Craving Cassie

  Dr. Thompson succeeded in making Candace’s disappearance look like a runaway. He used her cell phone to post vague farewell messages to social media before deleting all her accounts. He then turned off the phone and destroyed it. When she was reported missing the following day he cooperated with the police. He told them that she was acting strangely. He told them about her new boyfriend and how the guy seemed shady to him. He also told them how often she had told him that she wanted to get away from this place. 

A detective came back a few days later. 

“Dr. Thompson,” he said, “I need to ask you some more questions about the disappearance. We have been looking for clues and questioning Candace’s friends. We have some evidence to suggest that she may have had some ‘runaway’ warning signs. However, we weren’t able to corroborate what you said about her having a new boyfriend.”

“That’s odd,” Dr. Thompson said, “she seemed quite enamored to me.”

“Do you have any idea as to why she would keep that secret from her friends?” he asked. 

“Well,” Dr. Thompson said pausing for a moment, “She may have been embarrassed. I got the impression that he was a lot older than her. And he certainly wasn’t a clean-cut gentleman from her descriptions.”

“I see,” the detective replied, “And you saw her out of the building?”

“Right,” Dr. Thompson said. 

“Did you notice anything, anything at all that was off or unusual that night?” he asked, “No matter how small.” 

“I didn’t,” Dr. Thompson answered, “It was just a typical night of research.”

“Okay,” he said, “The police chief told me that he and the mayor wanted this question answered. I don’t understand, but they said you would. Does this have anything to do with ‘you-know-what’?”  

“You can tell him that it does not,” he said.

“Well,” he said, “I think her disappearance is likely to be classified as a ‘runaway.’ Our profilers don’t seem to think she is in any danger of being killed, if she did run away with her boyfriend. Since she is an adult she can’t be forced to return anyway. The case is probably going to remain open, because things don’t perfectly fit together, but the department won’t be putting many resources into the investigation once it’s classified.”

“I hope she’s safe as your people think she is,” Dr. Thompson said, “I think this guy is probably just a sugar-daddy tied up in drugs or something. She’s a smart girl and I don’t think she’d shack up with a serial killer.”

“Thank you for your time, Dr. Thompson,” he said, “I appreciate your help in this matter.”

Dr. Thompson’s next priority was finding the snake a meal and researching its eating habits. He made a plan to find a subject for his first test. First, he sent out an email to every female student at the university who had come from out of state. In it he said he was looking for test participants for an important and secret project. The payment for those who took part was $10,000 off of tuition cost, which was ridiculous, but he needed to make sure he caught as many women’s attention as he could. 

Attached to this email was a survey he asked anyone interested to fill out as well as an agreement not to disclose any information about this research until a study is published. With this initial survey he found out which of the women had a strained or broken relationship with their parents. From this he did another survey to narrow the prospective field of women to those who were not in contact with their families. 

He sent out several rounds of these surveys until he had a small group of women to choose from. They had broken all ties with where they came from and didn’t have many people in town that would miss them.

His goal in the coming months was to find out what the snakes preferences were for eating. His first experiment would be to test if the snake preferred to eat humans given its previous diet. He was going to have the snake choose between a deer and a human. He was going to have the deer unconscious and the human awake and alive. If the snake goes for the human rather than the easy meal it would show that it had developed tastes rather than going for the easiest meal.

He had decided on who he wanted to use as his test subject. It was a girl named Cassidy though she preferred Cassie. She was 23-years old, a senior at the university and originally from the south. She hadn’t contacted her parents since the day she turned 18. She had been shunned by her family when she came out as bisexual when she was 17. She was kicked out on her 18th birthday and decided to come to college far from her home. 

She had never really gotten settled at the university though. She drifted from social group to social group. Oftentimes, she would be befriended by her partner’s friends only to lose them once the break-up happened. She was single at the moment and had very little social life to speak of and since it was summer she didn’t even have classes to be around other people. She’d had a full time job at a department store, but was let go after some poor sales weeks. She worked some temporary jobs, but she was struggling to find a new permanent job. 

Dr. Thompson had met her for an ‘interview’ to find out all those details. He told her the study had to do with ‘Human fear response’ and the payment was so generous because of the possibility of lingering effects. She agreed to be a part of the study; it would pay for all of her last year of college and she doubted anything that could be done in a study could actually scare her. He told her when and where to meet him and that she should dress ‘business casual.’

Dr. Thompson walked out and saw Cassie walking towards him quickly. She wore a knee length brown skirt, a while button up shirt and brown flats. Her straight blonde hair fell past her shoulders and she wasn’t wearing the glasses he’d seen her in before. 

“Good Morning, Cassie,” he said.

“Good morning,” she replied as she followed him into the building. 

