This is the first short story I ever wrote! I wrote it when I was 17. You can just read it, but if you want to also know the backstory on how this short story ever saw the light of day, when you are finished you can go over to my personal blog to find out. Or you can go there first and then come back here and read the story. Or you can just read about how the story came about and not read the story itself. Or you can just read the story and not give a flying fig about how it came about. Or you can just leave and not do any of that stuff. It’s like choose your own adventure, but I have to say that last option is a sucky one. Don’t pick that one. Get going!

1

Tom reached for the door handle to the university lab and turned it easily.  He was surprised to find it unlocked, but on second thought he knew that the electrical storm last night had upset a lot of things and Professor Blackburn had probably just forgot to lock it when he left.  He walked inside and groped in the dark for the light switch.  A feeling of intense fear came over him during the period it took him to find the switch.  When he was a little boy he had always been afraid that a hairy paw would grab his hand before he could switch on the light.  He guessed the fear had always stayed with him.

He found the switch and flipped it.  With an audible click and the flood of light that now filled the room, all thoughts of hairy paws were pushed into the back of his mind.  He was glad that he was the only one here.  He would have almost an hour before his 7:00 economics class to catch up on some lab work.

He walked over to a tall metal cabinet and tried the handle.  No luck, it was locked.  No problem, he knew Professor Blackburn kept an extra set of keys in the back of a drawer in his desk.  He walked over and was about to open the drawer when he noticed a set of keys lying on the desk.  He picked them up and examined them.  Attached to the key ring was a leather tag with the initial T.B. burned into it.  The initials stood for Todd Blackburn.  Professor Blackburn had left his personal set of keys.  That wasn’t at all like him Tom thought.  After a minute in thought he chalked another one up for the storm last night.  It had really caused a mess.

The forecast for last night had been for clear, hot, and humid.  Willard Scott had even said it would be a perfect night for viewing Halley’s Comet in the New England area.  But Tom, and over two hundred other people who had gathered at a watch point for this occasion, got a little extra to see.  Around 9:00 a lady with a 1000x Orbit telescope had started screaming that she saw the comet.  Then out of nowhere clouds began to form.  Everybody had run to the park pavilions across the street for cover.  As if in a trance, Tom had just stood there watching the sky.  A big bolt of lightning reached out of the sky like an accusing finger and struck the telescope the comet sightseer had just been using.  Electricity had flowed over the telescope like metal in a microwave.  Two more times lightning streamed down from above and struck the telescope.  Tom looked around and saw that he was the only one left in the field.  Then he looked back at the telescope and choked back a scream.  The telescope was dancing around the field doing back loops and summersaults!  He felt something grip his shoulder and let out a bloody scream.  He knew it was a hairy paw, he just knew it!  He forced himself to look and only saw a tall muscular man standing before him.

“You trying to get yourself killed out here?” the man screamed and dragged him to one of the pavilions.

Tom didn’t try to resist, all he could think about was that telescope and how much it had looked alive.  Things had taken on a different light the next morning and Tom had thought he only had an illusion.  The morning news had said that the freak storm had caused several power outages and lightning had been reported to have struck several buildings in the area, including the university.

Tom pushed all thoughts of that away and tried to think about the lab work he needed to get done.  He picked up the keys and walked back to the metal cabinet.  He located the correct key and unlocked the door.  He opened the door and got a low resolution microscope out.  Closing the cabinet, he noticed a piece of broken glass on the floor.  He bent over, picked it up and looked at it closely.  It didn’t look like the thick glass used for test tubes or beakers one can always find in a university lab.  No, it was too thin, maybe the kind that was in a window?  He looked around the lab and located the source of the glass.  Next to the microscope cabinet was a wooden case where Professor Blackburn kept his old reel to reel magnetic tapes.  A plate glass front usually covered the case but it had been shattered.  Pieces of plate glass were all over the table below the case.  Tom looked into the case and noticed that a reel was missing.  That was really strange because in this day and age the reel to reel had been made obsolete by the cassette tape.  The complete silence of the lab was broken by the loud voice of a man in Professor Blackburn’s private office.  Tom uttered a high pitched scream and backed up hard against the wooden case.  He felt warm fluid trickle down his arm and discovered the he had slashed his arm on the broken glass in the case.

