HOME | DD

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

    “Hello?”

    A man sitting at the reception desk looked up to see who had greeted him and smiled. He immediately got up from his chair and rounded the fancy piece of mahogany and strode over to the young woman.

    “Ah, you must be Stephanie!”

    The girl took a step back startled, a bit surprised he knew her name already. “Y-Yes, that’s me.”

    The man chuckled casually and nodded, his black hair bobbing as he did so. “Don’t look so scared,” he continued with a laugh to put her at ease. “Someone had called earlier and I just thought I’d take a guess as to that being you!”

    Stephanie smiled and nodded with him. “Yes, that was me.” Her voice went quiet as she felt uncomfortable to admit the reason. “So…is it really true that this place can do what you said it can?”

    The man winked almost immediately and took her hand. “To make you healthy again? Why yes, of course…and so much more too.”

    The possibility made her heart soar. It may have sounded too good to be true over the phone, but she had to take her chance to get better. She felt him gently pull her hand, getting her attention again.

    “Please follow me. I’m sure you’ve waited long enough for a solution.”



    Stephanie soon found herself looking face to face with the reason for her despair that she had been coping with for over two years now. Cancer had run its course through her body and no matter how many previous treatments of chemotherapy she could put herself through, the disease still had its firm grip on her.

    “I believe you came to us at the perfect time, Miss Trexler.”

    She pulled her eyes away from the screen and looked over at the woman dressed all in scrubs and sighed. “I feel like it was my only option…”

    “No need to worry,” the surgeon assured her with a soft smile. “These scans may seem like too much, but I assure you that the dedicated staff and I will be able to help. It’s been our goal for the past five years to finally have the confidence to say that we know that it will work. If you are ready, just say the word.”

    Stephanie felt her body quiver nervously as the choice was again laid on her shoulders. Giving one last parting look to the x-rays and brain scans on the wall, she let out a shaky breath and nodded.

    “I’m ready as I’ll ever be.”

    The young woman was soon led through a set of double doors and down the all-too-familiar sterile hallways like the many hospitals she had been accustomed to being in. They had once brought on such a sense of discomfort for her, but now seemed like a second home away from home for her.

    “Right through here.”

    Stephanie stepped through the open door and sighed upon seeing the contents of the room. White. A singular examination table surrounded by immaculate white walls. A team of three people also donned in the scrubs the surgeon had were waiting patiently nearby for further direction. She guessed her expression could be easily readable as the surgeon beside her spoke again.

    “My apologies that the room can’t be a bit homier. Protocol and cleanliness for the procedure dictates how it looks. I’ll give you some time to change and we can begin.”

    Stephanie nodded as she was given a patient apron, watching the others leave the room. She quickly slipped out of her clothes and laid herself on the table, looking up at the bright light up above.

    “Please let it work this time…”

    The next hour went by in a haze of formal dialogue and medical tests. Stephanie just lay there silently letting the doctors work, her quiet state only breaking to give the occasional “yes” or “no.” She was soon told the age-old line of counting down from 10 as her eyes drifted closed into unconsciousness.



---- ----



    “What’s happening with her blood pressure!?”

    “I don’t know Lance!”

    The man looked from his colleague to stare wide-eyed at the monitor before him watching the number skyrocket in one instance and then in a matter of seconds plummet to frighteningly low readings.

    “It just keeps doing this over and over again! How is she even still alive after she already went through cardiac arrest just three minutes ago!?”

    “Lance!”

    “What?!” he cried and spun to look at Carmen, the head surgeon.

    “I understand this has never happened before because of the procedure we did, but you have to calm down. Paul, get another IV and Rachel, get an oxygen mask.”

    The two other doctors went their separate ways swiftly, while Lance glanced down at the pale motionless body of their patient. He was amazed to see Carmen going through emergency pulse checks and temperature monitoring readings with a sense of calm and professionalism. The others of the team came running in moments later with Rachel applying the mask and attaching tubes to the tank while Paul exchanged IVs. But the moment the mask filled with oxygen, the four watched in shock as Stephanie's body broke into a seizure.

    “Hold her steady!” Carmen ordered quickly, slipping out a syringe and injecting something into the girl's arm.

    “Her body temperature is rising.”

    “And her heart rate’s spiking again!”

    Lance and Paul held fast as Stephanie’s torso arched sharply into the air before falling back to the bed lifelessly. A tense minute went by as the group watched Stephanie’s vitals creep toward a comfortable equilibrium. But soon the sputtering of Lance filled the room as the others noticed him backing away, his face pale.

    “Lance, get back over here!” Paul ordered.

    “H-Her arm!”

    The others looked puzzled from his quivering pointed finger down to Stephanie. All three gasped as their colleague’s observation was not as random as they had thought. Brown hair of various hues had begun to grow along the girl's arm, the density of it only intensifying as the hair spread to other parts of her motionless body.

    “W-What's happening to her?”

    No one seemed to have the answer to Rachel's question as the team stood there locked in place, mesmerized by this strange phenomenon. The hair had traveled to every inch of Stephanie's body by now until it resembled that of a coat of fur to the stunned doctors.

    “Is that… cheetah fur?” Paul croaked out before losing his breath again. “Oh my god…her ears and nose are even changing too…”

    Round yellow and brown fuzzy ears had sprouted from the girl’s head, while her face had melded into that of a real-life cheetah, whiskers, nose, teeth and all. But it was Paul's cry of pain that got everyone’s attention next.

    “Aaahhaaa!! Make her stop! She’s gonna tear my arm off!”

    Deep red stains had filled around the cuff and sleeve of the man's uniform as the others panicked. Sharp dagger-like claws had slid out from Stephanie’s newly transformed paws and had found themselves buried deep into Paul's arm. Carmen was quick to act as the color in her friend's face was draining away. Throwing her hands down on the cheetah's arm, she made an attempt to pull it away when the animal finally awoke.

    Stephanie felt her eyes shoot open to the bright light as her lungs filled with a hungry pull on air. Disoriented and pumped full of adrenaline, her arms swung blindly through the air as if her mind was telling her she was under attack. A cry of agony. The clattering of medical utensils colliding with the floor. The feeling of something wet dripping down her arm.

    The frantic repetition of her name.

    “Miss Trexler! Stephanie! Stop! Stephanie Trexler, please calm down!”

    “Carmen, how can you call her that anymore! She’s this freaky cheetah thing! She probably doesn’t even understand you!”

    “Make yourself of use then and go get a sedative Lance! You’re not making the situation any easier. If she does anything crazy again we’ll knock her out, now go!”

    Stephanie felt her body tense up upon hearing that and went to apologize and speak, but all that seemed to come out were slurred growls. Her eyes had yet to focus on anything except for the bright light above her.

    “Rachel, take Paul and tend to his arm. I’ll be fine. Just please make sure he gets his wounds tended to and staunch the flow. Understood?”

     Stephanie felt her ears sense someone leaving the room while someone came running in. All the time she just wanted her eyes to clear and not be so blurry.

    “Lance, thank you. Give her the maximum dose. Don’t talk, just do it.”

    There was a tug on her arm as whoever this Lance person was, was injecting her IV with this sedative. And at such an unfortunate time too… for just as her eyes were about to focus for the first time, all she could make out was something brown and yellow all over her before she blacked out.

---- A few days later ----



    The place was dark as he passed by. It was just something he noticed as he walked on past the otherwise normal looking storefront. But Erik kept standing there gazing into the vacant interior, his curiosity brewing.

    It had been a health clinic for over 10 years and had been well received by its patients and other medical institutions. But why, after its fruitful time here in this part of the city would it be so…deserted? He swore he had walked by this place not even three days prior, it’s lobby alive with activity. Just a simple haphazardly hung “Sorry, we're closed.” sign could be seen against the dark pane of glass on the door, fooling the vast majority of any passersby. But Erik wasn’t one of those people. As a medical practitioner himself, he was brimming with questions. Questions that needed to be answered. With squinted eyes peering at that fishy looking sign, he pulled out his phone and quickly dialed a number.

    “Norm? Hey it’s me. I think I just found ourselves the possible big break we need to finally get some publicity…No…it doesn’t include stopping at Senor Burritos. Just meet me at the lab in f-- Ugh, fine! I’ll get burritos! Just be at the lab before I get there. Yes…I’ll get the sauce too. I know. Ok. See you later.”



    After a few days of investigative research, reconnaissance, and make-shift stakeouts in his car that now smelled of Mexican food, Erik was convinced he needed to sneak inside the facility somehow. As soon as night fell upon the city, he and Norm readied with their gear just outside the clinic one evening.

    “I’ve never done this, but it's really exciting.”

    Norm chuckled and slipped out a key card from his pocket. “You're such a newbie.” He stepped in front of Erik to give the external card reader a swipe.

    The practitioner watched as his tech-savvy friend whirled his fingers around the keypad. In seconds the system gave a light chirp, with the sound of a mechanized latch retracting.

