Free The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine by Jason Sizemore Page B

shut behind me.
    “Isabella? Are you home?”
    Nothing.
    Unsure what else to do, I
decided to see if she was working in the lab at the back of the house where she
may not have heard me come in. I made my way down the hall, through the dining
room and into the kitchen. There was a smell of over-ripe fruit and burnt
toast. I felt a sharp stab of guilt at the sight of the kitchen sink, this time
full of dirty pots and pans, as if I were a criminal returning to the scene of
his crime. I called her name again, just to be sure. This time I heard a sound
of movement from within the laboratory. My heart lurched.
    “Isabella?”
    The door between the two rooms
cracked open a few inches and suddenly she was peering out at me from around
the edge of the frame.
    “Oh.”
    I stepped closer. She opened
the door a little wider.
    She looked disheveled, in
disarray. Her hair was unkempt and her clothes were crumpled as if she’d been
wearing them for a number of days. There was a disturbing, almost forlorn look
in her eyes and her face was drawn and pale, pasty, even. She looked tired,
unraveled, as if she were starting to come apart at the seams. I had to fight
the urge to suddenly gather her up in my arms and hold her, to try to save her from
the world, from herself. Behind her, the laboratory was a riot of noise: the
sound of a pump, gurgling with fluid; a printer spewing out a data file; a
radio insistently hammering out an unfamiliar dance tune. I understood why she
hadn’t heard me calling her name from down the hall.
    I tried to get her attention,
but she seemed distracted, keen to get back to the lab, or to get away from me.
    “How have you been?”
    She shrugged. “Okay.” Her eyes
flicked back and forth nervously as though it made her uncomfortable to look me
in the eye.
    “Look, can we go somewhere to
talk?”
    Her reply was drowned out by
the insistent droning of the pump from the other room. I pushed on the door,
trying to see over her shoulder. I raised my voice above the clamor. “What are you doing in there...?”
    Isabella shuffled awkwardly,
blocking my view. “No. Not now.” Her voice was firm. I realized she was
responding to the first of my questions. “You need to go.”
    I wasn’t sure what to do, what
to say. I reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, to try to reassure her
that I only wanted to make things right between us, but she winced and twisted
away from me as if the simple act of me touching her was enough to cause her
pain. Her elbow struck the door as she shifted around and it bounced open,
banging loudly as it clattered against the wall. I caught a view of the inside
of the lab. A naked male corpse was lying prone on a trolley in the centre of
the room, wired up to a host of elaborate medical machinery. Cables snaked from
the man’s chest in a web-work of plumbing and bags of unidentifiable fluid hung
on intravenous drips from a metal framework over the bed. It looked like a
scene from a cheap horror movie; the workshop of a latter-day Frankenstein, a
crazed scientist in the process of creating a monster. I pushed past Isabella,
forcing my way into the room. Electric light gave everything a clean, clinical
sheen. The radio continued to hiss with the pounding of drums and static.
    “What the hell?”
    The pump was thumping noisily
as it sucked blood from the body, feeding it through long coils of piping. I
could see it sloshing into a large glass bottle by the foot of the trolley red
and dark and syrupy.
    I wheeled on Isabella, confused
and a little scared. “Where did you get a human corpse?”
    She stared at me, a stern,
emotionless expression on her face. “It’s not a corpse .”
    I looked again. The body,
although emaciated, was still breathing, its chest rising and falling to a
slow, soft rhythm, in time with the labored wheezing of the apparatus that was
slowly alleviating it of its lifeblood.
    She shifted closer. Her voice
was gentle in my ear. Her breath felt warm against my