“Yeah, Ernest, but—”
“And you promised! You said you wanted to be part of this, that you would always be one of us. You swore along with Caleb and me, fucking told us we were your brothers!”
“I didn’t know you meant murder!”
Ernest looked at the floor before speaking, using a patronizing voice not unlike his father’s. “I told you this would be difficult. I told you this would end badly. I told you we would be sharing secrets for life. What about all of that didn’t you understand, you fucking idiot? What the fuck did you think I was referring to?”
“Come on, Ian,” Caleb said. “You’ve got to see Nolan for what he is. A non-person, just an asshole getting a free ride. He’s a leech, a guinea pig. He’s a goddamned lab rat.”
Ian looked from Ernest to Caleb and knew they planned to finish. Could he see Nolan as just a giant lab rat? He tried to justify what they were doing to the slab of meat on the butcher block table, hidden away somewhere in a room that reeked of damp, dead wine, a room lit by a naked bulb dangling by a single thin wire. The expressions on the faces of his fellow scientists were feral, somehow evil. They were enjoying this too much and would never need to justify their actions. Ian tried to reason that this was all for posterity, tried to forget that this was how Nolan would spend the last minutes of his pathetic life.
“Okay,” Ian whispered. “I’m with you.” He didn’t know whether or not he really meant it. For now, he did mean it. For now, he would stand with them.
Ernest handed him the notebook and pen. “Good. Let’s get going then. First entry was, say, 6:00 pm. Let’s see …” He played with the webbing between his thumb and index finger. “Level One. Subject gagged and blindfolded. Nipple clamps and insertion of rods and tubes. Slight bleeding. Subject … uncomfortable.
“Level Two. Jot down, like 6:45. Level Two, melted metal enema injected. Subject in extreme pain and passes out. I guess this is where we begin Level Three.”
Glancing at his watch, he said, “Blindfold and gag removed. Subject will be revived and questioned for response. Start Level Three at 7:00 pm.”
Ian wondered what sort of doctor Ernest would become and then remembered his particular fondness for forensic medicine.
Ernest continued his dictation. “About to revive subject.” Then he grinned. “Level Three. Wake the fucker up.”
Caleb waved the salts beneath Nolan’s nose. There was no reaction. He waved them for another few seconds, and then lifted the vial to his own face and sniffed. He jerked back his head and snorted. “Nothing wrong with these!”
“Oh, god,” Ian moaned, peering into Nolan’s face. “What’s wrong with him?”
Ernest rolled his eyes. “Are you serious?” To Caleb he said, “Keep working those salts. See if you can revive him.”
Caleb waved the salts and slapped Nolan’s cheeks.
He continued the dictation. “Level Three. Subject unresponsive. Efforts to revive subject have been unsuccessful. Unsure at this point what—”
Nolan rocked his head away from the salts. His eyes rolled around in their sockets, trying to focus, unable. The whites of his eyes were tinged with pink, distorted Easter eggs.
Ernest leaned over, his mouth by Nolan’s ear. “Can you hear me?”
Nolan moaned.
“Nolan? Come on, man, wake up. We need to know how you feel. For posterity.” Ernest looked up at Ian. “Jot this down: subject unwilling or unable to respond. In great deal of pain.”
Nolan’s eyes focused. He blinked and tried to press himself into the table. Opening his mouth, all that escaped was a belching groan.
“Next level before he passes out again,” Ernest said, moving to the simmering pot.
“Burns …” Nolan groaned. “Help me …”
Ernest said, “This is going to be tricky. Ian, your turn. Grab his dick. Put on the gloves first.”
Ian got into place and did what Ernest instructed.
“Hold it up, as straight as you can. Hold it steady.” He turned back to the pot.
“Wha …” Breathing came as gasping hitches, making speech impossible for Nolan. Tears streamed, dampening the hair along his temples. His eyes were glistening gems, brilliant and dying at the same time, a beautiful comet blazing to oblivion.
Ernest held up an oversized syringe. “Hold him steady. I’m going to inject this.” The rod in the urethra was narrow, much thinner than the needle on the syringe. “Okay, hang on. He’ll thrash around, so hold him. Steady now.”
He stuck the syringe into the tip of the rod. Moments later, the liquid metal traveled the length and filled the inside of Nolan’s penis.
His shrieks reverberated off the cellar walls. He strained against the ropes, as if in the throes of a seizure. A sudden snap followed Nolan’s trailing screams before he passed out.
Ernest tossed the stethoscope to Caleb and traced his fingertips over the damaged flesh and bone of Nolan’s broken leg. “Jesus Christ, that was a hell of a reaction. He broke his own goddamned shinbone.”
Ernest examined the rest of the body. The flesh on the other ankle was torn and bloody, but the rope had held. He secured the broken leg to the table with another length of rope before checking on Nolan’s wrists.
Ian pulled the rod from Nolan’s body. The liquid metal inside his penis had already begun to harden.
“Hold it up,” Ernest said. “If you put it down the liquid will drip out.”
Caleb held up the stethoscope. “He’s still alive.”
Ernest smiled and wiped his brow with his sleeve. “Level Three was a success, I would say.”
“Look at this,” Ian said, pointing to the underside of the penis. “The skin’s burning away over here. But nothing’s leaking out. I think it’s already solid.”
“I can’t believe he’s still alive,” Caleb said, shaking his head. “If it was me, I’d sure want to be dead.”
Ernest glanced at his watch. “Write this: Level Three achieved at 7:20 pm. Subject in agony, yet continues to live. Asked for help. Barely able to speak, yet screamed his head off a minute later. Level Three consisted of pouring liquid metal into his urethra, creating a permanent solid block in his urinary passage.”
He cleared his throat. “Now at … 7:35 pm, we will attempt Level Four. Will see if administering liquid to victim while asleep revives him at all.”
Ian raised his eyebrows. His hands trembled as he wrote the notes, jotting every word, wishing this ordeal was over. He leaned against a wall, exhausted.
Caleb handed him a small bottle of water. “You okay?”
Ian nodded, chugging the water down his parched throat.
“Hey, look at this,” Ernest said. Nolan’s penis — ramrod straight and granite solid — jutted up and rested against his stomach. “Come on, break’s over. Let’s do Level Four.”
He held up two small cylindrical tubes. “Ian, write down whatever I say. Try to capture whatever he says or does. If he wakes up.”
“You have to hold his head back tight, Caleb. If he went nuts before … I don’t have a clue what he might be capable of. These are going up his nose now. If he shakes his head, that shit’s going everywhere. Hold him as tight as you can.”
“Up his nose?” Ian said. “Won’t that kill him? That’ll, like, fry his brains.”
Caleb shook his head. “Why didn’t you get something to hold him still, like Flunitrazepam or something, man?”
“Date-rape drug?”
“Yeah. Like you don’t have access to that shit.”
“Why would I want to use anything that would paralyze him? I want to see his reactions, asshole. I want to see the little fucker squirm.”
“You’re sure taking this little ‘experiment’ personally, don’t you think?” Ian said.
Ernest thought for a moment and chose to ignore this line of questioning. “I’m not sure whether this’ll fry his brains, but in other tests I’ve run, it didn’t kill the subjects right away. They kind of went nuts, but they didn’t die right away.”
“You still talking about small animals, man?” Caleb asked.