    “How did you—”

    “Relax,” Norm sighed, bringing his other hand up to take a bite off of a fresh burrito he had bought. “Just let me do my thing, and I won’t have to make your brain blow up from all the stuff I have to explain.” He pulled back the door and held it open all chivalrously. “You've got all those Greek gibberish medical terms memorized, while I've got mine, capiche?”

    Erik rolled his eyes with a laugh. “Alright, fair enough.” He looked around the dark street in either direction. “Let's get inside before someone sees us.”

    As the duo crept around the lobby and down one of the two main hallways, the state of the place was still puzzling Erik. It was as if a cleaning crew had gone through and readied the space for the next day's business hours. Everything was cleaned and in its designated place. For something that closed on such short notice he expected at least a hint of disarray.

    “Well this is weird…” Erik mused as he stepped into each public examination room. Each one was in the same orderly state. “There's no way they would leave this place so immaculate. They’ve got to be hiding something…”

    Norm shrugged as he pulled out his phone. “You sure are dead set on some conspiracy theory man.” He busied himself for a moment, soon turning his device around to hold up a virtual map. “Any specific rooms on here you wanna check? I barely know what half of these names mean. Lepitopterology? What the hell is that? The study of adopting lepers?”

    “Studying moths and butterflies,” Erik replied casually.

    “What? See what I mean?!” Norm groaned as he cocked his head to the side. “Weird gibberish. It sounds nothing like it means. Just call it butterflyology or something. So. Simple.”

    Erik let his friend fume as he took the time to study the map. The first floor appeared to be all public use and clinical care. There was a storage area and café out back, and a waiting room not too far away from where he was standing. But there was a stairwell to the east side of the building that led down to a basement level where these lab spaces were located.

    “Hey! Where you going?”

    Erik turned to see his pal running to catch up with him. “Ready to find butterflies yet?”

     “Ecstatic,” Norm smirked, unamused.

    “We're heading downstairs. It seems like the logical place to find some good intel on this place.”



    They soon arrived in the long hall that housed the various labs and testing rooms on either side. And by the looks of it, Erik knew he was in the right place. Unlike the tidy upper floor, even just standing in the hall, it looked like a windstorm had travelled through. Furniture was upturned, medical equipment was scattered everywhere, and there was a strong stench of sterilizer that stung his nostrils.

    “Guess they um, didn’t quite remember to caution tape this place off…”

    The practitioner nodded with Norm’s observation. “Yeah, really. I'm surprised the government isn’t crawling all over this trying to cover it up…unless…”

    “Unless they booked it and ditched the place without the government knowing?”

    “My thoughts exactly,” Erik pondered. “Though what on earth could have caused them to abandon this place in such a hurry?” He started to walk down the corridor, sticking his head into all the haphazard rooms, all of which looked to be ransacked. As he checked however, he couldn’t help but realize all the drawers and cabinets he saw were thrown open and completely empty.

    “They were definitely covering their tracks…” Erik said aloud quietly. “Can you show me that map again?”

    Norm pulled up the map on his phone again and gave it to him. “You know what they did here besides clinical care?”

    “That's what I’m hoping to figure out, because the more I walk around the less it seems to be just that,” Erik stated. “Let's keep going.”

    They soon exited out of the hall with the lab rooms and came across a door that wasn’t on the floor plan. On the layout, it showed just a blank wall.

    “It's got to be in here. A locked door that’s not even shown on here?” He looked to his friend with a raised eyebrow. “Should I even ask if you can open this thing?”

    Norm took back his phone with a witty grin and got to work on his new challenge. The door had a number pad, retina scanner, and a card swipe. “Tough cookie to crack…but I’ve got it.”

    Erik could sense his hopes dwindling as he stared at the eye scanner. “How are you supposed to get the scanner to work?”

    The techie never answered as he had begun to fish out various wires, gadgets, tools and a mini laptop from his bag. The mess of equipment seemed to all have a purpose as in a matter of minutes he had a contraption of connections set up with the door and his computer.

    “Just think of it as magic,” Norm smiled from where he sat on the floor, his eyes never leaving the screen of his device. There was a flourish of keystrokes. “And…bingo.”

    A click.

    Erik pulled the handle, amazed to find the door swing open. “Yeah, that’s basically what it is to me. But thanks, that was awesome.”

    “Eh, no problem. You just owe me a burrito box after we leave.”

    “Fine, whatever,” his friend obliged as he stepped into the new room. He waited for Norm to gather up his stuff and then flipped on the lights.

    They were met by a good-sized room housing a row of computer stations, a series of shelves filled with filing boxes, and several desks. Erik was quick to beeline toward the desks, eager to find any loose information that may have been left behind.

    “Start looking in some of these desks, Norm,” Erik instructed as he himself began opening up drawers. He knew there had to be something of worth in this room with the furniture all scattered and upturned. He searched high and low through all the desks but still, nothing. Anxious, Erik strode toward the filing shelves. They strangely appeared to be left untouched and he quickly took off the first one he saw and began rifling through it. Countless data record sheets of lab test results. All just a page or so long each saying the same thing every time, leaving Erik eluded.

    “Erik! Hey come check this out!”

    The practitioner gladly dropped the thirty-something rat lab test he had looked at and hurried over to Norm. A smile grew on his face as he saw what his friend was holding. It was a thick leather binder, with enough wear to be thought of seeing daily use. Embossed simply with the letters TMD, Erik immediately assumed it being a journal or diary of some sort.

    “Medical mumbo-jumbo?” Norm asked curiously, looking to his friend for an answer.

    Erik smirked and opened up the cover shaking his head. He smiled when he found he was correct. “Property of Dr. Thelma Marissa Drysduun.”

    “Oh, I half expected it to be that ‘trep-a-leper-dun-or-ology' thing…” Norm shrugged.

    “No, this isn’t about that,” Erik laughed. “It looks like she was the head supervisor of the experiments,” he deduced after having read an entry or two. He noticed a bookmark and flipped to that, wondering if it was of any importance. He peered at the heading, immediately engrossed in its text. “Wow. It’s from 1932…”



    May 27, 1932 – entry by Maxine Pirchard



    I had heard of her recently, though by the sound of her name, I had only thought of her as some mythical fairy tale that parents would tell their children. However, as I heard news of there being a sudden remedy for the dreaded Runner's Cough that had been plaguing the region for a decade, I was quick to seek out the truth.

    It was said to be just the touch of a dairy cow that could work wonders. Beyond my comprehension at the time, this strange discovery is what beckoned me to traverse the plains and see it with my own eyes. I had not expected her whereabouts to lead me to a farmer’s village just past the Copperton County line. Just a quaint farm just on the outskirts, owned by a young man of the name Wessley and his wife Eva. They were delighted to see me and welcomed me in with the utmost kindness and hospitality. I could presume they knew of my reason for seeing them, and did not waste a moment to show me their beloved heifer.

    She was nothing out of the ordinary, which did shock me quite much. Wessley was swift to answer my bewilderment with a story of his own that still bewildered himself! He spoke of how the heifer arrived in his corral just last month, with the simple collared bell that had the name ‘Ol' Nellie' emblazoned upon its surface. Alerting the local dairy farm owners of any possible missing cows, none came forward with any of such concerns. Taking her in as one of his own, he helped nurse the bovine to good standing health.

    But as she became healthier, Eva suddenly did not. Her health had taken a turn for the worse as the Runner's Cough that every soul feared of contracting, took a hold of her. Doctors did what they could to comfort her, but knew nothing they had would remove the disease. Friends and family gathered around Wessley and his beloved to embrace them in what appeared to be Eva's final days.

    One of Eva's final wishes before she passed was to visit Ol' Nellie one last time. She had grown fond of her, and had taken comfort in the bovine's calm nature that would put her at ease on any day she found herself stressed.

    Wessley was excited to retell the rest. For as Eva brought her face near to hug that cow, one simple lick, he said, was all it took to wipe away the sickness from his wife's body!

    But as I was brought back to present day, my shock was primarily due to the woman standing by Wessley’s side. He again, was there to respectfully give an answer.

    As he had told me, (and now I have blissfully come to realize) Eva had been blessed by Ol' Nellie. Through powers I cannot fathom, Eva had gone through a tremendous transformation. She possessed the traits of a bovine. The horns, tail, and even ears of one. But what floored me most of all, was the immensely sized organ perched at her waist. The woman had an udder! It was fantasy, yet right before my eyes! I in no way was repulsed, only intrigued.

    The couple was delighted to see my genuine interest and showed me all of the unique traits Eva now had. One of which was the ever-present swollen bosom, while the other was the ability to produce milk from her udder. And that is where I felt clarity. It was her milk that she had given to those in need with the Cough.

