The Lab Rat Report

Psychosis or Reality? You Decide!

Todays burst of mania comes in the form of flash fiction suitable only for the heavily medicated, heavily mediated, or heavily sedated readers who wish to hear a tale about a United States veteran who has come back home from Afghanistan only to find himself at war with reality itself.

Rick woke up and pulled his head out of the microwave oven. It wasn’t the first time. He slept with his head inside of it every single night of every single year since he first came back from his ill-fated tour in Afghanistan in 2011. Sleeping with his head inside the microwave kept his mind free from the radio waves being continuously beamed at him from the Illuminati reptilians and their cohorts in Washington D.C. The only problem was, that, since he couldn’t close the door on the microwave, it did not fully keep his skull and brain fully enclosed. And it needed to be fully enclosed to act as a perfect faraday cage and keep the malignant radiation pulsed at him at bay. Because he couldn’t protect his neck and he slept with an EMF blanket wrapped from the opening of the microwave down, all around his body. The Wu Tang Clan had told him long ago that he needed to “protect ya neck” and the words came to him as he drifted out of the not-quite-sleep of deprived sleep and its momentary fitful dreams and snatches of raging nightmare.

Now that he was awake he could think about the rat that had come to him in his apartment. He had named the rat Ratty, and now that he had Ratty, he was quite sure the rat had been sent to him as a test. He’d seen a post about this particular rat on one of the internet forums he habitually trolled. It had been liberated from a pharmaceutical testing lab by a group of eco-anarchists and animal rights activists. He felt sorry for the thing. It had been living on a steady diet of drugs used to ease the pain of neurological implants. He was pretty sure Ratty also had a neurological implant. He was also pretty sure he had a neurological implant.

One of these days he would prove it, but to do so he would have to risk leaving his efficiency apartment, heading out into the streets of Philly, and making his way to the public library to use one of their computers. He would never risk having the internet, with its all-seeing spy eye, fed into his own pad. It was hardly safe enough as it was. He would certainly never allow mind control WiFi. Using the internet was a calculated risk. On the one hand it was necessary to research the global mind control conspiracy. On the other it was a tool of the global mind control conspiracy.

Ratty’s implant might be the source of some of the psionic rays being beamed into his consciousness. Getting away from Ratty and out of the house sometimes made him feel better. Yet ever since he had taken Ratty in, it had been his PTSD therapy rat. If he could help cure Ratty, maybe he could help cure himself. He wondered why more vets didn’t have therapy rats. They were easier to take into fast food joints than pesky therapy dogs.

Taking the implant out of Ratty was what he needed to do if he really wanted to help heal his rodent friend. Not only would help Ratty, but it could be used as a practice surgery. It would help him when he performed the surgery on himself. That was another reason he needed to get out of his trash strewn place and down to the library: to read up on the brain and watch the amateur DIY surgery videos on YouTube. If they could do it, he could do it. He really wanted to be certain he could do it though. He wavered all the time about whether it was the Skull and Bones or the Bohemian Grove behind the implants, behind whoever else was who was behind taking over the world (and whoever was behind them).

Soon he would finally be able to dig that freaking microchip device out of his neocortex, using a rusty spoon if he had to. Then he’d finally be free of their evil machinations. The beams wouldn’t affect him anymore. He wouldn’t have to sleep with his head in the microwave. He wouldn’t have to remember all of the things he saw on the battlefield. The day his friend Joey had a leg amputated. It was the same explosion that had failed to kill him. How he wished it had been different, that he’d been the one to go down, and not just because he wouldn’t have to deal with the constant hum and pressure of whatever they put into his brain when they took him out in a stretcher and cleaned his wounds up. No, he would be better off dead because Joey had just gotten hitched, and now his son was out there now without a dad. Rick never had kids. Now it was completely out of the question.

The other thing Rick thought he could do was to figure out a way to microwave the thing inside him and destroy. Perhaps just a little bit of juice would be enough. Not too much to boil his brains, but to get to destroy the circuitry inside the implant. Even little kids knew you couldn’t put metal in a microwave. He’d done a few tests. He’d never had as much fun as the day when he microwaved his old cell phone, never to be replaced. That was one to keep McGov from watching his every move. Maybe he ought to just go ahead and microwave the rat and see if that destroyed its implant. Thirty seconds ought to be enough to destroy its microchip. Then he’d know he could put his own head inside the thing, even if he had to cut it off first to close the door.

“Come here, Ratty. Let me talk to you.”

#

Behind the observation glass that was disguised to look like a dirty mirror on the inside of Rick’s apartment, the doctors from the pharmaceutical company watched as their lab rat placed another lab rat in the microwave and turned it on. For a certain kind of scientist, there is nothing more satisfying than the splat of a rat.

Dr. Jonas smiled as he set down the joystick, and when he smiled, he licked his lips with a lizardly flicker. Brian was happy the experiment had worked. Not for Rick, not for the rat, but so Dr. Jonas wouldn’t take another failure out on him with his condescending scientific rage.

Brian scratched at the stitches on the back of his head where Dr. Jonas had drilled inside of him to insert the implant. He couldn’t believe how much it itched.

“Now stop it boy, and be a good little lab rat.”

Dr. Jonas hit a button on another remote control and Brian stopped.

“Type up my notes and send a report to Dr. Adder over in the Manufacturing department. I think we can finally get a roll out on these and start putting them inside the brains of politicians. Once that’s sorted, we will focus on the general public.”

~.:.~ ~ .:.~ ~ .:.​~

For another strange audio trip through the demonic world of psychiatry and/or ultimate reality check out my album under my old Satyr Oz moniker, “Dental Barfly.” I made this one in the early 2000s but I still stand by the work.

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