Each week, I send out a story via my email newsletter. Each story is around 1000 words, sometimes less, sometimes more (sometimes way more!). The stories are in a variety of genres: supernatural, thriller, sci-fi, horror, and sometimes romance, and all of my stories typically feature a gay protagonist.
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This is story number 2 of the series. Enjoy!
Transformations
The changes were subtle at first, easily dismissed or explained away. But as the days turned to weeks, I could no longer ignore the horrifying truth staring back at me from the mirror. It all began that fateful night in my laboratory.
I was working late, as I often did, consumed by my life’s grand ambition. My assistant had long since retired for the evening, lacking the stamina and fortitude required for our critical work. The research was as brilliant as it was complex – a feat never before attempted. And it had been proceeding so well.
That is, until the unexpected power surge.
One moment I was adjusting the dials on the microwave atomizer, and the next, an arc of electricity leapt from the device, shattering beakers and sending shards of glass flying. The acrid scent of ozone and singed hair filled my nostrils. Dazed, I surveyed the destruction, my eyes stinging from the fumes. Puddles of chemicals pooled on the floor, seeping into my shoes.
It wasn’t until I noticed the tear in my lab coat and felt the sting on my skin that panic gripped me. I had been exposed. Alone, I initiated decontamination protocol, stripping off my clothes and stumbling into the chemical shower. As the cold spray needled my flesh, one thought pounded in my skull: the toxin wasn’t meant to touch human skin. Ever.
In the following days, a heavy fog of exhaustion enveloped me. I would wake up more tired than when I had collapsed into bed the night before. But that wasn’t the only incongruity. My jacket, hung neatly in the closet as always, was damp with morning dew. Mud clung to the soles of my boots. Had I gone out? I had no memory of doing so.
Whispers reached my ears, murmurs from neighbors and shopkeepers when they thought I couldn’t hear. Something about a mysterious figure glimpsed only by moonlight, a wraith who walked the streets long after decent folk had retired. Unusual occurrences plagued the city, especially near the docks and rookeries. Orphans spoke of a stranger bearing gifts of food and blankets. The penniless and forgotten found themselves with coins in their pockets. A few swore the specter had stopped assaults and robberies.
I shook my head, dismissing such bunk. If anything, I was the obvious culprit — after all, who else conducted unsavory experiments into the dark hours of the night? I couldn’t forget my purpose, the glorious vision that had demanded the sacrifice of my livelihood and reputation: the utter subjugation of humanity under my boot heel. Let them cast me out of academia and hound me from the public sphere; I would prevail and take my rightful place as ruler.
The microwave atomizer was only the latest in a long line of inventions to that end. Before it, came the programmable nanovirus and the burrowing hunter drones — all brilliant, all stymied by small minds and weak wills. But this new chemical, designed to infiltrate the very water and air, would succeed where the others had failed. Once unleashed, the concoction would make the masses see the world through my eyes. Compliance and obedience would replace their pitiful free will. At last, the earth would be mine.
But even as I redoubled my efforts in the lab, my treacherous hands faltered and shook. The old certainties felt as insubstantial as vapor. Unwelcome questions knotted my gut. Was my course truly just? Could my ends, however grand, justify such means?
Impossible. It had to be a delayed effect of the accident, some brain fog that would soon pass. I would never abandon my convictions. Not after all I had sacrificed.
For a time, I convinced myself that was true. Then came a morning when I woke to find a note in my own hand, detailing the location of my hidden laboratory and itemizing my cache of chemical weapons. But the memo wasn’t addressed to my old allies in the mad science community. No, the intended recipient was the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard.
With trembling hands, I fed the incriminating paper to the fire and watched it blacken and curl. But I couldn’t unsee the words, so foreign and yet penned in my own script. In that moment, I glimpsed the horrible truth.
The accident hadn’t just contaminated my body. It had tainted my very being with something far worse than any poison.
The newspapers provided the final damning evidence. A front page story celebrated a record-setting anonymous donation to the widows and orphans fund. An editorial praised an unknown volunteer who spent nights feeding the hungry and healing the sick in the slums.
I knew it was me. Not the me that I recognized, the man who had sacrificed all to forge a new world order — but some warped parody birthed in the unholy fusion of man and chemical. A twisted reflection that pursued perverse ends while I slumbered. I had become the very thing I reviled most.
An unspeakable thought crept into my brain, taking root like a cancer: perhaps this wasn’t just the accident’s doing. Perhaps this seed of virtue had always dwelled deep inside me, a recessive trait suppressed by my magnificent ego and diabolical intellect. The toxin had merely watered it, allowing that tiny sprout to bloom into a noxious weed, choking the very core of my identity.
I, who would rule them all, now served the whims of the unworthy.
My beautiful wickedness had succumbed to an inoculation called conscience. The cruelest cut of all? Some part of me, however small and misbegotten, felt the alien stirrings of contentment, even joy, at the memory of aiding the needy.
No longer an evil genius — I had been reduced to that most pathetic of creatures.
The irony was sickening. After so much toil and sacrifice, I had finally achieved my greatest fear: becoming one of them.
I had become good.
And that was the worst fate I could imagine.