    I was soon washed over with a deep longing to be like Eva. I spoke openly of my studies as a medical student downstate and found these healing properties of this milk truly fascinating. I hoped with this blessing from Ol'Nellie I could help those in need.

    Wessley and Eva willingly accepted my genuine plea and led me out to that lovely bovine. It took only a kiss on her big pink nose to feel myself begin to change. I could now—



    The rest of the yellowing page had been torn off, leaving Erik to stand there in longing, more questions brewing in his mind than he started. He flipped the loose sheet over, noticing a different text. It was more recent, detailing a lab report, similar to the few he had read from the file box.



    August 9, 1996



    Log 103

    Dr. Thelma Drysduun



    Conclusions have been made that a cure for all fatal diseases that are known to this date have the high chance of being eradicated through the coupling of the milk and the mental stimulation drug of my own design. As it currently stands, 10,725 gallons of milk from the late Miss Maxine Prichard, who we are indebted to her passionate service to a better cause she was the founder of, are safely stored in a frozen stasis in the biogenetic chamber. We have the technology and the confidence to know that initial rodent testing is in our immediate future to document our findings.



    END REPORT



    Erik continued to read, albeit several missing pages after that, beginning to see some kind of connection between this old diary entry clipping and this facility. This milk…it had some kind of importance, immense importance based on the doctor's confidence. He’d have to see if he could find these storage tanks...



    January 30, 2007



    Log 178

    Dr. Thelma Drysduun



    Rodent recovery going excellently. Those with previous ailments have shown exponentially fast healing and regeneration to damaged tissue. No negative reactions documented being seen for any test subjects thus far. Will continue to fine tune. Updates to follow.



    END REPORT



    Erik flipped through several pages of documentation notes, diagrams, sketches, scrawled equations, and pictures. But as he skimmed each page he gasped when he found the last entry.

    “Norm! Look!” He motioned his friend over quickly. “It’s dated from just last week!”



    September 12, 2018



    Log 455

    Dr. Thelma Drysduun



    Tests with rodents have been an overwhelming success. An unmistakable 100% survival rate! Healing has abounded with each subject suffering from ailments ranging from cancers, blindness, lameness, respiratory deficiencies, weakened immune systems, and skeletal fractures, and so many others. The extensive research, diligence, and evidence we have, give reason to believe the drug may be safely administered to the first human subject.

    Stephanie Trexler has been nominated as Patient Zero. She has shown interest in undergoing the treatment. She currently suffers from a rare and inevitably fatal form of brain cancer, which in the past year, has spread and afflicted other areas of her body. She is scheduled for treatment tomorrow, September 13, at 4pm. Procedure to be documented in detail.



    END REPORT



    Erik looked past the last page for more information, yet he had reached the end of the book. Deciding to keep the book, he put it into his satchel for safe-keeping, and further analysis later on.

    “So, what happened? Did she go to her appointment?” Norm asked. He looked to his friend as if he knew.

    “I'm not sure…” His mind danced with so many eerie scenarios, all playing out differently as they tried to explain the tragic state of the room they were in. Not wanting to dwell on the grim, he stepped away from the desk he was at to look around the room in search of any other things to investigate.

    “Let’s find these milk storage tanks,” Erik thought aloud. “They must be gigantic or there has to be a lot of them to hold all this milk she wrote about.”

    It didn’t take long to walk around the perimeter of the small lab room, but as the two rounded a secondary hall toward the far wall behind the shelves, they stumbled upon a metal door. As they approached it however, Erik found the door to be slightly open, but he could feel Norm pause behind him. The handle was covered in dried blood. A smear of the hand across the metal surface made it look as if whoever was opening it was doing so in a frantic state.

    “You're not actually going in there, are you?” Norm asked nervously. He hadn't moved from his spot.

    Erik let his friend worry and used the toe of his boot to swing the ajar door open. He was met by a concrete block narrow hallway, lined with separate padlocked doors. As he looked down, he could see the unmistakable start of smeared dark red lines of someone being dragged. His calm resolve was tested further as he followed the trail down to the fourth and final door. He had no idea what was on the other side, but with the three padlocks on the door and this ominous feeling something was very wrong, he still felt the need to open it.

    Beckoning Norm, who was cowering at the door at the other end with his head peeking in, he finally coaxed his friend down over to him.

    “You've got chain cutters, right?” Erik whispered.

    Norm nodded while shaking, and fished around his bag until he held them up in his hand. “Why are we doing this? Are you crazy?! It could be some diseased monster in there that wants to kill us! Did you not see all the blood in this place?”

    Erik hushed his crazed hissing and took the chain cutters. “I'll be careful ok?” Even as he said that, he was beginning to feel fear take a hold of him as well. Before he could psych himself out, he made work of the three locks, each clanking loudly against the concrete floor as they fell. Bracing themselves for what would be on the other side, Erik slowly drew the door out.

    Peering around the door, the two looked inside to find a small cell of a room with a bed and toilet. But as they let the dim light of the fixture in the hall shine in, they were met by a huddled form curled up on the bed.

    “Wh-Where…am…I-I?” a feminine voice called to them weakly.

    Erik gasped as the form sat up into the light to show the matted furry face of a cheetah. She rose her hand to hold her head wincing, showing blood all over her paw and down her arm.

    He was hesitant to answer. “You're at the Grand East Medical Clinic. Do you know where that is?”

    The cheetah nodded slowly. “I was supposed to get cancer surgery here…”

    Erik looked to Norm with his mouth agape. He turned his attention back to Stephanie as he could hear her crying softly.

    “W-What am I?” she whimpered.

    “You're Stephanie Trexler, and we're here to get you out of here,” Erik replied encouragingly. He was puzzled by her animalistic state, but was going to help the poor girl nonetheless.



---- ----

    “Want a burrito?”

    Stephanie looked up to see Norm holding out one to her. She smiled to him thankfully and took the offered food, eating it happily.

    “If you need us to leave you alone or have Norm shut up, then just let me know,” Erik spoke trying to lighten the mood a bit.

    Stephanie nodded quietly. “No, no... thanks so much for finding me, and letting me stay here, the clothes, the food; its all very generous of you. I... really would like to talk about everything… There's so much I don’t understand.” The cheetah sighed and shook her head.

    “No rush,” Norm assured her with a thumbs up. “You're probably starving and tired and everything, so have as many of these burritos as you want.” He gestured at the Grande Box on the table, filled with over ten of them. “Just take it slow, and try to just start off with what you remember.”

    Stephanie nodded again with a thankful smile. “I really didn't know how hungry I was until just now.” She took a bite of her tortilla and scrunched her brow.

    “The place had called me, so I agreed to the surgery and went over on the date they told me. I was brought down to a small surgery room like any other I had been in before and I was met by a medical team and the head surgeon. The typical ‘count back from ten thing and then I blacked out.”

    Erik nodded. All of what she had said so far seemed to make sense based on the section of that doctor's report book. He waited patiently for her to continue.

    “Then I woke up feeling so foggy… I couldn’t see a thing clearly at all, and my whole body felt like a brick of lead… So much tension…orders being thrown out by that one woman…Carmen…that's what her name was… and there was this guy Lance that always seemed so nervous and out of touch with what to do…”

    The two men looked at one another concerned as they saw Stephanie lift her arm up to stare at her yellow-furred paw. “You alright?” Erik asked gently.

    “D-Did I hurt anyone?” Stephanie sniffed. She turned her paw over and poked at each finger fearfully as if claws would spring out at any moment. “W-Where did all the blood come from?”

    “That's…where we're a bit confused I guess…” Norm replied back, unsure of how to make good of that statement.

    “Well, we noticed that the cell you were put in, the door leading to it…it had blood all over it…as well as dragging marks all down the hall,” Erik explained quietly. “You said yourself earlier tonight that you didn’t have any cuts or injuries…so I’m sorry to admit that it may have been someone else, Stephanie.”

    “But I didn’t mean to I swear!” The cheetah protested fearfully. “A-All I can remember is feeling myself wake up so suddenly a-and I panicked. I couldn’t see anything, the light was so bright, I felt trapped and just started freaking out…” She put her face in her paws crying. “I must have hurt them when I was having a panic attack…I-I didn’t mean to do it…I’m so sorry.”

    Norm reached over and laid a hand on her arm gently. “We understand, it's alright.”

    “Yes, Stephanie, it really is. I’ve just been trying to find out what happened. All of what you've said I can tell fits into the missing pieces of the puzzle.” He sat back in his chair in thought. “Though, you becoming a cheetah is throwing me for a serious loop…”

    Stephanie nodded in agreement and gazed over her yellow-furred self. “I don't understand it either… I mean, its weirdly coincidental to say that cheetahs were my favorite animal as a kid, but that doesn’t solve anything.”

    “Really?” Erik asked as he sat up, taking interest in her statement more than he thought it should. “What if…”

    The two watched perplexed as the man jumped up from his chair to rush from the room. He came back holding his satchel, already rifling through it as he leaned down next to the coffee table.

