Natural Selector

[RandomTarget#22]

This was written a few years ago, and my command of the language wasn't great then. Despite that however, it's still an interesting short short story, if a little dark. I hope it makes you all think.

 

 

I woke up coated in sweat, yelling the phrase “Why did she scream?” over and over in my small room. My outcry quickly brought the attention a nearby doctor, who soon stood peering into my room through the little window on its heavy door. I was sick and tired of receiving these dreams every night, but still the always seemed completely real in almost every way. They weren’t like dreams at all, more like visions – or directives. Closing my eyes, I tried as I do most mornings to remember the content of the nightmare as completely as possible.

 

The dream begun with me staring at two twin signs hanging upon a plain white wall. The top sign read “Carpe Diem - Seize the Day,” while the sign hanging directly below read “Respect ALL fellow men.” Confused as I was by the signs, I turned to my left and begun to make my way down a long hallway.

At the end of the hallway I came into a fog-filled cubic room which resembled a schoolyard playground, and at the far end of the room I could barely make out a swing set through the haze. Cautiously, I walked across the room to get a better look, and what I saw was to say the least disturbing. The first group I could clearly see was that of the parents gathered around the swing set. All of them were deformed in at least one way, with many of them missing whole limbs. About half of the parents stood frantically heaving their children higher and higher on the swings. I begun to move closer to get a better look at the children, but as I was taking my first step the fog was suddenly blown from the room by a huge gust of wind coming from one of the walls. My jaw dropped as I saw the scene for the first time in shocking clarity. The children flying back and forth on the seven twin swings were all missing one or both of their legs, although their little arms were clearly visible holding onto the chains of the swings. The children were also all vastly overweight and had dumb looks of pure exuberance painted upon their drooling faces.

Suddenly, just as I had finished surveying the scene, all seven obese children begun dramatically losing weight as their disabled parents cried out in glee for what they obviously assumed was a miracle. However, their happiness was short lived. The cries of joy turned into screams of terror and pain as the children – still swinging away joyously unaware of what was happening to them – kept shrinking until nothing was left but a collapsing skeleton.

Upon hearing the cascade of bones hitting the dry gravel, I was suddenly transported to an overcrowded open market filled with relatively normal looking people. Out of the busy crowd, a young woman walked unsteadily. The woman was short and thin, and she had a pale, sickly look to her skin. Within the dream world, I acted instantly without thinking. I followed the short woman until she was alone, grabbed her, and hauled her off kicking and trying to scream through her gagged mouth.

Back at my house, which was out in the country with no neighbours in a one kilometre radius, I examined my subject for days. The tasks I presented her with encompassed both mental and physical challenges. Speaking of challenges, I spent most of my time just trying to make her cooperate. Finally, I learned to let my subject’s survival instinct take over as I offered small drinks of water in exchange for correct behaviour. Unfortunately, the woman failed most of my tasks badly and I knew I was forced to kill her. As I took the knife to the sickly woman’s throat, I couldn’t believe what a fuss she was making. I kept yelling at her, “This is for the good of your own people! You shouldn’t be screaming!” I guess that was when I woke up.

 

Coming out of my concentration, I saw the doctor was standing inside my room and directly in front of me. This wasn’t too unusual. I hadn’t been violent in this facility, so the doctors often came in if I was unresponsive. I watched the doctor begin to slowly remove a syringe from his pocket – likely a sedative – when I realised that I was still screaming in confusion about the woman in my dream. At the sight of my calming down, the doctor slid the syringe back into his pocket and instead asked if I was ok.

I sighed deeply and replied, “Sometimes it isn’t easy being the one picked too compensate for humanity preventing their own natural selection.”

The doctor seemed happy enough with my calm response and turned to leave; but when he did, the syringe had been removed from his pocket.

I had failed in my task. I was trapped here instead of being able to complete my mission. At that instant I realised a failure. I was just as bad as they were.

“Natural selection is dead!” I cried suddenly out of pain, “Humanity is dead!”

I took the syringe, carefully lined it up with my left eye, and as the doctor ran back into my room, I dove head first into the padded wall. The needle went straight through my eye and into my brain. I was dead. I had expected either bliss for trying my hardest at my mission or hell for failing, but all that exists is this blackness. This torturous blackness! Now I know why she screamed.

Edited May 16, 2004 by RandomTarget#22

[Wyvern]

A very dark and disturbing piece of writing, RandomTarget#22. The vivid and original imagery that you used to describe the dream and the narrator's death was evocative, and rendered the scenes very horrific and unsettling. The death of the narrator at the end of the piece was particularly disturbing, and even caused me to cringe while I was reading it.

 

In terms of improvements, I think that this piece could be made even more powerful if it were expanded into a longer story, as it currently seems to be rushed in certain places. More backstory for the narrator could particularly be useful, as though the details and events described throughout are genuinely disturbing, there's currently no sense of sympathy for the narrator, since he's a stranger when the story begins and a stranger when it ends. Perhaps you could go into more detail about the narrator's current condition in the mental ward, and the events that led up to him being confined there. Another thing you could do to expand the backstory is to clarify the symbolism of the dream... what is the significance behind his seeing the infants turn to bones? What provokes him to suddenly kidnap the woman from the crowd and treat her as a subject? An expansion of the backstory might make the piece less cryptic, but it would also make it more accessible.

 

Deeply disturbing, thanks for sharing this.

[RandomTarget#22]

Thanks Wyv, it was originally written for a creative writing exam, which is why it's so short.

[Ozymandias]

OOOooo. Shivers down my spine! I like it! Don't understand it yet, but I like it.

 

Unless I have really missed my guess (random? Any comment on the following?) I'd disagree with you, Wyv. I'd say enhancing the narrator's background further would take away from the story, because what the presentation tells me is that who he is is fairly unimportant, the meaning of his dream and what he does ("Sometimes it isn’t easy being the one picked too compensate for humanity preventing their own natural selection" -fascinating statement, that.) are the crux of the matter.

 

A very, VERY engaging and deliciously eerie story. I just need to reread it some more to figure out what on earth is happening...