/lit/ - Literature

Deke's girls were probably grown in a vat in a capacious basement. I imagine one of his shriveled silent mama-sans hunched in the green glow of a wombtank, watching swollen blatocysts cannibalize each other. Maybe she snaps on gloves and hauls a particularly vicious mutant from the cloying murk, inspects its twitching form for defects, and deposits it in the next tank along. In my dream the line of tanks stretches on into the damp darkness. I glimpse smooth forms drifting behind distant glass, the kink of an elbow in a swirl of pallid unflesh. I think of shark embryos pickled in formaldehye.

Deke does, in fact, keep shark embryos preserved in glass jars in his office. Dusty computer parts, too. He keeps sunbleached National Geograhics stacked on top of an antique workstation. He's cultivating an aesthetic, and the girls are part of it. One of them wanders in as we talk, taking no notice of us.