more lather

The suburbs are filled with families using soap and the news media covers the story. The soap is good they say. Worth every penny and they'll give you a membership card if you pay them enough. Almost like a platinum card with no real worth to it. The lawyers who could defend the case are lathering themselves and so are the doctors. It won't become an epidemic until the process completes itself and the full time period has passed it's point. My skype rings.

I adjust the screen and I see beautiful Shelby. There still in the same hotel.

“Hi babe, guess what?” Shelbs smiles.

I laugh, “what?”

“We got it, Cass has been using that soap you've been promoting,” my heart drops and I want to yell but they are watching my Skype as well and I cannot give out information.

“Remember, that time we talked about the codes I was learning while I was writing about the silent film stars.”

“Yeah,” she stops to think, “let me get a piece of paper.”

She sits back down and I begin blinking.

Three blinks for stop, four slow winks for soap.

Shelby looks at me through skype with her eyes widening.

Cassandra enters the room in a towel “Hi dad.”

I can't help but look away, the skin on her shoulders are beginning to peel from the soap.

Then the computer shuts down. And there's a knock at the pod. The door slides open and it Roman, his hands have turned into pieces of filet mignon and dripping blood. He looks down at his belt and there is a gun in it.

“Shoot me now, you son of a bitch,” he demands. I take the gun out of his pants and theres a silencer on it. “Do it you bastard?” I can't kill a man,  even though he will be in much more pain if I don't. I close my eyes and the gun fires. Missing him completely. There was only one bullet in the gun. And Roman just stood there, blinking. His eyes starting to ooze and you can see the soap, the harbinger, crawling through his body like a tapeworm. He could only mutter words together and form unintelligible sentences.  This is going to happen to my daughter as well as the general public. If only they waited, they could be saved but the corporation's numbers were more important. Now we've turned into statistics rather than individuals. Quantity rather than quality, field mice in the maze of an unknown atmosphere. And Roman just sits there, staring at me with his eyesocket gauged out of his eye. Attached to some sort of blue vein,gushing cottage cheese out of his nose, ears and mouth. I go to hold him but its too late. He's a pile of purple cabbage in my pod. He must have been one of the first test subjects. Soon Cass will turn into goop. Not unless I can figure out a way to stop this madness. There must be something in this lab that can reverse the effects, maybe a moisturizer of some sort. Eureka! That would be the only particle agent that could save her. And maybe the rest of the world.

I left the pod, stepping over Roman's remains, and see Nosferatu wandering the halls. He's not even wandering, he's hovering with his bald head doing surveillance of the facility. He can smell me, I know, but I got to make it to the third floor. My keycard must still have access to it and if not, then I don't know what I can do. And it works, the third floor access key is still valid. I walk through the sliding doors and it's already a set. A hotel room set and all there's one door with three symbols on it. The same as the numbers on the test subjects. I bang on the door and I hear a voice inside and from behind me. Behind me is a security guard, tough faced, poulou esque and ready to fight. He pulls a knife and I see myself in danger. It's another level. I kick the knife out of his hand and it turns to organisms that scatter down the corridor. He starts to choke me and I fall ill to the floor in seizures. What kind of witchcraft is this? I swipe my leg into his ankles and he stumbles a bit and falls to the floor beside me. Then he stands back up and I run to tackle him but it turns into dust and he's once again behind me.  This Poulou motherfucker thinks he's got me now doesn't he? I spin and throw another punch. More dust. I start to cough and try not to breath it in. Once more we go back and forth trying to beat each other down and the man becomes nothingness after my other limbs attack him. The sand scurries away back to where I entered. There's a pod door with a note on it. Something Lutherian. I don't study much anymore.  The note is a room service list and i bang on the door and the pod slides open. Shelbs has answered the pod. So has Cass but she is far in the back, dry skinned and peeling already. I only have enough antidote to cure one person and this is where it gets difficult. Should I save my only daughter or mass produce this antidote? This is the inciting force. Lose one to save millions. She's my only one for godsakes. I could never live without her. I'd shoot myself first before hurting her.  The problem is ethics. Just like those scientists, they knew it was ethically wrong after the first subject, but they still continued on Boss's orders. I can't think like this. There has to be more antidote in the lab somewhere, but the way this place evolves, who knows what corridor I'll end up in next. I could be on the moon for all I know. I can help her survive the next 24 hours and still have enough to make it viable before the early stages. I saw Cass for the first time after her initial lather. Her shoulders were peeling and i could already see the tissue dissolving. I told Shelbs to ensure that she falls asleep, since it will restore some of the lost tissue cells. The sunblock esqe was a jell like substance And Shelbs began to lather the gelly onto Cass's shoulders. This could be the only antidote left in the building to cure what is happening on the outside of my pod, in the world pod-into-world. The skyphone shuts off and I'm back to square one again. There seems to be no hope for the human race if this lather is being distributed in massively and I'm the only one left with any sense of virtue left in my being, my soul, my spirit. I go into the empty labs and stock my notebag with this substance. The I see Frank. He's off in his own world and I don't bug with him, I leave as soon as possible. I break through the side door, it turns into a sticky substance on the ground and it engorges me like quicksand. I manage to find some asphalt and push myself up out of the mess. Now I'm the only one who hasn't lathered in NYC, or at least a fair amount of survivors. The pod doesn't matter anymore, the real message was on the tape recorder and my daughter may or may not be one of the lathes. That's what we call the users now, lathes. The moan in the streets out of pain and I wish I could help them but I just can't not all of them because there just too many. I climb a tree and see a distorted vision of my family in the window. Is it really them? Have my journalistic skills brought me closer to madness? Shelbs waves and I wave back, it's them, I'm not blind yet. Maybe deaf and dumb but not blind. I climb the branches to the window and they open it gently. Is this a dream? Am I going to wake up back in the pod again, with Roman knocking on my door?