by Danny
Day fifty-seven. I think. Measuring time has become somewhat difficult. I wake up for maybe a half an hour at a time... and then I drift off again. Out cold. For who knows how long? I'm going on the assumption that each time I wake up is one day. I'm fairly sure that I've woken up and passed out again fifty-six times. There's very little else to do but count and remind myself of who I am. So... my name is Danny Hearn, and it's day fifty-seven.
What the hell is going on? The tube is getting smaller. Or am I getting bigger? Or are my eyes playing tricks on me? Maybe I'm not stuck in a tube at all. Maybe I'm not in the centre of some sort of laboratory, in a clear plastic tube, floating in some sort of green goo... Maybe it's all just a nightmare. A horrible nightmare. If I could move, I'd pinch myself. But I can't. So I continue to live the nightmare.
It took me a long time to figure out how I was surviving, stuck in this tube and floating in this goo. Food and oxygen are notoriously scarce in an airtight, goo-filled tube. It wasn't until about the thirtieth day that I realised a pipe had been crammed into my mouth, and was apparently surviving me with the nutrients I needed. The pipe... is painful. Horrendously painful. It fills up my mouth, my throat, my sinuses. But I'm a big fan of nutrients. So I suppose I have no problem with it for now.
Movement in the laboratory surrounding the tube catches my eye. It's hard to make out details... the green goo tends to blur everything. But I can make out what I think is a man. Walking around. The same man that's in here every day. My captor. The evil fucking bastard...
He walks slowly up to my tube (I've come to think of it as "my" tube. Though this man has obviously paid for it, I think I deserve some sort of entitlement to ownership of the tube, spending so much of my time here). He leans over, in front of the tube. Reaches down, presses a button on the keyboard below him. A microphone pops out of a small compartment. He taps on it, and clears his throat. I hear it loudly, inside my head.
Thump. Thump. Cough. Okay, the microphone works... get on with it... He says into the microphone, slowly and clearly, "Cat's tail." Again, the words echo inside my head. Cat's tail. The tail of a cat. What a stupid thing to say into a microphone.
Suddenly, there is a... pain. In my head. Something is in my head... something that's not supposed to be there... It listens. And it obeys. Pain shoots through my body, starting in my brain, and running down my body, through my spine. The pain is like... knives. In my spine. Many knives. Sharp ones. If I could scream, this would be a perfect time. But the pipe in my throat makes this an impossibility.
The pain centralizes somewhere in my lower back, just above my arse. Before I can process this information, I feel something grow from the small of my back. I can't see it. I can't reach an arm around to touch it. But something tells me that it's a perfectly formed cat's tail.
I can barely make out the man outside the tube's face. But something tells me he's smiling. That maniacal fucking bastard! What the fuck has he done to me? What right has he to keep me like this? Where am I? What have I become?
He leans over to the microphone again. Again, the words echo in my head. "Undo cat's tail."
The pain feels even worse in reverse. The tail, shrinking back into nothingness. The pain starting in the small of my back and spreading upwards. Shooting up my spine, and exploding in my brain. Everything goes black as I pass out again.