Twisted Speed

by DrumerTigr

Speed (spëd) n. 1. The rate or measure of the rate of motion, especially distance traveled divided by the time of travel. 2. A rate of performance or swiftness of action. 3. The act or state of moving rapidly. 4. Archaic. Good luck, or fortune; Prosperity 5. Slang. Any amphetamine taken to produce euphoria.

You can take a look at any of these definitions. But, to me, none of these can define speed, well…except maybe that last one.

Speed is equality between mind and body. One who has a very quick body and a slow processing mind would be called “Blind to the foresight,” and be considered one who can’t “look into the future” and “determine the consequences of past situations.”

Then you can look at people who might be geniuses, but when you ask them to do something that involves physical speed and coordination such as kicking a hacky-sack or dancing, they can’t do it, even with a gun pointed at their heads.

That’s where I come in. You see, I’m a junior at high school. I’m fairly popular, fairly good-looking, and fairly intelligent. I’m holding a 3.65 GPA. I’m in the Marching Band, Pep Band, Jazz Band, Forensics Club, Spanish Club, Basketball, Bowling, Outdoors Club, and the Cultural Awareness Club.

I play percussion instruments--you know, drums, congas, xylophones, and things of the sort, but my spare time I spend being the drummer for a local garage band called the Fierce Sheep. I can think up some nasty rhythms for our songs, but playing most of them is where my abilities are stunted. I can play what I need to for the songs, and I can manage most other songs by bands like Metallica, Korn, Godsmack, Offspring, etc., but I can’t rank myself as a “good” drummer. I just can’t practice some high coordination techniques.

Also, I can’t drive well; my reflexes suck big time. I can’t do things like mountain bike, because I just wouldn’t be able to react in time to that rock or the twist coming up. I don’t play many video games due to the fact that I know exactly what I’m doing, but doing that exactly when I need to just doesn’t happen.

I’ve taken medicines for my condition. They didn’t do anything but temporarily weaken my immune system and make me sick like a dog for a few weeks. I’ve always kinda wished that I had the reflexes of a tiger or a jaguar. I loved to watch documentaries on wild cats. I admired the strength of the lion, the quickness of the cheetah, the invisibility of the tiger, watching a jaguar stalk and kill its prey in the jungle. All of it just blew my mind and I could imagine being that quick and fast.

And for 18 years I knew that my dream couldn’t become reality; we just didn’t have the technology in our time. Sure, yeah, it’s 2000, and we’re all high and mighty over the Y2K virus. Life expectancies are at their highest in 20 years. New cures for viruses and medical breakthroughs are happening every day. But none on these helped me. I just wanted to be a little faster, a little more reactive. And my hopes were just about gone.

But… that’s when I saw the add on the Internet. It was called A.G.S., no meaning given. It told how they could insert certain types of programmed cells into the human bloodstream and they would do things like make their body grow taller, increase their metabolism, or even fight diseases like cancer or AIDS. I quickly printed out the directions to their facility and stuck it in my folder in my desk that has all of my things like stocks, club papers, tests, things like that. And I waited for our two and a half week Spring Break, due to construction at our high school, to go, when my parents would leave on their 17th anniversary to Cancun.

For about a month and a half I had to wait, as we just got off for Christmas and New Year's about two and a half months ago. Every day I woke up, went to school, practiced, came home, did homework, and repeated the process. But I could feel myself becoming more desperate. Every day I got just a little bit more anxious… kind of like a little kid waiting for Christmas to come or something. I was just waiting.

Every night I would sit in my bed and stare up at the ceiling and wonder what it would be like to be fast as a cheetah or have the vision of a tiger. I would think about it until I forced myself to clear my mind and go to sleep so that I could wake up and think more about it in class.

The days and weeks whittled down and finally, I found myself driving home on the first day of Spring Break. It slapped me across the face like a wet salmon in winter. I hadn’t even realized and I found myself speeding home and almost slammed the breaks on when I found my car inches away from a big-rig. I again had to slow my jumping nerves and my car when my radar went from 1 to 9 and started rapidly beating and I saw the policeman on the side of the road eye me suspiciously and turned to pay attention to more imposing threats.