    “What are you looking for?” Norm asked with a laugh. “The doctor lady’s favorite animal too?”

    Erik brought out the large binder and placed it on the table. He quickly flipped through the pages until he came across the diary entry from Maxine Pirchard. “No, its this woman that seemed to get turned into some sort of human bovine hybrid. It’s only a feeling I have, since the paper got torn off right as she was going to explain everything…man I wish I had that piece. But anyway, this woman, Maxine, produced milk that the doctor adamantly felt could cure all sickness.”

    “But what does that have to do with me? I’m not a cow...” Stephanie asked confused.

    “What if the surgery you went through involved this sickness curing milk?” Erik continued, his speech quickening before he lost track of his logic. “That special cow, cured the couple, and then gave Maxine something else. She wasn’t sick beforehand, but was blessed by the cow and was transformed into this hybrid species that could produce the milk, thus passing on the curing ability. The doctor was hoping to take the milk and fine tune it somehow to then mass produce it for all to use, in order to cure the world.”

    “Hey Erik. She's a cheetah,” Norm interrupted.

    “I know! I know!” the practitioner exclaimed exasperatingly. H-Here's my hypothesis.” He took a breath to calm himself down. The doctor had made this mental stimulation drug and combined it with the milk. Testing it on rats proved so successful that she got so caught up in it, that she overlooked the fact that she was testing rats. With me?”

    Stephanie and Norm nodded albeit some underlying confusing. “Yep. Rats. Ok…?” his friend shrugged.

    “They were rats,” he continued. “Animals! My thought is that the milk from Maxine not only possessed curing properties, but also animalistic manifestation properties as well. With the rats already, well, rats, they didn’t change into anything else but what they were. They healed, and that is all she was looking for. With no negative outcomes documented, she contacted you, Stephanie.”

    His explanation was starting to make sense of her foggy memory. “So, they used that combined drug on me to see if the cancer would go away? So then why wasn’t I turned into a cow then if that's what this Maxine woman was turned into?”

    Erik’s enthused smile only grew. “Because of this mental stimulation counterpart of the drug that Maxine didn’t have. Just think: Is it really a coincidence that your favorite animal is a cheetah, and yet you turn into one as well?”

    Stephanie gasped. “You don’t really think it’s that simple, do you?”

    “The doctor may have used that half of the drug as a way of heightening the brain chemistry, possibly quickening the pace by which the body could cure its sickness. So, in addition to the curing, it heightened the animalistic manifestation probabilities to therefore cause the host to go through a rapid and physical change to that of an animal…in your case, a favorite one. It’s…all so ambiguous, but that's all my thinking.”

    “Holy shit, man…” Norm blinked. “You thought of all that?”

    Erik shrugged modestly. “As a hopeful practitioner, I take interest in a lot of things involving the medical field, especially when its as unique as this phenomenon.” He turned to look at Stephanie. “Most of all I’m wondering if you've been cured of your cancer. Because in that case… I really want to find that collection of milk tanks!”



---- ----



    Eager to find out, the trio quickly descended into the basement of their apartment where Erik had built a personal small research lab with the help of Norm's techy expertise. There was a small computer station and desk at the far end that sat near a neatly set up microscope table. A couch opposite a TV lay off to the right next to a huge machine that the cheetah picked out immediately.

    “You have your own MRI machine?” she asked in surprise as she looked around the space.

    “Never thought I’d use it to be honest, but hey, perfect timing right now!” Erik laughed. “I had mostly just used this place for research and tiny little projects as time allowed.”

    “My brain hurts after all that…” Norm sighed as he gave a curt salute with his hand and plopped onto the couch. “If you need me, just throw something at me.”

    Erik nodded as he turned his attention back to Stephanie as his friend laid back to take a nap. “I guess there's no sense in waiting any further. I’ve got spare medical gowns and a changing room in the corner. Take all the time you need.”

    Stephanie silently thanked him and quickly changed, coming back ready for her scan. “Ready.”

    Erik smiled and helped her into the bed. As soon as she gave him the thumbs up, he stepped back and over to a small mobile console and watched as the tray slowly pulled his furry patient into the machine. With another nod from Stephanie, he began the procedure.

    He was practically on the edge of his seat the entire time. The prospect of finding nothing was too good to be true and he needed to know. He needed to know if this drug was undeniably capable of curing sickness. As the readings gradually generated on screen, he was seeing healthy bone structure, tissue and muscle. He wasn’t seeing anything out of the ordinary. As soon as her brain scans came through he nearly fell from his chair.

    Clean as a whistle.

    Hurriedly disengaging the machine, he rushed over and pulled out the bed and looked excitedly down at Stephanie’s baffled expression.

    “Erik? Is everything alr—”

    “You're healed! Your cancer is gone Stephanie!”

    Her eyes lit up as she leaped up from the bench, throwing her arms around the man. “Thank you! That’s such great news!”

    The practitioner laughed and hugged back. “Don’t thank me, thank Dr. Thelma Drysduun. She did all the work.”

    Stephanie raised a brow. “That’s the doctor from that binder you have?”

    “Yes! And now I know I need to go back to that clinic and look again. Those milk storage tanks… we need to go find them!”



    ---- ----



    After another night of breaking and entering, with a new member of the team tagging along, the three thoroughly investigated the clinics basement again. Without the lingering fear of the unknown gripping the two men like before, they explored every inch of the place until finally… they found them.

    Stowed away in a massive vault off a corridor that hadn’t been searched previously, the trio stood before the door in wondering anticipation. It took Erik a bit of time to scour Dr. Drysduun's binder for a passcode, but he was overjoyed when he came upon it. Wasting no time, he read off the code to Norm, the sliding of locks and hums signifying the vault was unlocked. Stepping back, they marveled at all the tanks, filled with this miracle milk from Maxine Pirchard.

    Upon Erik's crazy request, Norm was more than happy and enthused to build and outfit a makeshift freezer to deposit the recovered milk. He knew it would take time, but the idea of continuing on and fine-tuning Drysduun's work was egging him forward. Within a couple months, the freezer was completed and ready for use, of which Erik swiftly began the process of commencing the undercover transport missions of getting milk from the clinic and back to the apartment, all while evading the watch of law enforcement.

    While Norm was giddily being a rebel and slinking in and out of the clinic, Erik quickly began his analysis and research on both the milk and mental stimulation drug. His task of pulling apart the cure from the animalistic was increasingly elusive to him. No matter how he looked at it, molecularly, psychologically, even proportional tests of each element…they all seemed to lead to the same result.

    Stephanie had been by his side through it all, at first eager to help him any way she could to find a solution of ridding herself of this animal she was now. But as time went on, seeing how his efforts were for naught, all coming up the same, she had begun to accept herself. She had thought she would hate to be like she was forever, but in reality, she was finding very little to be disappointed in. Her cancer was gone. Even joint pain in her left leg from a college softball injury was gone, no scar tissue to be seen. Physically she couldn’t deny that her body seemed toned, with lean muscle in her legs. Little observations like a bit more in the chest and backside weren't going unnoticed. She may have been an anthropomorphic cheetah now, but when looked at for all that it was, she had to admit it was kind of fun. She was her favorite animal after all!

    Upon confiding in Erik at long last, she explained to him her thoughts about the drug as a whole. Aside from the initial shock of becoming something else, she could only praise the effects of it, even hinting at the enjoyment of the additional endowment effects too. The drug had essentially brought to light just about everything she dreamed of.

    “A drug that makes your hearts desires come true?” Erik raised an eyebrow.

    “My cancer is gone, I feel better than ever before, I’m…a bit fuller all around in places I always wanted them to be, even my eyes changed to the color I had jokingly, yet always wanted in high school, all wrapped in my favorite animal? C’mon Erik, it sounds crazy but I’ve witnessed it all first hand! It’s a drug that lets you be what you want to be deep down,” Stephanie pointed out matter-of-factly.

    “Your wildest dreams drug…I can't believe it,” the practitioner gasped, any logical explanation falling short of the, even though he didn't want to admit it, magic in it all.

    “It reveals who you are truly, especially things no one would think of telling another person, or even things a person doesn't want to admit to themselves.” Stephanie said quietly as she laid a hand on his shoulder.

    “Do you think people would go for something like that? Throwing away normalcy to embrace being…well, an animal?” Erik asked bluntly.

    “We won't know until we do. I for one, don’t mind it. I kinda like it actually. Screw being normal honestly.”

    Erik couldn’t help but laugh at her comment, loving her optimism. “Well said. And I like what you said before. I might use that.”

    “What?”

    “Reveals…” He looked over at the mini capsules laying in a tray on his table. “A…revealing…drug of the animal inside you?”

    “Revealing,” Stephanie whispered. “That should be the name of it. Let anyone decide what they truly want to be, revealing it to the world.”

