Mordred and the Head Shrinker

He called it the ‘Blood Rage’, a time when he lost his senses and surrendered to mindless homicidal impulse. Having recognized the impending fit, he was pleased Jack had taken heed of the advice to depart for two reasons, one, he really didn’t want to hurt the other man, and two, he didn’t want Jack to be forced to hurt him. It wasn’t voices telling him to kill, or vision of carnage, just a buzzing in his ears, maddening and growing in intensity until he couldn’t drone it out of his head. He wasn’t entirely sure what triggered the episodes and often wondered if it was something akin to what old Viking berserkers went through prior to battle. The sight of Maynard made his stomach turn and his skin burned. The buzzing grew louder inside his head, almost to the point of being painful and his consciousness retreated into the recesses of his mind.

Psychologist Hope wasn’t really expecting to find anything in particular when she opened the door to the mop room adjacent to the lab proper, let alone a tiny corpse of subject #2 and frenzied form of subject #6 mutilating the body.

“Jesus,” she murmured as the demented little creature looked up from the torn open remains of Maynard White.

Immediately the miniaturized ghoul started running directly at her, snarling and growling. During her schooling she had encountered articles of clinical lycanthropy about people whose perspectives were altered or they were suffering some form of psychotic break, but to actually witness it, albeit on a scale that seemed almost cartoonish. She was instantly reminded of a cartoon she had seen as a child, about a slavering weasel attacking a rooster. The recollection made her smile as she watched the little figure attacked the toe of her black leather shoe.

“Out here, quickly!” she said louder enough for the women in the other room to hear as she drew her foot back from the little attacker.

Julie was the first to respond, pulling open the door, looking first to Hope’s face, then to her feet where Mordred was scampering back at the foot of the other woman.

“Holy shit!” she said, surprised to see how aggressive the little form was acting.

Kari was next to arrive, stepping in behind Julie before quickly turning her head to Taryn, “Get me a beaker!” she instructed.

Mordred was back on Hope’s shoe. She lifted her foot off the floor slightly to try and shake him off, but he clung on tenaciously.

Julie crouched down, reaching out tentatively to try and grab one of his legs to pull him off, but jerked her hand back quickly when he turned and snarled and gnashed his teeth at her. “Nope,” she said.

“Get it off!” said Hope, shaking her foot more vigorously.

“The beaker!” demanded Kari as Mordred was dislodged and tumbled across the floor.

Getting to his feet, eyes distant and void of reason, he grinned, a feral expression and ran back toward where the three women were gathered.

“He’s like a mini terminator,” Julie said, lifting her feet and edging back into Kari, who took a one litre low form beaker from Taryn.

Slipping passed Julie, Kari inverted the beaker and deftly set it down over top of Mordred, confining the feverish felon and pressing down on it with the index and middle fingers of her right hand to secure it to the floor.

Leaning his head back, he slammed his fists repeatedly against the side of the glass.

Dagmara appeared, shooing the other out her path. She looked from the contained figure to dead form of Maynard, a frown touching the edges of her full mouth. “That leaves us with five unaccounted for. Obviously they’ve made it out of the lab and could now be anywhere in Sector B. Julie, you and Taryn begin looking out here. It might be wise to take another one of the beakers with you just in case,” she said.

Julie nodded, meeting Taryn’s eyes.

“What about him?” Hope asked, looking at Mara.

Dagmara chuckled, “I think I see why they called him ‘The Night Raver’ and he is all yours,” she said, turning away and walking back into the room.

Kari waited for Hope to replace her hand on the glass before rising back to standing and moving away, grin on her face. “I’ll take care of our other little friend there,” she said, pointing at Maynard’s body.

Looking down at the animated little figure trapped beneath the inverted beaker, Hope frowned.

Madeline poked her head out to get a look. “Cool,” she said, eyebrows raised.

“Madeline, can you please get me a piece of paper?” Hope asked, Julie and Taryn stepping around her to get into the hall.

Madeline nodded and hustled off, returning with the request sheet.

Taking the paper, Hope carefully slid it under the glass and under Mordred causing him to lose his footing before quickly tilting the glass and lifting up, pitching him into the beaker and making him fall as she turned it over.

Lifting it near her face as she rose, she smiled at him as he continued to pummel the inside of his glass prison. Moving out of Kari’s way and back into the lab, she set the beaker down on the top of her workstation, taking a seat and watching the episodes continue.

When reality came crashing back in for Mordred, leaving him with a dull pounding headache and the coppery taste of his own blood in his mouth, he looked through the glass wall of the beaker containing him, smears of blood from when he had broken his skin streaking the surface of the clear glass.

There was a face of a very attractive woman looking in on him. Looking first at his bloody hands, and then the rest of himself, he looked back up into her bright green eyes and nodded slowly, “It would seem you have me at a disadvantage madam,” he said.