Chicken or the Egg

I walked back into the conference room, jamming my pack of cigarettes and lighter into my pockets just as a single gunshot rang out. Screams and shouts replaced the idle chatter that once filled the auditorium. To my amazement, a couple of the attendees pinned the gunman to the floor and his pistol kicked well out of reach before I ventured to peek over the back row of chairs from behind which I took shelter. Directly in front of me, scientists, philosophers, reporters, politicians, and other attendees either sat alone, catching their breaths or huddled together, holding each other in safety. Toward the font of the seating section, several people stood together forming a circle as best they could around a person lying in the row. On the stage Dr. Henry, who was about to give a breakthrough lecture that promised to solve the Chicken or Egg debate, lay dead with his blood and brains splattered on the wall and charts behind him from a single gunshot to the head.

I shoved my way forward through the crowd blocking the center aisle. Call it natural scientific curiosity or just a feature of the human condition that relishes in viewing the macabre, but I needed to see, to hear, to know. After all, Dr. Henry wasn't unveiling a new chemical weapon or alternative fuel source, he was just solving the classic argument between the chicken and the egg and their places in history. Not a controversial topic at all and certainly not one a sane rational person would expect to be assassinated for.

As I neared the group holding down the gunman, I could hear them ask the same questions. "What were you thinking?" "What is wrong with you?" "Who are you?"

At the same time, the gunman ranted almost as loud as their cacophony. "We can't know the answer, we can't know the answer?" he repeated over and over

I pulled one of the men away for a moment and threw myself into his spot in the circle. "What do you mean we can't know? What is the harm of knowing?" Knowledge was the opposite of fear, it drove away ignorance, and made possible all the dreams we thought we could never realize. Even solving something as mundane as the Chicken or the Egg debate might help humanity gain insight into its own evolutionary course: would we be born with new survival traits or is it something that we could mutate into as we grew?

The man stopped raving for a second to look me in the eyes and I feared what I saw - clarity. This wasn't some drug-addled lunatic from off the street or some crazed, violence-prone conspiracy theorist who watched one too many Youtube videos. This man was calm, determined, sure-of-purpose. "We can't know. There are mysteries that must remain if humanity's existence is to continue. Our collective existence is the only barrier between The Creature and our universe. Our minds are its doorways into this reality."

One of the men holding him down dug his knee deeper into the gunman's back. "Whatever nutjob, except we don't experience a collective consciousness, or hive-mind as you psychos like to call it."

"No, not a hive-mind, but the similar questions individuals have within our society forms the barriers that keep The Creature from invading our heads and pushing through into our reality. Dr. Henry was about to answer one of those questions and thus open a doorway through the collective barrier we have formed for ourselves."

I knelt down next to the gunman's face. "What are the other barriers? These other questions that keep your creature at bay?" I asked, curiosity taking over.

The man smiled at me. "A believer in your midst. I am surprised. 'Who am I?' and 'Why am I here?' are two very big ones. 'Is it better to die by fire or ice?'. 'How long should I wait to call her back?'. Any of your wonderful 'Would you rather' questions."

The man with his knee in the gunman's back pressed the man's face into the hard carpeting. "Ok, that's enough nonsense out of you," he said with a growl.

Though I and others like myself considered the conference a big deal, it really wasn't important enough to warrant a full police presence. The handful of officers and security guards on staff spared just one man to check the body to confirm Dr. Henry's passing, and then left him in the auditorium to watch over the crime scene and the gunman. The rest scattered to assist those who might've been injured in the panic, to call for assistance from medical personnel, and to sweep the convention center in case there was another lunatic on the loose.

It was probably due to this distraction that I made it passed the lone sentry and onto the stage amongst Dr. Henry's work and his body. Why I was even up there, though, that part seemed questionable. I couldn't recall what drove me to walk casually behind the guard when his focus was elsewhere, to climb up on the stage, and start going through the late physicist's work. Charts and diagrams and graphs all on giant boards still covered in the man's blood. I didn't realize I'd stepped over his body until I found myself at a table on the other side of the stage. Two dozen white binders stood filled with pages and pages of research from cover to cover, obviously meant to be handed out at the end of his lecture.