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

    “Hello?”

    A man sitting at the reception desk looked up to see who had greeted him and smiled. He immediately got up from his chair and rounded the fancy piece of mahogany and strode over to the young woman.

    “Ah, you must be Stephanie!”

    The girl took a step back startled, a bit surprised he knew her name already. “Y-Yes, that’s me.”

    The man chuckled casually and nodded, his black hair bobbing as he did so. “Don’t look so scared,” he continued with a laugh to put her at ease. “Someone had called earlier and I just thought I’d take a guess as to that being you!”

    Stephanie smiled and nodded with him. “Yes, that was me.” Her voice went quiet as she felt uncomfortable to admit the reason. “So…is it really true that this place can do what you said it can?”

    The man winked almost immediately and took her hand. “To make you healthy again? Why yes, of course…and so much more too.”

    The possibility made her heart soar. It may have sounded too good to be true over the phone, but she had to take her chance to get better. She felt him gently pull her hand, getting her attention again.

    “Please follow me. I’m sure you’ve waited long enough for a solution.”



    Stephanie soon found herself looking face to face with the reason for her despair that she had been coping with for over two years now. Cancer had run its course through her body and no matter how many previous treatments of chemotherapy she could put herself through, the disease still had its firm grip on her.

    “I believe you came to us at the perfect time, Miss Trexler.”

    She pulled her eyes away from the screen and looked over at the woman dressed all in scrubs and sighed. “I feel like it was my only option…”

    “No need to worry,” the surgeon assured her with a soft smile. “These scans may seem like too much, but I assure you that the dedicated staff and I will be able to help. It’s been our goal for the past five years to finally have the confidence to say that we know that it will work. If you are ready, just say the word.”

    Stephanie felt her body quiver nervously as the choice was again laid on her shoulders. Giving one last parting look to the x-rays and brain scans on the wall, she let out a shaky breath and nodded.

    “I’m ready as I’ll ever be.”

    The young woman was soon led through a set of double doors and down the all-too-familiar sterile hallways like the many hospitals she had been accustomed to being in. They had once brought on such a sense of discomfort for her, but now seemed like a second home away from home for her.

    “Right through here.”

    Stephanie stepped through the open door and sighed upon seeing the contents of the room. White. A singular examination table surrounded by immaculate white walls. A team of three people also donned in the scrubs the surgeon had were waiting patiently nearby for further direction. She guessed her expression could be easily readable as the surgeon beside her spoke again.

    “My apologies that the room can’t be a bit homier. Protocol and cleanliness for the procedure dictates how it looks. I’ll give you some time to change and we can begin.”

    Stephanie nodded as she was given a patient apron, watching the others leave the room. She quickly slipped out of her clothes and laid herself on the table, looking up at the bright light up above.

    “Please let it work this time…”

    The next hour went by in a haze of formal dialogue and medical tests. Stephanie just lay there silently letting the doctors work, her quiet state only breaking to give the occasional “yes” or “no.” She was soon told the age-old line of counting down from 10 as her eyes drifted closed into unconsciousness.



---- ----



    “What’s happening with her blood pressure!?”

    “I don’t know Lance!”

    The man looked from his colleague to stare wide-eyed at the monitor before him watching the number skyrocket in one instance and then in a matter of seconds plummet to frighteningly low readings.

    “It just keeps doing this over and over again! How is she even still alive after she already went through cardiac arrest just three minutes ago!?”

    “Lance!”

    “What?!” he cried and spun to look at Carmen, the head surgeon.

    “I understand this has never happened before because of the procedure we did, but you have to calm down. Paul, get another IV and Rachel, get an oxygen mask.”

    The two other doctors went their separate ways swiftly, while Lance glanced down at the pale motionless body of their patient. He was amazed to see Carmen going through emergency pulse checks and temperature monitoring readings with a sense of calm and professionalism. The others of the team came running in moments later with Rachel applying the mask and attaching tubes to the tank while Paul exchanged IVs. But the moment the mask filled with oxygen, the four watched in shock as Stephanie's body broke into a seizure.

    “Hold her steady!” Carmen ordered quickly, slipping out a syringe and injecting something into the girl's arm.

    “Her body temperature is rising.”

    “And her heart rate’s spiking again!”

    Lance and Paul held fast as Stephanie’s torso arched sharply into the air before falling back to the bed lifelessly. A tense minute went by as the group watched Stephanie’s vitals creep toward a comfortable equilibrium. But soon the sputtering of Lance filled the room as the others noticed him backing away, his face pale.

    “Lance, get back over here!” Paul ordered.

    “H-Her arm!”

    The others looked puzzled from his quivering pointed finger down to Stephanie. All three gasped as their colleague’s observation was not as random as they had thought. Brown hair of various hues had begun to grow along the girl's arm, the density of it only intensifying as the hair spread to other parts of her motionless body.

    “W-What's happening to her?”

    No one seemed to have the answer to Rachel's question as the team stood there locked in place, mesmerized by this strange phenomenon. The hair had traveled to every inch of Stephanie's body by now until it resembled that of a coat of fur to the stunned doctors.

    “Is that… cheetah fur?” Paul croaked out before losing his breath again. “Oh my god…her ears and nose are even changing too…”

    Round yellow and brown fuzzy ears had sprouted from the girl’s head, while her face had melded into that of a real-life cheetah, whiskers, nose, teeth and all. But it was Paul's cry of pain that got everyone’s attention next.

    “Aaahhaaa!! Make her stop! She’s gonna tear my arm off!”

    Deep red stains had filled around the cuff and sleeve of the man's uniform as the others panicked. Sharp dagger-like claws had slid out from Stephanie’s newly transformed paws and had found themselves buried deep into Paul's arm. Carmen was quick to act as the color in her friend's face was draining away. Throwing her hands down on the cheetah's arm, she made an attempt to pull it away when the animal finally awoke.

    Stephanie felt her eyes shoot open to the bright light as her lungs filled with a hungry pull on air. Disoriented and pumped full of adrenaline, her arms swung blindly through the air as if her mind was telling her she was under attack. A cry of agony. The clattering of medical utensils colliding with the floor. The feeling of something wet dripping down her arm.

    The frantic repetition of her name.

    “Miss Trexler! Stephanie! Stop! Stephanie Trexler, please calm down!”

    “Carmen, how can you call her that anymore! She’s this freaky cheetah thing! She probably doesn’t even understand you!”

    “Make yourself of use then and go get a sedative Lance! You’re not making the situation any easier. If she does anything crazy again we’ll knock her out, now go!”

    Stephanie felt her body tense up upon hearing that and went to apologize and speak, but all that seemed to come out were slurred growls. Her eyes had yet to focus on anything except for the bright light above her.

    “Rachel, take Paul and tend to his arm. I’ll be fine. Just please make sure he gets his wounds tended to and staunch the flow. Understood?”

     Stephanie felt her ears sense someone leaving the room while someone came running in. All the time she just wanted her eyes to clear and not be so blurry.

    “Lance, thank you. Give her the maximum dose. Don’t talk, just do it.”

    There was a tug on her arm as whoever this Lance person was, was injecting her IV with this sedative. And at such an unfortunate time too… for just as her eyes were about to focus for the first time, all she could make out was something brown and yellow all over her before she blacked out.

---- A few days later ----



    The place was dark as he passed by. It was just something he noticed as he walked on past the otherwise normal looking storefront. But Erik kept standing there gazing into the vacant interior, his curiosity brewing.

    It had been a health clinic for over 10 years and had been well received by its patients and other medical institutions. But why, after its fruitful time here in this part of the city would it be so…deserted? He swore he had walked by this place not even three days prior, it’s lobby alive with activity. Just a simple haphazardly hung “Sorry, we're closed.” sign could be seen against the dark pane of glass on the door, fooling the vast majority of any passersby. But Erik wasn’t one of those people. As a medical practitioner himself, he was brimming with questions. Questions that needed to be answered. With squinted eyes peering at that fishy looking sign, he pulled out his phone and quickly dialed a number.

    “Norm? Hey it’s me. I think I just found ourselves the possible big break we need to finally get some publicity…No…it doesn’t include stopping at Senor Burritos. Just meet me at the lab in f-- Ugh, fine! I’ll get burritos! Just be at the lab before I get there. Yes…I’ll get the sauce too. I know. Ok. See you later.”



    After a few days of investigative research, reconnaissance, and make-shift stakeouts in his car that now smelled of Mexican food, Erik was convinced he needed to sneak inside the facility somehow. As soon as night fell upon the city, he and Norm readied with their gear just outside the clinic one evening.

    “I’ve never done this, but it's really exciting.”

    Norm chuckled and slipped out a key card from his pocket. “You're such a newbie.” He stepped in front of Erik to give the external card reader a swipe.

    The practitioner watched as his tech-savvy friend whirled his fingers around the keypad. In seconds the system gave a light chirp, with the sound of a mechanized latch retracting.

