Another day in the lab
Tick. Tick. Clonk! Screeeech....
"Emil! Get down here!"
Emil looked up from his homework, turning his head to regard the clock. There--the normally plain clock face had swung aside to reveal a decidedly ab-normal speaker. A speaker that he had heard from all too often.
"EMIL!"
"I'm coming!" he replied, even though he knew his father probably couldn't hear him. Walking over to the clock, he set the hands to the time he had been told the night before, and then pulled a small lever by the speaker.
Ka-Shunk! Whir-whir-whir thrummmm....
With those sounds and a jerk, Emil began to descend down into the lab, the small platform of floor shaking and stuttering all the way.
He really needs to fix this--but then again, why would he? He never uses it, after all.
Settling down over 20 feet down from where he had started, Emil skittered off the platform. The reason for his haste was made apparent a moment later--more rapidly than could possibly have been good for the machinery, the platform rocketed upward, colliding with the ceiling with a loud THUD that sent stone dust raining down below. Brushing the stone dust out of his hair with a sigh, 11 year old Emil trudged across the stone floor, to where his father was working. Looking up, he scowled at Emil. "Took you long enough. Time to work."
Walking alongside his tables, the father looked around quickly, his tattered black hair flipping around while Emil followed behind dutifully, the youth's arms becoming filled item after object that his father passed back to him. Just when he couldn't carry anymore, the father stopped in front of an unprepared testing vat and signaled Emil to set down the materials on a nearby table, fixating him with a meaningful stare from watery gray eyes to not just dump everything, his acid scarred and chemical pocked face menacing in the lab light. As Emil gingerly set each material down, his father began to speak.
"Tonight we are going to attempt to change a creature's skin composition. Now, you will be measuring and giving me my materials. Do NOT mix them or attempt to do anything else. That is, unless you want to become a test subject yourself, hmm? Do I make myself clear?"
Emil's stomach did an ungainly flip-flop. "Perfectly, sir," he replied. The thought of ending up as one his father's experiments had always made him a bit queasy.
"Good. Now, lets begin."