I casually opened one of the binders to a random page. Inside, Dr. Henry laid out a rebuttal to the idea that the egg came before the chicken. It obviously wasn't his final conclusion, just addressing concerns his colleagues rightfully would have if they attempted to disprove his ideas. I flipped through pages and pages of proofs and theories, skimming the words as I tried quickly to follow where Dr. Henry's ideas might lead. All the while, I felt something tingling in the back of my skull, slowly working its way to my forehead like a roach scratching its way across a newspaper inside my head.

Before I could turn the page to the end, I looked up to see the blank eyes of Dr. Henry staring at me. Except they weren't completely lifeless as one would expect of a dead man. I could feel a slight flicker of life behind those eyes, and as I stared I swear I saw the slight twitch of his lips. Having worked with cadavers I knew all the tricks my mind plays on me, unsettling me as shadows or illusions of the mind caused parts of the body to appear to move. But this wasn't like those times. I hesitated, my fingers clutching the corner of the page, ready to turn it over. I couldn't look away from the man and the illusion that some part of him might actually be alive. As I stared the scratching stopped its movement just behind my forehead, but never stopped its scratching, scratching, scratching, intensifying until I thought it might break through my skull.

Then I saw it, the slight roll of an eye, just one of them. Both eyes had been focused on the binder in my hands. Now one of them clearly focused on my eyes.

"Oh, what the fuck," I said to myself, letting go of the page and staring intently at the body of Dr. Henry.

His other eye wasn't so subtle. It rolled quick like a marble across a concrete floor, missing my face and staring up a the ceiling. It shifted down too quick and ended up a the floor. Finally it came back up, both eyes now locked with mine. The corner of his upper lip twitched a fraction of an inch, then opened wide like a fish trying to breath out of water, and I swear I saw for the briefest of instants, a green tentacle quivering inside his mouth. My legs gave out and I fell to to the floor, the binder still in my hand. I slid back until I was against the wall, as far as I could get from the body but not far enough. The scratching inside my head turned into a pounding.

"Turn the page, finish the reading, you need to know," said a voice from Dr. Henry's mouth, though clearly not Dr. Henry's voice.

I shook my head furiously determined to drive the sight of a talking zombie from my view and the pounding out of my head. "No, no, no," I repeated over and over again.

"You have to know. You want to know. Let us out," the voice gurgled as if underwater. I heard a scraping noise like nails on a chalkboard. I opened my eyes to see one of Dr. Henry's arms extend out to me. I watched as a mass of tentacles wiggled under his skin, moving from the extended arm to the other. Then his other arm shot forward, dragging the limp body with it. "Finish the page. Let us out," he repeated. It brought one hand up and clamped onto my ankle. I swung the binder at it but it was useless.

Before I could scream, Dr. Henry's mouth opened again. Rather than let out words, though, slimy green tentacles emerged. First one, then two, three. Wider and wider his mouth stretched open until there were at least a dozen tentacles wiggling in the air, each as wide as three of my fingers together. And there, in the very center of the mass, glowed a single eye filled with hatred and malevolence glaring back at me. An anger as deep and vast as all of creation itself.

"Finish the page and release me!" came a voice that definitely was not Dr. Henry's. Though the physicist was nearly 60 years old, the voice that raged now felt older, filled with a gravitas of something ancient, something that might've existed even before the words "Let there be light" were ever spoken.

I went back to the tactic of closing my eyes and shaking my head, hoping to drive out the command as well as The Creature's assault on my psyche as it fully occurred to me what exactly the scratching and pounding actually was - The same monster possessing Dr. Henry also trying to get into me. I pulled the report tighter so my chest knowing the moment I opened the binder The Creature would have me as it had taken Dr. Henry.

This was it, the monster the crazed gunman spoke of, a being seeking to possess humanity through our certainty. Our only psychic barriers being the questions we asked ourselves everyday. Did the chicken come before the egg? I repeated in my head a couple of times. Is it better to die of fire or ice? How can I tell if he likes me? did I make the right choices? What comes after death?

I gained a single moment of clarity, a brief window where I knew my mind was my own. I stared at the possessed body of Dr. Henry, his vice-like grip on my leg, the mass of tentacles stretching, reaching from his mouth, the glaring eye in the center of it all - and suddenly I knew what to do. I pulled my lighter from my pocket and set the pages of the binder on fire starting with the last pages. I could feel The Creatures anger about to explode. Fearing another psychic assault, quickly I tossed the report then closed my eyes and covered my ears, then curled myself into a ball.

