WEEKEND PLANS
(2919 Words)
The girl strode quickly through the narrow corridors of the facility. Her bare feet squeaked against the rubberized tiles, doing their best to carry her to her destination. Clutched tight against her chest were a sturdy plastic case and a laminated instruction sheet.
She ground her teeth, picking up her pace. It was the first week of her internship at The Collection and already she was under fire for being forgetful and clumsy. And even then, despite her best efforts, she had forgotten to do a task yet again.
Feed Item #22
Right at the top of her list, and yet somehow she’d missed it all day. She’d even found the time to take a long lunch with her colleagues, thinking she’d been done.
None of them could know that she’d slipped up.
So here she was, after hours, rushing to feed this Item #22. She had about an hour’s window between everyone else leaving and the facility locking down for the weekend, so she had to hurry.
The basement corridors were a labyrinth underneath the show floor. The girl was still learning her way around, but with a bit of brisk walking she should be able to finish her task and leave the facility with at least twenty minutes to spare.
Technicians and archivists that she didn’t recognize moved past her, too consumed by their weekend plans to notice the flustered intern rushing deeper into the facility. A few more corners and junctions and…
MEGAN HALL QUARANTINE 1-2
This should be it. The girl quickly thumbed through the room logs hanging next to the door. Warnings… PPE requirements… Inventory. She ran her finger along the laminated sheet until she found what she was looking for:
Item #22: Scyphozoan Goma
She pushed the door firmly, but it refused to budge. She glanced up — a red light on a magnetic lock. To the right, a keycard sensor stared at her stubbornly.
Shit.
She had access, if she needed it, but then there’d be a record of her entry. She was already on the grill as is without having to explain an after-hours entry to Quarantine 1-2. She would have to admit to missing the feed window for Item #22.
A loud buzz interrupted her train of thought and the door swung open in front of her.
"Jeez, careful!"
“S-sorry. I…”
A middle-aged woman in a lab coat stumbled out of the Quarantine room, muttering something under her breath about creeping around behind doors.
The girl moved quickly as she left, kicking her foot out to jam it between the doorsill, preventing the door from automatically locking again.
She glanced behind her — the technician was no longer nearby.
Carefully, she slid between the heavy doors and peered into the room, first checking the nearby wall for what she’d expected to be there: an exit switch.
At least she wouldn’t get trapped in the room.
A quick scan of the room told her that she was alone. The girl entered the room and closed the door, allowing it to lock behind her.
The room was messy. It was not unlike a middle school laboratory, except the teacher was absent and the kids were allowed to run free. Workstations were placed haphazardly across the laboratory floor, each piled high with papers, tools, and other doodads she lacked the context to understand.
Against the far wall was a built in rack. Rows of square enclosures held glass cages. Many were missing — they were either on somebody’s work station or elsewhere in the facility, but at least half remained.
They must be the exhibits.
The girl approached the rack. It was a good thing that the shelving and cages were both numbered and labeled accordingly, but it was a bad thing that the cages were stored haphazardly and with no regard for any kind of empirical order.
She would just have to check each one.
Each glass case had a paper label stuck on its walls somewhere, identifying its item registration number, along with the item’s given name.
Behind the locked doors of the lab, the girl felt safe enough that curiosity had slowly replaced her initial apprehension. She was aware of the nature of this facility, but few of her tasks brought her in close proximity with any of the exhibits, or… would-be exhibits.
She inspected each cage, brows furrowing at the implications of each.
#12 housed nothing but a limp rubber glove. It was imaginatively named “The Glove”. Inside #43, a thin layer of black mold had latched itself onto a glass wall. This one had a more scientific name, “Physarum Kaoutsouk”.
Slowly, the girl scanned through the rack, stopping every other cage or so to take a closer look at their contents. Finally, almost to the end of the rack, she spotted it.
This cage was different from the others in that it was filled almost to the brim with a clear liquid. Floating within that liquid was what her brain immediately recognized as some sort of jellyfish, rendered in an opaque, inky black. She double-checked the label:
Item #22
Scyphozoan Goma
Medium
Polydimethylsiloxan, Dimethicone, Dimethiconol
Contraindications:
HAZARD CODES BD-3, TE-5
Do Not Handle
Do Not Add Water
Do Not Relocate
Do Not Remove from Medium
Work under Supervision
The girl bit her lip. So she was explicitly not supposed to handle the cage. But creeping around after-hours was also not allowed. She briefly considered her options. Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it fast. Her window was closing and the facility would be locked down in less than half an hour.
Well, we’re already here.
The shelving blocked access to the top of the cage, so she would have to move the cage to a work station in order to access the item.
