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The Prion: A Short Story

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The Prion – An Excerpt
“His condition was never going to improve, they all knew that; how long did they intend to sustain this absurd façade?” he asked rhetorically, idly sifting through the sea of white documents strewn out before him.
He looked up to see a worried face, adjusted the small black-framed glasses that rested upon his wrinkled nose, and scoffed. “Well, it’s out there now. They’ll all know soon enough,” the worried-looking man stated.
“Without a doubt, they will claim it is my fault,” he added, gesturing with a flick of the wrist to the man across him, “he’s to blame, that one there-” he pointed, extending a slim finger to the worried man, “-the one with the face.”
Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he picked up one of the documents in front of him, and sighed with a heavy heart before beginning …show more content…
What are you-” the man in white paused as shards of a broken mirror were crunched underfoot, “-what’s happened here?”
“I let it ou-,” he choked, reaffirming himself, “him out, it’s out there, Benoit.”
Benoit’s face grew pale and silence befell the room. Only four words managed to escape his trembling lips in the minutes after, “then God help us...”
“It’s over,” Gascoigne whispered, maintaining his composure. “We have to run away; it’s the only thing left to be done.”
“We?” Benoit questioned, raising a hand and gesturing towards him, “You’re the one who let it out.”
Gascoigne sighed and said nothing; he merely shook his head in response as he stepped passed the stern, white-coated man.
“So it’s already started…or perhaps it just ended. Well, no human will be alive to see the effect, that’s for sure,” he grimly stated as he opened the door, “It’ll spread unnoticed, reaching the far corners of the earth and then…” he paused and looked wistfully at the broken mirror.
“Perhaps even we were a prion at one point. So long,” Gascoigne added, and with that he slinked into the lit corridor and disappeared down the hallways, leaving Benoit in the

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