Story-A-Day #175: Facility 17

FACILITY 17

There used to be an illuminated sign in that metal frame that "Ministry of Corrections - Private Facility". For years, people assumed that was exactly what was in Terence, a correctional facility of some sort, or more likely, an administrative building.

They had been smart that way. When the truth came out, it was clear that they had the resources to build a secure, impenetrable location if they wanted to, but they chose to hide right out in the open.

What better place is there really? Slap a name on a sign out front and curiosity is no longer an issue with the public. Choosing the Ministry of Corrections was also a simple yet smart decision as it provided a cover for the late night deliveries to the secure delivery bay at the rear of the building. What better time to conduct a prisoner transfer?

Of course the truth was far more sinister. It often is.

There was no way we could have known the ungodly experiments that were actually being conducted in there. Even the city officials claimed ignorance.

"We had toured the facilities and aside from a few restricted access areas, everything seemed as it should," they said.

"They operated with transparency and full cooperation. There was no need to doubt their credibility."

Of course that probed false. It was only two months ago that the event occurred, and most of us are still afraid to leave our homes.

The abomination that got loose, the one that rampaged through the facility and wiped out the medical staff unfortunate to be working that shift, and over half of the security personnel, is still out there somewhere. It stalks us in the night, fueled by an untempered rage.

After the breakout, the facility was wiped clean. Their massive investment a write off. Stories trickled out about the horrors discovered within that building, not just the maimed workers strewn about, but the horrible chambers in the lower levels, those deep underground 'restricted access' dungeons filled with unnatural hybrids.

Facility 17 is no more, but that Alpha creature is still out there. Most of us fear that there is probably more to be afraid of beyond that single escapee.

After all, this was Facility 17, not Facility 1.

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Story-A-Day #142: Tom

TOM

The shadows scurried. There was no other way to explain it. She had climbed out of the shower and was toweling off, the remnants of the song she had been singing still drifting through her mind, when she noticed the movement.

It was quick and fleeting, a sudden dash across the yard outside the window. Her first impulse was to assume it was a peeping tom, some lowlife trying to sneak a peak at her.

She had noticed her neighbor skulking around back there before and assumed that this was more of the same.

She pulled the towel tighter around her torso and peered out through the blinds. Everything seemed to be as it should and just as she was about to turn away again, the black shape dashed from tree to shed.

She squinted more intently. There was something out there, but it was hard to tell what it was. It was too fast to track with her eyes, and too amorphous to clearly distinguish. She could just make out a wavering form behind the shed, dark tendrils extending fingerlike around the corner of the small building.

She banged an open palm against the window hoping the abrupt noise would be enough to scare off whatever was out there. The shimmering form froze and the imposing feeling of being watched quickly mounted. She took a step back as her discomfort grew and was about to turn to leave when the form revealed itself.

It was a shifting black mass, uniform in its make up, but hard to distinguish against the growing gloom of twilight. A pair of glowing red-gold eyes peered across the distance between them, sizing her up.

She took a few tentative steps backwards, finally running into the flimsy bathroom door,. The jarring impact caused her breath to seize momentarily in her chest.

The black shape flowed across the yard with a sudden burst of speed and filled the entire space of the window, its breath fogging up the small pane of glass. There were no discernible features to be seen.

The shape vanished as quickly as it had appeared. She ran into the bedroom where she hastily turned on all the lights and closed the blinds. It was a while before she was able to make her way back to the bathroom, and when she did, there was no sign of the creature – only a growing darkness that slowly filled the neighbor’s yard in an inky black darkness.

She returned to the bedroom and crawled under the sheets. It was something she hadn’t done since she was a child, but that night, she left the lights on, a comforting glow to ward off the things that go bump in the night.

Story-A-Day #133: Burrowers

BURROWERS

Something happened over the winter.

As recently as two weeks ago, solid mounds of snow had lined the streets. Their decrease in size was no surprise with the warmer temperatures, but an odd aspect to the melting had become apparent. As the snow banks melted, large pockets of open space were revealed. It wasn’t a random occurrence either. The gaping holes were evident within melting banks throughout the city.

What would cause a mound of snow to melt from within?

It had perplexed the team for the first week or so, but the answer had become clear over night. The banks weren’t located over storm drains, and the degree of melting could not be attributed to sand and salt from the roads. There was something else behind the enclosures and while they weren’t clear at first, things had now progressed and the picture was becoming clearer.

The slithering trails that had been appearing throughout the city seemed to indicate that something had been in the banks; the dense snow possibly serving as an incubator.

The team was now operating under the theory that unknown creatures had been growing in the snow, hidden from the prying eyes around them; and when the thaw came, they started hatching. The problem now was figuring out what type of creature had been growing in those icy enclosures, and to where they had now disappeared.

Nothing known to science could account for the strange gestation pattern. Heat was usually required for creatures, mammalian or otherwise, to incubate, hatch, or be birthed. With the exception of certain deep-sea species, no entity known to man would have such a disparate and spread out nesting pattern. There was no reason for a creature to spread its brood throughout the city.

More alarming still was the fact that none of the usual post-birth signs were evident. There were no shell fragments, no stillborns, and barely any sign of exit routes from the mounds of snow.

These creatures were an unknown quantity, and as unknown quantities, they would be hard to trace, and harder still to identify.

The one lucky break we’ve had is that there seems to be a secretion in their trails that reacts to ultraviolet light. We’ve tracked a number of the trails to sewer and storm drain accesses and are preparing a team to conduct a search below ground.

With any luck, we’ll get to the bottom of this by early next week. The worst-case scenario is that we have a hostile new breed of animal infiltrating our city, but we have had no indication that the creatures pose a threat. Still, we would be remiss to assume there is no reason for concern whatsoever. The secretions could prove toxic, or pose a threat to the area water table.

The team is in place for tomorrow. Hopefully we will find a quick solution to this mystery. Until then, we’ll just keep our eyes peeled, and hope for a favourable outcome.