The creature let out a howl at my defiance, rattling my teeth and shaking me to the core of my being. I trembled, doing my best to control my fear until it eventually broke loose. I let out my own scream, a primal, terror-filled, victim-about-to-be-stabbed-in-a-horror-movie scream.

I felt hands grab my shoulder, shaking me. "Dr. Fox," a voice said, "Dr. Fox, ma'am, are you okay?" I opened my eyes and uncurled my body to find the security guard and a pair of the other scientists crowded around me. The smell of smoke and burnt pages filled the air.

Slowly, I uncurled myself and brought my body into a seated position against the wall. I took several deep breaths. "Sorry, I'm not sure what happened," I said, looking around the room. My flaming binder hit its mark - the other binders stacked together on the table. The ones that weren't torched were instead doused by the liberal spraying from the fire hose pulled from its box against the wall. Near my feet, lay the body of Dr. Henry, his body now limp and lifeless and no sign of a creature trying to escape his flesh.

I happened to lock eyes with the gunman. They had him hand-cuffed and seated in one of the chairs. His eyes met mine and widened. "You saw The Creature," he said, "It tried to get to you. The monster, you heard it, felt it."

"Did you move Dr. Henry's body?" interrupted one of my colleagues that had climbed onto the stage.

Before I could respond, the security guard said, "A little my fault. I might've kicked him a little when rushing to put out the fire, or dragged him a bit with the hose. Or, you know, post-mortem spasms. I've heard of bodies twitching, jumping long after they were dead."

The other man just grunted and walked away. "And did you really need to spray everything up here. We won't be able to see the damage to the computers and hard drives until we can get them set up someplace else. The other presentation material is definitely irreparable."

"Sorry about that. Just being thorough, though I might've gotten carried away." The security guard turned to look at the gunman and gave him a slight nod which the gunman subtly returned. "I guess we'll never know which truly came first."

"I swear between you and that pyromaniac it'll be surprising if we have any data left."

Maybe it was all just stress, grief hitting me all at once that caused me to buy into that nutjob's crazy story. I looked down to see bruising already starting to appear on the ankle The Creature grabbed and I knew that it was real. I also knew enough about my colleagues and the scientific community to know that they weren't going to believe me. I looked over to the security guard staring at me with hard eyes that betrayed nothing. "I just needed a smoke. I wasn't paying attention, lit the report on fire. I got scared, wasn't looking when I tossed the binder. Sorry." I said, looking back down at my feet.

The security guard just shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the damaged presentation. "Grief affects us all differently, I guess. Just be a bit more careful in the future."

I turned and headed back up the center aisle toward the exit. Now I really needed a cigarette. I sensed the security guard fall into step next to me. We walked in silence until we got outside the auditorium. "So, no one else saw what happened?" I asked.

"That's not how it works," said the other man as he pulled out his own pack of cigarettes. He offered and I took one. "They all saw it, heard it, felt it, but it's whether or not they want to believe it. Most people will look for any excuse to disbelieve something that doesn't fit into their narrow world."

I took a drag of the cigarette. "So, you're working with the gunman."

He nodded. "Never work alone, very important rule to follow." The he held up a white business card, blank except for a phone number. "Give it a call if you're looking for a career change."

I took the card and put it into my pocket. "I'm ready now. I want to know, need to know. What else is out there?"

So, this unfortunately was a long one even from the person writing it (I think Word put it at 2675 words). Yes, I know there are parts in it that I should cut-out for being too wordy but it's too late at night to focus really well on editing. From the Reddit Writing Prompt: A quantum physicist solves the riddle of the Chicken and the Egg and is then shot in the head. I was trying to get one story done a week, but the one I was working on last week just couldn't get any traction. I had most of the story, just the ending was eluding me so I gave up, mostly so I wouldn't just have a story that ends on a plot twist reveal. One positive about writing this one now is that I'm currently on "Ghost Story" of The Dresden Files and I tried to channel Jim Butcher's description of the monster He Who Walks Behind into my description of The Creature. The ending, I think, mostly needs work, if I were the type to go back to polish any of these turds.