Take Your Child to Work Day
Uh.. idk what this is or why. Enjoy.
Cw: anxiety, self-destructive habits, lab whump, solitary confinement, implied kidnapping, prolonged captivity, abuse, non human whumpee
Caretaker was too old for “take your child to work day”. They were well into adulthood, yet because they still lived with Parent, they were dragged along to the odd looking facility at where Parent worked.
It gave them the creeps just being there. The walls were almost all concrete, the floors made of a white tile that reflected the fluorescent white lights. Every single door required a key card and pin entry to open.
“Parent, I’m too old for this,” Caretaker sighed, interrupting their excited rambling about their job.
“You’re my child, and as long as you live under my roof, I’m in charge of you,” Parent said matter-of-factly, straightening their white lab coat. “I promise it gets more interesting. But as I was saying, we work with complex live specimen, interacting with and examining them. We analyze their brainwaves, and how they differ from ours, then we work to replicate the DNA sequences, so we can clone the organism, it’s all quite amazing. You’ll see, our most complex subject can even speak!”
“You mean, like a parrot?” Caretaker decided to indulge their excitement. After all, they never really saw Parent smile anymore, especially after the divorce…
“Not exactly,” Parent grinned like a child offered candy, their eyes lighting up. “You’ll see soon.”
Not knowing what that meant, but willing to play along, Caretaker followed Parent through a door into some sort of decontamination room.
“We haven’t been able to replicate this one yet, so until we are able to, we must take extreme measures to ensure nothing happens to it,” Parent explained, as they began to scrub their hands in a hospital-grade sink. “It’s lived longer than any other, so you can understand why it’s so precious to us,”
Caretaker just nodded along, and washed their hands as well.
“Now, this one is usually well-behaved, but if a problem were to occur, this is what this little remote is for,” Parent said, as they picked up a little remote from a shelf. “With the press of this button here, it will automatically deliver enough electricity to incapacitate the subject, a stun which will provide us enough time to leave the room and call for security back up.”
Parent then turned to face Caretaker. “Are you ready to see something amazing?”
“Uh, sure?” Caretaker couldn’t help but phrase it like a question.
Parent turned to the door, and tapped in a key code. With a click, and a woosh of air, it opened.
Caretaker’s heart dropped.
What was inside the plain, padded room looked undeniably human, and utterly terrified.
“Caretaker, this is number five, or as I like to call it, Whumpee,” Parent smiled widely, and gestured across the room. Curled into the corner sat… something. It looked human, as far as it came to features, but… with wings? Large wings, like those of a crow, with ruffled black feathers. There were gaps, where it seemed handfuls of feathers had been torn out.
The poor thing looked up at Parent with obvious fear in it’s eyes.
“Whumpee, say hello. This is my child, Caretaker. The one I’ve told you about,” Parent said slowly, enunciating each syllable like they were talking to a child.
“Hel-hello,” The creature chirped, half hiding behind it’s trembling wings. “Care-Caretaker.”
“Isn’t it just amazing?” Parent grinned.
“Yeah… amazing…” Caretaker echoed, glancing around the room as Parent went off on another ramble about the creature. The room itself was small, the only furniture being a mattress shoved against one wall, the single blanket tossed askew, and a toilet sink thing in the corner, like the type you see in prisons. In each corner, there was a camera, allowing not even an ounce of privacy. “Parent,” They cut in, looking back at the creature. “What exactly are they?”
“I like to call it an Avionoid, as I was one of the main contributors to the initial study and analysis of it. The scientific name, however, is Pecerus afror.” Parent straightened their lab coat. “Whumpee, why don’t you come here and say hello?”
Caretaker’s attention was turned back to the creature, who slowly pushed to their feet, and even more hesitantly walked over to where Parent stood. Parent roughly clapped a hand over the creature’s shoulder, and they winced much more than they should have, Caretaker noted with a frown.
They weren’t that tall, maybe five foot one or two, with buzzed short hair. So close, Caretaker could see the faint markings in their skin, a light gray pattern against a natural ashen hue. It’s eyes were dark, quite so they couldn’t tell if they were brown or black, or another color entirely.
