The Slavering Beast

         David crouched low behind an old tree, gazing fearfully at the concrete complex of Unity Corporation. “Better plans for a better tomorrow,” was their catch-phrase. The home of genetic research and adaptation. They had spawned such runaway successes as the Mark IV Super Soldier, Make-a-pet, and Everyday Butler. David, however, did not agree with Unity’s catch-phrase. No tomorrow could be better with the corporation crushing the small individuals under its massive heels. He knew the stories. The Mark IV Super Soldiers were prone to brutal tactics of riot suppression, as indicated by the New York Massacre. Make-a-pets would sometimes give off an unstable enzyme that obliterated whole families the pet was designed to please. Everyday Butlers often went insane if given too many complex commands, sometimes resulting in homicidal activity toward its owner. All these stories and more were swept away under the rug of greed. Greed of the corporation, eager for profits. Greed of the lawmakers, eager for cash to let anything go. Even greed of the consumers, too lazy and stupid to notice they’re paying too little for something that shouldn’t be owned. But David wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t lazy. He was willing to work for a better tomorrow, with the most obvious step right in from of him.
         And so David found himself lurking in the shadows of a dark corridor within a Unity complex. His eyes danced among the darkness, carefully spying and then disregarding immobile monsters blended with the shadows. A pillar, a door, a box; all beasts. Children of the foul mother whose womb David had entered. As the echoes of endless silent shifts of darkness rang in his ears, David’s hands gripped each of his large pockets. One contained a camera, the destructive power of the images it could capture vital in his purpose. The other had a pistol, a different and far more simple form of power, vital in ensuring the finality of what might be done needing to be done fully. His breath was sharp and shallow, full of life and horror. It contrasted the black air about him, which sulked in lazy anger and sagged with the weight of the evils it concealed. David’s mind screamed to go but his legs screamed to stop. His heart was trapped in the middle, running itself ragged and crashing against the gates of its cage before spinning in frustrated agony. Finally the legs succumbed, and David moved through the shadows toward dim and distant lights.
         The lights were yellow bulbs screwed loosely into metal fixtures hanging from the gloomy ceiling. They formed dim cylinders of light, which David each time was terrified to cross for fear of detection, but nevertheless crossed. It was with a proud goal, however, that he achieved this. He would stop the suffering of others, heroically facing his own suffering now. In the light, sight was his foe, and in the darkness, it was sound. His every footstep was an avalanche. His every breath became a hurricane. His heart clattered like machine-gun fire and ripped holes in his soul. But he continued, tattered and torn by fear, further through the light and dark until time had lost all meaning.
         Eventually, David found a door of steel, shrouded in the light of a single gentle beam. Above it was an aged sign, stating simply: Genetic Defectives Storage. David’s heart and mind were filled with a new beam of hope, which mingled with the yellow light drifting about him. The camera soared free of his pocket and stole the image of the sign in a single shuddering click. With high hopes David tried the handle of the door, and in surprise found it unlocked and passive. He pushed it open, the raging squeak of the hinges echoing far through the darkness but seeming only a drip of water to David. A beam of yellow cut the darkness inside the door, and David stepped forward blindly, camera in hand. He stepped in and peered into what he could only assume was a vast endless dark.
         “Hello?” he called, the pitch dying meters away.
         With a squeal and a clang the door slammed shut behind him, like the jaws of a hunter closing on its pitiful quarry. David spun, draped in the gaze of a dingy yellow light, squeezing through a small porthole in the door. It offered little help, and gave him no glimpse into the inky wall he faced. Suddenly his ears twitched and his heart shook with spasms of terror as he heard a noise. It was slight, sloppy, and slow. It was wet, and it was close. Iron rods of terror shot through his body, locking his joints with an inaudible click. The horribly fleshy noise danced about him, but he couldn’t define its derivation. With surprise in the heart of lightning acquainted, the noise-reeking beast of the dark erupted forth into David’s presence.
         The savagery of the creature threw David’s mind into confusion, as talons raked his skin in blazing agony and horrid waves of flesh pulsed and groaned with an undertone of adrenaline-boosted muscle. All civilization was lost to David as the realization of dark and dreadful doom dawned within his sophisticated brain of clay.
         Rotten embers of instinct were blown to blazing glory by David’s terror and pain. With inconceivable fury in any peaceful creature, David’s arms and fists flew upward and slammed with earthquake force onto the horrid being’s blotched and putrid flesh. Straight rows of white teeth clamped into pork flesh and black blood flooded his gums. The creature shrieked inhumanity and slithered once more into the darkness with electrifying speed. David spat and coughed the bloody skin from his mouth and fumbled in his pockets for a moment before removing his pistol. Bolts of superheated light marked each shot, revealing the true vastness of the chamber he had entered. It now roared with the noise of shuffling, crunching, groping, and most of all, dying. His shots hit nothing, simply disappearing into the darkness, swallowed alive.
         David staggered, blood flowing in profuse waves from his shredded neck. He moved toward the porthole light, stumbled, and fell. He tried to look up into the light, but his strength was gone, and blood ran rivers from his body into the cold darkness around him. “Better plans for a better tomorrow.” For one who took the suffering of all and tried to bring them above the dreary darkness of their lives, no tomorrow would come. For suffering, it seemed, was just a hunk of meat, shoved into the maw of the slavering beast.