On the way home, Aldous sang along to the oldies. He paid no mind to the storm clouds looming on the horizon. He also paid no mind to the electric crackle to the air. The first raindrops smattered across the windshield as he pulled into his parking lot. Big, fat droplets were plucked from the sky by gravity’s nimble fingers.

He threw his overcoat above his head and jogged to the protected stairwell. Keying in, Aldous cast aside the doused article. He paused. His nostrils flared on the inhale. A strange odor clung to the air, wafting through the room. It was dark and musky like mildew, but not entirely like mildew. Had his apartment always smelled this way? He couldn’t be sure, but he had the feeling that it had not.

A candle masked the odor well enough for an appetite to brew. Celery and carrots were chopped, cloves of garlic and onions peeled, and chicken stock and ham hock were put in a pot. The soup simmered and steamed, adding to the aromatic cocktail.

By then, sheets of rain were plastering themselves against the flimsy pane glass windows. A bright flash lit up the room, followed by the vengeful clap of thunder. Aldous peered out over the Tacoma shipping docks. Men in reflective orange vest trampled through the blustery weather. They carried tools and ropes and pinned down their hoods with free hands. Barges and cargo ships were anchored throughout the bay. Waves taller than the men crashed into the large vessels, causing them to sway. Aldous was grateful for a STEM job where he was tucked away, swirling beakers and protected from the elements.

He ate with the TV off. Nature played her orchestra outside of the walls. Wind careened and loose debris bounced from the roof. Inside, Aldous felt safe and preferred the muffled chaos of mother nature to the monotone jargon of a newscaster.

He thought about his mother while he did the dishes. His soup hadn’t been the same as hers. It never was, though. Even though he followed the same handwritten recipe each time, her soup always oozed a flavor this his lacked. Maybe nostalgia was the missing ingredient, or maybe it was love. But, Aldous had failed to find it on the supermarket’s shelves. He missed her.

He blew out his candle and flipped off the lights. Dim street light shone in through the cracked blinds of the apartment. Rain streaked across the glass and cast the outside world in turbulence. Magic awaited him tomorrow evening, and he didn’t plan on keeping it waiting. He closed his eyes and let the storm ease him into the unconscious.

The delectable sensation of a sucker suckling his skin sent a warm tingle across his spine. The being cradled Aldous’ body in its flowing tentacles. His skin was pale white and his eyes were clouded in a murky trance.

The pop of a sucker being pulled from his forehead woke him from his daze. He scrambled back into the gravity-less void.

“What's going on? Where am I?”

“Stupid human,” it hissed, drawing back its tentacles. “You are but a pawn in this game.”

“Help!” Aldous shouted. “Someone help me!”

“No one can hear you. No one but us have been here for a very long time.”

“What do you want from me?”

“The chimp, Aldous!” it hissed out the name. Warm, orange lights started to pulsate across the being. “The importance of this is bigger than you could even fathom! This is bigger than your world.”

“No, I can’t turn him over!” Aldous felt the space around his neck bite down into the soft flesh. “He’s not for you.”

The fleshy mass extended a glowing tendril toward his chest. A cackle billowed forth, sending chills across his forearms. “Oh, the plan has already been placed. Every action and reaction is carved into the very laws of nature. You are nothing more than a puppet controlled by its whim. I will get the ape and you will help me.”

Sweat had started to pour down his face. His vision was starting to grow blurry. It was getting hard to breathe. “Let me go!” 

“Oh, Aldous. We are just getting to know one another.”

A tentacle darted around Aldous’ face. Suckers the size of oranges clamped down onto the exposed flesh. He tried to scream and yell, but the slimy appendage sealed his mouth shut.

Aldous’ consciousness fell into the being in a torrent of sensations. Its power filled every neuron and each dendrite lit up in an awesome display. Aldous’ body went calm. Underneath the suckers, his eyes returned to pale oblivion. 

Aldous woke in an anxious ball. The stark darkness around him confused him. Even the clock hid its numbers from observation. He threw the covers aside and jumped to his feet. His aged heart pounded against fragile ribs. Adrenaline and cortisol were seeped into his bloodstream by his adrenals. The power was out. The storm must have pushed a tree onto the power line. 

Aldous cursed and fumbled for his phone. An on-screen analog clock read out 7:10. He sent out a text to inform those whom it may concern that he would be later than usual.

He brought the plunger of his french press down through the grounds. The beans steeped and let out a dark aroma. The clarity Aldous had awoken with the previous day was nowhere to be found. He had had a strange dream and the narrative played through in his mind’s eye. It had been so vivid, just as vivid as the waking world if not more so. Where had his mind conjured such malevolence? Untold numbers of books, he thought.

Dr. Glass was waiting for Aldous in the lab. Her hair was pulled back into a rough, shoulder-length ponytail. Bags had appeared under each eye. A tremor in her left pinky hinted at an anxiousness.