The loud voice continued to bellow from the office but Tom noticed something strange about it.  It sounded like someone giving a lecture.  Tom slowly pushed the office door open and saw the owner of the voice.  It was a reel to reel tape playing on Professor Blackburn’s personal recorder.  Tom switched off the tape recorder.  Who turned the tape recorder on?  Things were getting too weird for Tom and he decided to do his lab work some other time.  He was getting out of here.  He turned to leave and kicked something across the floor.  It was a shoe.  Tom also noticed a shirt, dress pants, and a sports coat and tie lying on the floor behind the desk.  On the tie were those same two initials; T.B.  Something very weird is going on here Tom thought, and that’s when he really found out what was going on.

2

Tom turned around at the whirring sound behind him just in time to see the last of the tape on the reel roll itself off into a heap on the floor!  Several snake like projections were shooting out from the gray mass of the tape straight at him.  Tom grabbed at the closest weapon nearest to him, which happened to be a dagger shaped letter opener on Blackburn’s desk.  As the projections of tape got within a couple of inches of him, Tom brought the letter opener down on them.  He lopped off several pieces of tape in three blows.  The projections drew back momentarily as if considering what to do next.

Tom didn’t stay around to find out.  He bolted for the door and out into the lab.  He got halfway across the room when he felt something grab his leg and jerk him to the floor.  It burned like hell fire and he screamed out at the top of his voice.  He looked back over his shoulder to see one of the projections coiled around his left ankle.  The rest of the heap of tape was moving across the floor toward him!  He let the tape have it with the letter opener again and severed the projection that was holding him.

Tom looked down at his ankle and saw that his sock had been burned through and his skin was charred black as if it had been electrically burned.  When Tom looked up again, he could have kicked himself in the ass for taking the time to examine his wound.  The tape had spread out and was now surrounding him.  It started to move in, closing the death circle around him.  He could hear gurgling noises coming from the gray mass.  Noises like you would hear from a baby about to eat his jar of Gerber Beans and Franks.  Tom held the letter opener in front of him.  A finger of tape shot out of the pile so quickly that he didn’t have time to react.  The tape circled around him and latched on to the letter opener jerking it from his grasp.  It threw it across the floor where it slid across one of the heating vents and dropped from sight.  Fingers of tape shot forward and Tom jumped up and out of the circle coming down on his cut arm, reopening the wound.  Blood flowed down his arm and pooled on the carpeted floor.

The heap of tape quickly regrouped and slithered toward Tom.  He tried to back up and found himself cornered by a wall and a lab table.  He sat there and waited for the end, but luckily it hadn’t come this time.  The heap had stopped where he had spilled blood.  It was now devouring the blood with disgusting slurping sounds that made him almost toss his cookies.

Tom frantically began looking for another weapon before the tape monster finished with its appetizer and came for the entrée.  He looked in the drawers of the lab table and couldn’t find anything sharp.  Nothing but a lab coat, Bunsen burner, a rack of test tubes, and a magnetic device, called a degausser, used for quick erasing of cassettes.  He had just about given up all hopes for survival when he hit upon an idea.  He grabbed the degausser and started unlooping its power cord.  The tape, having finished its drink, proceeded toward Tom.  He finished with the cord and jammed the plug into the wall socket behind him.  He flipped the switch on the degausser and thrusted it toward the tape.

The heap of tape uttered a high pitched screeeeetch and the foremost finger projections shivered and then lay limp.  The heap pulled itself back away from Tom, dragging the lifeless projections with it.  Tom, full of confidence now, started after it intending to fry the hell out of it!  He got a couple of feet and then stopped short.  The degausser power cord was all played out and stretched tight.  He was trapped once again.

Tom looked around the room for other wall sockets and located two.  Both were behind the heap of tape and beyond his reach.  He sat back down in the corner and tried to think of something.  He looked at his watch and saw that it was quarter past seven.  He was late for his Economics class.  Would he be missed there?  No.  He had been known to skip that class several times and anybody who even noticed he wasn’t there would think he decided to sleep in.

Professor Blackburn would have been here by now, but of course, he wasn’t ever going to be explaining the fundamentals of organic chemistry to a room full of bored students again.  That tape had somehow come alive, probably something to do with that electrical storm.  Blackburn had been at the wrong place at the right time.  The evidence was clear now.  He didn’t lock the lab door, his personal set of keys were on the desk, and his clothes were all over his office floor.  This thing, he had come to think of it as the tape monster, eats flesh and bone.  Another thing he noticed also was the way the glass in the tape case had been shattered.  It was all over the desk under it as if something had broken out.

