Beast Machine

Cover art by
Sean Robert Carver

Acknowledgements:

I want to thank my family
and friends for their support. I love you all.

Chapter 1

Appleton,
Wisconsin

A gargantuan man briskly
made his way through a dreary, unkempt cemetery toward a rotten
mausoleum engulfed in vines. The entrance to the mausoleum was
accessible after the man cut away several thick vines. He tossed
aside any foliage that dropped upon him. The man rubbed his hand on
a bronze plaque resting on a pillar that read
Captain of the United States Marine Corps
. The words, once a shimmering reminder of dedication, lost
their sheen over the years on the feeble pillar that kept the
mausoleum standing. He entered the mausoleum with a peculiar
calmness.

Inside the mausoleum the
man found a less than modern light switch. It was a thin metal,
possibly aluminum, switch. He flipped the switched and was pleased
when all the light bulbs burned bright. The man knew he must have
been the first visitor to this particular mausoleum in decades, as
the light bulbs were rinky-dink, old models, which meant that what
he was looking for was likely immaculate, or at least untouched.
His skin began to faintly glow.

He examined dust covered
portraits of a white politician standing next to other white
politicians at golf outings, at The White House, around a circular
wooden table, at an execution by electric chair and at a segregated
water fountain. Each politician wore a serious face in every
portrait, except the electric chair picture where they all had
satisfied smiles. These portraits did not stir an ounce of emotion,
one way or another, in the man – he was mostly devoid of that kind
of thing.

Next to the portraits stood
a glass case holding achievements of the deceased resting in the
tomb: a large bible with stellar golden letters, a photo of a white
politician with Red Grange, an unopened bottle of scotch, five
bottles of Schlitz beer and a bizarre drawing of the Soviet Union,
specifically Moscow, ablaze. The words
My
Favorite Place On Earth
were captioned on a
small tile in front of the picture.

The man came to a casket
perched atop a marble stand at the end of the dank mausoleum. A
chintzy, unlit chandelier hung directly over the casket. The
chandelier was made of mini-Jack Daniel’s bottles and ruined the
serious demeanor of the mausoleum.

The casket was made of a
rich mahogany and had not lost the luster it had when it was
created years and years ago; it remained dustless in a somber
museum of super dusty items. The casket had never been opened once
it had been closed years and years ago. The man noticed an old
style lock keeping the casket closed, peculiar for even a
politician’s casket. The man, being more brawn than brains, ripped
the lock clean off with the ease of a toddler ripping a noodle in
half.

On the wall behind the
casket, red letters began to slowly glow and form words. The
electricity from the aluminum switch finally had reached the lights
to produce the red letters.

“
He has lighted the spark
which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the
whole sorry mess of twisted warped thinkers are swept from the
national scene so that we may have a new birth of national honesty
and decency in government.
”

The burly, glowing man
opened the casket and was greeted with a skeleton of moderate size
in a drab suit and considerable stench. Only a thin layer of what
looked like skin remained on the skeleton. He covered his mouth and
nose with a surgical mask from his back-pocket, then pulled the
skeleton out of the casket and hurled it down the hall. The
skeleton broke into several pieces, leaving the skull and rib-cage
the most intact pieces.
Click-clack-click-clack
as the bones
rolled through the tomb.
Click-clack-click-clack
. The leftover
skin slid off the bones and left large swatches of the decomposed
skin in the hall.

That skeleton was not what
he was after; rather, he was interested in what was under that
skeleton’s casket. He ripped up the bottom of the casket with his
gorilla sized hands. The casket was lined with lovely velvet, which
must have felt lovely even to the dead, but the glowing man
continued to rip up the casket.

Under the casket was a
sizable hole with a steel ladder protruding out, and the man,
slightly agitated about the dark below, began to climb down the
ladder. The glow he had mere moments ago had vanished. Did the glow
disappear from his growing fear? The hole began to widen even
further as the man slowly climbed down and down into the
dark.

Down roughly twenty-five
more feet of ladder, the man had reached the room he needed to
find. In the room sat an upright casket with tubing connected to a
power supply elsewhere in the cemetery. It was made of an unknown
metal, but shone brightly when the lights in the secret room were
flipped on. The lights in this room were more modern and coiled
tightly, thus taking a minute or two to shine as brightly as
possible.

The burly man crept toward
the metallic casket while swatting spider webs left and right. The
metallic casket, not touched in years, had zero blemishes on it. It
was as if the spiders and other vermin avoided the casket out of
pure respect. All the tubing appeared to be working as intended
too.

He grasped his hand on a
small handle before looking up at more red glowing
words.

Above the casket, the
ceiling read:

“
FEAR THE RED SCARE, FOR IT
SHALL CONSUME YOU
.”

Chapter 2

Gora’s Beast
Machine

Gora raised a vial above
her head into the fluorescent lighting. A faint purple liquid began
bubbling near the neck of the vial; suddenly, it was glistening.
The liquid slowly oozed down the neck, ceased bubbling and rested
at the base of the vial – still glistening. Gora smiled.

“
Perfection!” she said.
“Simply perfection!”

Gora walked over to a table
with seven other vials, all the same size. Inside these seven vials
were not bubbling liquids that would glisten in the light, but
pint-sized animals that were seemingly stuck in time – they were in
stasis. Gora picked up the vial with a tiny brown bear inside. She
put the six remaining vials back into a cooling station and locked
them inside.

