The Gene Timer

The Gene Timer

CHAPTER 1

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Thats exactly the feeling that I had as my voice echoed through the darkness of the Goose Island Woods. I lay there screaming for help knowing that no one can hear me. “Please someone help me” I scream as my voice echoes through the emptiness of the woods. Only it doesn’t feel like night to me. I can see perfectly clear, clearer than I ever have. I try and stand up to only feel a sharp stabbing in my lower right abdomen. As I go to grab my stomach I feel an unfamiliar scar, “what the hell is this?!” I yell as I wince in pain while my fingers run over the jagged scar about 6 inches in length. I slowly begin to stand up, my balance not what I remember it to be. I’m feeling groggy like I have been asleep for days. Have I been? How long was I out? Has it been days, weeks, years? The last thing I remember is walking home to my house from the bar. I was fumbling for my keys and then everything after that is a blur. I go to try to check my phone to see what the date it is, “Of course it’s dead” I mumble to myself. “I might as well start walking”, I say to myself. I start to wander through the woods hoping to catch a glimpse of someone or hear the bustle of the city. I begin heading what I believe is the quickest way out of the woods. It’s a hot and humid out and I’m still in a long sleeve crew neck, and blue jeans. As I start to sweat I decide to roll up my sleeves, and that’s when I notice on the inside of my left wrist something unusual. It looked like a tattoo of a timer, but it was counting down. 47 hours 53 minutes and 16 seconds…... 15 seconds…14…13..12. My mind begins to panic, “what could this be, a bomb, is it counting down my time left on this planet, a sick joke?”. I start running hoping I would run into someone. “Please help me!” I frantically yell as I feel the droplets of moisture form on my face. With ever step I slowly begin to lose hope that I will ever get out of these woods.

After what felt like a mile I stopped running, my hearting racing, my lungs trying to suck in the heavy air. Now that I’ve stopped something doesn’t seem right. There are no animals running around, I can hear crickets chirping, I think I might of even heard the howl of a wolf in the distance. “Why would they be out while the suns out?” it thought to myself. I scan the area around me I can see everything perfectly, the green of the leaves that are slowly changing colors in to a blend of red, orange and yellow. I can see a little creek about 100 yards away. The water as crystal clear as you would see it in a bottle. A large grayish black rock sitting in front of it. My adrenalin is starting to wear off. I can feel the pain of the mysterious scar on my belly begin to creep in. I slowly make my way over to the water, debating on if I should drink it. “At this point you’re already dead so why not right?” I ask myself in a sarcastic but hopelessly optimistic tone. When I finally make it to the creek, I put my hands down to cup the water. It’s colder than I expected. I press my lips to my hands and take a big gulp. It tastes exactly how you would expect nature to taste, a mixture of dirt and leaves, but still refreshing. I make my way to the large rock on the edge of the creek. I sit, feet dangling off the edge of the rock, my elbows pressed against the top of my leg. I bury my head into my hands. “What am I going to do? No one is going to find me out here”, I grumble to myself. I look down at my wrist hoping that the timer was just a figment of my imagination, but there it was in big bold light blue lettering. 47 Hours 38 minutes 29 seconds. Now the reality of the situation begins to set in. I’m in trouble if I don’t figure something out fast. Just in that moment I hear the sound of the church bell ringing in the new hour. I hear the bell ring …”One” I count out loud to myself, it rings again, “two” and a third bell rings as clear as day as if it were maybe a quarter mile away “three”, I utter softly to myself. I wait a few seconds but there were no more bells. “Okay, perfect”, I exclaim to myself. “There is a better chance that someone will find me in the middle of the afternoon on this nice bright and sunny day, surely someone will be hiking”, I exhale a deep breath of relief and hope. “I need to get to a hospital as soon as possible”, I think to myself, as I feel a terrible stabbing pain in my stomach again. I begin to head toward the sound of the church bells, slumped over holding my stomach. I continue on for what feels like forever but I have no way of knowing how long it has been. I could look at the timer on my forearm. “No you cant do that!” I exclaim. “You have to keep your focus on making it out of here alive first”. Now normally I’m not one to talk to myself like this, but I need to find a way to stay positive. I always remember my mom telling me to just stay positive, everything will work its way out the way it’s supposed to. I wonder what she’s doing now? Does she even know I’m missing? How long as it been since I’ve seen her and Dad? I keep slowly walking as I day dream about my parents, brother and I walking through Costco together. What I would do for a hotdog right now. I snap out of the day dream as hear leaves rustling in the distance. I quickly glance to the left from where I heard the sound. “Over here, I need help, I need a hospital” I try to scream with what little energy I seem to have left. Nothing but the deafening silence of the woods. “Must have just been a deer or some birds”, I say defeatedly. “I’ll just continue forward, I’m bound to hit a hiking trail at some point”, I think to myself. It seems like another ten minutes has passed and I’ve seen nothing but trees and pricker bushes since I’ve started. I stop to look around hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of anything that could take me back to a city. And that’s when I hear it. The sounds of people laughing and yelling for a taxi. I hear the engine of a taxi pull up and the group of friends reply “Thank you, were going home”, and raddle off a combination of numbers and a street name. I couldn’t make out the address as they were slurring their words so much. “Wow must have been a fun day of day drinking” I laugh to myself reminiscing on some of my past college days. “I have to be close”, I think to myself. I keep heading in the direction of the church bells and the voices. I must have walked for another ten minutes. I’m so confused I could hear that group of friends like they were across the street, but I couldn’t see anything. Another few minutes pass and I begin to see the top of a building peeking through the horizon. With the energy I have left I begin to jog. I see people and begin screaming for help with what little breath I have in me. “Someone please! I need a hospital.” As I begin to approach the street a group of four or five people come running to me. I collapse on to the pavement face down. Not enough strength to get my hands on the ground before my face smacked the concrete. I could feel the blood gushing from my forehead and my lip began to swell. “Someone call 911!” a younger brunette girl shouted as she tried to turn me over to my back.