I got home and my parents were packing up, getting ready to leave. My mom kept reminding me about this and that, do this, don’t forget that. Close the door, no parties, keep the place clean, let us know if anything goes wrong, don’t let strangers in, blah, blah, blah.

They hugged me goodbye and I heard their car rev up and drive down the road. I smiled and nodded my head as I went up to my room, pulled out my packet of info on A.G.S. I called up their company and asked about prices and they gave me a list. They also told me that I could have the price cut in half it I allowed them to use semi-experimental process and/or equipment during the procedure.

Of course, I agreed. If a high school student can save money, they probably will.

I asked the clerk for an appointment and gave my insurance information. She said they would have it cleared in a day or two.

So I waited two days. Maybe not patiently, but I did.

I paced back in forth in the office room, trying to word what I wanted in my head perfectly. I changed it about a billion times, but I still got the basic drift down.

Finally, after an eternity, the doctor came in with new manila folder with some paper in it and a pen.

He was average height, slightly muscular build. He looked in his mid-thirties and didn’t wear a suit like some doctors or even a tie, he wore some baggy jeans with a white polo shirt with some green and purple stripes. He had brown hair and a brown goatee. But what I noticed about him the most was his eyes--bright bluish-green eyes that sparkled in a way that only a professional's could do. Instantly I felt that I was in safe hands.

He started out just like any doctor would, “Hello… Joseph. I’m Doctor Glenn Roberts. I’ve been assigned to your development with our cell splicing.”

“Yeah…” I thought. All he saw was my nodding.

He opened the folder and sat down at a little table and invited me to sit, which I did and he scanned the first printed page with my name, age, allergies, etc. I had put down my parents life insurance under my fathers name, seeing as we have the same first and last name but a different middle name.

“So, Joseph, I see that you wish to obtain some faster reflexes.”

“Well, yeah. That’s really it.”

“And I understand that you have agreed to let us use experimental chemicals and techniques in your process.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Right now we're just going to go over the list of possibilities. We’ve eliminated all of the things containing things that you are allergic to which cut the list by twenty-six percent. After that, we took out things for females, people older than you, and treatment for animals, and that knocked it down another forty-five percent. Finally, there were the products that were specifically for what you wanted to change about yourself, which knocked off another fifteen. That leaves you with a remaining fourteen percent. Even if the list is two pages long, it’s a relatively short list.”

He handed me a stack of papers stapled together that had my info printed on the top.

“It’s listed in order not by letter, but by the level of danger of side effects in the body, depending on your immune system, metabolism, et cetera.

“At the beginning, we have a few pills like Hytraglascin, which just speeds up the development rate, and Rethiniat, which boosts the immune system during and after the development… whereas on the bottom of the list we have a medicated body wash that could cause someone with AIDS or a very weak immune system to become an easy target for things like pneumonia, or to die by even the least dangerous of venoms.

“Before each product there is a number from one to twenty, also containing decimals to the nearest tenth.

“A drug with the rating of one would have no danger of any side-affects, diseases, or things of the sort, while twenty is for people that have been taking immune system boosters their whole life, work out, have a average blood pressure and cholesterol level, are average for their weight and height, eat healthy all the time, and don’t drink or smoke.”

“So why are they listed, if their usage is so dangerous?”

“Because there’s always someone who will use it. It’s kind of like a move theater. If there’s five new movies showing at the theater and one of them is so awful that no one wants to see it. What’s the point? Because there will always be one person who will go see it.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Anyway, back to the list, as you can see, there are more products below ten then there are above it. You have less to worry about if you cut the list in half at ten, or you can go higher or lower than ten, whatever you want.”

I scanned the list. There were about 20 things above ten and about 50 below it. I wanted to say everything above nine, but a name struck out at me. Thetrophil. It was described as the using advanced splicing technology to place the genes of subjects into gel-filled pills that would permeate through the stomach lining and into the blood stream.

So, I said, “I think that I’ll stick with ten and up.”

He nodded and said, “Before I sign the papers saying that they can give you your selected pills, you will have to go through medical examination--just some minor things like a heart test, blood draw, drug test, and so on. You will have this afterwards, but right now we must choose the experimental treatments that you want.”

So for about an hour we sat and he explained to me what each one was, what it did, what was in it, how it worked, and the danger level to my body. It felt like an eternity. I just wanted to begin the treatment. Just to feel myself be faster and more acute. Not this gibberish. This wasn’t what I was looking for. But I was patient, and I waited.