Being filled with liquid made this a difficult task. The cage was much heavier than she had expected for a tank of water, but with some grunting she was able to place it on a nearby workstation, atop a small pile of indecipherable papers.
The movement seemed to excite whatever it was floating around inside the cage; it began to zip around the confines of its cage, ballooning and expelling the medium to propel itself.
It seemed akin to a small sack made of rubber, no larger than a tennis ball. The lip of which looked like a tube had been rolled up into a soft, rubber “O” ring.
Narrow, black tendrils drifted lazily behind, extruding from within the sack. The… thing… seemed capable of moving these autonomously. They seemed to glide against the walls, incapable of gaining any traction. Perhaps they were some sort of feeler.
The girl turned her attention to the case in her hands. She laid it on the table next to the cage, before undoing the clasps and swinging the lid open.
Inside, foam padding secured a single item — a sponge, packed inside a resealable plastic bag.
This is food?
She consulted the instruction sheet, but it was just more corporate copypasta. Basic hazard warnings, work in a group, wear PPE, the usual thing. Apart from telling her to carefully unwrap and throw the non-specific food into the cage whilst observing the correct safety protocol, the guide was useless.
There was nothing left to do.
As soon as she broke the seal of the bag, a strong feminine odor permeated the room. The girl’s brow furrowed. It was tangy, metallic and faintly-sweet; a smell she was quite familiar with. Muscles clenched in her hips as the odor directed her thoughts to her loins.
THIS is food??
It couldn’t be what she thought, could it? Given the nature of the facility, it might not have been too far-fetched… but it was still a… strange… thought to have. So many questions ran through her head. How was this food? How did they get it? How did they get so much? Whose… bits… did they get it from?
She looked around the room. There had to be some sort of ‘grabbing implement’ somewhere. She was not about to handle somebody else’s fluids with her bare hands.
A light rummage turned up a small pair of tongs.
Carefully, she unclasped the top lid of item #22’s cage. Its occupant seemed not to notice. Reaching into the open bag with the tongs, she lifted the sponge up and over the cage.
A stray bead of liquid pulled off of a corner of the sponge, tumbling as a small droplet into the liquid in the cage.
It took barely a moment for the substance to diffuse, before the black jelly sprang into action. The surface of the liquid rippled as it jet across the cage to the source of the smell.
It was excited now.
The cage wobbled as it darted about within, its placement atop the mess precarious and unstable. Droplets of medium splashed out of the cage and onto the girl’s skin and clothes.
Struggling to hold on to the cage with one hand, she quickly lowered the sponge into the medium, releasing it to splash into the liquid about partway down. Working fast, she deftly resealed the cage and shut the clasps, finishing the job.
Inside she watched enraptured as the rubber sack closed in on its prey. Its tendrils snaked out, more numerous than before, wrapping around the sponge gently. It was careful not to squeeze out any of the liquid.
Sponge held in place, its body closed in. Its ‘lip’ slowly enveloped the sponge, and as it began to gradually encase it so too did it take on its shape.
In moments all that was left in the cage was a latex-coated sponge. The creature’s lips forming a closed pucker, sealing the sponge within itself.
Like a toddler sucking a lollipop, it began to pulse, rhythmically squeezing the sponge and releasing its juices into whatever system it had within itself to consume it.
The job was done.
The girl turned her attention to more pressing matters. The facility would be closed in under twenty minutes. She was behind schedule, but all that was left to do was to pack up and leave.
Item #22 seemed to be immersed in some sort of slippery oil. She rubbed her hands together — a lot of liquid had gotten on her and the surrounding area amid the commotion, and her hands were now quite slippery.
She made a good attempt to clean it off with some paper towels nearby but the oil proved to be stubborn and difficult to remove. She would have to find a chance to wash her hands elsewhere, and hope that no one would notice the oily workstation amidst the mess.
Within the cage, the sponge had been compressed to a mere fraction of its size — sucked dry by the cage’s inhabitant. The girl’s gaze met it just as it released its prey, ejecting a dry and brittle sponge to sink to the bottom of the cage where it slowly began to drink the oil and rehydrate.
It was time to leave.
Grasping at the cage at opposite corners, she put a good effort to lift the heavy tank back into its enclosure. The good news was that she was able to lift it off of the table. The bad news was that its walls had become extremely slick with oil.
In an instant, the heavy cage slipped out of her grasp, first clattering against a corner of a workstation. Rotating from the impact, she watched as the cage tipped, spilling its medium through the grille of its lid on its way down to the laboratory floor.
All at once, the cage shattered.
Oil poured out, coating the girl’s feet and legs. Her instinct to catch it had unbalanced her, and she immediately lost her footing, falling on to the mess she had made.