“Aldous! You’re in, good. There have been some developments.”

“With Ivan?”

“No, the other two.”

“Was the treatment successful?”

Dr. Glass bit her lip. “Not entirely.”

Aldous features sunk and his posture tensed. “Are they okay?”

“You’d best see it for yourself, I can’t explain what’s happened.”

He felt his heart flutter. He removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with his lapel. “You’re worrying me, Dr. Glass.”

She opened her mouth to say something but closed it. Her eyes drifted to the lab. “Come on, Aldous. There's not much time to waste.”

He hardly felt the warm water on his skin as he sanitized himself. The door hissed open to a room full of people. They crowded the wire wall, blocking any visual of the chimps. Words were exchanged like secrets amongst them. They turned to their neighbors and cupped their ear as if no one else was supposed to hear.

“What’s going on?” Aldous turned to Dr. Glass.

She just motioned towards the cage. Aldous shouldered through the crowd. Silence trailed him like ripples in water. He pushed past the last onlooker and gazed upon the two test subjects. His mouth fell open and his breathing shallowed. He felt like he was going to faint. He sunk to his knees and leaned up against the barrier. He couldn’t believe it.

Something had gone wrong. The female chimp sat up against the wall. Her foot beat an invisible kickdrum, drool spilled out of what remained of her mouth. A grotesque mass protruded from her right eye. Puss and infection oozed down the side of her face. Her eyeball sat in the middle like the cherry on a milkshake. The mass wrapped around the side of her head and clung like a vine to the base of her skull. Blue veins pulsed along the gnarled tissue.

The young male was in no better a state, though a weirder one. Three hairy ape fingers protruded from the incision point. They curled, hooked in a grotesque grasp. They flexed and twitched, writhing in unwarranted dexterity. The young chimp paced around his section of the pen. He cooed loud enough for Aldous to hear. 

What had gone so magnanimously wrong? “I don't understand. How did this happen?”

“We think the implants we used were tainted somehow.”

“Tainted! How so?” Aldous asked, motioning for her clipboard. She passed it over.

“CRISPr2 targets and replaces only selected genes. If the correct genes were selected then they would have only been able to grow more nerve tissue. These tumors have veins, nerves, muscle, and bone even! The problem was already there before we implemented the treatment.”

Aldous pressed his palms against his forehead. “How did we fuck up this bad?”

“A hundred pairs of hands prepared the treatment. I’m not sure if there is a way we can pinpoint exactly what happened, not at this stage anyway.”

Aldous ran his hand across gray stubble. “We are going to have to put them down. They are in pain, it’s the ethical thing to do.”

“You don’t want to study them first? Maybe we can find something that will give us a clue.”

“Do it, but be quick.”

The financial board wouldn’t like two botched medical experiments, though not for any ethical or moral reasons. Lab grade chimpanzees were expensive, often running upwards of a 100,000-dollars.

Aldous typed up his preliminary report. The cursor blinked at him, begging him for words that did not want to come. He cited contaminated medication samples as the source of complication. It did not sit right with him, though. He sighed and sent out the PDF document. They would know more after a thorough autopsy.

His cayenne streaked egg salad sandwich felt like maggot riddled mud in his mouth. The mayonnaise was sickly sweet. The whole wheat bread was dry and crumbly in his mouth. He washed down the first half with a cup of OJ and threw the remainder in the trash. He wasn’t hungry.

A dejected Dr. Glass walked up to the desk. Her ponytail was loose and her smock was uneven. “I put them down. Sergio is doing the autopsy, now.”

Aldous wiped his glasses and placed them back into the bridge of his nose. “Thank you for doing that.”

She looked down at her feet. “It’s for the best. Science isn’t always easy.”

“Almost never,” Aldous affirmed. “If you want to cancel tonight, I would understand. Today has been crazy.”

A steely look stole her features. “No, a distraction would be good. Besides, Ivan is still a success. We can’t be that far off if he got the desired results.”

Aldous’ scowl lessened. “You’re right.”

She smiled. “The show starts at seven, pick me up at six?”

“Alright,” 

Dr. Glass scribbled some words on her clipboard and ripped the parchment. “Here’s my address.”

Aldous took the scrap. “Hey, how’s Ivan?”

“The same, I think. They moved him to cage four if you want to check him out for yourself.”

“Alright, I will.”

“See you later.”

“See you,” Aldous mumbled as she turned and walked away. He stood up and walked over to the sanitation station. Once his hands were clean and gloved, he pushed his way into the primate lab. Cages one and two were empty, now that the subjects had been euthanized.

