What made the sight even more bizarre was that the flesh seemed to have sealed and healed itself. There was no stitching or scarring. Just the dreadful clean cut.
Mildred gently closed that grille and moved to the other side of the small passage. Tears were gathering at the corners of her eyes. She was barely winning the battle to keep herself from puking on the floor, dreading what awful abomination of nature she might stumble on next.
The sound of conversation was a little louder, seeming to come from the last cell in line.
The first cell was empty, though the floor was covered in a strange, translucent coating of gelatinous slime. Mildred stared at it, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t moving.
The grille on the next cell showed a large man sitting on the toilet in the corner. His body was covered in hair, and both hands were gone, replaced by brutish paws with yellow claws.
He had only eye, set close to the center of his forehead.
The movement of the grille attracted his attention, and he stood, revealing grotesquely large genitalia that hung almost to his bowed knees.
To add to Mildred’s horror and shock, the creature spoke, in a deep, melodious voice.
“Hello.”
She cleared her throat. “Hello.”
“Yes. Hello.”
“Hello.”
It had moved to stand close by the door, head to one side, smiling at the woman. “Hello, yes.”
Mildred looked into the deep-set brown eyes and realized that nobody was home. Whatever had been done to the man had totally robbed him of his intelligence.
“Hello, yes, hello, yes, hello.”
Mildred managed a smile as she closed the grille. The person inside immediately fell silent.
One more door.
Now the conversation was louder, as though an argument were taking place. The voices were female, and Mildred wondered why two women had been locked up in the same cell, when one of the others was vacant.
The grille showed her the unbelievable, unspeakable answer.
There was a naked woman sitting on the bed. Her body seemed fairly normal, though the right arm and leg looked to be better developed, as though she had played some strange sport that favored just the one side.
But it wasn’t the woman’s body that drew Mildred’s appalled attention.
It was her head.
Both of her heads.
One was set on an ordinary neck, slightly to the right of the shoulders. It had cropped blond hair, rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes.
The other head was visibly a little smaller, its neck sprouting off to the left side. The hair was lanker and longer, colored like wet straw. The eyes were of a duller shade of blue, and the complexion was noticeably more pale.
The two heads were having a conversation and seemed oblivious to the eyes watching them through the grille.
“Patience is the great virtue,” Insisted the larger, more dominant head.
“We have waited an eternity too long already.” Even the voice of the smaller head was quieter and weaker.
“As long as I have the strength, you will never be able to take our life.”
“When you sleep I can strangle us.”
“You tried and it woke me, and it was all empty and pointless.” A bitter laugh.
“Our dreary existence is empty and pointless.”
“The whitecoats have promised to try and reverse what they did to us in their laboratory.”
The smaller head shook from side to side. “And you believe the lies of the whitecoats.”
“There is nothing else to believe.”
“After the horrors they perform on us and others? After their endless failures?”
This time the larger head shook. “No. They tell us they are close to success. The copying is working better every time.”
“It could not work worse even” The rheumy eyes suddenly widened as they spotted Mildred’s face peering through the grille in the cell door. “A watcher,” it said.
Now both heads were staring at Mildred. The body rose and walked toward the door, with a slight sway and limp that favored the right, dominant side.
“Hello,” Mildred said.
“Hello,” came the reply, simultaneously from both of the woman’s heads.
“Who are you?” asked the larger head.
“And why is your face so black? Are you a failed experiment like the rest of us?”