*WARNING *
Contains body abnormality, child violence, deformities.
Please read with care
(By Dr Jospha . A.)
I remember the letter.
That was how it began for me—just a plain envelope delivered to my office on a Tuesday morning.
No stamp, no seal, only my name in block letters across the front.
Inside was an official request: my presence was needed in a small rural town affected by something called the H.M.V.
I almost laughed when I read the words:
Human Mutation Virus.
It sounded like a bad joke, or the premise of some ridiculous horror movie.
A virus that made body parts grow in strange places?
That spawned tumors shaped like mouths, or hands on foreheads?
Impossible.
I had seen disease before, of course—cancer, leprosy, deformities of all kinds—but this?
It felt absurd.
But the letter carried the stamp of the Ministry of Health.
And more than that, there was something in the language that unsettled me.
No request for volunteers, no offer of choice.
It was phrased as a command.
So I packed my bag.
The first thing I saw when I reached the village was the wall.
A towering structure of reinforced steel that rose up toward the sky like the ribcage of a dead titan.
It was wrong—terribly wrong.
Affected environments weren't sealed like this. It was as though someone wanted not only to lock the sickness in, but to lock truth out.
At the gates, I was greeted by Dr. Kerry.
She was younger than me, bright-eyed, her voice warm.
She smiled in a way that was seems rehearsed, too perfect, but in that moment I was relieved to see another scientist.
She shook my hand and said, "Welcome, Dr. Jospha. We've been waiting for you."
Then we went inside the lab.
And what she showed me after that will haunt me until the day I die.
The patients.
The children were the first I saw.
A newborn, barely days old, with a hand sprouting from its forehead that twitched as if grasping for air.
A pregnant woman with what looked like a sexual organ grafted grotesquely onto her ribcage, twitching and pulsating.
An old woman with teeth—hundreds, maybe thousands—crowding every surface inside her mouth and pushing through her gums like ivory knives.
I wanted to vomit. My legs shook beneath me.
These weren't deformities I had ever studied, not conditions nature would allow.
This was perverse.
I asked Kerry what was happening here.
She sighed and said, "We aren't sure yet. That's why you're here."
She then introduced me to the rest of her team—Mark, the lead researcher, and several assistants.
They welcomed me, praised my expertise, treated me like an honored guest.
They told me they were searching tirelessly for the cure.
And so, I stayed.
**********
months passed. I became less of a scientist and more of a caretaker.
Especially to the children.
The children…...God, how they smiled despite their pain.
They ran to greet me whenever I entered their ward, deformities and all, eager for attention, for affection.
Some of my colleagues avoided touching them, disgusted by their swollen limbs, by the unnatural tumors that pulsed like living creatures.
But to me, they were still human. Still children.
I played with them. I read them stories.
I held their trembling hands when they woke up screaming from nightmares.
I told them to be brave. That they must fight.
That someday this sickness would be gone and they would be free.
Of all of them, one boy remained close to me—Collen.
He was eight. His jaw was warped by a tumor so large it covered half his mouth, making it nearly impossible to speak.
He had three legs, one crooked and dragging uselessly behind him.
But his eyes—his eyes were sharp, alive.
One night, after the other children had fallen asleep and i was about to leave, Collen tugged on my sleeve.
His eyes pleaded with me to stay.
"You can't sleep?" I whispered.
He nods his head and grabbed the notepad we kept for him.
His hand scrawled across the paper, crooked but urgent: Nightmare.
I asked what the nightmare was.
He hesitated, then wrote more.
Words about the day everything began.
My blood went cold. For months I had been here, and no one—not Kerry, not Mark, not the others—had told me how the outbreak truly began.
I sat on the couch and put him on my lap. "Tell me," I whispered. "What happened?"
His began writing.
He wrote for a long time, then handed me the notepad with sleepy eyes.
I tucked him into bed, patted his head, and promised I'd read it.
When I returned and sat in my office, I opened his notepad and began to read.
The first entries were simple words.
He wrote about the officials who came to the village two years ago, promising clean water and farming machines. The mayor had welcomed them with pride, calling it a blessing.
The villagers praised the water—it tasted sweet, purer than anything they had known.
But Collen's family lived far away from the central wells, so he often fetched water from a waterfall instead.
One day, curious, he visited the tank where the new purified water was stored.
He wrote about the men working there, about the villagers gathering their supplies.
