Sunday, January 30, 2011

Drilling Down - Francisco Mora

The two guards who abducted Dr. Jackson were taking her through the gates into the building that Ace had been standing by watching, in pursuit of the doctor. Ace ran up to the gate door to try to catch it before it closed. The gates were scalable but no easily so. They were over fifteen feet high. He got through it. But the door to the building was nearly closed. He catapulted over to the door jumping like a frog and then leaping by bending at the waist like a four-legged animal.

The door hadn’t closed. Relieved. Slowly, slowly, he opened it, so slowly he could almost not hear the metal door latch moving out of its socket.

Dr. Jackson’s howling was muffled by their hands. Ace walked the empty corridor in her direction, but had to stop. The sounds of her voice were bouncing making it difficult to identify her location. He went downstairs, drilling down into the building three, four, five floors. It was difficult to tell if some of the landings were actual floors.

They disappeared. He wasn’t where to exit. He peered through the glass window over a door handle. What he walked out to was a catwalk that cut across a vast open space. It was filled with stations of circular lab tables that were on different levels. Columns of these circular tables were connected by cables with bubbling liquid. The doctor was being carried away on a catwalk one level down. Ace got down on all fours to not be seen; the area was bright with glowing catacombs of extra large tubes that were filled with globular tissue.

On one circular table there were large glass tubes with embryo-looking forms. Oh my god, that couldn’t be human.

1 comment:

  1. You really use the rhythm of your language and repetition to create a sense of tension here. Your pacing practically forces us to read faster, to find out what's going to happen. And that last line is just perfect. Nice work!

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