Half-crawling, half-stumbling, she pitched down an adjacent hall. The CLANG of steel on shattering linoleum chased ahead of Joanne’s cackle as Nate fled  through dark empty corridors. 

With only the gown as protection, the air conditioned hall was icy cold. The chill provided a marginal distraction from the horrific pain in her shoulder and clavicle, but panic soon consumed all else. She wanted to scream and scream and never stop, but there was no point. There was no one to hear. The remainder of the facility staff had gone home for the night. She and Joanne were the only ones here. 

Sock-clad feet sliding haphazardly on linoleum, Nate made to round the corner but didn't generate enough friction on the fresh-waxed tiles, and slid right past the glowing red “Exit” sign to burst into the facility cafeteria through its unlocked, swinging double-doors. She caught herself on the nearest table with her good arm, twisting her ankle, but managing to correct before the strain could more than sting. 

A red dollop dripped from her panting lips, speckled the moondust white laminate. 

“Nate?” In her wildest dreams she'd never imagined little Joanne's voice could sound so like the snarl of a wildcat on the prowl. But oh, how it could. “Nate! Come on out! I just wanna little nip'a that new skin'a yours, Nate. For science? Think of the greater good.”

Illuminated only by the soda machine's red glow, the cafeteria lay blanketed in slanted, spindly shadows with impregnable dark corners.

The janitor had come and gone. In his wake, he left the faint whiff of industrial strength cleaner, so strong Nate smelt it even through her stuffy nose. She covered her mouth to suppress a cough. Fuck her fucking landlady for giving her this cold on top of everything else. It was the absolute last thing she needed right now.

The door to the kitchen was another double swinger. She silently thanked her gods and goddesses and tip-toed.

Inside it was pitch black, but for the green electronic read-out on one gas-range stove. It wasn't enough to see by, but she dared not turn on the lights with Joanne's voice still in earshot. Her raving had become rabid now, her usual soft but scholarly tone a distant memory. Shuddering, Nathan barred the door handles with a broom and mop from near a janitorial sink. 

It might hold Joanne for a moment but if she got a full noseful of Nate, it wouldn't stop her. Nothing would.

Speaking of which, the Scent.

Nate had to get it off.

Somehow.

Stomach roiling with the trauma of her injury, nose now gushing mucus as well as blood, she limped through the kitchen, around a half-wall, where she found a big tub sink through another half-door. On the right side, her arm hung limp, already tingling numb from where she’d caught herself wrong. It was too bad that numbness hadn't spread all the way across her clavicle. As it was, every jostled motion brought forth a prickle of tears, but there was no time to think of discomfort. The arm could be fixed later. The Scent needed fixing now.

Reaching the sink, she fumbled with the knobs until the faucet spewed. She winced. In her disorientation, she hadn’t considered the volume. 

Swearing under her breath, she turned the knobs back until the stream poured no more than a trickle. Her jaw throbbed, stiff and aching. 

“Nate! Stop playing around!” On the other side of the wall, out in the hall, something (probably the vending machine) shattered with a smashing crash. The vulgar curses that followed ached Nate’s ears; she’d never heard Joanne swear.

As she filled her good palm with soap from the dispenser, she tried not to hear the woman's wails. It must have been the lotion, yes. She had to get the lotion off. 

She'd been using it for two weeks, always under Joanne’s supervision, testing and re-testing despite those pesky safety regulations. After all, if the CEO of Nabaclin Industries gave the go-ahead well...who was she, a lowly test subject, to question?

Besides, there was no other work available, and Nate needed the money. All she had to do in exchange was smear herself in the lotion, then sit in a room for a few hours a day, twice a week, for nine weeks. One fiscal quarter. Easy. 

Sure, she’d experienced a few minor changes. Instead of sweat, she exuded a pleasing (even attractive) aroma. Her skin grew free of blemishes or blots. Even the scar she'd gotten in a bicycle spill as a kid vanished. That was some impressive shit, no doubt. They were well on the path to creating the world's next best-selling vanity serum. 

Until today. Today, something had changed.

Nathan scrubbed. The now-dry lotion crust flaked into the sink. Joanne’s raving voice continued to ramble incoherent threats and pleas. “No one likes a person who isn’t willing to share, Nathan! Ooo! What's this! Fresh blood?” A slight pause. Smacking lips. “Mmmm... Delicious.”

Nathan's flickering hope doused. She stared at her shaking wet hands, slowly comprehending the futility. No way to wash off the Scent. It was in her. It was her. 

Shadows shifted beneath the door crack. The movement silenced even Nate’s thoughts. For a moment, there was only the quiet trickle of water on nickel, the labored taxi of her anxious heart. Then the axehead cleaved through the thin wooden door. 

Nate hit the ground on instinct. 

Nauseating pain! 

She cupped her lips to withhold her scream. 