After that, Dr. Roberts left and a nurse came in and led me to yet another room that contained some sterilized needles, a treadmill, a scale, and a heart monitor. They didn’t ask me to do anything that I wasn’t already familiar with from my normal annual physicals.

After they had made me run for while to get heart rates, weighing me, measuring my height, having a small amount of blood drawn, and giving them a urine sample, I was told to wait yet again in a small waiting room. After what must have been twenty to twenty-five minutes, they called me back in. What I didn’t notice was that the testing equipment was all in a small hole in the wall that had a door, the color of which matched the color of the room.

Dr. Roberts sat down and went through all my tests and showed me the new list of things that he couldn’t authorize me using. It cut out almost a third of the list because I didn’t weigh enough. Because of this, the drugs would’ve been too strong for my body, and side-effects were definite.

Luckily, Thetrophil was still there. Dr. Roberts got out a pen and another corrected list that contained fifteen remaining drugs/equipment.

He crossed out the two top ones, because they were the new needles and the new scale. Also crossed out, another three were the urine sample cups, the heart monitors, and the treadmill. Got it down to ten.

He circled two, the start of my treatment. One was the needles they were going to inject me with. On the list they were rated a one, and they were coated in a safe healing cream that closed the hole of the needle behind it. The other was a drug called Rheutamin which prepared my body for the rest of the treatment. Then there was one drug, with a rating of two, that I agreed to use if I ever wanted to stop the treatment in a short term (about two days.) Then he asked me which of the remaining seven I wanted to use for my actual treatment.

I read all of them, but I pointed to Thetrophil. He asked me one more time if that was what I wanted, and I said yes. He had me sign a form that he filled out saying this is what I chose to take and also on tape recorder so to have verbal consent.

He asked me to roll up my left sleeve , seeing as I was right-handed, for the injection. He gave me the injection and to my surprise the needle did its job--no blood. Usually there’s always at least a little spot or a drop, but this needle did the job of saving even that. This could save a medical facility like this hundreds of dollars over small bandages and they could buy more needed supplies.

The doctor gave me the prescription for my two pills. I got them on my way home at the surprisingly empty drug store.

At home, I read the labels. Thetrophil said to take one a day. I pulled one out and it looked like a miniature marble. Imagine a small, clear marble with a white stripe splitting it in two. I popped it in my mouth and swallowed it.

I just stood there and basked in this feeling of triumph (I guess that’s what it was,) and stood there for a good ten minutes just looking at the pill bottle, that was, until I heard the phone ring.

“Hello?”

"Joey? It’s Tobi. We’re having a party tonight at Daniel’s place…you free?”

“Yeah, what time?”

“Be there about seven-ish.”

“Gotcha. See ya then.”

We hung up and I checked my wrist watch. 4:30. Good, plenty of time. I took a shower, changed my clothes, and watched Animal Planet until 6:30, and, upon seeing a pride of lionesses hunting for food, I thought, finally, I can be myself one-hundred percent.

The party was really uneventful; nothing out of the ordinary happened. Daniel Roberts did beat his old record of eating 194 miniature weenies with eating 227. Not a large increase, mind you, but have you every tried to eat 227 miniature weenies? Thought not…

I got home and was about to plop onto the couch. I was dead tired and I didn’t have the energy to walk upstairs. My entire body ached and I managed to swallow some Advil before I fell asleep on the couch.

The next morning a splitting headache was my sunrise and my first bird chirp was a vomit run to the bathroom. I had almost a… hangover?

It couldn’t be! There were no drugs, alcohol, and even if there were, I wouldn’t touch it! I just vegged out on the couch until the beautiful silence was broken by the splitting sound of the phone ringing.

“Hello?” I said in a sickly, tired voice.

“This is Doctor Roberts from A.G.S. Is Joseph there?”

Almost immediately I brightened up and said in as an awake voice as I could muster. “Yes, uh, this is he.”

“Well Joe, sounds like you went out partying last night.”

“Well, I had a little get together…but that was it.”

“All right, just checking. How is the treatment going, no sudden changes, mood swings, hair loss, et cetera…?”

“No, nothing that I’ve really noticed.”