‘Shit. Shitshitshit-’
Adrenaline coursed through her body and she scrambled to move away from the site of the accident. Her eyes darted across the white floor of the laboratory; the creature had disappeared.
She quickly inspected herself. She was now drenched in oil. No cuts, thankfully. She reached to pick a stray piece of glass off of her calf, and then she saw it.
Item #22 was strewn flat against the floor, tendrils snaking out along the puddle of oil that was quickly forming — a puddle that also included her.
She had to move. She struggled to pick herself off of the floor, but her bare feet and hands found no friction against the oily rubberized tiles. She’d barely made a foot away when it grabbed her.
Tendrils quickly encircled her toes, immediately followed by more. The girl watched wide-eyed as Item #22 pulled itself toward her using its new found leverage. More and more rubber tendrils emerged from its tiny body, slithering underneath her clothing and exploring her skin.
It was tasting her.
Apparently deeming her suitable, it began to envelop her.
The girl thrashed, kicking her legs to free herself from its grasp but it was already too late. It pulled itself over her foot with ease, encasing her in an airtight rubber sock. It moved quickly now, disappearing underneath her pants as it continued to envelop her calves and knees.
She grasped onto a nearby table, pulling herself up to a low, shaky posture. She could feel it climbing around her thighs; she had to get it off.
The girl struggled to unbuckle her pants, almost tearing it off of her body. Her entire left leg tingled, encased in a tight layer of black rubber that continued to climb of its own accord.
She grasped at the creature’s lip in an attempt to pry it off of her skin, but it was vacuumed tightly to her body. For every inch of skin she reclaimed from the creature, it claimed another five.
Within the creature, countless tendrils snaked about frictionlessly, exploring her twitching skin for the source of the growing scent it so craved.
The girl bit her lip, cheeks flush a hot red as more of its tendrils slipped underneath the edge of her underwear. A soft whimper of a moan escaped her lips as it flitted against her folds.
The creature throbbed pleasurably against her at its new discovery. The one tendril quickly became five, which quickly became fifteen. The girl clenched her muscles, squeezing her knees together but the fight was over before it began. She mewled out loudly to no one in particular as the rubber entered her and coated her hips in itself.
On the floor of the laboratory the girl writhed, back arched in pleasure as item #22 continued to explore her inside and out. All rational thought was driven away by the sensation of countless rubber fingers pushing against her inner walls.
The creature made short work of her right leg, and the girl found herself coated from the waist down in impossibly tight living rubber.
It continued to rise around her torso, squeezing her waist and slipping underneath her bra. It coated her breasts in itself, squeezing them together within before making its way down either arm.
The rubber sleeves ended in balled-up fists, rendering her hands useless before the creature continued to envelop her head in its entirety. Tendrils explored each remaining orifice, filling her mouth and sinuses before the creature’s lips puckered closed at the top of her head.
It took no more than five minutes for the girl to become enveloped in the living rubber creature.
Useless hands groped blindly at the creature that cladded her tightly, both inside and out. Her cries, whether of protest or pleasure, rendered as useless muffled gargles through the tentacles that gagged her.
Her slippery body rolled and thrashed on the laboratory floor. Slick with oil, any attempt to stand or grab anything was futile, and the girl simply slid across the room, trashing anything that happened across her path. Shards of glass from the shattered enclosure slid harmlessly across the oily surface of Item #22.
The slick black skin that enveloped her pulsed; reflections of light fixtures rippled and undulated. Item #22 suckled her body, massaging its food in ways to secrete more of its nourishing fluid for its own consumption.
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Elsewhere, a safety officer conducted final checks in the facility’s security center. Lockdowns were serious business, and it was important to ensure that no one would be accidentally left behind. In a facility like The Collection, vigilance is key, and so there were many robust operating procedures put in place to prevent accidental lock-ins.
First, the corridor cameras checked for stragglers still making their way out of the facility’s common areas.
Deserted.
Second, the laboratory access logs would highlight anyone who had entered the facility’s controlled areas and hadn’t exited.
All-clear.
Finally, a single warning alarm would fire across the facility. Anyone still within could then reach out via any of the touch-pad communication systems to inform the officer that they were still inside.
No alerts.
It was time to start the weekend.
A loud blare sounded out across the facility as the white halide lamps extinguished in turn. One by one, the white lights that reflected off the slick curves writhing on the floor were replaced with the dim red glow of the facility’s night lighting.
Underneath, alone in Megan Hall Quarantine 1-2, the girl’s body arched silently. Muscles strained and twitched in an unseen explosion of pleasure, the first of many for the long weekend ahead.