The axehead wiggled free. Red light spilled through the broken slat and outlined the kitchen's boxy layout. Spotting a likely nook near the half-wall, Nate army-crawled beneath the cutting table.

BANG!

Chips of splintered wood rattled to the floor. And there stood Joanne Rowls, still smart-dressed in her immaculate white coat with her silver-and-strawberry blonde hair knotted from her wicked grinning face. Red light chiseled out her narrow profile, sparkled in her glazed, rolling blue eyes, and dappled her thin stretched lips.

Wraith-like, she prowled the still kitchen. “Nathan. Oh Naaatthhaaann!” The word tapered into a guttural growl, punctuated by another crash of the fire ax. 

A massive pot with a great hole in its center bounced and rolled beneath the stove.

Covered in goosebumps, half-blind in the dark, Nathan held her breath and waited, watching. The faucet continued to spurt. Joanne’s sensible black shoes strolled heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe to the cutting table corner beneath which Nathan curled.

Joanne stopped.

The ax hung in Nate’s viewline. She could see herself reflected in the pristine silver stripe along the curved red blade.

All this for a $300 food card, a year-long discount on gas, plus a free bottle of “the world’s most effective skin-softening agent.” It was hard to believe two hours earlier, she’d been back home, in her cramped apartment with her two loud-mouthed roomates, arguing politics and mocking the evening news. 

The insurance waiver had been spattered with unforeseen side effects warnings. Dana and Jon were on their way to visit Dana’s family for the weekend, and Dana had been teasing Nate good-naturedly about the case study.  Nate had said it would be worth the risk if they could afford meat (a luxury) for her annual year-end Solstice dinner.

“I bet you’re eventually going to sprout hair like a werewolf,” Dana giggled.

“At least they aren’t testing it on animals,” Jon added.

“Animals?” laughed Dana. “That would cost them a fortune!” 

And then it had been an argument about rising food costs and the economy and world hunger and, by the way, who was Nate voting for-- the asshole politician? Or the loud, asshole politician? Or was she going to throw it all away and go third-party like the hippie sucker she always had been?

“Well, the first of the pair doesn’t employ me,” Nate had replied, all glib humor and sarcasm. It was a moot argument anyhow; they talked politics nonstop, but she didn’t actually vote. Who had the time?

Well I sure as shit’ll vote this year, thought Nathan, and now instead of being frightened she’d scream, she felt deliriously certain she’d start giggling. And it ain’t gonna be for you, Mr. Stalwart.

Joanne’s shadow moved towards the counter end. From her cramped hideaway, Nathan noted Joanne’s loose grip on the ax. A sniffing noise. Maybe...

“Nate?”

Gritting her teeth, Nathan snatched.

A harpy-like wail. 

Joanne whirled as the wooden handle slid from her manicured grip. Nathan twirled and hefted the

 cleaver with her left. 

So low to the ground and at such an awkward angle, there was only one shot to take, a sideswipe at Joanne’s pantyhose-clad ankle.

Nate swung.

The ax squelched through flesh and muscle, then lodged in the bone, staggering Joanne, who wailed and cantered akin to a horse throwing a bad shoe. When she went, she took the ax too; the grip of her bone on the blade was much stronger than Nathan's non-dominant hand on the ax.

Pans and pots clamored to the floor. Joanne screeched as she followed.

Sliding on fresh spilled blood, Nathan lunged past her writhing form, for the Exit, but Joanne’s fingers sank into her heel, and Nate tumbled, landing on her bad side. 

Cackling triumph, Joanne scrambled up Nathan’s prostrate body like a spider monkey. A white hot surge of pain on the side of her head. Nathan rolled, wrenching free. 

A stringy chunk of flesh chomped between Joanne’s straight white teeth, lab coat stained drenched red. Blood gushed to Nathan’s shoulder and pooled in the gown’s neck. 

She clocked Joanne as hard as she could between the eyes with her left balled fist.

Joanne sprawled. 

“You fucking bitch!” Nathan staggered upright and ripped the ax from Joanne’s leg, hefting overhead with her good arm. 

Joanne flipped herself around and lunged, heedless of her damaged leg. A strip of Nate’s flesh still stuck caught in her teeth, laughing face painted like a toddler who had gotten into her mother’s lipstick.

Nathan brought the ax down with all her strength.

The laughter morphed into a perplexed gargle. 

Nathan’s grip on the ax slipped. The handle bobbed. Joanne jerked. Her steps tangoed drunken giddy circles. All at once, Nathan recalled this woman had been her friend, grabbed the handle again, and tried, too late, to pry the blade from her skull.

Then Joanne fell.

She landed lumped in a messy pile, axehead still stuck between her eyes. Her nostrils huffed, cloudy gaze fixated on Nate. Her tongue darted.

She died wanting one last taste.

Continue to Part II