“That’s good. Just checking up on you.”

“Okay, well, thanks.”

“Oh yeah, Joe?”

“Yes.”

“Remember that your body is undergoing heavy strain from this treatment, and undergoing heavy activity may interact with the treatment, so just lay low for about a week, during your treatment.”

“What kind of interaction?”

“Oh nothing major really, maybe minor hair loss or small sicknesses, but it’s just precautions to take care of.”

“All right then, thanks for the info.”

He hung up and I popped one of the pills into my mouth and was able to crawl to my bed before I blacked out again.

That afternoon, I went to a movie and ended up helping one of my friends move some stuff to a storage facility, completely forgetting Dr. Roberts’ warning. The next morning? I woke up tired and sore all over again.

So it went on like that. For the rest of the week, I ended up dead tired and woke up dead tired and sore. The treatment finished and I had what I wanted.

I could do all the high co-ordination and maneuvering things that I couldn’t do before. I could react to things much swifter than I could before. I could play video games and play drums better than ever. It was almost like I had a balloon of energy and skill well up inside me and it just popped right there.

So I went on, happy as I ever would be. School started and I amazed my friends. I amazed my teachers. I amazed the holy hell out of my parents. Then, the call came from Dr. Roberts. It was his last check up. Of course, I thought everything was okay, and he took my word for it.

Right then. That was the moment that I became officially screwed. You see, after that “last check up,” my file goes in the records for eternity, or until I show up again for another problem. He wasn’t going to call me again. And since I figured that I was fine, I didn’t keep track of his phone number.

The first weird thing that happened was when I was upstairs studying. I could smell my dad grilling steaks on the grill. My stomach growled and the though of tracking and killing a deer came into my mind.

I brushed it away, throwing it to my mind wandering.

After that came the weird dreams and the fact that sometimes I’d just know where everyone was. Not like, “Have you seen Billy?”

“Oh yeah, he just went that way a few minutes ago.”

It was like, when I was in a room, even if I wasn’t looking at them, I could sense their heart beating, know if they were close enough to chase down and kill or run away from if they were a threat.

But I threw that to my family's “natural aggression.” Not that I had ever heard of any.

I went on like this, until about a week before exams, I had an insatiable desire for a chase, or blood. The two interchanged sometimes.

It got so bad that I would ask some of the stronger members of the track team to run the football field. I would give them five counts and chase after them. I was cool until I tackled one on accident. That’s when I got the quarterback out there in his gear and had him run.

It worked until I realized that straight lines didn’t do it for me. I had him zigzag back and forth. That was fun until I could catch up to him and the whole run was a cakewalk for me.

I ended up chasing deer through the park.

I guess that I had grown taller and more muscular because some of the guys that gave me occasional guff would back away when I was walking through the halls.

My parents seemed more like just people than my parents and I noticed that I had become forlorn and distant from just about everyone. The only exception was one when one of the girls at school was in heat. My mind had started to think like that. It wasn’t more of “that time of the month.” For them, but I was thinking, “When can I produce offspring?”

I had grown used all of this and once school ended, I decided that I would return to normal if I just relaxed for a week or so.

First day of summer, I sat down and tried to watch TV, but it seemed so…fake. Not that I ever watched it much, mind you, and even when I did watch, it was probably Animal Planet. But now it just seemed like someone pulling wool over my eyes. No smell, no feeling, just sights and sounds coming out of a box.

I used some of my extra energy on drumming practice. But other than that, I could only relieve myself by retreating to my former activities.

Over time, I could hear my that my voice was deepening considerably, and could feel my teeth sharpening.

After a while, I noticed the hair on my head shortening and becoming orange-ish. This orange hair spread down my neck, across my shoulders, down my back, over my stomach and over my rear end and around my genitals.

This happened in about three days.

The worst part was that not a single part of it seem at all odd to me. It was almost a normal, everyday occurrence. My parents began to notice the changes, and they thought that it was just some “new trend” that I was into.

They never even got concerned!

“So Janice, how’s your son, David?”

“Oh he’s fine, how’s Joe?”

“Oh, he’s turning into a jaguar.”

I could just see my mom and Daniel’s mom talking about my changes like it was just a bird flying overhead. Now, even now, my changes to seem to startle me, but I can still get enraged at my parents for not saying anything.