“Hello.” The creature repeated, it’s voice slightly raspy, sounding like it hadn’t spoken in a while.
“Hey,” Caretaker breathed, watching how the creature shook under Parent’s hand. “Are you- are you okay?”
“Why of course it’s okay,” Parent laughed. “This is a building full of doctors, it couldn’t be better!”
“I mean, they look scared,” Caretaker hated speaking as if the thing wasn’t right there in between them.
“Oh, that’s just nerves. It hadn’t met anyone new in a while.” Parent roughly patted the creature’s shoulder, and it but it’s lip, barely holding back a whimper. It was obvious something was very, very wrong.
“Why are they trapped in here? You guys could at least give it something to do,” Caretaker shifted their weight back and forth between each foot.
“Believe me, it has plenty to do all day. These avionoids are easily overstimulated by things such as bright colors and loud noises. We wouldn’t want to risk that,” Parent shook their head. The creature looked at Caretaker with wide, pleading eyes, their bottom lip trembling, looking as if they were about to burst into tears.
“What happened to their wings?” Caretaker asked, not looking away from Whumpee.
“The poor thing is sick out of their mind. It rips out its own feathers. We don’t know why yet, but it looks like some sort of psychotic disorder unique to its own species,” Parent shrugged. “One more reason we have to be careful when attempting to replicate it, we don’t want any of the bad genes ruining our model.” The way they talked made it wound like they meant some car model, not an actual living creature. A creature who was injured and scared.
“Oops- Come on Caretaker, we have to get going now,” Parent released the creature, and motioned them towards the door, their phone buzzing in their pocket.
“Wait, Parent,” Caretaker thought quickly. “Could I stay just a bit longer? It’s so interesting, how it can speak and all of that, I want to study it some more.” They lied.
“We have everything you could ever want to know on hard drive, I’ll show you in my office-“
“I know, but that isn’t the same as actually being with it. You could head back to your office, and I could just stay with it for a bit?”
“I don’t know…” Parent looked back and forth between their phone, and their child. “I suppose so.”
“Thank you,” Caretaker took the remote as Parent handed it to them.
“Press this button if anything happens, you know what it does. The code to both doors is written on the back of the remote for when you want to leave. Don’t stay too long, it’s feeding time is soon. Come back to my office when you’re done,” Parent pulled them in for a quick hug. “I love you kiddo.”
“I love you too, Parent,” Caretaker echoed as Parent tapped in the code, and left the room. Only once the door slid shut, did Caretaker turn back to face the creature, who had returned to its corner.
“Please,” It whimpered. “I- I was good! Good, good! I was really good, pl-please,”
“What?” Caretaker froze.
“Please don’t, I was good,” The creature sniffled, it’s voice trembling.
“Don’t do what?” Caretaker asked, glancing at the remote in their hand.
“Please don’t shock me, please. Please,” The creature tucked it’s head under its wings.
“I- I won’t, I won’t shock you,” Caretaker slid the remote into their pocket, crouching down to the creature’s level. “I promise. Your name’s Whumpee, right?”
The creature peeked out, and shook its head.
“Nnn- I mean, yes, yes, yes it is. My name is Whumpee. Whumpee, Whumpee, Whumpee.” It offered a small, obviously forced smile. It’s teeth were oddly shaped, as if they had been sharp, but then filed down.
“What’s your real name?” Caretaker questioned, sitting down. Red flags were going off throughout their mind, something was seriously wrong here.
“I- I don’t know how to say it in your language. I- I’m sorry, please don’t do it.”
“I’m not going to shock you,” Caretaker repeated. “I promise. Can you try to say it?”
“Nn-no, I- I’m not- not, not, not allowed, not allowed.”
“Uh, okay… it okay,” Caretaker mumbled, resisting the urge to reach a hand out to the creature.
Whumpee whimpered, and curled their wings around themself, burying their face in their knees.
“What are they doing to you?” Caretaker whispered.
“Bad things.” Whumpee muttered, as their hands went to their wing, twisting and pulling at a feather until it came loose, letting it drift to the floor. “Bad, bad, bad things.”
They were anxious, that’s why they were pulling out their feathers. They were scared.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Caretaker’s heart nearly broke in two. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”
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