You’re Going to Love My Laboratory

I’m really glad you guys finally had the time to stop by and see the house. My real estate agent told me that it was kind of considered an eyesore by the Neighbors Association. Well, I think that with the improvements we’re planning—and the ones we’ve already made—you’ll no longer be ashamed to live next door to “that house,” as you guys call it.

Yes, Ted, I did all the wainscoting myself. Took quite a toll on the ol’ vertebrae, but I’m pretty pleased with the way it came out.

Say, Anne, did you notice the countertops when we were in the kitchen? Those are solid marble, direct from Italy. What’s that? Oh, I have some acquaintances over there and they were able to get me an excellent price on it.

Ted, you work for Pfizer, don’t you? I thought so. Well, I think you’re going to love my laboratory.

It’s still a little messy even though it was one of the first rooms we set up when we moved in. But between my various reanimation projects and the genetically-engineered “Manimals” that wander in and out, it’s kind of tough to keep it clean!

What’s that, you ask? Are you pointing to the cooling board or the muddy coffin? Well, Anne, that’s the freshly-exhumed corpse of a teenager who perished in a car accident. Horrible, indeed. I’m hoping to implant his virile heart—he was captain of the football team—into the body there over there on the examination table. In actuality, it will be a kind of back-up heart as the monster is so enormous he’ll require three hearts to properly circulate the blood.

Oh, don’t mind that howling. It’s merely the Manimals’ feeding-time. Normally I would keep them well-sated so that when I loose them to harvest victims for my experiments, they don’t kill indiscriminately. But for the past week I’ve been starving them as their blood-lust must be primed for the task I have in mind for them.

Gosh, sorry, Ted, I can’t tell you what it is. I mean, don’t you think that’s a little personal, asking me something like that? Maybe once we get to be better neighbors.

Now, in that tank to the left is the Octo-Shark. That’s right, Anne, it’s got tentacles like an octopus, but the body of a shark—a prehistoric shark, that is. One unlike any human being has ever seen. Five times as large—and countless times more vicious—than the great white shark.

Funny you should ask about the the name, Ted. Philippe wanted to call it the Shark-O-Pus, but I said absolutely no way. We’d be a laughing stock! No, Anne, that’s Oliver over there that resembles a walking cadaver. Philippe is my assistant with the hunchback and maniacal laugh.

Well, enough about them. Come on over to the serum table and I’ll show you what I administered to the previous owners to get them to sell me this house for one dollar!

No, Anne, I don’t think you have to get going now. There’s so much more to show you. The dog will be fine, as will your two lovely children. They have each other, and in more ways than you know. At this very moment Philippe and Oliver are bringing all three over so we can splice their DNA together.

Scream all you want. This laboratory is sound-proofed. I mean, do you really think I’d have a laboratory that wasn’t sound-proofed? Wow.

Don’t feel left out, Anne. I’m going to cross you with a panda and Ted is going to have the DNA of a mallard incorporated into his genetic code. Oh, not because I want to transform you into pitiless mutations who will obey my every command; I just think it’d be really fucking funny.

Well, and because I need more pitiless mutations who will obey my every command. So there is a practical side to my murderous experiments.