by Daniel Davis Clayton

The story began like most end...in bitter conflict. Contradicting the ways blues and grays did non-conversational engagement, I crafted arrangements of chemical agents to be utilized on a pheromonial basis. I was a master of my own sword. Cutting down obtrusive foliage obstacles in abusive mortgaged opticals I sought to clear a path toward any ole direction. The infection of injected biological manifestations gave our experimental host the most disturbing side effects. Nasal coagulated plasma congestions and the coughing up of pinkish phlegm stemmed research we hadn't conceived possible. Upon a whim, I petri-dished twenty-five samples in ample enough time to hold true to the placebo. Deemed scientific heroes, we dreamed of Nobel pieces and daily press releases on the recesses of our daily-annotated decision-making progress.

I remember back reading Ray Bradbury superstitions on Mars expeditions and the failure of such antagonistic endeavors when I was young. We would pave the way, whether history delved us kind measures for our would-be-gift to society or not. The work continued to go well. A venue of unwise circumstance had anyone cared to contemplate the notion. The lack of rhyme signified our disharmonious actions with nature. My lack of rhyme signified my disharmonious actions against natural Darwinism. I sought to change the face of the earth. I was not the only who grieved, displeased with my potential crimes against humanity; yet we could not leave but only fall to knees and bequeath a bit of our saviors' dew.

Tears smeared and oblique outcries released little social pleasure; therefore, my vocal measures were scaled against my petri treasures, which were cultivi (which is the true plural of cultivation) in duplicational multiplying mosh pits of bacterial materials in gestation. Regrets meant nothing. Daddy always said good intentions meant little without just actions; so my inventions bent, crushing throughout thrust fractions. Each flail of my arms sent shards of shattered glasses and myriads of airborne viri into the enclosed breathing chambers. My children birthed far prematurely; they scattered into the winds of the four directions. Correction (more perplexion) when the door cringe buckled from battered demon furry cursed building flies. Had I batted mine eyes, I would have missed their amassment, sweltering like Beelzebub congealing into an instant humanoid being. What I was seeing was my life's work indeed. The seed of my hatred creeds led sorrow pleads from genetically pinpointed races. Melted swirl faces bled from bright blinding confining joust to blacking out.

God damned me in more ways than I had ever verbalized such a phrase. I suppose that was poetic justice engaged in jest. But within my situation, there was little to be mocked. I awoke from the incessant sound of the counting clock which began to resin my cerebellum like Chinese torture (if there were ever such a thing). No water needed, just the slow trickle of blood becoming a gelatin river carving deep canyons into my cranium. Such certainty loomed from contrite head wounds which can be maddening indeed.

My counterpart chose to clear a different path. He began to calculate counterstrike C-cells and viral incubation times, genetic soup concoctions and archival witchdoctor cocktail suppositories. His face began to grow long of no sleep and showed stress marks like the marks left on women's bellies after childbirth. A haggard description. Hair white and abandoning his body in tufts upon his pillow, at least it would rest fully. His attempts did not go unnoticed however; those big brother bugs and microphone sewn lab jackets exposed his endeavors in compound. Of course they simply allowed for him to continue. As his body and mind grew weaker, those eager for him to complete his missions allowed for conditions which encouraged his disobeyment. Oh how he feigned himself clever indeed when he crafted his own private laboratory from an abandoned storage room in section eight of the building.

He expired 27 months before his work was complete, meeting a defiant defeat upon his makeshift workstation's ungrievous floor.

I escaped the compound wailing, bearing gifts of otherworldly parasitical phalanges into water sources. Locals made erroneous citations of the presence of a strange beast when, in actuality, those beasts lie in each of their beds. I would deliver them into sanctuary, surely purging our earth of the scourged presence of man. The pharmaceutical plan was to create the antidote early and charge golden change. Surely the poor would be purged which pleased the manufacturers. Of course I would usurp their intentions.