    “How did you—”

    “Relax,” Norm sighed, bringing his other hand up to take a bite off of a fresh burrito he had bought. “Just let me do my thing, and I won’t have to make your brain blow up from all the stuff I have to explain.” He pulled back the door and held it open all chivalrously. “You've got all those Greek gibberish medical terms memorized, while I've got mine, capiche?”

    Erik rolled his eyes with a laugh. “Alright, fair enough.” He looked around the dark street in either direction. “Let's get inside before someone sees us.”

    As the duo crept around the lobby and down one of the two main hallways, the state of the place was still puzzling Erik. It was as if a cleaning crew had gone through and readied the space for the next day's business hours. Everything was cleaned and in its designated place. For something that closed on such short notice he expected at least a hint of disarray.

    “Well this is weird…” Erik mused as he stepped into each public examination room. Each one was in the same orderly state. “There's no way they would leave this place so immaculate. They’ve got to be hiding something…”

    Norm shrugged as he pulled out his phone. “You sure are dead set on some conspiracy theory man.” He busied himself for a moment, soon turning his device around to hold up a virtual map. “Any specific rooms on here you wanna check? I barely know what half of these names mean. Lepitopterology? What the hell is that? The study of adopting lepers?”

    “Studying moths and butterflies,” Erik replied casually.

    “What? See what I mean?!” Norm groaned as he cocked his head to the side. “Weird gibberish. It sounds nothing like it means. Just call it butterflyology or something. So. Simple.”

    Erik let his friend fume as he took the time to study the map. The first floor appeared to be all public use and clinical care. There was a storage area and café out back, and a waiting room not too far away from where he was standing. But there was a stairwell to the east side of the building that led down to a basement level where these lab spaces were located.

    “Hey! Where you going?”

    Erik turned to see his pal running to catch up with him. “Ready to find butterflies yet?”

     “Ecstatic,” Norm smirked, unamused.

    “We're heading downstairs. It seems like the logical place to find some good intel on this place.”



    They soon arrived in the long hall that housed the various labs and testing rooms on either side. And by the looks of it, Erik knew he was in the right place. Unlike the tidy upper floor, even just standing in the hall, it looked like a windstorm had travelled through. Furniture was upturned, medical equipment was scattered everywhere, and there was a strong stench of sterilizer that stung his nostrils.

    “Guess they um, didn’t quite remember to caution tape this place off…”

    The practitioner nodded with Norm’s observation. “Yeah, really. I'm surprised the government isn’t crawling all over this trying to cover it up…unless…”

    “Unless they booked it and ditched the place without the government knowing?”

    “My thoughts exactly,” Erik pondered. “Though what on earth could have caused them to abandon this place in such a hurry?” He started to walk down the corridor, sticking his head into all the haphazard rooms, all of which looked to be ransacked. As he checked however, he couldn’t help but realize all the drawers and cabinets he saw were thrown open and completely empty.

    “They were definitely covering their tracks…” Erik said aloud quietly. “Can you show me that map again?”

    Norm pulled up the map on his phone again and gave it to him. “You know what they did here besides clinical care?”

    “That's what I’m hoping to figure out, because the more I walk around the less it seems to be just that,” Erik stated. “Let's keep going.”

    They soon exited out of the hall with the lab rooms and came across a door that wasn’t on the floor plan. On the layout, it showed just a blank wall.

    “It's got to be in here. A locked door that’s not even shown on here?” He looked to his friend with a raised eyebrow. “Should I even ask if you can open this thing?”

    Norm took back his phone with a witty grin and got to work on his new challenge. The door had a number pad, retina scanner, and a card swipe. “Tough cookie to crack…but I’ve got it.”

    Erik could sense his hopes dwindling as he stared at the eye scanner. “How are you supposed to get the scanner to work?”

    The techie never answered as he had begun to fish out various wires, gadgets, tools and a mini laptop from his bag. The mess of equipment seemed to all have a purpose as in a matter of minutes he had a contraption of connections set up with the door and his computer.

    “Just think of it as magic,” Norm smiled from where he sat on the floor, his eyes never leaving the screen of his device. There was a flourish of keystrokes. “And…bingo.”

    A click.

    Erik pulled the handle, amazed to find the door swing open. “Yeah, that’s basically what it is to me. But thanks, that was awesome.”

    “Eh, no problem. You just owe me a burrito box after we leave.”

    “Fine, whatever,” his friend obliged as he stepped into the new room. He waited for Norm to gather up his stuff and then flipped on the lights.

    They were met by a good-sized room housing a row of computer stations, a series of shelves filled with filing boxes, and several desks. Erik was quick to beeline toward the desks, eager to find any loose information that may have been left behind.

    “Start looking in some of these desks, Norm,” Erik instructed as he himself began opening up drawers. He knew there had to be something of worth in this room with the furniture all scattered and upturned. He searched high and low through all the desks but still, nothing. Anxious, Erik strode toward the filing shelves. They strangely appeared to be left untouched and he quickly took off the first one he saw and began rifling through it. Countless data record sheets of lab test results. All just a page or so long each saying the same thing every time, leaving Erik eluded.

    “Erik! Hey come check this out!”

    The practitioner gladly dropped the thirty-something rat lab test he had looked at and hurried over to Norm. A smile grew on his face as he saw what his friend was holding. It was a thick leather binder, with enough wear to be thought of seeing daily use. Embossed simply with the letters TMD, Erik immediately assumed it being a journal or diary of some sort.

    “Medical mumbo-jumbo?” Norm asked curiously, looking to his friend for an answer.

    Erik smirked and opened up the cover shaking his head. He smiled when he found he was correct. “Property of Dr. Thelma Marissa Drysduun.”

    “Oh, I half expected it to be that ‘trep-a-leper-dun-or-ology' thing…” Norm shrugged.

    “No, this isn’t about that,” Erik laughed. “It looks like she was the head supervisor of the experiments,” he deduced after having read an entry or two. He noticed a bookmark and flipped to that, wondering if it was of any importance. He peered at the heading, immediately engrossed in its text. “Wow. It’s from 1932…”



    May 27, 1932 – entry by Maxine Pirchard



    I had heard of her recently, though by the sound of her name, I had only thought of her as some mythical fairy tale that parents would tell their children. However, as I heard news of there being a sudden remedy for the dreaded Runner's Cough that had been plaguing the region for a decade, I was quick to seek out the truth.

    It was said to be just the touch of a dairy cow that could work wonders. Beyond my comprehension at the time, this strange discovery is what beckoned me to traverse the plains and see it with my own eyes. I had not expected her whereabouts to lead me to a farmer’s village just past the Copperton County line. Just a quaint farm just on the outskirts, owned by a young man of the name Wessley and his wife Eva. They were delighted to see me and welcomed me in with the utmost kindness and hospitality. I could presume they knew of my reason for seeing them, and did not waste a moment to show me their beloved heifer.

    She was nothing out of the ordinary, which did shock me quite much. Wessley was swift to answer my bewilderment with a story of his own that still bewildered himself! He spoke of how the heifer arrived in his corral just last month, with the simple collared bell that had the name ‘Ol' Nellie' emblazoned upon its surface. Alerting the local dairy farm owners of any possible missing cows, none came forward with any of such concerns. Taking her in as one of his own, he helped nurse the bovine to good standing health.

    But as she became healthier, Eva suddenly did not. Her health had taken a turn for the worse as the Runner's Cough that every soul feared of contracting, took a hold of her. Doctors did what they could to comfort her, but knew nothing they had would remove the disease. Friends and family gathered around Wessley and his beloved to embrace them in what appeared to be Eva's final days.

    One of Eva's final wishes before she passed was to visit Ol' Nellie one last time. She had grown fond of her, and had taken comfort in the bovine's calm nature that would put her at ease on any day she found herself stressed.

    Wessley was excited to retell the rest. For as Eva brought her face near to hug that cow, one simple lick, he said, was all it took to wipe away the sickness from his wife's body!

    But as I was brought back to present day, my shock was primarily due to the woman standing by Wessley’s side. He again, was there to respectfully give an answer.

    As he had told me, (and now I have blissfully come to realize) Eva had been blessed by Ol' Nellie. Through powers I cannot fathom, Eva had gone through a tremendous transformation. She possessed the traits of a bovine. The horns, tail, and even ears of one. But what floored me most of all, was the immensely sized organ perched at her waist. The woman had an udder! It was fantasy, yet right before my eyes! I in no way was repulsed, only intrigued.

    The couple was delighted to see my genuine interest and showed me all of the unique traits Eva now had. One of which was the ever-present swollen bosom, while the other was the ability to produce milk from her udder. And that is where I felt clarity. It was her milk that she had given to those in need with the Cough.

