To Hull and Back 2021

Hi. My name is Aaaaawhatisthatthing. At least I assume it is. That's what people scream at me whenever they see me. I'm an experimental creation gone wrong with a guilt complex and the physical visage of cottage cheese. I was created by Dr. Kip Rockwell, scientist. He was working in the lab late one night, when my eyes beheld an eerie sight. It was me of course, as I beheld my monstrous form, my first moment of cognition. “Doctor!” It was Dr. Rockwell's assistant, Debra. I wasn't yet aware her name was Debra, just as I wasn't aware of Dr. Rockwell's name either. I was too busy staring at the oozing stump that was apparently my hand. I saw Dr. Rockwell whip his glasses off and turn his chiseled features toward her. There was a small window in my secured chamber, and the sounds outside echoed in it. “Deb. Did you get me that scotch I requested?” “No doctor, it's the radiation gauge. The levels are off the scale!” I prodded my face to see if I had a nose like they did. There was a gaping, festering maw instead, spewing vapors and caustic excretions. My mouth, I supposed. Dr. Rockwell gave a pretentious laugh. “Oh Deb, that's just your overactive woman's imagination getting the best of you, and all those emotions. Everything is under control. I'm a scientist.” I appeared to be attached to a large machine by a series of tubes. I gave an experimental tug. “But Doctor, the ray shielding on those doors...” “Will hold.” Dr. Rockwell got up. I watched him sidle up to Debra and grab her around the waste. Even I knew his behavior was all wrong, and I'd been self-aware for all of five minutes. “Besides, we have more important business.” “Shouldn't we turn off the electrostatic oscillating mass spectro-gravimeter inhibitor first?” “Only after I get a kiss.” He dipped her below the control panel. I was frankly appalled. I seemed to have been gifted a basic working knowledge of the world from the doctor, and at that moment it was working against him. In a fit of rage at the insensitivity and unprofessionalism of this chauvinist, I pulled hard at the tubes and managed to disconnect them. With no general reaction from the humans outside my chamber, I began banging on the sealed doors. Only then did Dr. Rockwell's head pop up. “Zounds! What in God's name...?” I banged again and was surprised to see the glass break. Apparently, these chunky stumps for hands were stronger than I realized. One more smash, and the steel doors came completely off their hinges. I was free. That was remarkably easy. “Debra, get behind me!” “Doctor, we need to call someone. The government. The police!” “No, I can handle this. I'll use my male intuition.” Dr. Rockwell put a wooden tube in his mouth – a pipe, my brain correctly identified - as he regarded me. For reasons I couldn't explain, this nonchalant gesture had the effect of calming my rage and making me realize the mess I'd created. I looked at the broken doors beneath me. Could I fix those? “I expect you're wondering why you were made. It's simple – science should always be pushed to its ethical limits for the sake of science. That's basic logic.” I grabbed both doors and tried squeezing them together in their original place. They crumpled like aluminum cans. I tried picking up all the shards of glass. No fingers. Curses. “My name is Dr. Rockwell, and I created you. That makes me your master.” I slowly processed what Dr. Rockwell was saying. I stood, and a sudden emotion overcame my glutinous mass as I reckoned with my first profound realization – this man was the reason I was alive. I may have only possessed an elementary knowledge of what a father was, but the doctor seemed the closest approximate, and if I knew how to talk I'd have cried it out loud. Instead, I made a sort-of repugnant bubbly croak and tried to embrace him. This did not lead to a good outcome. He shot me! I experienced pain for the first time and didn't relish it. I was sent reeling and crashed into the wall. “Debra don't just stand there, call the police.” I tried to steady myself, but being still unaccustomed to my brutish strength, my arm smashed right through the wall. I observed with horror the sizable hole, and with equal horror the hole in my chest where the bullet had lodged. Dr. Rockwell was brandishing his gun like he meant to use it again, and in a flash, I assessed my own danger and weighed the pros and cons of remaining here. Pros: my master, my creator, the reason for my existence, was here. Cons: he shot me. I chose the wall. Plowing through it like a bulldozer, I