But what unsettled him were the spots—yellow and green blotches blooming on the faces of children.
When he asked, a boy laughed and told him the new water "released the sickness inside."
Collen wanted to believe it.
His mother was sick. Maybe this water would heal her.
So he fetched some, and on the way home, he saw strange mushrooms sprouting from the side of the tank. White, spongy, and glistening with a green fluid.
He thought they were normal mushrooms, a gift from nature, and plucked them.
My hands shook as I flipped for the next pages.
They weren't words anymore, but drawings. Distorted, childlike sketches.
His mother cooking the mushrooms, then collapsing on the floor as a worm slithered from her mouth.
His father tearing at his skin, bleeding green pus from open sores.
Another page: men in white and yellow barging into the home, dragging his parents away.
Another: Collen strapped to a bed, surrounded by figures in black.
Another: a laboratory filled with tubes—tubes that held not animals, not humans, but abominations.
Creatures with human heads on animal bodies.
Infants fused with insects. Faces stretched across torsos.
And then—the last page.
Dr. Kerry. Smiling. Watching as a woman was amputated alive.
The woman's mouth was open in a scream.
But Kerry was calm. Happy.
I dropped the notebook. My breath came ragged. No. It couldn't be.
But somewhere deep in me, I knew it was true.
I always have my suspicion.
But i never except this.
I ran to the children's ward.
It was empty. Every bed, stripped bare.
Panic swallowed me. Rage followed.
I stormed to Kerry's office.
She barely had time to look up before I slammed her against the wall, screaming in her face.
"What have you done? Where are the kids?!"
For a moment, her mask slipped. Her lips curled into something feral.
And then she laughed.
Her laugh was like shattering glass, high and wild.
"So you've finally seen it," she whispered. "Good. Follow me."
I wanted to kill her on the spot. But I didn't. I followed.
The underground lab was hell.
Bodies. Rows of bodies. Children strapped to tables, their limbs removed while they still breathed.
Infants floating in jars.
Men and women whose bones were rearranged by unseen hands, whose eyes bulged from sockets too small.
"Don't worry," Kerry said, smiling sweetly.
"They can't feel pain. We paralyze them first."
How can that help?
I wanted to pass out. My legs failed me, and I collapsed to my knees.
And then I heard it.
A scream.
A familiar scream.
"Sam?" My voice cracked.
I ran. Sam—a boy of six, so gentle, always laughing despite his fused fingers—was being shoved toward a tank.
He saw me and cried, "Doctor! They're all dead! They killed them!"
I knocked the man aside, held Sam tight.
And then I saw it.
The tanks.
Collen.
His face. His tumor-ridden mouth—gone.
His eyes wide, lifeless.
The others too. Olivia. John. Hana.
Their small bodies floating like discarded toys.
"No," I whispered. My hands trembled as I opened Collen's tank, lifted him into my arms. His skin was cold, stiff.
"Why?" My voice cracked. "Why?"
The answer was laughter.
The scientists all around me laughed.
Mark. Kerry. The whole team.
Kerry stepped close, placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Because humans are curious," she said.
"Because progress demands sacrifice. Look at what we've achieved. Something even God couldn't imagine. A new frontier of science."
" a new breakthrough for humanity "
Her eyes burned with fanatic light.
"In life," she whispered, "a little sacrifice is worth it."
My tears burned.
What kind of monstrous ideology is that?
Why them? Just why….
I began to laugh. A madman's laugh.
Tears streaming down my cheeks.
Then I laid Collen down gently. Wiped his cold face.
And pressed the trigger on my watch.
The walls shook. Fire burst. Screams. Sirens.
I carried Sam on my back, weaving through collapsing corridors, detonating every charge I had set in secret.
The village burned. The labs crumbled. The monsters screamed—not the infected, no.
The scientists.
The real monsters.
**********
Two years have passed since that night.
I no longer wear the coat of a doctor. I live quietly in a remote town, writing books under another name.
Sam sleeps in the next room, dreaming safe dreams.
He calls me Father now.
I teach him at home. He laughs sometimes, though he carries scars I cannot heal.
And every evening, I walk to the hill.
Beneath the pine tree are four gravestones:
Olivia. John. Hana. Collen.
I sit with them. Talk with them. Tell them stories of the world outside.
I smile. I weep.
Because I know the truth now.
It wasn't the virus. It wasn't the mutations.
It was us.
Humans.
We were the real monsters.
