolted inside while
nobody was there. He took the elevator up to the top floor where he thought the
boss’s office might be located. Michael went up to the large oak door and
quietly it open.
He went
straight to the file cabinet and started tearing open the drawers. He was
shocked when he found a folder with his name scrawled across the top. He sat
down the large chair and spread the papers out on the desk. Most of them where
medical charts with doctors nots scattered on them, but there were a few that
he could actually make out, and the more he read the more scared he became.
There had been experiments done on him. They had sliced him open and apparently
found something in his genome that was very valuable.
“Michael,”
the voice said calmly, “I’ve been expecting you.”
He recognized the voice for the
messages on his phone, but his phone wasn’t the origin of the voice this time.
Michael froze. He swiveled the chair around and was surprised when the voice
wasn’t the only thing he recognized. He started having flashbacks of being
tucked into bed and sitting at the table eating cheerios, and the more he
remembered the dizzier it made him. Michael passed out and fell to the ground
with the flooding memories of his mother.
When he woke up she was sitting at
the end of his bed and there was an IV dripping next to him. She rose and came
close to his face, she was talking but he wasn’t listening. To Michael she was
scarier than any monster in the history of time. He had been abandoned and
hunted by his own mother. Michael felt himself getting woozy and soon passed
out.
This time when he woke up he was in
some kind of tube with bright lights that seemed to be circling him. As his
vision came to he was the door opening. When the door was fully ajar, he
stumbled out of the tube. Once he got his bearings he went and cracked the door
open. The only thought on his mind that he had to escape.
He was
a doctor waking toward his room with clipboard. Michael crouched down and held
the knob turned. As soon as he heard the man coming near he slammed his
shoulder into the door knocking the doctor clean out.
Five minutes later he was walking down the
hallway looking like a medical official. The only problem occurred when he was
trying to get out the door and there was a passcode. The guards let him through
the door and he started to walk outside. As soon as he got outside he wished he
was still in the tube. Everything was new and shiny, cars were flying, and
people were wearing the strangest looking clothes.
“Well Michael
what do you think? Thanks to you coming right into our grasp we have been able
to unlock the secret to a prolonged human life. People that should’ve died long
ago are still walking, talking, and eating fast food. They are as healthy as
they’ve ever been, and it’s all thanks to you.
It was at that moment that Michael
let his guard down. He turned his back to her just in time to her that unmistakable
click. He pivoted around just in time to see the flash. Time seemed to slow he
felt the warm metal slide into his stomach. His mind was crawling as he tried
to figure out what was happening.
“Well Michael, now that we’ve
perfected prolonging life we don’t need you anymore.”
As Michael lay there his vision
fading he was completely bewildered that the person who created him and brought
him into this world would so suddenly take him out. Right before he faded out
he lifted his arm and made a rather obscene gesture.