She took the vial with the
brown bear and the vial with the glistening liquid over to what she
liked to call her “Beast Machine.” The Beast Machine was her first
working invention after over seven years of failure trying to
invent something for the betterment of society – or just to invent
something that worked. Gora had once been a prodigy of an inventor,
creating mostly emergency products for less developed countries,
but failed to recover from an extremely rough patch in her
career.

Gora thought she had hit
the jackpot and reignited her inventive ways with her Muscle
Expander. The Muscle Expander was supposed to do exactly as its
name stated – expand muscles. Expand muscles for looks
and
for strength purposes;
it was to be an invention to improve health and to improve looks –
a surefire moneymaker. The Muscle Expander was only supposed to
expand the muscles of a human being to their max anatomical
capacity, which would vary depending on the human, but instead the
muscles of each user of the item kept expanding and expanding and
expanding and…
pop
went their muscles. Her Muscle Expander resulted in 34 busted
biceps, 23 torn triceps, 39 costly calf muscle injuries, 2 blown
glutes, 16 pectoral tears and at least 12 deaths. In her haste to
create an invention, she forgot to test the Muscle Expander on
anyone or anything.

Gora’s next invention – the
Beard Regenerator – was supposed to be a godsend to all males that
failed to grow facial hair, a truly
horrible
affliction for men. Soon the
world would be filled with billions of men with suave beards,
right? Her Beard Regenerator fell flat after it became known that
using the Beard Regenerator actually left the user impotent, angry
and with no facial hair – symptoms that most of the users had
already gained through subpar genetics and poor life choices. One
man even developed extra long armpit hair from the invention, while
another man grew eyebrows the size of a chinchilla. Gora, again,
forgot to test this pharmaceutical invention on anyone or anything
in her haste.

Her most notorious
invention to date – The Speedy Reader – has been used as a prime
example of what
not
to try to create as an inventor. The Speedy Reader was
supposed to increase a child’s eye speed and concentration while
reading a book. The Speedy Reader was going to be a magnificent
tool to increase worldwide education and literacy. Children were
going to be able to read the works of Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Hemmingway, and so forth without needing to consult with a teacher.
The eye speed of each child
did
increase, but, unfortunately, the speed increased
so much that their eyeballs fell out. It was a mess across the
nation. Glass eyeballs were being sold at an incredible rate after
many used The Speedy reader, though, so there’s the only positive
of that invention. Gora, once more, forgot to test The Speedy
Reader on anyone or anything in her haste.

Gora had a slew of other
inventions, but none more worth noting because they all ended with
the same results – the user being maimed, killed or left
impotent.

The Beast Machine was
different! Gora wouldn’t let her haste ruin another invention. She
made sure to run tests on animals, plants and a strange man named
Algernon. The plants and animals were mixed with unknown humans
from photos found in the various magazines Gora could get her hands
on. The plants never came out correctly when merged with a human,
another plant, or an animal. Each of those samples was incinerated.
Gora rightly nixed ever using plants with the machine. It was a
crucial step in her
new
inventing process to nix products that don’t work.

Animals that were combined
with other animals survived several rigorous tests and were later
incinerated too as they were useless to Gora, but Algernon and a
hippopotamus were killed after Algernon merged with the
hippopotamus and charged wildly at Gora. The instinct of the
hippopotamus overpowered Algernon’s human instinct and made him
bloodthirsty.

Gora used the Muscle
Expander on Algernon the Hippo-Man to kill him. Gora’s lab
resembled a ripe slaughterhouse after that incident. She didn’t
have to make a trip to the butcher shop for two weeks, however.
“Hippopotamus tastes a lot like lamb,” Gora would
recall.

Gora removed the tiny brown
bear and put it in a plastic container the size of a soup can. She
then poured the purple liquid on the tiny brown bear. The liquid
seemingly vanished into the fur of the tiny brown bear, but the
tiny brown bear started to move! The bear let out a shrill growl.
Gora grinned at the cuteness of the growl.

M’rowwlll
!

Gora took the miniscule
brown bear to a triangular opening near the Beast Machine. She
picked the tiny brown bear up with her finger and thumb then
dropped it in the triangular opening. Down slid the tiny brown bear
into the waiting area inside the Beast Machine.

The Beast Machine was a
mixture of a kiln and a 3D printer that had the power of
bioengineering. It took Gora several months to even begin to
understand the basics of bioengineering, let alone being able to
master the science of it. Over a year was lost trying to perfect
the machine.

The front of the Beast
Machine had one large orange handle on a door that Gora used to
pull open the contraption to release the newly formed creature. A
knob was placed on the inside of the Beast Machine, so the creature
could exit on its own after being ‘cooked’ – if the creature were
smart enough. A control panel to the left of the contraption stood
five feet high and was adorned with buttons, knobs, dials and even
a nifty slider to adjust the light inside the Beast Machine – an
extra addition Gora made at the last minute.

Situated in among the
buttons, knobs, dials and the nifty slider was a screen. Flickering
on the screen was an unfathomable wall of text with an emphasis on
certain memories, personality and desires to be placed into the
beast’s mind – an untested option. She quickly glossed over the
words and then nodded as if she was satisfied with what was in the
wall of text.