Captured Souls (19 page)

I checked the cameras before I went to bed and he was asleep, his erection had spent at last during my journey towards bed.

Musicians have sexual stamina equivalent to athletes.

Journal

Once again, my dreams were laced with ferocious images. Specimen 3 creeps to my bedside, her flesh peeling, her eyes burning with both lust and hate. She’ll stand there by my bed, her outline glowing eerily in the dim moonlight. Is she a dream? An energy surge? My guilty conscience?

She reaches for me, her hands rotting. I can smell the stench of death on her, can hear the clattering of her bones as she stretches her arm, then she sputters and sparks, as if she’s an old-fashioned TV tube. The muddy smell of musk and seaweed creates a nausea so vile that I need my bathroom quickly. But the creature is there, standing there. Staring at me with accusing eyes.

“What do you want?” I asked her.

She stared at me, eyes milky white, her skin molting as more bones were revealed. She opened her mouth as a high-pitched screeching noise flew out of her throat or stomach or somewhere else. The sound was so loud and high that I feared my eardrums would explode like crystal. I put my hands over my ears.

“Get out,” I yelled, shutting my eyes, wishing her away like a child in a fairy tale.

Then came the dreams about Specimen 2.

They were always the same.

It was as if I was seeing through his eyes as events unfolded and, I guess, in a way I was, with all the equipment and recordings I had of his last moments.

First, he was sweating to death in his wet suit, surrounded by hundreds of other triathletes standing on the boat, chilly from the air, but slippery with sweat beneath their suits. Then they all jumped into the cold San Francisco water, starting their journey towards Alcatraz. He swam with the rest, but his body buzzed as bits of water seeped through the hundreds of pinpricks I had pierced into his wet suit. The salt water wormed its way into his implants with every stroke. He was way ahead of most of the others as his strong arms pulled him through the waves.

A darkness lurked below him, he could sense it before he really felt it. His dream arms grew paralyzed with fear as he noticed no other swimmers around him for miles. They were all scrambling back towards the boat as he flew into the air, hugged in the jaws of a great white like a little rag doll.

The shark toyed with him, tossing him out to sea and then snatching him up as it exploded from below him again. At last the shark was ready to eat for real and the sheer terror of staring at its gaping mouth coming towards him in the water like a torpedo always jerked me awake.

Upon my awakening, maybe after the fourth or fifth time, I was aware that he was there with me too.

Not really as a ghost. Just as sharp flashes of images and impulses. He was drawn to my own implants, even after death, as was the beauty.

Specimen 1

He seems to be content writing and drinking. He’s lonely with Specimen 2 gone.
 

I thought about Specimen 2 trying to claw his way out of some shark’s belly. I can’t help but feel a little bit of glee when I think about how Specimen 2 snuck around with the goddess behind my back.
 

Specimen 1 hasn’t said anything about how we’re suddenly not fucking nightly and if he knows about Specimen 4 in the attic, he hasn’t tipped his hand.

Specimen 4

There was a reason why I had settled on the thesis that a beauty, a brainiac and an athlete would be the best combination for the perfect lover. Since no
one
human is capable of perfection, combining the augmented quality of each with that of the others could possibly create perfection. Capturing all of their essence into a triad was possible with three bodies, but how would just the electrodes work together?

Adding a fourth to the chord had been a misguided experiment. The balance had been tedious enough to tend to, without the addition of a musician.

As it always happens to us mortals, the lure of the musician is a siren song difficult to elude. Curiosity always overrides common sense, there’s something about their charisma, no matter who they are, that is alluring when their focus falls on you. Even I was charmed by the musician—the beauty of creating notes from strings and wood, and coaxing amazing sounds from throats and bows. Musicians were almost always the best lovers, likely because they were constantly moving anyways.

When musicians aren’t making music or making love, they are worse than teenage girls. Mood swings, emotional outbursts, pouting withdrawals—it was exhausting. Even the athlete didn’t pull the emotional blackmail that the musician did.

I was in a difficult spot. The musician was not going be a viable part of the experiment. However, I couldn’t release him back into his former life. My brainwashing and programming talents weren’t that skilled. He would tell people about me, no matter how much he might promise not to or fear repercussions should I discover it. He would never know how much power I could theoretically have over him for the rest of his life. I couldn’t take any chances. I had to make certain that no one ever discovered anything at all that was happening in my home.

“Miriam…I think the neck of my guitar is warped, come look at it, please…” Specimen 4 whined from the bedroom. The tone of his voice made my skin crawl.

The spell was broken. The song is over for Specimen 4.

Journal

The house is old. That’s the problem with these old gothic houses. Things can blow at any time, no matter how many renovations there are and how much new wiring rerouted—there will always be something missed. Old walls. Old wallpaper. Old curtains. You never know what is going to be a problem when it comes to an accident.

I lay sprawled naked across the couch while Specimen 4 played his guitar for me. It had been a good night—some wine, some sex, and now he serenaded me with a damn-fine rendition of “Hotel California”. Just as he was hitting the chorus for the final refrain, there was a power surge. The lights flickered, the instruments glowed and made loud humming sounds while smoke and sparks flew everywhere. I stayed on my couch island as for several seconds the only sound was static electricity and Specimen 4 still holding his last note as his body shuddered and jolted along the floor like a puppet being dragged, his guitar still clutched in his frozen hands. Puffs of smoked wafted up from him, his guitar, the speakers…

Soon the noises all stopped. The smell of burned flesh filled the room so much that I thought the fire alarm would begin to bleat. The generator must have kicked in because some of the lights clicked and hummed back on as if nothing had happened, while all the instruments and lighting that had been on the same circuit didn’t do anything at all. They were done.

