We stood in the presence of this medical marvel—a lifeless body that was dead no more. It was crazy enough that Yolanda had pulled this off in the first place—but now, I had no idea if this was some kind of never-ending nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from.
But this was reality.
A reality that I can no longer recognize.
Yet, Izzy is right before us. Alive. It didn’t make sense.
Her chest started to rise, and her fingers began to twitch. It seemed like she was trying to figure out how to breathe and move again. With every movement she made, slowly, we could hear tiny shrieks of pain and bones twisting, like it was involuntary.
It was a deeply unsettling sight to behold.
We were frozen in place, watching her every move. Even if she was pulsing with life, we still can’t determine if this was the Izzy we once knew. And we had no control over it all.
I wanted to say something—anything—just to break the silence. But what can you say to a distinguished face you barely recognize anymore?
The monkey creature awoken to the sight of a mishmash of body parts approaching him and he scuttled off, running to the cages, hoping that would protect him.
Yolanda’s mind was wandering elsewhere as she looked back at the machine, planning another scheme. She squeed with glee like a little piggy and ran directly towards it.
“No! Are you fucking kidding? Get away from that thing! Haven’t you done enough already? I shouted.
But she wasn’t having it. “Do you even realize what I have done here? I need to run new tests on her. You do not understand. This is just the beginning. Imagine what limits she can surpass!”
As Yolanda pushed buttons on her machine's control panel, Izzy was busy staring off into space. Her hollow, icy stare into nothingness made it seem like she wasn’t there with us.
Then she turned, almost instinctively, and studied Yolanda’s wears. Without a second thought, Izzy shoved me with a jolt. I stumbled backward, slamming into Yolanda. The major impact sent us flying into one of the machines in the lab—an old ring arcade game Yolanda had scavenged for parts.
The neon lights of the machine lit up in unison as we bumped into it and a booming, distorted voice from within the game’s speakers shouted, “Strike!”
Yolanda groaned in agony, pushing herself up. “Are you serious right now?”
“Oh, my back!” I muttered under my breath, still trying to process what just happened to us.
Then, after reeling in pain for a moment, it hit me harder than we hit the machine.
Her strength… it was unnatural. And Yolanda realized the same thing.
Izzy did a double take with a confused look marked on her face. “Oh, Dios Mio... Florence?” she whispered, her voice shaking. She suddenly rushed over, pulling me into an awkward hug. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t recognize you!”
At first, I felt uneasy. I'm not exactly used to hugging a corpse and it freaked me out. But the longer we clung to each other, the rawer it became.
Yolanda’s voice broke the bond. “Okay, you two, break it up immediately!”
We backed away from each other, though Izzy's hand still lingered on my shoulder.
"Oops, my bad," she giggled as she attached her hand back to her wrist. Chilling.
Then, Izzy turned her attention to Yolanda and slowly, she moved toward her.
“Oh, mi hermana pequeña,” Izzy said as she pulled Yolanda into a sweet embrace. Then, she pushed back with a puzzling look on her face as she absorbed every detail of Yolanda's lab. “But… where am I, and why am I here? I shouldn’t even see the light of day.”
Izzy's neck turned as she locked her eyes with mine, which brought shivers down my spine.
Yolanda cracked Izzy's head back into place to face her as she explained. “There is so much I wanted to do, so much I wanted to show you…things I never got to tell you. But you left too soon. And I was not ready for you to go. That is why I brought you back."
“All of this, is your work? You really nipped me, just like that?”
“Well, yes, but it is more complicated than that. I did this for you," Yolanda said as she adjusted her glasses.
Izzy took a deep breath, tugging on the string of the stitches on her chest. “This isn’t right, Lanny. I'm glad to see you, but I liked it when I rested."
“Ezekial,” Yolanda pleaded, stepping closer, “you do not understand—”
Izzy’s hand shot up, silencing her, though she locked her attention to me. Something was stirring between us, something I’d ignored for too long. She gave me the thousand-yard stare.
“Florence…” she said, her voice trembling, “we… we had a life together once, didn’t we?” She layed her eyes into mine, asking a question that I hadn’t dared ask myself since the night she’d disappeared from my life. “There’s something I can’t remember… but I know you were there. You were always there. And… I remember being angry at you.”
