The Laboratory (Fiction)

She was lying on her back breathing heavily when a truck passed by. The driver didn’t see her so he continued his journey. Amid the ever-present breeze of diesel fuel she could finally straighten up to continue her travel. Blood was pouring down from one of her knees making it difficult to walk. The adrenalin kicked in and she couldn’t feel the pain any longer.

As she was leaving this forgotten industrial complex, she remembered the good old days when she used to come here with her father and watch go-kart races. It was a small track but people from the villages nearby used to gather every Saturday afternoon and enjoy the atmosphere. You could witness drivers brag about their experience and than lose the race while you were savoring a bag of popcorn with a super-sized soda.

One day the owner sold the land to a corporation and the race track got demolished. A fancy building of glass along with a couple of ugly containers were part of the new scenery ever since. They told us that the company had established a modern laboratory to do medical tests on animals but that was all we ever heard from the officials. More so, as they only employed people from outside this area, we couldn’t get rid of the feeling, that something fishy was going on behind the big yellow warning signs that read “No Trespassing”.

Here she was on a winter night trying to find her way home after a car accident. Tara was driving her beautiful red car when a truck driver pulled over and hit her car on the side of the road. The impact was significant sending the little car off the road and causing it to roll over.

Luckily Tara didn’t suffer major injuries and was able to exit the car alive. But here she was on the side of the road with the truck driver who caused the accident shamelessly continuing his journey while she was looking for her phone to call for help.

The battery died pretty quickly so she wasn’t able to dial the emergency number which led her to start making her way home by foot along the side of the road. She reached the industrial complex after an hour or so when she realized a painful sensation of pressure in her lower back. Her body sent shockwaves to the brain informing every single cell to quickly lie down and rest.

Now that she could move again and the fog that appeared right after the impact had been lifted from her brain, she started having all these flashbacks from her childhood. First, the go-kart races came to her mind, followed by the many colorful circus shows she attended with her older siblings, the farmers markets that used to sell fresh regional produce on the weekends, and finally she saw her mother laughing while purchasing a coup of ice cream for her younger sister.

That was the last time Tara saw her mother happy and laughing wholeheartedly. After a terrible illness took her younger sister away, her mother never recovered. She stopped speaking the day Hannah died and a few years later she wouldn’t leave the house anymore.

Despite of these events taking place more than thirty years back, it felt as if everything was unfolding now in this present moment. The warmish blood pouring down her knees invoked a state of dizziness in Tara, making her question the ability to get home on her own. She decided to take a little break and sit down on the side of the road a little bit before she would continue her path.

It was dawning when a group of workers heading to the laboratory noticed a human body lying on the side of the road. It was Tara. She was alive but unconscious. Her wounds caused her to lose a great amount of blood.

When Tara opened her eyes she was lying on a table of steel with all kinds of wires connected to her body including her brain. There were no signs of bruises, fractures or injuries on the body. She felt completely pain free and the memory of her accident was non-existent. All she could remember was her name.

Tara was never to be seen again. Her car was never found and there was no mention whatsoever about an accident in the region.

The laboratory is functioning to this day. It is said that the experiments taking place in this remote location go beyond what is acceptable under the guise of “medical research”. The limits of time and space have been removed, enabling scientists to move between realms and explore infinite possibilities.

💎💎💎 Krisz Rokk 💎💎💎

Creative art: AI-generated image by Daniela S.

Originally published on the Hive Blockchain at @KriszRokk.