    I was soon washed over with a deep longing to be like Eva. I spoke openly of my studies as a medical student downstate and found these healing properties of this milk truly fascinating. I hoped with this blessing from Ol'Nellie I could help those in need.

    Wessley and Eva willingly accepted my genuine plea and led me out to that lovely bovine. It took only a kiss on her big pink nose to feel myself begin to change. I could now—



    The rest of the yellowing page had been torn off, leaving Erik to stand there in longing, more questions brewing in his mind than he started. He flipped the loose sheet over, noticing a different text. It was more recent, detailing a lab report, similar to the few he had read from the file box.



    August 9, 1996



    Log 103

    Dr. Thelma Drysduun



    Conclusions have been made that a cure for all fatal diseases that are known to this date have the high chance of being eradicated through the coupling of the milk and the mental stimulation drug of my own design. As it currently stands, 10,725 gallons of milk from the late Miss Maxine Prichard, who we are indebted to her passionate service to a better cause she was the founder of, are safely stored in a frozen stasis in the biogenetic chamber. We have the technology and the confidence to know that initial rodent testing is in our immediate future to document our findings.



    END REPORT



    Erik continued to read, albeit several missing pages after that, beginning to see some kind of connection between this old diary entry clipping and this facility. This milk…it had some kind of importance, immense importance based on the doctor's confidence. He’d have to see if he could find these storage tanks...



    January 30, 2007



    Log 178

    Dr. Thelma Drysduun



    Rodent recovery going excellently. Those with previous ailments have shown exponentially fast healing and regeneration to damaged tissue. No negative reactions documented being seen for any test subjects thus far. Will continue to fine tune. Updates to follow.



    END REPORT



    Erik flipped through several pages of documentation notes, diagrams, sketches, scrawled equations, and pictures. But as he skimmed each page he gasped when he found the last entry.

    “Norm! Look!” He motioned his friend over quickly. “It’s dated from just last week!”



    September 12, 2018



    Log 455

    Dr. Thelma Drysduun



    Tests with rodents have been an overwhelming success. An unmistakable 100% survival rate! Healing has abounded with each subject suffering from ailments ranging from cancers, blindness, lameness, respiratory deficiencies, weakened immune systems, and skeletal fractures, and so many others. The extensive research, diligence, and evidence we have, give reason to believe the drug may be safely administered to the first human subject.

    Stephanie Trexler has been nominated as Patient Zero. She has shown interest in undergoing the treatment. She currently suffers from a rare and inevitably fatal form of brain cancer, which in the past year, has spread and afflicted other areas of her body. She is scheduled for treatment tomorrow, September 13, at 4pm. Procedure to be documented in detail.



    END REPORT



    Erik looked past the last page for more information, yet he had reached the end of the book. Deciding to keep the book, he put it into his satchel for safe-keeping, and further analysis later on.

    “So, what happened? Did she go to her appointment?” Norm asked. He looked to his friend as if he knew.

    “I'm not sure…” His mind danced with so many eerie scenarios, all playing out differently as they tried to explain the tragic state of the room they were in. Not wanting to dwell on the grim, he stepped away from the desk he was at to look around the room in search of any other things to investigate.

    “Let’s find these milk storage tanks,” Erik thought aloud. “They must be gigantic or there has to be a lot of them to hold all this milk she wrote about.”

    It didn’t take long to walk around the perimeter of the small lab room, but as the two rounded a secondary hall toward the far wall behind the shelves, they stumbled upon a metal door. As they approached it however, Erik found the door to be slightly open, but he could feel Norm pause behind him. The handle was covered in dried blood. A smear of the hand across the metal surface made it look as if whoever was opening it was doing so in a frantic state.

    “You're not actually going in there, are you?” Norm asked nervously. He hadn't moved from his spot.

    Erik let his friend worry and used the toe of his boot to swing the ajar door open. He was met by a concrete block narrow hallway, lined with separate padlocked doors. As he looked down, he could see the unmistakable start of smeared dark red lines of someone being dragged. His calm resolve was tested further as he followed the trail down to the fourth and final door. He had no idea what was on the other side, but with the three padlocks on the door and this ominous feeling something was very wrong, he still felt the need to open it.

    Beckoning Norm, who was cowering at the door at the other end with his head peeking in, he finally coaxed his friend down over to him.

    “You've got chain cutters, right?” Erik whispered.

    Norm nodded while shaking, and fished around his bag until he held them up in his hand. “Why are we doing this? Are you crazy?! It could be some diseased monster in there that wants to kill us! Did you not see all the blood in this place?”

    Erik hushed his crazed hissing and took the chain cutters. “I'll be careful ok?” Even as he said that, he was beginning to feel fear take a hold of him as well. Before he could psych himself out, he made work of the three locks, each clanking loudly against the concrete floor as they fell. Bracing themselves for what would be on the other side, Erik slowly drew the door out.

    Peering around the door, the two looked inside to find a small cell of a room with a bed and toilet. But as they let the dim light of the fixture in the hall shine in, they were met by a huddled form curled up on the bed.

    “Wh-Where…am…I-I?” a feminine voice called to them weakly.

    Erik gasped as the form sat up into the light to show the matted furry face of a cheetah. She rose her hand to hold her head wincing, showing blood all over her paw and down her arm.

    He was hesitant to answer. “You're at the Grand East Medical Clinic. Do you know where that is?”

    The cheetah nodded slowly. “I was supposed to get cancer surgery here…”

    Erik looked to Norm with his mouth agape. He turned his attention back to Stephanie as he could hear her crying softly.

    “W-What am I?” she whimpered.

    “You're Stephanie Trexler, and we're here to get you out of here,” Erik replied encouragingly. He was puzzled by her animalistic state, but was going to help the poor girl nonetheless.



---- ----

    “Want a burrito?”

    Stephanie looked up to see Norm holding out one to her. She smiled to him thankfully and took the offered food, eating it happily.

    “If you need us to leave you alone or have Norm shut up, then just let me know,” Erik spoke trying to lighten the mood a bit.

    Stephanie nodded quietly. “No, no... thanks so much for finding me, and letting me stay here, the clothes, the food; its all very generous of you. I... really would like to talk about everything… There's so much I don’t understand.” The cheetah sighed and shook her head.

    “No rush,” Norm assured her with a thumbs up. “You're probably starving and tired and everything, so have as many of these burritos as you want.” He gestured at the Grande Box on the table, filled with over ten of them. “Just take it slow, and try to just start off with what you remember.”

    Stephanie nodded again with a thankful smile. “I really didn't know how hungry I was until just now.” She took a bite of her tortilla and scrunched her brow.

    “The place had called me, so I agreed to the surgery and went over on the date they told me. I was brought down to a small surgery room like any other I had been in before and I was met by a medical team and the head surgeon. The typical ‘count back from ten thing and then I blacked out.”

    Erik nodded. All of what she had said so far seemed to make sense based on the section of that doctor's report book. He waited patiently for her to continue.

    “Then I woke up feeling so foggy… I couldn’t see a thing clearly at all, and my whole body felt like a brick of lead… So much tension…orders being thrown out by that one woman…Carmen…that's what her name was… and there was this guy Lance that always seemed so nervous and out of touch with what to do…”

    The two men looked at one another concerned as they saw Stephanie lift her arm up to stare at her yellow-furred paw. “You alright?” Erik asked gently.

    “D-Did I hurt anyone?” Stephanie sniffed. She turned her paw over and poked at each finger fearfully as if claws would spring out at any moment. “W-Where did all the blood come from?”

    “That's…where we're a bit confused I guess…” Norm replied back, unsure of how to make good of that statement.

    “Well, we noticed that the cell you were put in, the door leading to it…it had blood all over it…as well as dragging marks all down the hall,” Erik explained quietly. “You said yourself earlier tonight that you didn’t have any cuts or injuries…so I’m sorry to admit that it may have been someone else, Stephanie.”

    “But I didn’t mean to I swear!” The cheetah protested fearfully. “A-All I can remember is feeling myself wake up so suddenly a-and I panicked. I couldn’t see anything, the light was so bright, I felt trapped and just started freaking out…” She put her face in her paws crying. “I must have hurt them when I was having a panic attack…I-I didn’t mean to do it…I’m so sorry.”

    Norm reached over and laid a hand on her arm gently. “We understand, it's alright.”

    “Yes, Stephanie, it really is. I’ve just been trying to find out what happened. All of what you've said I can tell fits into the missing pieces of the puzzle.” He sat back in his chair in thought. “Though, you becoming a cheetah is throwing me for a serious loop…”

    Stephanie nodded in agreement and gazed over her yellow-furred self. “I don't understand it either… I mean, its weirdly coincidental to say that cheetahs were my favorite animal as a kid, but that doesn’t solve anything.”

    “Really?” Erik asked as he sat up, taking interest in her statement more than he thought it should. “What if…”

    The two watched perplexed as the man jumped up from his chair to rush from the room. He came back holding his satchel, already rifling through it as he leaned down next to the coffee table.

