The ringing of a bell clatters as the store door swings open with an audible, aged creak. The shop interior has a varnished wood aesthetic to it with an old and ragged red rug across the wooden planked floor. The store window displays many archaic antiques, including a vintage leather case filled to the brim with glass vials and sharp knives, even a bone saw as well as an old tophat, a Victorian wig and even a Greek vase, depicting Zeus seducing Alcmene by disguising as her husband. Plastered atop the store window is a missing child poster  soberly swaying in the air. A teenager with a black crew cut and shining blue eyes is depicted on the page. The name underneath reads: Fred Harris.

 

"Eesh, is this an antique store or a goddam museum?" A high voiced teenager asks, wooden planks creaking under his steps. At the counter sits an old man with slick-back white hair, wrinkled peachy skin, a brown waistcoat with a pen with a yellow zigzag pattern in the pocket and an oddly twitchy eye, seeming to have jittery eyelids. The waist and below is hidden under the desk. The teenager in question has a grey hoodie, black combat bottoms and sneakers on, plus shaggy brown hair.

 

The old man smiles with a closed lip when the teenager enters, body bobbing as he chuckles.

 

"You flatter this humble collector. Welcome, Welcome to Burke's emporium, young man..." the old man says in a calm, gentle tone.

 

The teenager looks across the store, taking in the smell of varnish and dust. Lining the wooden store shelves are several old goods, many with a medical or mythological theme. A kitsune mask from Japan, a beaked plague doctor mask by the side of it, a row of leather bound and ancient seeming books, a collection of antique surgical tools including old scissors, tweezers and syringes. The boy browses the goods, fingers to his chin with an... uncomfortable silence.

 

"You... really like your old timey medical equipment, ay?" The boy asks, a slight hint of worry in his voice.

 

"Oh, it's an old interest of mine! Barbaric things, ay? Lucky we don't use 'em today, or they'd be sawing legs off over cuts!" The old man says in a jovial tone, the boy laughing along nervously as he reaches for a book on the shelf. An old book from as far back as 1951, a recorded works of Greek mythology, a single page bookmarked. The boy plucks the tome from the shelf, feeling the crinkled pages and leathery tome, flipping to the bookmarked page. The start of the tale of heracles is the marked page.

 

"So, what brings ya 'ere, sonny?" The old man asks the boy, leaning over his desk and other hand reaching into a chest like box beside him.

 

"It's..." the boy sighs as he reads the story. "... My girlfriend. She's mad at me, and... I want to get her a gift as an apology. She has an interest in the occult, so I wanted to see if you had anything old and witchy in here..." The boy explains whilst flipping through the pages and shutting the book with a shudder. 

 

"Creepy beginning..." he whispers, tucking the book into the shelf and reaching for the next, dragging out a book with a wrinkly, tan and overly leathery tone with the title "The Zeus Incision." The boy feels... heavily distressed by the texture. Moist, cold, dirty, he shoves it back into the collection. The old man kneels over and disappears under his desk.

 

"Oho, interesting! I can certainly help with that!" The old man says proudly with his left eyelid jittering, fishing about some shelves below him and causing the boy to turn to him.

 

*... Why do... I think I'm going to regret this?* The teenager thinks, fluttering in his stomach and paranoia creeping into his head.  *Maybe... Maybe I'm just stressed about fred. He's... been gone a while. I... I just hope the worst hasn't happened.* The teenager rationalises.

 

"Come here, come here!" The man calls over, waving his hand over to usher the boy over. The boy sighs and walks towards the old man, unable to shake the feeling of something not quite being right in this store after touching that book. He arrives at the desk, as the old man brings out a cube. One that glares at the boy.

 

The cube is unusual, seeming to be made from a peachy, fleshy material with a single blue eye in the centre of one of its sides. It blinks with an unusual pace, and widens upon seeing the teenager. 

 

*What... What the hell is that... and why does it look... familiar?* The teenager asks, slowly guiding his hands towards the cube. He wraps his fingers around both sides.

