Guinea Pig

''Over the musty smell of gunpowder and rotten food, I caught the whiff of something too recognizable. I crawled inside a small room and found a dead body strapped to an operating table,its chest cavity open, with needles running in and out of each arm. The patient was human,and had been strapped to the table, as if he were awake during the procedure. If you had brought me here blindfolded and showed me the corpse,I might describe this as another conversion center. The medicine bottles with MDC labels were the only disconnect.The poor chap was strong and healthy before he died. He didn't look a thing like Johnny had in the end,but he smelled the same. Chimera or human,rotting flesh is rotting flesh. Johnny was always concerned with his image...his muscular frame, his coiffed hair,and the expensive cologne he used to buy in Paris. All singed away by the Chimera's cocooning process. What the Chimera made him into those final moments,robbed him of that pride,and made the whole thing that crueler.''

--Journal Entry,03 September,1951--James Grayson