I could feel the adrenaline rush through every inch of my body. The words that had just come from my mother’s house hung in the air around me like an unwelcome guest.
Excuse me? Test subject? What on earth are you talking about?
I could feel my voice threatening to waver, but I forced it to be steady. I couldn’t let her know that I was scared; it would just give her even more power over me.
Well, as you probably knew I studied science while I was in college. But what you probably didn’t know was that I was soon after shunned by the entire science community because of the experiments I wanted to pursue. Even some of my best friends turned their backs on me. But I needed to do it. I needed to do experiments on humans to solve some of the most pressing scientific issues we’ve ever known.
She turned so that her back was facing me and proceeded to shuffle around with some instruments on a lab table she had in the corner of the room. The light wasn’t bright enough for me to be able to see what she was messing with, but the knot in my stomach told me that no matter what it was, it couldn’t be good.
Mom? I attempted to make my voice sound as innocent and young as I could possibly muster. Tell me about your experiments. I wanna know about them.
In reality, I wanted nothing more than to never hear about what she thought she could contribute to the scientific world, but I needed to buy myself as much time as humanly possible. I didn’t know what I would do, but at least then, I would have time to formulate a plan.
Her head swiveled around faster than I had ever seen her move before.
Really? Her eyes were filled with a certain combination of melancholy and hope that it shot right through my heart. This was my mother after all. Something obviously wasn’t right with her, and it broke my heart. I vowed in that second that if I could come up with some way to save both of us, I would. I nodded my head in response to her. She began to wring her hands nervously.
I should have prepared something for you. I didn’t know you’d want to know about them. No one has ever really asked about them before, not even Jared. You were my favorite out of the two of you after all, so I suppose it makes the most sense that you would care more.
A tear welled up in the corner of my eye as I watched her go shuffle around some papers, presumably to find something to show me. I knew she had done some horrible things, but she had also been driven to this point by something wrong in her brain. And none of us had even noticed. Maybe if we had, she wouldn’t be in this situation.
She pulled a paper out of the pile and held it up triumphantly. That’s when she began to twitch. I heard her mutter things to herself, almost like she was having a conversation with herself. She whipped her head up and shouted, Liar!
It all then happened quicker than I could process. She grabbed a white cloth and placed it over my nose and mouth and simultaneously stabbed me with a syringe. I drifted off right as a searing pain trickled through my veins.
