Sold as a Crow

A group of co-workers sat around together, as they prepare their three-martini lunch break of the day for their hard work, having chosen a relaxing spot to sit in. They lifted their glasses in cheers, trying to relax and clear their mind after their long trip home. Their voices, were for the most part lost, as they had been sworn under policy not to discuss what they had done.

Distant booming of thunder fills the air as lightning cracks through the darkening sky; an ominous warning of a storm incoming. With their policy notwithstanding, they solemnly spoke to each other aside from unrelated events and the occasional failed attempt at a joke that was laughed at rather than with. Despite bearing heavy hearts, they were rest assured that the outcome of the tests would be able to give their country a needed push in the War, at least that was what they were led to believe.

But overseas, all hell had already broke loose.

---

As a piercing screech rings out somewhere in the distance, one of their fellow agents who had been tasked with writing down the results in the tested village was confused, but curious at what the commotion was. He sat back in silence for a few before he reached over to pick up a pen and paper to document the results of their experimentation. As he rose his slumped body up, he walked on the dusty road to investigate the noise until he saw a woman propping herself up against the side of a building, bleeding. His eyes blinked a few times as he watched the woman continuously scratch at her arms while screaming loudly. Obvious fear could be heard in her shrieks, he would take note later.

After studying her. the reporter tried to write about how she almost seemed to be trying to claw at imaginary insects before taking a few steps back as a man jumps from a high ledge just a few feet to the side of him, nearly falling over as he does with wide eyes. The fallen man's head was twisted at an unnatural angle as he had dropped on his neck with a loud snap when it made contact with the hard ground. Small, but distinguishable plopping of raindrops would ripple the crimson-colored liquid that was slowly pooling around the man's head. The storm was coming.

As the agent looked back up at the woman, he realized that she had been scratching at her arms for a longer period of time than he had previously thought, her face scrunched up in a mask pain as a ghastly flash of white bone could be seen through the folds of her flesh and skin. At the sight of that, the man runs over to a corner to void his stomach as he listened to the woman screaming at him to get "them" off.

After wiping the excess vomit from his mouth, he finally looks up to watch a horrendous sight. He bared witness as the frenzied village-folk were being thrown into a state of mass hysteria. He managed to resist the urge to heave once more as he watched in awe as people dropped from roof to roof, spreading their arms out as if they were trying in vain to take flight, while others were merely pushed off by the mobs in vast confusion. Broken men, weeping families and corpses lay alike across the street, while others were huddled in corners with bleeding bodies. Some had crawled to a fetal position under the shroud of shadows, rocking back and worth in their insanity.

The publisher could do little else but gawk at the madness unfolding around, before the spell was broken as one of his friends pulled him out of the dreamlike trance.

"What the FUCK is going on!?" the man frantically asked the other as he led him to a safer, less chaotic area.

"It's hell on Earth," said the agent in a quiet, hushed tongue. He looked around weakly once more at the chthonic landscape once more with the rotting stench of iron and death entering his nasal. The scavengers take flight from the air, as ants and maggots crawl up the dead and the good-as-dead alike. He blacked out on the spot.

---

Straitjackets were fastened tightly around those who were deemed uncontrollable, leaving them to rot in padded cells under lock and key. In the midst of only a few days, sanitariums were being filled to the brim with fresh inmates belonging to what was once a peaceful, quiet town. They lashed out in their beds, the Serpent's venom remaining in their system as the acid had already corroded their poor minds.

In time, the air was cleared and the drinking water of the village was, eventually, decontaminated. As terrifying as the events had been, the inhabitants had little to no choice but to simply move on. Most of the meek-minded had never known that they were simply guinea pigs in an experiment gone wrong, pawns of their game; any who realized that they had were either too cowardly to speak up or were stricken to silence by the operators.

The C.I.A. quickly gathered together to try to discuss how they could successfully cover up the horrifying events that had unfolded. A "Stormy Epidemic" was what they called the results of their failed test. A test that had cost the lives of seven and traumatized far more. In order to make sure that none of this information was leaked, the C.I.A. resulted in destroying the evidence of the crime lest their MKUltra project would be revealed to the public eye; the black swan sold as a crow.

Written by FlakyPorcupine