El Oso stretched his back and flexed his arms and legs as he sat up on the gurney. He rubbed his head to try and alleviate the massive headache that always followed his treatments—the headache and a voracious appetite. Standing, he pushed through the lab doors and headed to El Hombre Delgado's private offices.
"How are you feeling?" Delgado was peering into a microscope with his back to him as El Oso entered the lab. The Bear never understood how the doctor knew it was him. Perhaps nobody else dared enter the professor's lab uninvited. "Do you need something to eat?"
"I need some recreation." El Oso was as blunt as the need welling inside him. "Where are you keeping the rejects?"
"Lab 13. Let me warn you. The door only opens from the outside and they are running free in there. That way the problem seems to resolve itself over time." Delgado smiled a thin smile
After a short ride, El Oso approached an anti-septic white polymer fiber and frosted glass door identical to every other door in the underground lab. Chrome lettering above the door read: 13. His amygdala tingled with primal fear but the urge was too great to turn back. Pure fear made the impending experience more delicious. His body moved forward compelled by animal urges that he didn't try to understand.
El Oso cracked the door and the smell hit him straightaway—low and rank. Stimulated, he roared as he stepped in slamming the door closed behind him. The lab door opened into a natural cave, dank and dimly lit by the fluorescent light coming through the frosted glass lab door. He could hear dripping water running down the walls.
His ears registered skittering from every direction as the survivors of the nightmare sought shelter. Taking one ponderous step forward, his senses were stretched to the breaking point, his breathing short and shallow, almost hyperventilating—nothing moved for a long moment.
Something long and slimy dropped from the ceiling onto his back and, as if on cue, they all attacked at once. As the slimy creature encircled his neck, he smiled cruelly, his neck muscles bulging in resistance to the increasing pressure. He booted something that resembled a rat the size of a small dog to the other side of the cave.
A shadow the size and shape of a smallish bull separated itself from the wall behind him and kicked him viciously in the small of his back with two hoofed feet. Falling to his knees, fire was injected into the back of his neck causing him to claw frantically at the reptilian body strangling him.
A huge shape lumbered from across the cave where the rat had landed, shambling with an apish gait, the big boy raised two wooly arms and smashed them down on his shoulders jarring his spine. The mammoth pulled El Oso into a crushing embrace, its fetid breath reeking of spoiled meat, as it raised him into the air.
El Oso, reveling in the pain and fear, worked his fingers around the lithe body sending fire into his nervous system through his neck and tore it in two. Taking the still squirming halves, he pushed them into the large black squirrel eyes belonging to the beast that was crushing the life out of him. The reaction was instant: the beast dropped him. El Oso smashed a massive elbow onto the back of the bullock as he fell.
When he hit the ground, the rat was on him scratching at his eyes and biting. The Bear grabbed the little varmint in his right hand and smashed his fist still holding the rat into the flank of the bullock. He received an instinctive kick that doubled him over in return, but he didn't lose his grip on the rat. Rolling to his feet, he punched the gorilla, body, face, body, face, still holding the rat. The great lumbering giant was undone by the loss of his eyes. El Oso could smell the fear and he flew into a rage, savagely pummeling the creature until it lay limp. Tossing the rat aside. El Oso circled the bullock trying to get a look at its head.
In the dim light, El Oso thought he saw the silhouette of the upper torso of a man—a man with no arms. El Oso launched himself onto the back of the bullock and wrapped his hands around its throat, squeezing with all of his might. The animal brayed twice as it circled, bucking and kicking, trying to knock him off.
El Oso held on refusing to release his grip. He felt the animal's windpipe collapse. The bullock staggered and fell under him.
His adrenaline waning, El Oso pounded on the glass door. He couldn't hope to break the bulletproof glass, he only wanted to get someone's attention. He pounded for what seemed like hours as the fog grew in his mind. He fell to his knees just as the door opened and his head thumped on Delgado's shoes.
"I thought I should come check on you. I see you took some jellyfish venom. I'll be right back."
El Oso lay on the floor, eyes unfocused, gazing at the ceiling, reliving the pleasure moment by moment.