Night 54: The Sphinx's Chamber
[from here]
The room was warm. Boiler room? Anyone who'd gild the bowels of a psych ward was a nutcase. Or -- S.T.'s brain coughed up equally ridiculous yet plausible scenarios as he stepped through the door, flashlight trained on the floor in front of him. Glittering toilets for visiting foreigners who'd flown out of their palaces on a private jet for the best hospitals money could buy and gotten this. Bored politicians with earmarks to burn.
Or a madman zookeeper with a taste for the exotic. A giant abomination of a creature was lounging on a pedestal in the center, staring back with eyes that held at least a facsimile of intelligence. The image of a dying dolphin swam forward. Eyes misted over, skin sloughing off with a distinct resemblance to Harvey's face that S.T. shoved back into the swirling depths he currently called a brain. Whatever that thing was, it was completely wrong. Nature didn't put wings and a face on lions. Man did that, by dicking around with things he didn't understand.
Saying as much was a recipe for getting eaten by this particular abomination, so he just stood by the door and tried not to make eye contact. "What do you make of that?" he hissed, though keeping anything quiet enough for the creature not to hear was a lost cause.
The room was warm. Boiler room? Anyone who'd gild the bowels of a psych ward was a nutcase. Or -- S.T.'s brain coughed up equally ridiculous yet plausible scenarios as he stepped through the door, flashlight trained on the floor in front of him. Glittering toilets for visiting foreigners who'd flown out of their palaces on a private jet for the best hospitals money could buy and gotten this. Bored politicians with earmarks to burn.
Or a madman zookeeper with a taste for the exotic. A giant abomination of a creature was lounging on a pedestal in the center, staring back with eyes that held at least a facsimile of intelligence. The image of a dying dolphin swam forward. Eyes misted over, skin sloughing off with a distinct resemblance to Harvey's face that S.T. shoved back into the swirling depths he currently called a brain. Whatever that thing was, it was completely wrong. Nature didn't put wings and a face on lions. Man did that, by dicking around with things he didn't understand.
Saying as much was a recipe for getting eaten by this particular abomination, so he just stood by the door and tried not to make eye contact. "What do you make of that?" he hissed, though keeping anything quiet enough for the creature not to hear was a lost cause.