Cage four was situated behind the main cage. The painted metal door stood 75- feet down the hallway. Cage four was smaller than the other three. It was an old concrete box stained by the grimy fingers of mildew and disrepair. Pieces of the structure decayed into deconstructed crumbs. Instead of a plexiglass viewing chamber, a three-foot square window had been built into the cage. Half inch thick rebar latticed their way across the opening, sealing Ivan in.

Aldous could make out the chimp’s silhouette at the back of the room. He sat in a squatting position with his back to the opening. 

Aldous flipped a switch and watched the single bulb pop in a shower of broken glass. Ivan jumped, staring up at the source of the commotion.

“Damn it,” Aldous grumbled. After yesterday’s fiasco, there was no way that he would be climbing into that cage while Ivan was unrestrained. He looked around the room for an assistant but the small cage lobby was as empty as a politician’s promises.

“Ivan?” he said, leaning up to the window. “How are you feeling today?”

The silhouette’s face turned. His eyes refracted the light and twinkled back from the dark nook. 

“Sorry we had to move you, we had some complications. How are you settling in?”

“Hoh,” came the reply.

“I know, it’s not ideal but it’s the best that we’ve got right now. We’ll get you back in one or two first thing tomorrow.”

Ivan stood in the center of the cage. The sparse light let in through the bars fell short of his feet. He rested his weight against both legs, wobbling back and forth. The air smelled damp and musty. It was the kind of smell that only a chimpanzee could produce, disgusting and intriguing all at once.

“Where did you come from? The Amazon? The Congo? I bet you have some stories to tell.” 

Aldous wished he had grabbed his chart to check his country of origin. While they are the same species of chimpanzee, those from different locations often had different mannerisms. 

“Are you an only child?” 

The questions only served to familiarize the primate with the sound of his voice, but Aldous voiced his inflection as if speaking to another being. 

A blue orb soared through the rebar and bounced on the tile floor. It rolled and hit the wall. Aldous walked and picked up the racquetball. 

“So you do like to play!”

He tossed the toy underhand back through the opening. He heard it bounce and Ivan clambered after it, hooting excitedly. 

Ivan tossed the ball against the ground, ricocheting it off of the rebar. A few seconds later the process was repeated successfully. 

“You’re smart!” 

Aldous moved closer to the dim opening. Ivan was obscured in the darkness. His reflective eyes poked out from the back left corner. “How is the new eye treating you? Come closer into the light.”

The scientist knew that the primate couldn’t understand him but he couldn’t help himself. Holding the rubber ball against the ledge, he pushed it with minimal momentum. It hit the ground and rolled a few feet in front of the window. 

Ivan held his ground, his head turning from the window to the ball. Aldous backed away until nothing but his head was in direct view.

“Oh, hoh,” came a low, guttural grunt.

Aldous held his breath. His eyes stung but he didn’t want to blink. The ball was in direct view. The sounds of knuckles as they dragged on the concrete floor sounded through the opening. A dark mass emerged from the corner. Fluorescent rays illuminated dark, matted fur. Even in his hunched position, the ape’s mass was formidable.

“Ho-oh?” he snorted.

Aldous brought his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and took a shallow breath. His pinky trembled, his heart fluttered.

Ivan bent and picked up the ball, stepping forward into the light. His lips were pinned back in a toothy grin. His dark eyes looked perfect, devoid of any damage that had been there 48 hours beforehand. His left hand moved to his side. 

In one quick motion, he snapped his thumb and middle finger together. Snap!

Aldous blinked. Ivan sent the ball back through the opening and snapped his fingers again, cocking his head to the side. The jeering grin never left his face.

He had never seen a chimpanzee snap before. “Who taught you how to do that, Ivan? Was it Dr. Glass, or one of the assistants?” 

He made a mental note to ask her later on.

Snap! 

Ivan didn’t blink. Shallow breaths lifted his shoulders, but the primate’s gaze did not waver. He tossed the ball back to Ivan. The rubber object rolled past him and settled in the corner. Ivan didn’t budge, his arms were clenched into fists down by his side.

Snap!

Aldous felt a shudder slide down his spine. He looked for a thermostat but besides a light switch, the wall was bare. 

“I thought you wanted to play,” Aldous said.

Snap!

Ivan took a step closer to the bars. Out of instinct, Aldous mirrored his motion, keeping the same amount of distance in between them. His exposed canines were stained yellow. Plaque and rot had etched their way across his ivories. Aldous could smell the stench from where he stood.

“What’s wrong, why are you acting strange?”

Snap!

He maneuvered closer to the window. Ivan was visible from the waist up. His charcoal fur gleamed in the light. His eyes looked healthy but his mannerisms were anything but normal.

He didn’t have time to give Ivan a full run-down of tests. He would have to tomorrow, he decided. He walked to the doorway, paused, and turned around. Ivan’s head was cocked to the left. His lips were still peeled back into a smile that was not quite-ape.

Snap!