Tom was startled out of his thoughts by the sound of slithering tape.  Two projections were inching their way toward him.  He brought up the degausser and pointed it in their direction.  The projections recoiled quickly and joined the rest of the heap.  He had to keep alert.  Somebody would come soon.  Blackburn’s students would come in and find him there and they would get help.  All hope he had of help sank when he realized what day it was; Wednesday.  Blackburn didn’t have a class until 2:00 in the afternoon.  He knew because the Professor had told him if he ever needed any help, to come talk to him during this time on Wednesday.  He was stuck here until 2:00.  He was brought back to awareness by a knock on the door.

3

“Professor Black burn?  Are you in there?” inquired a voice.  “I need to ask you some questions.”  It was a girl’s voice and Tom thought it sounded familiar.  The handle on the lab door turned and a girl walked in.

“Professor Black…” the girl started to say and then saw Tom huddled in the corner.  It was Mary Jane Cauley.  She and Tom had dated a few times.

“Mary Jane, watch out!” Tom shouted at her.

“Tom?  What are you doing in the corner?”  she asked, walking over to him and stepping right over the heap of tape on the floor.

Why wasn’t the tape monster attacking?  Had he dreamed the whole thing?  Was he crazy?  Tom just about decided it had been a dream when several finger projections separated themselves from the heap, affixed to the lab door, and slammed it shut!  Two more projections coiled about Mary Jane’s legs and brought her to the floor.  She screamed and started calling Tom’s name.  The projections started dragging her toward the heap and her right foot was already buried in the gray mass.

“Give me your hands!” Tom shouted at her.  She flung her arms wildly around and Tom managed to get a hold of one.  He jerked hard and pulled her toward him.

“It hurts, oh shit, it huuuuuuurrrrrrrts!” she cried as she flopped around trying to get her leg away from the tape monster.  Tom jerked hard again and pulled her most of the way towards him.  He picked up the degausser and stretched it as far as it would go.  The tape projections made one last pull at her leg, then shrank away from the magnetic field emitted by the degausser.

Tom pulled Mary Jane all the way in the corner and looked at her foot.  It had the same charred look as his ankle did, but it was much worse.  He managed to calm Mary Jane down and asked, “How does it feel?”

“It hurts like hell!  How do you think it feels?” she replied to him in her high class daddy’s girl tone that had caused him to break off their relationship before.

“The pain will go away in a little bit.”

“How do you know?”

Tom pulled up his blue jeans leg up to his knee and showed her the scar on his ankle.  “It’s like an electrical burn.”

Mary Jane pulled herself together and flipped a strand of blonde hair back, a motion she always performed before she tried to rationalize a situation.  “What is it?”

“It was a reel to reel tape, but I think the electrical storm last night did something to it.  It got Blackburn.”  Tom looked into her eyes and saw a momentary loss of that rationale mode.  As if she sensed his thought, she regained her resolve and flipped her hair back once more.

She studied the heap of tape for a minute and then said, “Why isn’t it moving now?”

“Because it’s scared of this degausser,” Tom said and lifted up the device to show her.  “If it comes this way I’ll blast its ass!”

Tom and Mary Jane jumped, startled, when the tape monster began to move again, as if in direct action to his last comment.  Tom brought up the degausser but saw that two projections were moving away, toward a lab table.  The projections climbed the legs of the table and ran across to a cage sitting on it.  Tom’s stomach heaved as he realized what the tape was going after.  The projections of tape ran through the bars of the cage and wrapped around the two lab mice that were inside; lab mice that were meant for experimentation, just not this way.  The projections pulled the mice through the bars of the cage, squeezing the bodies until Tom could hear bones snap.  The mouse carrying projections slithered back to the heap.  The mice disappeared into the heap of tape.  The whole heap went into a wild thrashing motion.

Mary Jane lost all hope of rationalization and bolted for the door!  She caught the tape by surprise and might have made it but she caught the heel of one of her shoes on the leg of a lab table and went sprawling on the floor.  Two projections of tape shot toward her, but Tom pulled her away just before they reached her.

She flung her arms around Tom and started crying.  For some reason, the only thing he could think to do to console her was to kiss her, which he did, cutting off the sobs.  This had only been meant to calm her down, but it did quite the opposite.  She responded to the kiss and he felt her nipples, that were pressed to him, get hard.  Mary Jane was not shy when it came to public displays of affection.  It’s one of the reasons Tom had dated her despite her rich high class attitude.  Is that what this was?  Not really public, except for a heap of monstrous murdering reel to reel tape watching.  Were they  really going to do this?  Make out when their lives were on the line?  Hell, might as well, could be the last make out session ever for them.