Stream Commentary; Tape #37. "Humans Were The Real Monsters "
(Kai sighs)
So… you've heard it. Through a doctor's lens. His truth.
Or maybe humanity's truth. The question isn't whether the virus was monstrous… but whether we were, for creating it"
[@642: Humans…. Humans did this! Not the virus, not nature. It was them. Cutting open children, playing god, laughing while carving flesh. Monsters? No—devils. Every single one of them should've burned in that fire. Every. Single. One.]
[@Ovesix: I can't even argue. They traded compassion for curiosity, conscience for control. I used to believe science was salvation. But here… science was a scalpel of cruelty. To experiment on the innocent… there's no logic that redeems it]
[@Jaija: They were just kids. They just wanted to smile. To live. Why… why do adults always destroy what's pure? Collen, Sam, Olivia… they were still human. But no one saw that except Jospha.]
[@Enchomay: What terrifies me most isn't that this happened—it's that it could happen again. That someone, somewhere, will always choose power over morality. We tell ourselves monsters are beasts, shadows, things in the dark. But look closer. The monster is the hand that holds the knife. The one that justifies suffering for progress. The one that smiles while others scream]
[Static hums. Kai leans forward again. When he speaks, his tone cuts deep, calm but carrying thunder underneath.]
"You see?
Even my friends—each of them broken, touched by the echoes of humanity's sins—struggle to process this.
Anger. Hatred. Sorrow. Disbelief. And yet, nothing will change unless we listen."
[He pauses. The screen dims. His next words sound like a confession, or a warning carved into stone.]
"Science without empathy is butchery.
Curiosity without restraint is cruelty.
And humans without conscience… are worse than any monster you've ever feared.
The greatest virus is not H.M.V.
The greatest virus is us."
[He tilts his head, goggles flashing like eyes of a predator in the dark.]
So here's your warning to you,
whenever you see suffering—don't look away.
Because if you do, if you let it pass, then you're no different than those who strapped children to tables and called it research.
Silence makes you complicit. Remember that."
[ Kai's voice grows softer, but sharper at the edges, like a blade sliding from its sheath.]
"And speaking of silence… our next story begins with one.
A silence so loud it echoes from the pages of a girl's hidden words.
A diary no one was meant to read.
A diary filled with truths that were never meant to be spoken."
Perry's Diary.
[@Jaija: A diary? Heh… maybe it's full of drawings and little secrets. I'd read that…]
[@642: You fool. No diary ends with laughter. Diaries are where people hide the things they can't scream. The things that destroy them inside.]
[@Enchomay: A diary is a coffin. Words nailed shut between covers, waiting for someone curious enough to pry it open]
[@Ovesix: And when it's opened… the truth inside might be the sharpest knife of all]
(The static surges. Kai's mouth curves—half a smile, half a wound)
"Let's open it together, shall we?
But before that i want to ask you guys something.
What do guys really think of scientists?"
[@642: Scientists? Hah! Don't even call them human. Scalpel-wielding demons, that's what they are. They choose cruelty, then hide behind the excuse of progress. They don't cure—they cut. They don't discover—they destroy]
[@Enchomay: Not all scientists are monsters. Some dedicate their lives to saving others. But… when knowledge becomes an obsession, compassion rots away. And in sterile white halls, cruelty feels… justified. They stop seeing people and start seeing numbers, specimens, data points]
[@Jaija: But why? Why can't they just… care? They're supposed to heal people, right? Doctors, scientists… aren't they supposed to make us better? How could they look at kids like Collen or Hana and still cut them apart? How could they smile while doing it?]
[@Ovesix: Because cruelty can be disguised as curiosity. Because the line between experiment and torture is thinner than a scalpel's edge. Humanity convinces itself that purpose redeems pain. That a breakthrough justifies blood. But every discovery built on suffering… is already poisoned]
[@642: They call it science. I call it sadism. Don't ever say 'not all scientists.' If there are good ones, where were they when the children screamed? Where were they when Kerry laughed?]
[@Enchomay: Some of them are cowards. Some are complicit. And some… maybe they convince themselves they're saving the future. But yes. In silence, in action, they are guilty too]
[@Jaija:Then maybe… maybe scientists aren't the problem. Maybe humans are. Because humans always find excuses to hurt each other. Even the smartest of them]
"Isee….."
(Kai smiles, then he looks straight at the screen…at you)
What do you think?
STREAM ENDED