Culture Shock (© Tony Sandy)
Page 1 I was lost, asleep, caught in a nightmare, until
Professor Andrews rescued me. His treatment was new, radical and no-one else
had thought of it, let alone tried it. I was the first successful guinea pig -
all the others had 'died' or remained unchanged but I was saved. The current
was too strong, too weak or the condition of the others was too far gone.
After the series of shocks, I started to remember who I was, who I'd been
before and then I was slowly able to communicate this to others. "My name
is Charles Ward," I said, stumblingly. "I used to live in Acacia Avenue, Fulham. I was
married with two children, until the illness took me. My family - God no!
Were my first victims (I would have cried, had it been physically possible but
my condition stopped me). "It's alright old man. Steady on. It's perfectly
understandable. The horrors of your previous life," said the professor. He was the only one who treated me with kindness. The
others in the establishment called me a monster and didn't trust me. "Once one of them, always one of them," they
intoned behind my back. "You just can't trust them - I wouldn't turn my back
on him for a second." I was still a monster, a misfit to them and would revert
to type, given half a chance. Maybe they were right - how could I tell? I
could be fine one minute and slide back into bad habits in an instant - who
knows? Even the professor can't be sure, which is why I'm monitored so
thoroughly. The cameras pan me. Eyes follow my every move. If it wasn't
for the recovered memories of who I was, I might become paranoid. My beautiful daughters! My wife! How could I do this
horrible thing to them? I was a monster alright. A creature not to be
trusted. I was an addict of human flesh and the professor had saved me. They give me insulin and feed me nutrients, intravenously
because they say I cannot digest food normally yet. Apparently all the dead
flesh is returning to life and I am becoming 'human' again. They say the
return to conscious awareness is the first stage and that they might be winning
this war, if they can turn me back to normality. The professor believes that
consciousness is what keeps the animal urges under control and stops me - us in
fact, from being condemned to a life of mindless cannibalism, eternally. I
hope he is right. He further believes (and the evidence seems to suggest it,
strongly) that once you've captured the mind and got it in thrall, the body
will follow. He says, like criminals and addicts, it's a question of
reprogramming the being. I really hope he is right. The guards wanted their revenge on me - not for my crimes
against my own flesh and blood but for those they had lost to 'my kind.' It
gave them a sense of closure and of power, to beat the hell out of me. It made
little to me as I felt nothing and was broken already, in mind and spirit, and
as the professor said the body just followed down the mineshaft of terror. I am not alone here. The others are chained and locked
in cells because they have been known to gnaw off their own hands and pull off
their own feet, to try to escape - such is the effect of their deep hunger.
They look at me with pleading eyes - like animals that cannot communicate in
any other way. I turn my back on them, glad to no longer be one of their
number, sad that they are still trapped in this lifestyle and ashamed that I
cannot help these lab rats. Talking of lab rats, the urge is returning in me. It
started with surreptitiously swallowed insects, then rodents, birds if I can
catch them and once a hedgehog. Oh yes, as they learned to trust me, they let
me out into the grounds - at first supervised, then quite freely. By this time
Andrews had moved on. I was no longer his favourite 'pet,' just an old project
that he let others monitor. I was still fenced in. I still had cameras aimed
at me but by this time I was considered mostly harmless. The smell of rotting
flash that was me, had subsided with time and the effects of various
treatments. On top of that people had become acclimatised to my odour. I was
the grenade that hadn't gone off. [ Continue to page 2 ] |