    “What are you looking for?” Norm asked with a laugh. “The doctor lady’s favorite animal too?”

    Erik brought out the large binder and placed it on the table. He quickly flipped through the pages until he came across the diary entry from Maxine Pirchard. “No, its this woman that seemed to get turned into some sort of human bovine hybrid. It’s only a feeling I have, since the paper got torn off right as she was going to explain everything…man I wish I had that piece. But anyway, this woman, Maxine, produced milk that the doctor adamantly felt could cure all sickness.”

    “But what does that have to do with me? I’m not a cow...” Stephanie asked confused.

    “What if the surgery you went through involved this sickness curing milk?” Erik continued, his speech quickening before he lost track of his logic. “That special cow, cured the couple, and then gave Maxine something else. She wasn’t sick beforehand, but was blessed by the cow and was transformed into this hybrid species that could produce the milk, thus passing on the curing ability. The doctor was hoping to take the milk and fine tune it somehow to then mass produce it for all to use, in order to cure the world.”

    “Hey Erik. She's a cheetah,” Norm interrupted.

    “I know! I know!” the practitioner exclaimed exasperatingly. H-Here's my hypothesis.” He took a breath to calm himself down. The doctor had made this mental stimulation drug and combined it with the milk. Testing it on rats proved so successful that she got so caught up in it, that she overlooked the fact that she was testing rats. With me?”

    Stephanie and Norm nodded albeit some underlying confusing. “Yep. Rats. Ok…?” his friend shrugged.

    “They were rats,” he continued. “Animals! My thought is that the milk from Maxine not only possessed curing properties, but also animalistic manifestation properties as well. With the rats already, well, rats, they didn’t change into anything else but what they were. They healed, and that is all she was looking for. With no negative outcomes documented, she contacted you, Stephanie.”

    His explanation was starting to make sense of her foggy memory. “So, they used that combined drug on me to see if the cancer would go away? So then why wasn’t I turned into a cow then if that's what this Maxine woman was turned into?”

    Erik’s enthused smile only grew. “Because of this mental stimulation counterpart of the drug that Maxine didn’t have. Just think: Is it really a coincidence that your favorite animal is a cheetah, and yet you turn into one as well?”

    Stephanie gasped. “You don’t really think it’s that simple, do you?”

    “The doctor may have used that half of the drug as a way of heightening the brain chemistry, possibly quickening the pace by which the body could cure its sickness. So, in addition to the curing, it heightened the animalistic manifestation probabilities to therefore cause the host to go through a rapid and physical change to that of an animal…in your case, a favorite one. It’s…all so ambiguous, but that's all my thinking.”

    “Holy shit, man…” Norm blinked. “You thought of all that?”

    Erik shrugged modestly. “As a hopeful practitioner, I take interest in a lot of things involving the medical field, especially when its as unique as this phenomenon.” He turned to look at Stephanie. “Most of all I’m wondering if you've been cured of your cancer. Because in that case… I really want to find that collection of milk tanks!”



---- ----



    Eager to find out, the trio quickly descended into the basement of their apartment where Erik had built a personal small research lab with the help of Norm's techy expertise. There was a small computer station and desk at the far end that sat near a neatly set up microscope table. A couch opposite a TV lay off to the right next to a huge machine that the cheetah picked out immediately.

    “You have your own MRI machine?” she asked in surprise as she looked around the space.

    “Never thought I’d use it to be honest, but hey, perfect timing right now!” Erik laughed. “I had mostly just used this place for research and tiny little projects as time allowed.”

    “My brain hurts after all that…” Norm sighed as he gave a curt salute with his hand and plopped onto the couch. “If you need me, just throw something at me.”

    Erik nodded as he turned his attention back to Stephanie as his friend laid back to take a nap. “I guess there's no sense in waiting any further. I’ve got spare medical gowns and a changing room in the corner. Take all the time you need.”

    Stephanie silently thanked him and quickly changed, coming back ready for her scan. “Ready.”

    Erik smiled and helped her into the bed. As soon as she gave him the thumbs up, he stepped back and over to a small mobile console and watched as the tray slowly pulled his furry patient into the machine. With another nod from Stephanie, he began the procedure.

    He was practically on the edge of his seat the entire time. The prospect of finding nothing was too good to be true and he needed to know. He needed to know if this drug was undeniably capable of curing sickness. As the readings gradually generated on screen, he was seeing healthy bone structure, tissue and muscle. He wasn’t seeing anything out of the ordinary. As soon as her brain scans came through he nearly fell from his chair.

    Clean as a whistle.

    Hurriedly disengaging the machine, he rushed over and pulled out the bed and looked excitedly down at Stephanie’s baffled expression.

    “Erik? Is everything alr—”

    “You're healed! Your cancer is gone Stephanie!”

    Her eyes lit up as she leaped up from the bench, throwing her arms around the man. “Thank you! That’s such great news!”

    The practitioner laughed and hugged back. “Don’t thank me, thank Dr. Thelma Drysduun. She did all the work.”

    Stephanie raised a brow. “That’s the doctor from that binder you have?”

    “Yes! And now I know I need to go back to that clinic and look again. Those milk storage tanks… we need to go find them!”



    ---- ----



    After another night of breaking and entering, with a new member of the team tagging along, the three thoroughly investigated the clinics basement again. Without the lingering fear of the unknown gripping the two men like before, they explored every inch of the place until finally… they found them.

    Stowed away in a massive vault off a corridor that hadn’t been searched previously, the trio stood before the door in wondering anticipation. It took Erik a bit of time to scour Dr. Drysduun's binder for a passcode, but he was overjoyed when he came upon it. Wasting no time, he read off the code to Norm, the sliding of locks and hums signifying the vault was unlocked. Stepping back, they marveled at all the tanks, filled with this miracle milk from Maxine Pirchard.

    Upon Erik's crazy request, Norm was more than happy and enthused to build and outfit a makeshift freezer to deposit the recovered milk. He knew it would take time, but the idea of continuing on and fine-tuning Drysduun's work was egging him forward. Within a couple months, the freezer was completed and ready for use, of which Erik swiftly began the process of commencing the undercover transport missions of getting milk from the clinic and back to the apartment, all while evading the watch of law enforcement.

    While Norm was giddily being a rebel and slinking in and out of the clinic, Erik quickly began his analysis and research on both the milk and mental stimulation drug. His task of pulling apart the cure from the animalistic was increasingly elusive to him. No matter how he looked at it, molecularly, psychologically, even proportional tests of each element…they all seemed to lead to the same result.

    Stephanie had been by his side through it all, at first eager to help him any way she could to find a solution of ridding herself of this animal she was now. But as time went on, seeing how his efforts were for naught, all coming up the same, she had begun to accept herself. She had thought she would hate to be like she was forever, but in reality, she was finding very little to be disappointed in. Her cancer was gone. Even joint pain in her left leg from a college softball injury was gone, no scar tissue to be seen. Physically she couldn’t deny that her body seemed toned, with lean muscle in her legs. Little observations like a bit more in the chest and backside weren't going unnoticed. She may have been an anthropomorphic cheetah now, but when looked at for all that it was, she had to admit it was kind of fun. She was her favorite animal after all!

    Upon confiding in Erik at long last, she explained to him her thoughts about the drug as a whole. Aside from the initial shock of becoming something else, she could only praise the effects of it, even hinting at the enjoyment of the additional endowment effects too. The drug had essentially brought to light just about everything she dreamed of.

    “A drug that makes your hearts desires come true?” Erik raised an eyebrow.

    “My cancer is gone, I feel better than ever before, I’m…a bit fuller all around in places I always wanted them to be, even my eyes changed to the color I had jokingly, yet always wanted in high school, all wrapped in my favorite animal? C’mon Erik, it sounds crazy but I’ve witnessed it all first hand! It’s a drug that lets you be what you want to be deep down,” Stephanie pointed out matter-of-factly.

    “Your wildest dreams drug…I can't believe it,” the practitioner gasped, any logical explanation falling short of the, even though he didn't want to admit it, magic in it all.

    “It reveals who you are truly, especially things no one would think of telling another person, or even things a person doesn't want to admit to themselves.” Stephanie said quietly as she laid a hand on his shoulder.

    “Do you think people would go for something like that? Throwing away normalcy to embrace being…well, an animal?” Erik asked bluntly.

    “We won't know until we do. I for one, don’t mind it. I kinda like it actually. Screw being normal honestly.”

    Erik couldn’t help but laugh at her comment, loving her optimism. “Well said. And I like what you said before. I might use that.”

    “What?”

    “Reveals…” He looked over at the mini capsules laying in a tray on his table. “A…revealing…drug of the animal inside you?”

    “Revealing,” Stephanie whispered. “That should be the name of it. Let anyone decide what they truly want to be, revealing it to the world.”