I lay there and can hear them talking, “This guy must have been out all night”. “Night? It’s not even dark?” I question to myself. After a few tries she is finally able to turn me onto my back. I find the energy to open my eyes, “Thank you” I murmur to her. “OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” she screams as she stands up and takes off down the road. The rest of her friends look quickly at me and begin to run. They must have not gotten too far because I hear them say “Bro what the hell was that?” That’s the last thing I remember hearing before I blacked out.

As I begin fading in and out of consciousness, I can feel myself being pushed somewhere. “Where am I going?” I think to myself. I try to move my arms and my legs to find that they are in restraints. I opened my eyes only to be staring straight up at the off-white ceiling tiles of what I could only guess to be the hospital. I try to sit up but I can’t as they also have a restraint around my head. “Where am I going? Where are you taking me” I concerningly ask. “Sir we need you to stay calm, can we ask you a few questions?” A tall but well-built male nurse asks me. “Sure not like I can go anywhere else” I reply in a sarcastic tone. “Okay, let’s start with some easy ones, What is your name? When is your birthday? And where are you from?” the nurse remarks. “My name is Trevor Worm, I will turn 30 August 29th this year, and I was born and raised in Goose Island.” I quickly replied back. “Okay Mr. Worm, we are going to take you back to run some tests and take some blood” the nurse calmingly said.

