This lab smells of failure. 

No, not failure. 

Progress. 

Everything is as it should be. The lab, the experiments, the work I put in. It is all going according to plan. I have done nothing but clean up the mess for hours now, but it is not a mess. It may seem to be a fiasco now, but it is not a mess. 

They all think it is wrong—Florence, Ezekiel, even the monkey—but they do not see the bigger picture.

Did I see it, though? Yes, of course I did.

This is what happens when you push the limits, when you are the only one willing to do what no one else will do.

I am just stressed out, that is all.

And that noise. The same noise over and over again.  The static in the air. The equipment buzzing, and it is fine. Everything is fine. If I just keep cleaning, I would feel better about myself. The entire lab needs to be spotless. 

That is all there is to it. The clutter—the clutter everywhere is clouding my judgment. It is just all part of my imagination.

Everything is under control.

Ezekiel... she is alive again, is she not? I brought her back, did I not? So why did she not thank me for it? My sister, the ungrateful ghoul. Well, she is grateful. Somewhere deep down, she has to be. I made her faster, stronger, flexible, and yet she looks dead inside and out. She has the nerve to abandon me without any care in the world. 

No. No. I won’t let her. I cannot lose her again. She is not leaving me behind this time. I won’t let her disappear again.

It was not even my fault she died. I was not there. I did not drive her to the edge—she drove off. She did it to herself. She always did this to herself. And now she is back. I fixed her.

So then... why doesn’t she feel fixed?

What if she would never be fixed? What if I have been wrong after all this time, running in circles, chasing something that I could not grasp or worse, was never there? That can’t be right. 

Florence does not understand either. He is so insignificant, like a summer ant. He does not know what it took to bring her back. The time that I had to sacrifice. What we all had to sacrifice. Coward. He probably thinks he is better than me now, after everything he has seen. But he is not. He is just like me. I gave him the same treatment, and now he is stuck too. 

Stuck, like the rest of us.

And that crazy lady, Willy or whoever. Barging into my store…she frightens me.

But those creatures mutating... I didn’t... I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. They were all just little stepping stones, perfect hybrids. Beautiful, elegant mongrels. And yet, here I was, scrubbing their guts off the walls and blood off my hands. 

Now I am staring at these walls, and they’re staring back, and all I can see is me.

I can’t get distracted. I just have to keep going. Keep cleaning. Keep working. Keep pushing. Can’t stop, won’t stop. If I stop now, things fall apart. And I’m not falling apart. Not now, not ever.

*No matter how deep you clean, you can’t scrub your way out of this one...*

I tried my best! I just wanted to make things right!

*Help who?*

I had tears stream down my face. I don’t know anymore. For once, I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of my life. I couldn’t see the vision of the ground work that I laid out for the future. All I could see is a cold, unfeeling monster. 

And I could not look away.