The figure in front of me stirs, lifts its head. Looks at me with those beige patches in place of eyes. That yellow parchment skin. Oh, shit. It’s one of those experiments from Phase One. That half-human hummus thing born in a horse womb. It spills off the chair and waddles toward me, maybe three feet tall. Drool dangles from its sneering mouth and I wonder if it’s toxic.

“No, no!” I shout, the static buzz assaulting my ears. “Don’t, no!” I’d rather burn to death than have that thing spit acid in my eyes.

It lifts its head, opens its mouth to reveal four square teeth, two on the top, two on the bottom, spaced out about an inch apart. Its throat begins to convulse like it’s choking or trying to clear a hairball. There’s no soul in that thing; the woman told me. It’s pure hostility without any saving grace.

“You are his father!” says the woman, shouting in my ears. It sounds like she’s reporting through a Category 5 hurricane. “His protector!” I don’t know how to raise my boy. I ask the doctors for advice without realizing they don’t know either – they’re just regurgitating bullshit they learned from textbooks twenty-seven years ago. My face is on fire, my mind about to melt. Yes, I am in my son’s head. This frightening, tumultuous lair from which neither of us can escape.

I try and work my fingers underneath the panel trapping my neck, but can’t find a seam. Where is Malia, and why isn’t she helping me?

The homunculus thing whips its head forward and spits at me like a viper. Misses. A ribbon of smoke rises up past the eyeholes as the figure’s convulsing throat chambers another round.

“Please let me out of here!” I’m not sure to whom I’m pleading. I don’t expect sympathy from the abomination before me. Malia, then? The stewardess berating me about my son’s damaged brain?

“He is a wound that will not heal. He is exposed skin dipped in saltwater. The world is too much.”

“Okay!” This is too much. And I’ve only been experiencing it for about fifteen minutes. Rox has had seven full years. “I’m sorry! I get it, and I’m sorry!”

“There are no accidents. You were chosen as his father.” Underneath her voice and the static maelstrom I can now hear sonic chirping that I associate with bats in a cave.

“Please! I can do better! Please, give me another chance.”

The static screech falls silent, so do the sonic chirps. Seconds pass where all I can hear is the crackle of flames from the fireplace and the perverse snorting from the figure as it extracts poison from whatever glands secrete it.