The Somewhat Short Life of Experiment 15

Trapped in the Lab

June 16th

No one knows just how bad the Lab really is. Not unless you live there. It’s like if you look at another school you don’t go to: it’ll be all pretty and sophisticated and amazing. But you don’t really know what it’s like until you actually go there. Then it’s a different story.

I should probably tell you a little bit about it.

The Lab is called... The Lab. That’s all I know about the name.

I think it once used to be called something else, some institution or something. I think it used to be a home for mentally ill or disabled patients fifty years ago. But I’m not old enough to know that.

Its home to over 500 different people, each with their own bedroom, a dining hall, sports hall, classrooms and day rooms. I guess you could call it a type of boarding school... you don’t leave unless They let you. There’s a border that surrounds it which prevents people from the outside world from finding it, unless you’re looking for the building. It gives off bad vibes and scares off any explorers if any were to come. It’s something They monitor closely. There’s about one-hundred of Them, and each of us are assigned to one of them. I’m assigned to Dr Marble. He was nice at first, but ever since he told me the bad news, I can’t look him in the eye without wishing he’d take my place. I don’t mean that horribly: I’m a nice person, so I’ve been told. But sometimes, I wish someone would take my place.

I think we’re located on some remote island in Bahamas, but They don’t tell us anymore than that. They think it’ll ruin us, corrupt our way of thinking. I don’t know how it would though.

Now, you’re probably wondering what could be so terrible, so bad that I’d ever want to leave. It’s not as if we’re left in a cell to rot: We’re all clothed, fed, educated and exercised. We can practically have whatever we want as long as it’s within reason.

What’s bad is the reason behind it all. The reason any of us are here in the first place.

My name is Experiment 15. I share the DNA of a human girl and a Purple Emperor butterfly.  And I have three days left to live.

I don’t have a proper name. Not really. Mr Marble calls me Fay sometimes, but that’s the name of the person I used to be. I’m not her, not anymore.

See, at the Lab, you’re either born or created. They’ll mix your DNA with that of another species that possesses certain characteristics, and have you born like a normal human baby. That’s if you’re born. If you’re created, they’ll wait until you’re a certain age and then have you undergo certain surgeries and procedures until you emerge with some sort of deformity They insist is a unique quality.

I was 16 when I was created. My name was Fay Patches, and I had once lived with parents and a younger brother named Jesse in Ohio in the United States of America. I had once had friends, interests, and freedom. But one night I went to sleep and awoke as Experiment 15, a Female Human/Purple Emperor Butterfly.

Apparently when I had awoken I had been dazed and confused, scared and upset I’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night for my parents. They told me there was a car accident, and only I survived. One of the other Experiments found me when they were out on a mission and brought me back. During my first few days here apparently all I could say was that I was choking. I used to throw furniture around and have tantrums. But then I settled in, until I practically belonged there. Maybe it was because I did belong there. I didn’t feel like an outsider because everyone around me was like me. Just different.

That had been a few weeks ago, early May.

And, because I woke up in May, I decided to call myself May.

Pan Fur said that was stupid. She said I should call myself after my merged animal, like she did. Pan is part human part panther. She has a panther’s the speed, agility and the balance..Her tense eyes remind me of Bagheera’s from the Jungle Book. She has black panther ears and a tail too, like an anime cat girl.

Being merged with a butterfly obviously gives me wings. They’re huge, indigo in the middle with black edges. They stretch out from between my shoulder blades, five whole feet of coloured membrane, and reflect the light as blue all over the room. Whenever I have them out, people can’t help but stare. Sometimes I got embarrassed, but I ended up embracing it when I could, once I found out I had a matter of days to see the sun.

I don’t have those strange insect antennas, although they’re sure that if I tried hard enough I could push them out from my head. But that’s not happening. No way. The wings are strange enough.

And as part of the job, I have a slightly strange diet: Leaves, tree sap and nectar.

It hadn’t mattered as much though: I had been a vegetarian as Fay, so at least I didn’t have to drastically change and start eating raw meat like Pan. Whenever we ate together, I had to always look in another direction while she ‘tucked in.’

But I didn’t always eat with Pan. Sometimes I ate with Raffe.

He was born part giraffe, with patchy fur for skin and a neck that was double the length of mine. Not to mention he was tall. Like, really tall.

We like the same leaves, so whenever the Lab had a fresh batch, we’d always grab a few bags and head to my room and eat. Sometimes we’d watch one of the Disney films from the Day Room’s selection. We loved watching Monster’s Inc. Between us, we must have seen it maybe two-hundred times, and we both knew the script word for word. If you walked in on us while we were watching it, you’d catch us mumbling along, facial expressions and everything.

I considered Pan and Raffe my friends in the Lab. They were good to me, and didn’t stare at my wings like some of the other experiments did. Some of the experiments here didn’t have obvious qualities like Pan, Raffe and I did. For example, Lauren could be mistake for one of Them with her mid-length brown hair, brown eyes and slender body. You had to look closely to see what was wrong with her. Lauren had the DNA of a viper, and her main quality was the venom in her lips. Her back was coated in scales and skin that she’d shed every year or so but you never seen them under all the hoodies she wore, and her tongue was slightly pinched at the tip. Her eyes were a vibrant green. But nothing majorly noticeable. I’d tried befriending her in my first week at the Lab, but she’d just curled up in a ball and ignored me. I gave up eventually.

There was one other person in the Lab though, that I considered a friend- Maybe more than just a friend.

Taran was part Tarantula, part human. Thankfully he didn’t have eight legs or anything of the appearance of a spider since I was arachnophobic, except for his mop of jet black hair.  He was like Lauren- he had the venom. Although he didn’t pass it by kissing you like Lauren. He had a spear like arm that extracted from a slit in his back that, if it stabbed you, would inject his venom into you, causing your life to slowly wither away within twenty-four hours. He always kept it hidden whenever we’d been together. Fortunately.

And I was going to have to say good-bye to them all in less than three days. Forever.

All because of the Lab. All because they made me like this, mixing my DNA with that of a specie that didn’t last longer than a few months. But because I was a hybrid, there had been complications apparently; complications that had shortened what should have been many years of my life.

Instead of making it to the age of fifty, I was going to die before I’d even reached seventeen. I was supposed to die the day before my birthday.