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All Chapters of A Cruel, Mad Experiment: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

9 Chapters

Chapter 1

"This steak is cooked to perfection, Michelle, dear. Any longer, and it would have lost that sublime quality. Come, take a bite!"The voice sounded familiar.I turned and saw a woman holding a glass of red wine.It was my mother, Blaire Devos. She wore a silky gown, and I had never seen her look so relaxed.A man in loungewear stood nearby, carving the steak. He was my father, Mitch Devos.Michelle took a bite and gave a thumbs-up. "Incredible! This is exquisite! The two of you really know how to live."I looked down at my hands.I could see right through them.Only ten minutes earlier, those same hands had been stained with blood.I had wanted to leave my parents the last can of food in the basement, so I had used its jagged edge to kill myself. It had been slow and agonizing, but I endured every second because I believed I was doing something noble.I had believed I was a hero."That reminds me." Michelle set her glass down and pointed toward the lawn. "How's the kid? Not

Chapter 2

Everyone set their glasses and utensils down before turning to face the screen.My mother pressed a few buttons on her tablet, and the display flickered to life.The title, The Best Of: In the Past 72 Hours, appeared in bold, red Arial font.Then the video opened with a shot of me kneeling beside a broken section of pipe, desperately licking the water droplets leaking from the crack.The water was brown with rust. It stank. Yet I drank it as though it were the purest spring water because I was that desperate to survive.The crowd let out a collective gasp of admiration."Such a powerful survival instinct. Beautiful," a man said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "He abandoned every trace of human dignity and reverted to a state of pure animality!"My mother stood beside the screen with a laser pointer, carrying herself like a museum curator.The tiny red dot settled on my face. "I would like to draw everyone's attention to this gaze."She circled my eyes with the laser. "His pu

Chapter 3

The audio system boomed with blood-chilling howls, growls, and shrieks. Crazed beasts bellowed as claws scraped against bars and screeched across metal plates.Even in broad daylight, while everyone relaxed in a beautiful garden surrounded by freshly pruned lawns, the sounds made many in the crowd's skin crawl. Plenty shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Some of the women covered their ears.This had to be the zombie sound effects they had spent so much money creating."God, this is too realistic even for my taste, Professor Devos. Your audio system is truly state of the art!" the bob-haired woman half-joked, trying to hide her discomfort.The footage blurred with violent vibrations. The basement bunker must have been shaking to simulate the impact of a zombie horde. My mother stared at the emaciated figure in the corner and frowned.It did not move at all."Something's not right," she declared, her fingers flying across the control panel."He's supposed to show some reaction.

Chapter 4

Right before opening the second door, my father stopped and summoned the butler with a wave."Get everyone a gas mask, please," he said, covering his nose with a frown. "The basement bunker's ventilation is functioning properly, but the subject's personal hygiene leaves much to be desired. I'm sure the stench will be unbearable for our guests. I don't want anyone fainting from it."The masks arrived, and the guests slipped them on with surprising enthusiasm, as though they were attending a masquerade ball."Look at me!" one of them said. "I look like a BSAA member from Resident Evil, right? Guess which one."My father put on his mask. "Let's get this over with as quickly as possible. Our steaks will get cold."He turned the wheel on the door several times before the lock finally disengaged.A thick, overwhelming wave of stench rushed out to greet them. The odors of rot, blood, and excrement had festered together for three days. Even my mother frowned. She had not expected the sme

Chapter 5

The silence was deathly, broken only by the low hum of wind flowing through the vents.My mother's hand shook so violently that the flashlight beam flickered back and forth between the words on the wall and the corpse that had written them, as though the light itself trembled in denial.The explanations she had constructed for herself died in her throat.A loud crash shattered the silence.My father had dropped his glass of red wine, soaking the cuff of his lounge pants. He stared at the bloodstained lines of text, his usual composure replaced by utter bafflement and shock."This isn't logical," he muttered mechanically. "His breathing pattern appeared normal only yesterday. We were still collecting data yesterday... This has to be an act. A practical joke."He turned to the guests with a grimace that was meant to pass as a smile. "The subject's acting skills have become so refined that he used them to trick us into opening this door."No one responded. Whatever admiration they

Chapter 6

My mother's so-called Apocalyptic Survival of the Fittest had turned out to be a complete failure.The guests began speaking loudly among themselves. They no longer bothered to hide their disgust and disdain."Funny how the nature of an experiment changes when someone dies.""Elite education my ass. This is just exploitation, torture, and murder.""What kind of shitty experimental design was this? They couldn't even keep someone alive."The bob-haired woman spat on the floor and ground it under her shoe in disgust. "God, these people make my stomach turn. Don't ever imply I knew these assholes."To these elites, being labeled a loser was worse than being branded a villain.One of the guests, who worked as a police officer, called his colleagues."Send in the detectives. We've got a case over here," he said matter-of-factly, eyeing the Devos family. "False imprisonment, negligent homicide, and quite possibly child abuse. The location? The Devos estate. You're going to need the f

Chapter 7

The young policewoman slammed her fist onto the table, shot to her feet, and pointed a finger at my mother. "Where do you think you are? Your goddamn conference? You're not a social scientist. You're a murderer! You killed your own son in some stupid experiment!"The law doesn't give a rat's ass about your theories of evolution. All the law knows is that you've committed murder, and you're going to pay for it!"Her words shattered the defensive narrative my mother had built for herself. She opened her mouth to respond, but no argument came. None of her theories could withstand the judgment of either the law or basic human ethics.…The story made headlines the very next day: [Filicide in the Name of Education: Renowned Elite Professors Charged with Murder.]The article spared no detail, recounting everything captured by the surveillance cameras and the evidence investigators had gathered.Public outrage erupted almost immediately. The internet was overwhelmingly united in its con

Chapter 8

Electricity to the house was cut off a few days later. No one had paid the bills.Darkness swallowed the mansion like a tidal wave. The only light came from the moon, spilling across the floor.It felt just like the basement.My father lit a candle with trembling hands.The flame danced in the draft and quivered with every unsteady movement he made, stretching the shadows into long, flickering shapes that shifted through the house like phantoms.My mother sat huddled in a corner, her hair disheveled and her eyes sunken.She had not eaten in three days. Every time she tried to swallow, her throat closed up. Whenever she shut her eyes, all she could see was the rusty, contaminated water sitting in my stomach.My father stared at her for a long moment before suddenly screaming, "Don't get any closer!"He grabbed a vase and hurled it at her. It shattered at her feet.She sprang to her feet in fury. "Have you gone mad, Mitch?!""You're a zombie! You ate Bobby!" my father shrieked,

Chapter 9

The door to the basement swung open. The nauseating stench hit them like a freight train, just as it had the first time.This time, however, they seemed to smell something else entirely. They stepped inside slowly.The basement looked exactly as it had when they first discovered my body. The bloodstain had dried into dark, hardened grime. My father walked to the corner where my body had lain.He picked up the tattered T-shirt I had been wearing and pulled it over himself like a second skin. Then he sank into the corner, drew his knees to his chest, and assumed the same position I had.He chuckled. "This way, I can generate the same data he did."He pressed his cheek against the wall and brushed his fingers across the bloody message I had left behind."The wall is so cold. No wonder Bobby was always shaking."He was trying to imitate the victim in a desperate attempt to find some twisted form of salvation. Or perhaps he was pretending to become an extension of me so he could conv

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