Project Asclepius

The cell phone hummed again. Gary turned the faucet handle and shook the still clinging moisture from his hands into the sink. He scanned the number.

“Same as before,” Gary mumbled and then jabbed at the power button, holding it down. The phone closed with an irritated flip and he slid it back into his pocket. “Well, there’s my temporary solution.”

“If you’re going to do that there’s no reason to even bring one.” Don said. “Anyway, I’ll go ahead and get us set up. Grab one of the cages when you come alright?”

“Know what Colubrid toxin we’ll be using today?”

“Coral, not sure which species. Just check the handling manifests.”

“Right.”

Don left through the double doors and after a moment of preparation Gary followed. Immediately he was accosted by a familiar pungent aroma. It held an everlasting gloom of a scent that hung about the place like some ghostly pall. As his nose slowly acclimated to the stench, the protest of many birds replaced it, filling his ears. Unlike the odor, this din was more of a recent addition to the labs.

“Project Asclepius has advanced far enough to begin live animal testing,” The project director had announced when the first avian shipment arrived. “Medical immortality may be closer than you think.”

Gary hated that motto. If not for Jennifer’s condition he never would have signed onto this ridiculous project to begin with. He scowled and then paused. A lone dark shape sat pecking at something on the floor before him.

“Hello, Jackdaw,” Gary greeted the bird solemnly. “What are you doing loose?”

“Kak-kak.” The crow tilted its head up at him and then hopped a bit to one side, granting Gary the space to pass.

--

This clip was done as part of a writing assignment for my creative writing class. The teacher called it 'Relay Writing'. Basically, we started with a story and each week we added something to it and passed it along to another student from the class at random. We all started with the same two stories, but by the end of the semester there were several wildly different tales floating around. Almost without variance I declared each week's story worse than the last and impossible to contribute to. And almost without variance each week I was surprisingly pleased with my own additions. Largely my annoyance at what others had done was over the apparent lack of coherence resulting from the story stuttering slightly with each new addition. Despite my griping, it was fun. I can't help but wonder if anyone would be interested in doing something like this with a group of my fellow writing/story blogs.