About 10 minutes later they finally got me all situated in a room and began to take the restraints off. As I look around the room it seems bleak. The white walls with no pictures up, a small 20-inch tv hangs from the wall gives off a depressing vibe. This didn’t feel anything like a normal hospital. A new nurse walks in, this time it’s a female nurse about 5-foot 8 dark black hair and hazel eyes with a slight hint of green. “Okay, Mr. Worm” she remarks. I cut her off “You can call me Trevor.” “Okay Trevor, were going to take some blood and run a few tests on you. I will be right back; I’m going to grab you something to take your contacts out” she said loudly as she walked out of the room to grab a few things. “Contacts, what is she talking about? I’ve never worn contacts in my life” I thought to myself. As the nurse walks back in with a white and green contact case, a small bottle of solution a tiny hand mirror, and a medical gown I reply to her “ I don’t think I need those I don’t wear contacts.” “You’re funny” she said while she laughed set down the items and took a few vials of blood. “If you could please get into this gown and the doctors will be in shortly to take you down to imaging to make sure you didn’t get a concussion from that fall you took” she said standing up and taking a few steps toward the door.

She shuts the door behind her. I begin to change into my gown. I look down at my forearm. The timer is now at 45 hours 44 minutes and 6 seconds. I grab the tiny hand mirror from the table to take a look at how scrapped up my face is. And that’s when I saw it. The irises of my eyes are Orange. It looked like the coloring of a monarch butterfly, or a ripe pumpkin mid-October. I was startled, I jumped back and that’s when I felt the stabbing pain in my abdomen again. I dropped the mirror, and watched it shatter into hundreds of pieces. I could hear every piece ping against the floor of the hospital. I drop to the floor in pain grabbing my stomach. The nurse runs in “what happened?” she yells concerningly as she moves my hand to see the scar on my stomach. She also catches the vibrant blue timer on my forearm. She slowly starts to back away from me reaching backwards for the door handle. “I’m going to go get a doctor” she says with a quiver in her voice as she is slowly realizing that I wasn’t lying about wearing contacts. Within minutes a swarm of doctors are running in with a few security guards. Before I even know what is going on I’m being forced back onto the bed and the restraints are back on me. I could feel the circulation to my hands and feet begin to be cut off as they pulled the nylon restraints around my wrists and ankles tighter. That’s when they all got a good glimpse of the timer still counting down on my arm. As they restrain my head against the bed, they could see light reddish tinted lines begin to carve their way through my already orange irises towards my pupils. I feel a prick of a needle slide into a vein of my right hand. I can only assume its an IV. As I stare up at those same off-white ceiling tiles I saw as they rolled me in, I hear the sound of a bottle shaking and a needle sucking up liquid. “What are you doing?” I yell as what seemed like ten doctors gather around me. “Trevor please calm down” one the doctors say. “You can’t do this to me!” I frantically yell as I try to squeeze out of the restraints. I see the needle get put straight into the IV. Within seconds I feel a warm sensation work its way to my heart and then explode through my body like a firework on the fourth of July. I try my hardest to just stay awake. I can feel the drug slowly causing me to drift away into a deep sleep. “NO!” I yell as my eyes open up wide trying to make a last-ditch effort to fight the inevitable. All the doctors jump back for a second as if they forgot the restraints were more than capable of holding me back. At this point I have no choice but to just give up. My eyes begin to grow heavy and I slowly begin to fade out. As my eyes are closing I can here one of the doctors take out his cell phone. It almost sounds like it’s an old fashion flip phone. I could hear him dial every number. “Hello Sir” he says in low monotone but professional voice. “I think we have another one. We are still waiting on the blood work but he has the same scar on his lower abdomen and I’m assuming we will find the same alterations made to his kidneys.” There is a sudden but short pause as he waits for an answer on the other side. At this point I can’t make out what is being said back. “Yes, his eyes are orange but have a red tint to them now.” The doctor exclaimed. “Our main worry sir, is that his timer is significantly shorter than the rest. Its less than 2 days, the others still have weeks” the doctor continued to say, but his voice slowly becoming more concerned and starts to shake. “No sir we do not have any answers on what it means.” Even with my mind starting to slow down I begin to piece everything together and now I have more questions than answers. “What are they referring to? Are there others that have the same thing happening?” I think to myself. As everything fades to black, I hear the phone close and the Doctor walk over and touch my arm and say “Don’t worry Trevor you’re going to be okay. We will get this figured out” and that’s the last thing I remember before my life changed forever.