New Beginning 986

I am the worm you see in the bottle of tequila. I crawled inside because alcohol smears the memories, tames the furies, and thins the blood. I embrace my fate with ever-increasing ardor but in doing so I despair of life and its impotent God. Would that I were made of stone, long forgotten and never-minded stone without care or the desires of flesh and blood.
We begin in a laboratory in the quest for money to pay for a doctorate. Professor Morgenteil paid premium rates for students because only greedy fools like me would to sell their souls and perform live experiments on chimpanzees, Pan Troglodytes.
Subject Ten succumbed to the virus early this morning. I did the post mortem and prepared the body for burial. Characteristically, its fingertips were bloody, body hair smeared with its fluids, eyes blackened, and face hollow. Ten weeks, ten failures.
“Death delayed but not prevented,” Professor Morgenteil sighed the words in his thick accent as he read my report. “The effect of the virus seems to build. First few days they’re ecstatic. It took two weeks this time for the frenzy to start and the death spiral that follows.”

Ah, how I longed to be that imprisoned and inebriated worm--actually, not a worm but the larval form of the Hypopta agavis moth--instead of a graduate student of free will, monstrous greed, and immense hairy arms (Gorilla gorilla).

"As you know," Professor Morgenteil continued with his ridiculous Propithecus pronunciations, "the next chapter of the Planet of the Apes franchise depends on this virus. Back to work." 


Opening: Dave F......Continuation: IMHO