The last part of my changes came while I was at the movies with Tobi, Daniel, Jennifer, and Gina. At this point, the hair and turned into fur, and it had spread down my legs and arms. I had also developed white fur on my chest and stomach, and my orange fur developed black jaguar spots on it.

I went into the movie feeling normal. About halfway through, I felt some pressure on the base of my spine and a small sore spot developing. I pulled out my small lock-blade and cut a hole in my jeans for the sore spot to stick out.

Now, coming out of the movie. I felt kind of funny in my shoes, so I took them off and found that my feet had turned into paws. My heels had developed more like the way a dog’s were: high up, and counterbalancing my knees . My legs from the shin down were covered in dark, black fur. I felt more balanced and swifter like this.

My sore spot had developed into a three foot long tail. My palms grew about half an inch wider and my fingers half an inch shorter. Claws could be retracted from both my fingers and toes due to my lack of finger and toenails.

Then some small stuff. Whole head look semi-jaguar. Muzzle, ears, eyes, teeth. all of it. I Was about seven to seven and a half feet tall. I walked out of the movie and I heard someone scream. I looked around and realized that Gina had screamed and ran into the bathroom. Tobi and Jennifer quickly followed.

For some reason Daniel didn’t seem at all phased by my appearance. We walked to my car and we drove home. There I asked him whether he was frightened or not. He explained everything to me.

If I wasn’t busy driving, I would’ve reached over and ripped his head off. Or I would’ve ripped him a new head-sized belly button. Or maybe… sorry, I get carried away sometimes.

Anyway, here’s the story…

His dad was a genetic engineer in the race to decode the human DNA. He had unraveled a part of the strand that was a universal part to any of the DNA combos that determined height, weight, build, hair or eye color, and just about any genetic trait.

By tweaking it in a certain way and introducing the new strand to the body through the blood stream, the DNA of the body would change according to the changes made to the “UniStrand” as Daniel’s father called it.

Dr. Robert’s, Daniel’s father, tried his work on a few patients, but their bodies rejected the work and suffered greatly, either to the point of death or to that of wishing that they were dead.

His father was stricken so deeply by his failure that he almost committed suicide. After three attempts, something made him continue his research.

Eventually he tried using animal DNA. This worked marvels upon the human body, and he discovered that all animals had a “UniStrand” too. Because of this, he could just pick an animal with the trait that the patient wished to receive. More height? Easy, Giraffe. Jumping ability? Kangaroo or maybe a flea. My case? Faster reaction, sight, agility? Jaguar.

He explained that what had happened to me was a mistake. I would still be human if I had laid low and not done anything. I’d be the person I wanted to be if I just listened. I was about to protest that, but he said that I didn’t listen; I only heard.

I was the ninth person for this to happen to out of hundreds of others. Two were dolphins and they escaped into the pacific a few years ago. There are three buffalo-people and one elk-person working in the lumber industry out west in Oregon.

A wolverine case was reported in Canada last year. A tiger case was reported in Massachusetts, but her transformation was a whole transformation because she ended up running in the Boston Marathon.

We got back to my house where Daniel’s dad was waiting for me.

I was about to apologize when he nodded to Daniel, who pricked my neck with a small dart. I leaped at Dr. Roberts with my teeth bared and my claws out, but I collapsed halfway there…

I woke up in a dark room. I could still see though. My night vision had kicked in. A single light formed as the door to my cell opened and I saw Dr. Roberts come in. I tried to charge him but I felt chains pull me back. He held a small remote.

Upon pressing one button, a wall opened up and I saw a small clearing with dense forest on the far side of it. He began talking to me and a calm, soothing voice.”

“Joe, you’ve been named dead in the U.S. I couldn’t do anything for you there. Here, you can start over. I even made you a mate…”

I heard a loud click and a female jaguar-person entered and crouched down next to Dr. Roberts. He rested his hand on her head.

“Go on and mate, make a clan and start a new race for me. You can be the beginning of a great future. You can go now.”

He pressed another button and the chains released me. The female ran off into the woods. I was about to tackle the Doctor when I smelled something in the air that Roberts had somehow kept from me before.

That female…the one that he gave to me…

…She was in heat.

Twisted Speed copyright 2001 by DrumerTigr.