I tugged on my collar as a floodgate of memories flowed through vividly—the day I met Izzy at the mall, back when everything still felt like they made sense. She was a stranger leaning up against the wall outside a game store.
We hit it off in that weird way where two people just click without really knowing why. We opened up about stupid shit we hated and stupid shit that we loved. And it all worked out fine. Not long after, she invited me to her folks' place for dinner, and I couldn’t turn that down. I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in a minute.
When I got there, I remember tearing into the food like a starved animal. It was damn good. For a while, everything was going well. Izzy’s smile, the way she could make me forget about the worries in my life. It was something that I have been missing for quite some time. I guess that’s what made it all the more painful when things started to fall apart.
One day, Izzy had a fight with her parents that cut deep. They told her she was too old to be living under their roof, tired of it all—sick of her drinking and the sticky-icky mary-jane use, sick of her abrasive lifestyle. And the fact that in their eyes, she didn’t contribute much to the household. But Izzy didn’t take that lightly. She fought back, claiming she paid her share and more. It didn’t matter to them, though. She packed her stuff and stormed out, swearing she’d never return.
Yolanda must have noticed something in my expression as she finally spoke up, her voice trembling, “You… you knew about this?”
"Oh. I didn't realize I was thinking out loud," I muttered to myself.
Yolanda barely spoke more than a whisper. “I believed her when she said she had herself under control and that I had nothing to worry about. I never doubted her.” She looked at Izzy with dull eyes. “Because I look up to her and know she would never stoop so low."
Izzy quickly glanced at me with regret in her eyes. Yolanda didn’t know what happened after that—but I did. A whole past we both buried for good reason. But now, it was inevitable.
Yolanda had always idolized Izzy, defending her whenever her motives were questioned.. How deep Izzy’s addiction had gotten was something I’d kept buried. Yolanda would have never believed it. Izzy's autopsy never mentioned anything more than a blood alcohol level that might have been a mere coincidence and nothing more.
“She called me after that fight,” I said quietly, avoiding Yolanda’s gaze. “She didn’t ask, but I let her stay with me. I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
Yolanda shook her head in frustration, as if I was describing someone who wasn't her sister.
Back then, I thought I could handle it. I was wrong. Soon after, Izzy got laid off from a store job. The reason? Theft. It was no wonder I started seeing things we couldn't afford. Not with our tight budget. Plus, she wasn't making as much. So, the burden fell on me to find work. The only job I could get at the time was fast food. We celebrated by getting drunk together, and it didn't take long for me to find out she had a drinking problem.
Then things got heavy.
After some time, I brought up the idea of rehab, and we argued until she cried in anger and thrashed my apartment like a one-woman wrecking crew. I tried to calm her down however I could until she decided to leave, vowing she'd come back for the rest of her things.
And that was the last time I saw her alive.
I caught Yolanda’s eyes, and I could see her faith in Izzy was no more. Things quickly became quiet once more as she started to take it all in. When it seemed like she was going to blow her top, she didn’t.
She was paralyzed as she looked onward.
The monkey creature rattled around in a cage he placed himself in for protection. He didn't know that from behind the bars, in the corner, a drooling, snarling creature lurked in the darkness, watching him with a great stillness. The monkey's heart pounded heavily in a tight spot, and he began to bargain with the monster. To save his hide, he unlatched the lock. He backed away slowly but never took his eyes off the beast.
The little demon spawn peeked its head out. It had rabbit ears but the skin texture of a burnt, bumpy turkey. It bore its frighting fangs as it turned toward the cages around them, lined up with confined creatures, watching with bleak, hollow eyes. One by one, the monsters pulled at their latches, and one by one, they were freed, setting off a domino effect that surged through the lab. Strange creatures poured from the cages as their malformed bodies spilled across the lab floor. They looked patched together, barely clinging to life as their cries and screeches filled the air, approaching us with jerky motion.
“Hell,” I whispered, my heart racing as they closed in. “What do we do now?”
Izzy clenched her fists, her new, unnatural strength evident. Whatever she was now, she wasn’t afraid of anything.
“Nothing left to do but bring them down with me.”
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