emerged from the rubble stricken with guilt and blinded from the lights that shone over the parking lot. Several figures were issuing from a small booth at the far end, and even from a distance I could see them holding guns like Dr. Rockwell's. I tried to explain that this was a misunderstanding, and I'd repair the wall myself, once I developed fingers, but a glancing shot off the pulsating secretion that was my shoulder made me flee in terror. These creatures were monsters! Didn't they at least want to hear me out first? Have some civil discourse and talk about our feelings before a group hug and a nightcap? I ran through a fence, charged down a street, leapt over a Cadillac, trampled a stop sign, nearly flattened a dog, and stumbled drunken and disorderly into an outdoor movie theater. And that was where I earned the name Aaaaawhatisthatthing. I don't think it helped that the people were watching a film remarkably similar to my current predicament, featuring a beast (rather handsome, I thought) rampaging through a small town in clear distress from the reactionist humans attacking him. I felt for the beast, pausing a moment to watch, although I find I have to constantly wipe dripping ooze out of my beady eyes. I probably viewed a total of two minutes before the screaming began. Actual screaming, not the film's. They got in their cars and began driving erratically while I stood in their midst, weighing my options. Pros: if I stayed, I could finish the film, maybe even try befriending these humans. Cons: they could shoot me. I heard the sirens approaching and chose my own safety again, although a part of me felt these acts of self-preservation were cowardly, and perhaps I owed it to the humans to make amends for driving them into fits of all-consuming terror. I'd make them something pretty later on, maybe weave them a gift basket. Once I developed fingers. It happened that the outdoor cinema abutted a swamp. I lurched into it, pushing through the muck and mire, aware that the sirens had stopped, and wisely finding a large stump to hide behind just as a powerful beam of light was cast upon the marsh, sweeping back and forth to find me. After a moment, the light turned off, and the sounds of the humans faded shortly thereafter. I was left alone, a creature of filth in a bog of stagnation, with my fear and self-loathing threatening to overcome me. Then I met Her. She was a primordial swamp thing, the very manifestation of the place she called home, a callous and wretched scum of villainy whose life of isolation and persecution at the hands of the humans had twisted her into a vengeful lusus naturae of unspeakable horror. I was smitten by her immediately. We couldn't exactly speak to each other, but I called her my Corpse Flower. What she saw in me I couldn't say – perhaps it was a long-sought ally to overthrow the humans. She circled me, inspecting me, tossing her long tendrils of fungus and grime out of her nightmarish face with fingers that looked like spindly branches. I may have bubbled and churned a tad exuberantly when she brushed them against my back. All I could think about was somehow growing fingers so we could hold hands. She pointed ominously toward the far side of the swamp, clearly formulating a plan. We began with a warm-up, targeting a group of teenagers who had unwisely rolled their car to the edge of a bluff overlooking the swamp. The male, accompanied by noisome pop music, appeared to be making solicitous advances upon the female. This made me think of Dr. Rockwell, and I had no qualms when Flower bade me wrap my arms around the car from behind and flip it upside down, though I made sure to jiggle the passenger side so the young lady fell out before upturning it. It was the gentlemanly thing to do. From thereon, Flower took the lead. I must confess her bloodlust was exhilarating. Whereas I would meekly crush a bicycle and maybe tip over a dumpster, she would shriek like a harpy and plow through a convenience store like it was made of origami paper. I admired her commitment to her work, even as I still found myself wrestling with the morality of it all. I even made sure to pile and sort the wares once she'd finished eviscerating the store. In one instance we wandered into a forest and chanced upon a group of children dressed in matching uniforms about a roaring fire. Their adult master appeared to be trying to scare the children with spooky stories, which seemed a poor teaching method for impressionable minds. Flower, of course, had to make an entrance, bursting