 

The boy jumps back and screams. It's squishy and warm. Warm like flesh. The skin even feels familiar, fingers pushing into the stubble of black hair growing out the side. Sharp like a crew cut.

 

The boy turns around and sprints to the door, crashing into it. It's locked. The old man laughs at the desk, slapping his knee.

 

"TH- THAT'S NOT FUNNY, YOU OLD-" The boy screams whilst the old man bobs up and down with chuckles.

 

"Want a surprise?" The old man simply asks, twitchy eye as ever, calm in response. The boy doesn't even reply, just back to the door and chuff puffing and retracting from hyperventilation.

 

The old man points to the ground with a grin. The red rug.

 

"Peel it back." He says with a grin. The boy raises his arms and starts sweating, hoping to get out of this creepy store. He touches the red rug, noticing it feels... crunchy in texture as he pulls it up.

 

"Getting the dye for it wasn't easy... you'll find the source under there." The old man's voice says, as the rug peels back to reveal a trap door. Medieval in design, rot iron handle. The teenager gulps. 

 

He pulls it up. He is met with a grotesque, rotten and meaty smell as his eyes meet the disfigured and defiled face of a friend. One with pale, bled out skin, an open mouth, and an empty eye socket. Below the head, several more cadavers lie, missing pages of skin. Pages the exact same size as the leather cover of the book.

 

The teenager covers his mouth to hold in the vomit filling his mouth, eyes wide and full of disgust. He can hardly process what he is witnessing, what he's touched, what he has done. 

 

Then, he hears the sound of a pen click followed by the feeling of a needle sliding into his neck, the old man's breath crawling down the boy's neck.

 

"Night night, boy..." he whispers in the teenager's ear as he begins to collapse.

 

The boy wakes up, feeling a cold, hard substance on his back and cold hands gripping his ankles and wrists. The boy's eyelids split to find a stone brick ceiling overhead. He is strapped to a table, staring at the ceiling. He is stretched out on the table, shirt missing. He looks up to find a pale hand wrapped around his wrist... a pale hand on a pole, not a arm, but the grip of a man. The boy screams in terror, lungs rattling as he tries to fight out the stone cold, dead clutches but cannot bodge. This prompts the old to lean over the boy, now in a leather apron, goggle over the eyes and grin across his face.

 

"Ah, wakey wakey! Wouldn't want to start the Incision without you!" The old man says, cheerfully.

 

"STOP THIS -I -INCISION?!-" The teenager screams, further alerted by the mention of an Incision.

 

"Yes~ you touched the book with the incision instructions inside! Wasn't much a fan of the cover though, were you? Finest leather I've ever harvested, I tell you!" The old man says with the avidness of a collector whilst exiting the teenagers field of view.

 

"FINEST LEATHER?! IT WAS MADE OF HUMAN SKIN, WASN'T IT YOU BASTARD! WHO ARE YOU, HELL- WHAT ARE YOU?!" The teenager yells, writing in the binds.

 

"Who I am? Eesh, I've had many names, my boy! What's yours, by the by?" The old man asks curiously.

 

The boy raises an eyebrow, breathing deep and confused by the question. "...W- What...?"

 

"Your name, not too hard!" The old man clarifies, sounding frustrated.

 

"Why on earth would I tell you that?!" The boy yells, prompting a sigh from the old man, now to the right side of the boy and over the abdomen.

 

"... Say it~" The old man says mockingly, as the teenager feels something slimy, cold and tube shaped on his stomach. He looks down to see what the old man just dropped onto him.

 

It was a black, slimy leech.

 

"ARGH! NO, NO!-'' The boy cries, prompting the old man to laugh and clap his hands in response to the boy's horror. The boy starts to thrash from left to right to try wrestle the leech from his skin but fails as the parasite jumps up and down on the stomach, sinking its ice cold body on the boy and sinking its thirsting teeth into the flesh of the stomach. The sting begins to sink in as the teenager feels his stomach get cold from exiting blood.

 

"STOP! STOP!-" The teenager cries as the leech feasts on the boy's skin and blood, the old man cackling at the teenager's suffering.

