(This is horror)

I sat in the laboratory and waited for everyone to leave. Then I withdrew the primitive book of death from my rucksack and set it upon the table. Such a silly human book. And yet the obsolete thing held power.

Within its pages a promise; an ancient curse with no specifications written to entice the willing. The ravaged. Someone wicked such as myself. All it said was to sacrifice one hundred. Of what, there was no directive. The only qualifications were that the more powerful the sacrifice, the more powerful the ritual and curse. The closer to the ritual the sacrifice was, the more powerful. I could achieve both.

I never thought my plan would come to fruition so easily. It was as if a lightbulb had gone off over my head one day. I possessed all the power of the monkey’s paw in my own hand.

I was no fool. I knew that such an easy curse would indeed have the consequences like that of a monkeys paw. But I was counting on it to hold those deadly cards in my favor. Those mutations of luck. Any negative side effect would please me. I did not care about anyone. Not even myself. Whatever happened did not matter to me.

If I were going to kill everyone on earth, I needed something rare and deadly, similar to what my curse would do.

I had no desire to bloody my hands with humans. I misliked their ilk. They were weak.

I walked to the fridge in the back, swiped my keycard. I had worked hard to get access to this very fridge. Years of working. Of rubbing shoulders. Schooling. Of unsavory things. And I had made it. For a moment, I sat staring at the little glass door. So innocent looking. And able to take down weak humans with ease. The ending to my journey on this accursed planet.

I pulled open the door and let the woosh of air hit me. Then, I hummed as I picked through each Petri dish. Eventually I found my bounty. I made to grab it and use the bacteria as my sacrifice. But then… I could try something else. I had wanted to start a plague. But…

I slowly replaced the bacteria and looked upon another. I pulled that dish out, very carefully. It was one of the most powerful and terrible things one could hold.

I looked around the lab until I found a butane torch. Then I opened the Petri dish. Fire was indeed the most sure way to kill these short of a lengthy process of denaturing. I had no desire to do that. I had waited long enough.

I recited the incantation as I burned my sacrifices. “May the humans in this world take on your curse as air is breathed through the lungs. As sustenance is taken into the mouth. As you die, let them become as like you, a sick perversion. Let them fold themselves into unnatural shapes until their bones crush. Let their touch entice the those unbending to follow suit. Let them fold.”

A puff of acrid smoke rose from the Petri dish of prions. I waited a moment before paging my superiors: “It is done. I am ready for extraction.”

The message scrolled across my pager. “Affirmative. Proceed to the roof.”

I left the room, not bothering to lock anything up. I heard screams emanating from the halls. So quickly.

I walked up the stairs, glancing in stairway door at the first landing. The sight was quite humorous to behold. A man was literally folding into the most disturbing shapes. I shuddered in delight. It had been cruel, using prions as a sacrifice rather than the yersinia pestis. It was almost cheating, certainly.

A group of people tried to help the man, but the very sight of him caused them to convulse and fold into strange ways. A mere glance.

My heart pounded in delight. I rushed up the stairs and burst out into the open air. More screams filled my ears. I dropped my disguise and walked toward the edge of the building, air exploding around me from the extraction ship. A ladder descended from the sky. I grabbed it and watched the carnage play out as we entered the atmosphere. It was like a perverse collection of origami.

I climbed the ladder. My superior grabbed my hand and pulled me inside.

“You are quite cold Tark,” he said, unfeeling. “I never would have thought of this. A literal interpretation of a prion. Very creative. This suffering pleases the queen with its cruelty.”

My voice caught. Even the queen was impressed? I allowed myself a rare smile. And then banished it.

—END

“I am N’zari, destroyer of worlds!”

The small voice squeaks from the centre of the pentagram, the sentence punctuated by a tentacle slapping weakly on the concrete floor.

You smile to yourself, tuck the sterilised petri dish into your labcoat pocket, switch off the ring of LED ‘candles’, and dispose of the test subject.

---

“I am Il’goneth-”

The speech is cut short by the dull thud of a cleaver. In short order the tentacles are removed, cut into lengths, and dropped onto the conveyor belt. The rest is scraped down the disposal chute. The petri dish is placed on the trolley for reuse, and the next dish slides automatically into place. The ring of lights blinks, the sulphur flares, and the ritual begins anew.