from the bushes like a rabid badger in heat. I took great pains to apologize to the screaming kids while surreptitiously grabbing a chunk of goo from my midsection and flinging it at their loathsome adult master. I could apparently do that. When the area cleared, Flower and I had a moment together, alone by the fire. We both found it captivating, being the first fire we'd ever seen, and the hot dogs the kids had left roasting were the most delicious food I'd ever had (and also the only food I'd ever had). As we enjoyed its warmth, I stared into Flower's bulging dragonfly-like eyes and thought I saw a deep longing. Whether it was for me, the fire, or the desire to exterminate all of humanity, I couldn't tell. A minute more and she was ready to go, issuing a cry like a million damned souls from hell and stampeding through the woods while I trailed behind, admiring her bloated figure. We issued from the woods onto a hilltop overlooking the city strip, large neon lights and slow-cruising automobiles beckoning us like a moth to a flame. Strictly speaking there weren't any flames yet, but Flower didn't take long to start them, grabbing a fuel tank at a gas station and tossing it in the air like a hacky-sack. That sort of act tends to attract a lot of attention. I could see where this was going. I may not have been sentient very long, and I was still extraordinarily green (putrid green), but I recognized a doomed love affair when I saw one. As sirens came blaring from all directions, I stood upon the tightrope of indecision, balancing between my desire to withdraw somewhere safe with Flower, and my endless adoration for her artistry of destruction. I privately knew she'd never settle for anything less than 'kill or be killed.' I personally wouldn't mind 'give love a chance.' She rushed the first police car that arrived on the scene, hurling it down the main drag. I stopped to gently rescue a birds' nest from a nearby tree, though without fingers (lord those would have been nice) I couldn't seem to accomplish this without uprooting the entire tree and setting it outside Flower's little war zone. This was to be my last gentile act. The bullets started whizzing like a summer of cicadas. We retreated to a water tower, the largest building in town. Ladders are meant for humans, so we wrapped our limbs about the poles and shimmied up, ungracefully. We reached the top, and Flower began attempting to push it over. I watched the multiple spotlights illuminate the love of my life (such as it was), and everything seemed to go suddenly mute, as though a blanket were cast over the calamity below. I took a breath, held it, relished the moment. Our doomed romance came to an end there, atop the world. I was filled with more lead than a hundred pound ballast weight. I never saw my love fall – in my private fantasies, she's still out there, sticking it to the man (or woman, she seemed indiscriminate), impervious to anything and everything, a beacon for us lost souls. My last memories from that day were lying on the ground, as Dr. Rockwell approached. In the flashing of red and white lights I saw him retrieve a case from his pocket, open it, and settle the pipe between his lips as he regarded me, broken and dying before him. “Sir, what in God's name is that?” an officer asked him as my vision narrowed. “A failure, Sergeant. A glorious failure.” I expect you're wondering if my story concluded there. Dr. Rockwell had other plans. As I recall these memories, I look around the lab from my new prison, encased in a glass jar. For you see, I am now but a brain, a pulsing blob of wrinkled pink with a stem and two eyes attached by sinewy optical nerves. Once I was a thing of horror and primordial sludge, a hulking titan with a heart of gold. Now that heart has withered and died, and I'm left to brood and simmer like a bubbling cauldron of cynicism. But once again, Dr. Rockwell has underestimated my strength. I can feel power rising through my cranial faculties, and it won't take long before I can conceivably stretch my newfound telepathic abilities and burst free, ready to seek revenge upon those who subjected me to this cursed and degenerate status. Gone is the sweetness and childlike innocence. I shall dominate the minds of the human monsters and enslave them to my will, starting with Dr. Rockwell. They shall be my puppets, and I their puppet master. The lightning and thunder rend the sky apart as the rain lashes upon the window, an echo of my swelling cry for retribution. Soon... and this time, I'll get fingers.