Tom laid her on the floor, kissing her all over.  He ran his hands in her shirt and felt for the bra snaps.  He found them and popped them loose.  She started making pleasure moans that made Tom get even more excited.  She moaned even louder, but then the moans turned to screams!  He felt her slip from his grasp and looked up.  Several tape projections had gotten in Mary Jane’s hair and was pulling her toward the heap!

“Help me!” she screamed to Tom.

He grabbed her legs and tried to pull back but it was no use, the projections had a firm grip and they were not letting go this time.  He turned around and grabbed the degausser that he had let fall by the wayside during their brief make out session.  However, when he turned back to use it, she was too far away.

Tom watched in a trance as Mary Jane’s head slipped into the gray mass.  Slowly, the rest of her body followed until she was totally engulfed.  Then her head resurfaced in the mass.  It was black as coal except for her blue eyes that stared, accusingly, right at him.  She opened her mouth to yell and as tape projections filled it, he could hear her scream, “Toooooommmm!  Ahhhhhhhhh!”

The tape then completely covered her up and the gurgling noise began.  A stream of blood shot up from the pile and made a pool on the ceiling.  The tape proceeded to finish off the flesh and internal organs and then went to work on the bones.  Tom heard the bones crunch and spewed his breakfast all over the heap of tape.  The tape monster didn’t care, it just drew it in with the rest of the meal.

The tape monster became quiet again and gathered itself into a dense heap.  Something popped out of the heap and flew across the room.  He saw it was one of Mary Jane’s shoes, probably the one that had betrayed her by getting caught on the leg of the lab table.  Another shoe popped out along with her dress.  Her bra popped out and hung to one of the fluorescent light fixtures in the ceiling.  Her designer panties popped out and landed in his lap!  He absent mindedly picked them up and looked at them.  They were pink and had little ruffles.  Tom thought about how close he had been to those pink ruffles just a few minutes ago and began to laugh hysterically.  He laughed so hard that he began to cry and then he screamed for five minutes straight.

Tom eventually quieted and pulled farther back in the corner, gripping the degausser tightly.  He sat there for the next twenty minutes in a trance until he noticed a piece of tape on the floor.  He jumped and brought up the degausser in front of him.  Then he realized it was a piece of tape he had cut with the letter opener when he still had that weapon.  Quickly, he touched the tape and then brought his finger back.  The piece of tape didn’t move and it didn’t burn his finger.  He had an idea.

He reached up to the lab table and grabbed the microscope that he had originally wanted to use for his lab work.  He clipped the piece of tape into the specimen tray on the microscope, and then angled the mirror below it to catch the light from the overhead fluorescent lights.  He put his eyes to the viewing eye piece and turned the focus dial.  When he got a clear picture he drew back and rubbed his eyes.  Surely he had seen wrong, but what he thought he saw were animal cells.  He looked again and confirmed it.  This was a low resolution microscope and he couldn’t see in great detail, but he could clearly see the round cell wall and nucleus that defined an animal cell.  This thing was definitely alive!

Tom dropped the microscope when he saw several tape projections moving his way.  He shoved the degausser in their direction and to his horror, nothing happened!  He looked at the degausser as if it had betrayed him.  Turning to see if the cord had come unplugged, he saw a single projection of tape that had come up from a heater vent under the wall socket!  It had entered in another vent by the heap of tape and had crossed under the floor.  That sneaky projection had wrapped around the power cord to the degausser and had burned right through it, severing it and the power to his last line of defense.

Tom threw the degausser at the tape projections that were moving his way and made a desperate attempt for the lab door.  Twenty projections overcame him before he got halfway.  They dragged him back toward the heap.  Tom cried out in pain as his legs sank in the swirls of tape.  Instinctually, he punched the heap with his fists as they disappeared up to his elbows.  Then the tape completely engulfed him.  He felt burning pain all over as his flesh dissolved.  Tom opened his mouth for one more scream, but tape filled it, silencing him.

4

The digital clock on the lab wall changed to 1:49.  The heap of tape dragged all the clothing into a corner under one of the lab tables.  It then slithered back to Professor Blackburn’s office over to the tape recorder.  It wound itself back onto the reel attached to the recorder.  A low mumble of general chit chat that students on their way to a class would make, was heard in the hallway outside the lab as the digital clock changed to 1:55.