 

"I'll make it stop, just say you're name!" The old man says, eyelid twitching intensifying, jittering as if trying to force out the eye in excitement.

 

"TYRONE! TYRONE! TYRONE SMITH!-" The boy screams, the old man laughing as the chilling creature is removed from the boy's flesh, blood pooling near the belly button. The boy takes deep breaths and holds still, trying to ignore the stinging cold of the plate he's on. The old man laughs. 

 

"There we go... lets just..." the old man says, quickly followed by the sound of a knife on the chopping block.

 

"W- What was that?!" The boy asks, scared of whatever's next.

 

"Testing compatibility, my boy!" The old man replies.

 

"Compatibility?! For what?!" Tyrone shouts back, continuing to try wrestle out of the hands that bind.

 

"Simple! The Zeus procedure! I have your name, all we need now is to test if your blood is compatible with mine!"

 

"Why do you need to know that!"

 

"Simple! How do you think I got so many antique medical tools?" The old man says. 

 

"What? What does that have to do with this?" The boy asks, as a silence follows.

 

Then, laughter.

 

"AHAHAHAHAHA- finally! I thought this body was going to fail me before I found a quality host!" The old man announces joyfully.

 

"... w... what?" The boy asks, struggling in his binds as the old man appears overhead once again, a grin across his face and a scalpel in his hand.

 

"W... what are you doing..." the boy asks. Until the old man smiles and the scalpel begins slowly gliding towards the boy's forehead.

 

"W- NO, NO, DON'T TAKE A STEP CLOSER-" the boy begs, screaming, thrashing as the scalpel pierces the skin.

 

"AAARRRGGHH, NO! PLEASE!" The boy begs as the old man says other hom;

 

"You know, your unlucky friend wasn't compatible. I may have let you live. Spend the rest of your existence cursing his misfortune and that he got off lucky as a cube." The old man says, Tyrone thrashing in response and closing his eyes as tears run down his face.

 

"I WON'T, NEVER, NEVER, NO-"

 

Then, the scalpel glides all the way down his forehead. The stinging cannot be described by words, no anaesthetics making the pain blistering and sharp. Blood trickles down both sides of his face. 

 

The old man turns around, and the sounds that follow... the sound of squirming, squelching, even a bit of biting follows. The sounds are definitely of organic origins. They make the boy's stomach clench more than they already did. The old man turns around, an eye missing and holding what looks like a cockroach. He begins to lower it towards the boy's face.

 

"NO, NO, NO-" the boy says before blood pours into his eyes. He cannot see anymore, blinded by the crimson. He doesn't need to see though. He can feel it, the cockroach. Perched atop the boy's forehead, scuttling towards the point of the Incision. That then became the point of entry, the boy feeling the cockroach squirm, fight its way into the wound, the alien little body crawling under the skin like it was a carpet, struggling through the muscle and feeling it struggle inside, touching nerves and biting through the insides to burrow inside.

 

"AAARRRGGGHHH!--" The boy cries as the cockroach crawls under his face’s skin. Then, he doesn't feel it anymore. He can’t hear anything. Just blankness and oblivion.

 

Then, his eyes open. But he wasn't the one who did it. His body rises on its own.

 

"Ah... such a nice, fresh body..." Tyrone says, yet Tyrone didn't force his vocal cords to. He can see, but cannot pilot. Then, Tyrone's body laughs.

 

"Keep trying to resist, boy... your squirming brings me pleasure… So, Tyrone you say? I’ll figure out the rest of your secrets, I’m sure. Now, Let's go say sorry to my girlfriend, shall we?~" Tyrone says as he realises: he is conscious, but his body acts on its own. He's been hijacked. He has lost all control. All Tyrone could do is force his eyes to leak, as he lost the mouth the scream and the arms to flail.

 

Tyrone walks home to his family. Tyrone went out with his girlfriend. Tyrone bought the abandoned antique shop. Yet for years, no-one could explain the leaky eyes of the man. This happened for years, in every robbed intimate moment, the boy had to watch his stolen life be robbed. 

 

Eventually, the boy stopped crying. All he ever did was smile and work in the back of the store.