“Pretty warm out there already,” he said.

“Yea,” she said, “I’m not looking forward to going back out when I’m done here.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “Hopefully we’ll be done quickly.”

“That’d be nice,” she said.

The rules were changed to allow Dr. Thompson to let someone into the research area without having to have them go through the whole signing-in process. He had done that quite intentionally. Having no evidence of her coming in would make it simpler when she doesn’t come back out. He showed her into the research area. He’d had a giant curtain installed to block the view of the snake that the room had before. He’d justified it by saying he could involve more experts in his research, if the snake could be hidden from view and with the budget the project had been given it wasn’t a problem. 

He sat down at one of the desks in that area and motioned for Cassie to sit across from him. He gathered some papers. It was a bullshit contract he’d drawn up, but he wanted the people to feel like it was a safe and professional environment until they were shoved in with a gigantic snake. 

“I’ll need you to sign this for me,” he said, “Basically, it says that you are not allowed to say anything about this until the study is published. You’ve already signed a similar agreement, but we figured we would throw it into this one as well. Also, you agree to not sue. On our end we agree to keep your information strictly confidential. We also agree to pay for any medical bills should you suffer psychological trauma.”

She looked it over once and gave her signature. Dr. Thompson signed below hers. 

“Alright,” he said, “when you are ready I’ll show you to the testing area.”

“I’m ready,” she answered. 

“You will be shown frightening stimuli,” he said, “I’ll have to hook up some medical equipment so we can see your brain activity. Also, they’ll be a few more sensors to monitor your body temperature, perspiration, heart rate, et cetera. Do you mind having that equipment on you?”

“No,” she said, “That’s fine. I don’t mind.”

“Okay,” he said, leading her through the first set of doors, “It’ll take me a second to get this door unlocked. Fancy high-security technology stuff.”

He gave a fingerprint, an eye scan and entered a numeric code. The door unlocked, he opened it and allowed Cassie to go through first. She did and as soon as she had entered she heard the door close and lock. She then realized that she was alone. 

“What the hell?” she said. 

She wondered if this was part of the test. She turned back to the door and tried the handle. It didn’t open. Her attention was brought back to the room when she heard a thud behind her. She turned and saw a deer had been what hit the ground. She panicked a bit; that didn’t make sense and she realized that this guy might just be a lunatic with a doctorate. 

“Let me out,” she said loudly, “I don’t want to do this anymore. Open the d….”

Then she saw the large snake moving towards her. She screamed and ran from it. She did have anywhere to go really, but she ran around the enclosure. The snake followed her. It was surprisingly quick and so large that it was easily closing in on the fleeing woman. Tears streamed down her face as she ran and looked over her shoulder at the monster. 

The snake lunged at her. She jumped at the last minute and managed to dodge the bite. However, she came down awkwardly with one foot landing on the snake and she fell to the ground. There was a searing pain in her ankle and she heard a pop. She tried to get up quickly, but as soon as she put weight on her ankle she went down again. The snake was ready to pounce on its injured prey. 

“You are helping me find out that this truly is a human-eating snake,” he said into a microphone which played in the enclosure, “It’s unfortunate for you, but the research is needed. And you won’t be the only one, if that’s any consolation.”

She had managed to sit up as she heard the doctor’s words. Suddenly, her world went dark. Her head was in the snake’s mouth and the weight of the serpent forced her to lay back down. She started to fight. It was painful, but she was fighting to survive. She tried to twist away from the snake. She struggled and did everything she could think of to get free, but soon her shoulders and breasts slid into the snake’s mouth. 

She kicked off her shoes one right after the other as she did have much else to do but kick. Her toenails were painted purple. Dr. Thomson watched as her purple toe nails flailed in the air. He wondered if she could’ve ever imagined what was happening to her while she painted her toenails. Her stomach and waist slid into the snake. Her skirt had risen up her thighs and she continued to kick her legs moving it further up. 

Her muffled screams from inside the serpent could barely be heard. When her knees were swallowed she lost the ability to kick. The pain had returned to her injured ankle and she couldn’t stand to move her ankle any longer. She gave up as her lower legs and feet went limp. They were consumed by the snake. 

The snake moved to a spot it found comfortable and several minutes later Dr. Thompson entered the enclosure. He grabbed her shoes and walked out. He would dispose of those along with her purse and the phony contract he had her sign. He also would need to call the Division of Wildlife and have them release the deer into the wild. 

It was obvious that the snake had developed a preference with its meals. He hadn’t designed the thing to have any particular malice towards or hunger for humans. He had created a giant monster, because he could. He wanted something big that would be an attraction and make him famous, but now if the truth got out he would be infamous. It was his creation, which made him proud and also endeared him to the snake. His main goal was to keep both their asses out of trouble.