In the end, the wiring couldn’t withstand the electrical draw of all the equipment in the attic. The music room short-circuited, pretty straightforward. Once I was satisfied that the floor wasn’t rife with electrical currents, I walked across the room to slip on a pair of his sneakers that were by the door.
 

I came back and stood over his body. It didn’t twitch. It just lay there like a melted doll. He didn’t even look real with his hair burned off in most places and half his face melted. His fingers had merged with the strings of his guitar. I wondered if his cock was seared to the melted guitar through his pants.

It was too bad it had to end like this. And I was glad I had thought ahead with the wiring, or so I thought, so that it would only affect this room.

It would be a while before he would be discovered missing.

So far, just in the time he’d been staying here, his disappearance hadn’t been noted. I’d kept his online presence alive and well through a shell account that was untraceable, so there was no reason to believe anyone would discover him missing for a long time. Photoshop and text messaging were the best inventions to keep a person alive long after he wasn’t. He could disappear anytime I willed him to disappear. That day would come, but not just yet.

First, there is the matter of disposing of his body. There’s nothing to salvage from the melted mass of blood and guts that lay on my floor. It was like he had been cooked into a stew and then began to expand when the melting took over the inner pressure. It was going to be one hell of a mess to clean up. Not to mention equipment and wiring. If anyone came to check the house they would notice such things. I had a lot of work cut out for me.

Specimen 1

The mess in the attic would have to wait. I must be certain that the power surge only affected the attic and not the security systems or cameras. I hurried down the stairs to the basement, carrying hypodermic needles in my freshly donned lab coat, just in case there had been an escape.

All systems appeared to be secure. I entered the door to Specimen 1’s office. His back was to me. As I walked closer, he appeared to be slumped over the computer.

“Oh no… Scott!” I cried out running towards him. The idea of him being gone was beyond belief. Yes, he was going to have to go too, they all did, but I hadn’t been mentally prepared to let him slip from me in his current form just yet.

The choice had been made for me.

I looked at his body, determining the cause of death. Electrocution. When the power surge happened he was typing and for some reason there had been a jolt or short powerful enough to kill him. Likely a heart attack, since he wasn’t burned or melted as Specimen 4 had been. Tears ran down my face as I pulled him from the keyboard. Whatever electrical currents had killed him were long gone from his system. Only his fingertips were singed.

“Oh, Scott,” I cried as I dragged him from his chair and onto the floor. I lay him out and stared at him, his face clenched, his eye shut tight, as if he were on a scary ride.

Although his time was coming soon, this was too soon. I wasn’t sure how I could adapt quickly.

“Enough,” I scolded myself. I took several deep breaths and went over to Specimen 1’s bar. I poured myself a large scotch. I went into my office and prepared the calculations.

Specimen 1 was easily wheeled from his room to the laboratory. First, I placed him on a slab to record all the necessary data and make the necessary speculative notes in the other journal. I stared at him. Forever still at last. Specimen 1 was gone. I hugged him and kissed his forehead.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” I whispered to him.

I began the process of running a myriad of tubes to and from various parts of him. Once everything was wired up, I wheeled him over to one of the tanks.

First, we stopped by Specimen 3. She floated on her back so beautifully, serene in the water, tubes rising from her like a myriad of seaweed strands. The perfect mermaid without a tail.

She must have felt us staring or maybe her electrodes were throbbing. She opened her eyes and turned her head to glare at us. The action caught me by surprise and I had to swallow before I stared back at her. She turned away from me, staring instead up at the ceiling.

I reminded myself she wasn’t real, she hadn’t even really looked. It was the electrical impulses making her body a puppet. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t see. She was dead.

“This will be you too, Scott,” I said. I wheeled the bed to his tank. Carefully I moved him from the side bed to the stretched-out plastic over the tank. Once he was firmly in the middle, I cranked the wheel of the contraption that controlled the tension of the plastic tarp. Slowly he was lowered into the tank. I unhooked the plastic tarp from the one side of the tank and rolled it up on the other side with the crank.

Specimen 1 floated in the fluid while I affixed the wires that led from him into the machines.

Once I was satisfied that everything was functioning properly, I left him there.

Specimen 1

I slept in Specimen 1’s room that night. My dreams were vivid yet foggy. The actions happened with sudden clarity, while the narrative was a dim visual that perhaps I could figure out, but likely not. There was a huge gothic house, not like mine, but old, really old. Dust flew from doorknobs, cobwebs shimmered in the stray strands of sun sneaking through cloth-eaten drapes. There was always a smell, a pungent smell of decay or cat piss. There was whispering, distant, just out of range of aural clarity. As I strained to hear the voices, in front of me a strange horror began to manifest. On the floor, on the carpet, in the dim of the night, a black mass rose. It was full of noises, deep growls and sounds that we laugh at in daylight as being Halloween sounds, but the reality is that they are frightening sounds in a dream.

I woke screaming and stared out at the room. Momentarily I forgot I was in Specimen 1’s bed and was disoriented. A rush of coldness passed by me and I turned to see where the wind was coming from since the window was heavily barred and above my head. The many mirrors and toys reflected shards of light, a patchwork of mystery, waiting for me to unravel it. As I stared in awe around the room, my heart still pounding from my nightmare, the mass began to take shape at the foot of my bed. My heart began to race again as the mass rolled into itself, expanding wider and taller the longer I stared at it.