I sat down in a chair across from Styx and Bliss. I’m curious of how, or why, Bliss would patch Styx’s bite wound. While Bliss collected supplies from her desk, Styx and I were talking to each other. Styx leaned forward towards me. “I’m tellin’ ya, you ain’t gonna want to see this. There ain’t nothing good lookin’ about getting patched.” If I was worried about anything looking good here, I’d have kept looking at Bliss! This is purely from a scientific standpoint! Of course, I couldn’t say all of that out loud. “I’m just studying since I’m stuck here anyway.”

Styx shouts his shoulders as he sits back up. “Do what you want. Just don’t go messing up the floor.” What does he mean by that? Does he assume I’m going to pee myself or something? There’s no way it could be that bad. Bliss turns around. She appears to have an eager look on her face as she walks with a joyful smile. “Alright, Styx! Take your shirt off so I can see what needs fixed!”

Styx removes his full face mask. His neck is covered in cuts, stitches, and staples leading up to his head. His face is missing large chunks of flesh. Some of the spots have clearly fake flesh-looking patches in them. He seems to just barely have any lips left. It probably took a lot of practice to be able to pronounce a lot of words with so little flesh to form words properly. His cheeks were in pieces with open gaps, showing his sharp zombie-forged teeth and his dark green gums. The top of his head was an absolute horror show, as well. Cuts, scratches, missing skin and exposed skull.

This is so horrific to see up-close. I can understand why he feared for the floor. I’m feeling nauseous from looking at him. He looks at me as I’m looking at him. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, kid.” Styx proceeds to remove his shirt, exposing that he has huge pieces of his body missing. A lot of spots with clear silicone patches, presumably to keep an eye on internal organs. His heart is the only thing moving inside of his body. The exposed portion of his ribs appear as though they’re made of metal. His intestines are dark green like his gums. This is an obviously corroded man. He’s literally surviving by a dream.

I hold my hand over my mouth, blocking the vomit from expelling from my mouth. This is like looking at a rotting animal corpse times 100! Styx is chuckling as Bliss prepares a needle behind him. “Hahaha! I knew you’d be weak to this! Thinkin’ twice about “studying” this?” I knew I couldn’t let something like this deter me from learning, so I held back the vomit and continued watching. Bliss takes a needle and threads it with a dense plastic twine. She grabs his head, tilting it to the side, to stretch the flesh tight. Starting with the opening nearest to his ear, she pokes the needle through his skin, looping it through to the other side, conjoining the two sides of skin and meat together.

This whole experience seems incredibly gross, but so intriguing. Is this what it would have been like had the drug succeeded? We simply get wounded and would be stitched? No, it couldn’t have been. This means that our wounds would never heal. That’s very counterproductive to an “eternal life” concept. You’d eventually break so much that you couldn’t be repaired, right? After some time, I hear footsteps upstairs. There’s a tapping sound, similar to when Styx stomped his foot on the floor. I guess that’s their way of alerting people that someone is home.

“Must be geek boy.” Styx says in a pretty casual tone. There’s no way they have someone codenamed “Geek boy,” is there? Bliss looks up at me for a moment before looking back down at Styx. “Would you mind going up and telling him I’m stitching up Styx.” “Okay.” I quickly respond. While I’m curious about this, I think it’ll day stomach some good to get out of this room for a minute. I climb the stairs and exit the basement. I make my way back into the main entrance room. There’s no one in here right now. Maybe he went and took a shower like Styx did. I sit down on the couch, waiting for the person.

After fifteen minutes or so, they descended down the stairs in a peppy foot motion while whistling. The whistling sounds very… familiar… I turn to see the person, but… I’m in disbelief of what I’m seeing. The person stops and looks me in the eyes. “Leah?” he says. He clearly knows me, and I’d recognize that pale white skin with freckles and short red hair anywhere. That’s Mr. Vice! What does my college professor have to do with these guys?!