GaN You Dig It?

Over the phone, Doctor Hester told me only, “You must come to the house immediately, my boy. We have much to discuss.”

I put on my sweater and made my way across town, and though I knew the route well–we had long been friends, and I had visited the doctor many times–I found myself momentarily lost. I could not explain it. The lanes and roads seemed to blur, and I couldn’t remember for the life of me whether to turn left or right at the end of one street or another. At a certain point, I even went so far as to take my phone from my pocket to navigate, but quickly put it away, determined to coax the knowledge out from whatever fold of the mind in which it hid itself.

Later, I would understand why this occurred. It was a warning to myself. I understood, on some innate level, that what Doctor Hester had to say would change forever not just our relationship but also my understanding of the world as a whole.

Once I arrived, Doctor Hester hurried me into his study and poured me a tall snifter of cognac. He had his own, and I could tell by the sheen of perspiration on his brow it was not his first.

“Vincent, my boy,” Doctor Hester said, “I must tell you this quickly, for I know not how long I have before… well… that’s just the thing.”

“Are you in poor health, doctor?” I asked.

“Yes, but not in a way that knows logical explanation,” he said. “I may, within the night, cease to be. But I will not expire. I will instead transform into another man. A man who is unlike me in every way. A man who stands seven feet tall, a man whose eyes shine golden in the moonlight, a man whose teeth sharpen to points that allow for the easy breakdown of flesh and cartilage.”

“Doctor, are you saying–”

“I become a monster,” said the doctor, and with this, he drained his snifter and stood to pour another. “I have transformed into this monster previously, for an hour at a time, or an evening, but I can feel his pull on me. He is gaining strength. His grip over my actions tightens with each passing moment. And I must explain all of this to you so that my legacy as a good man is not tarnished. For my story could be that of anyone with an inquisitive mind. But first, you must take this.”

And here the direness of the situation came into full view, as the doctor retrieved an ice pick from one of the shelves and handed it to me.

“If my eyes begin to glow golden,” the doctor explained, “you must not hesitate to put this through my heart.”

“But doctor,” I began.

“It’s for your own good, Vincent!” he cried, and begrudgingly I accepted the pick, unsure if I could ever use it.

“Very well, then,” the doctor said. “I shall tell you the whole of it. It all started some weeks ago, when I was conducting tests in my laboratory on a rare sample of trickle weed sent to me by a colleague in Transylvania.”

Such began the doctor’s strange tale, one of such true horror I hesitate to recount it in its entirety…

[Editor’s Note: You know how the narrator got a call on his phone and then later thought about using it to get directions. Well, he could only do that because he’d charged it with one of these adaptors.]