The Shea Hypothesis

Prologue1

Sergeant Michael Dante lay still in his hospital bed; the pain that wracked his body was betrayed by his stoic demeanor. He was a Marine, the last real men in a world of hustlers, pimps, drug addicts and deadbeat dads, and that meant he took his blows like a man, that is to say silently and without a drop of morphine. His legs screamed for relief, as did his right arm, which lay mangled in a cast by his side, but he just bit down and soldiered through. He had already told the doctors in no uncertain terms that if they impregnated him with even a drop of painkillers it would be the biggest mistake of their entire lives. Fortunately, there was a silver lining in all of this, his left arm felt fine; as a matter of fact it didn’t ache even in the slightest. 2

To try to forget the rest of his agonizing anatomy Michael tried to move his left hand, just to give himself something to do while he sat immobilized on his gurney. As he tried to make a fist he realized he couldn’t move his fingers, and as he tried to shift in his bed he found that his left arm wasn’t any help in moving his weight. He figured that it must just be a result of the sedative from surgery, it was starting to wear off, but the movement in many parts of his body was touch and go. As the hours went on he became more and more concerned with his inability to move his left arm, he couldn’t move his head to see what was wrong, and he knew if he opened his mouth to call for a nurse he would just end up screaming at the top of his lungs. 3

He slept most of the day away, trying his best to forget about his apathetic appendage. He knew the doctors would know what was wrong and he would ask them just as soon as he was confident he could talk without breaking down in tears. The most important thing to him right now was the tingle. Although he couldn’t move it or see it, a faint tingle in the left side of his body told him his arm was still there. A blinding pain reminded him the rest of his body was there, but all he needed was a tingle to tell him that he still had his left arm. 4

It was early the next morning when Michael felt he could muster the strength to call for a nurse without turning into an emotional basket case. When she arrived he asked her what was wrong with his left arm.5

“What?” she asked, thoroughly bewildered by the question.6

“My arm, the left one, I can’t move it, I can feel a little tingle in it, but I can’t even seem to make a fist,” he said, nonplussed by her reaction to his question. Just then, as she opened her mouth to answer, a memory came screeching into his head. Phantom pain. He had heard the term before, but it didn’t strike him as relevant until now. When a limb is amputated you can still feel the limb there, sometimes as a faint pain, other times as no more than a tingle. He couldn’t even hear her response. He just started to cry. “Fuck composure,” he thought to himself; amputees, Marine or not, are entitled to a few tears. It took him forever to fall back to sleep, but when he did his dreams were wracked by apocalyptic images. Limbs were chasing him, trying to kill him, he screamed for help but no sound could be heard in the infinite vacuum of his nightmares. When they found him the next morning his throat had been slashed with glass from his drinking cup; it was ruled a suicide.7

18

Karl Loyd hated his life. He was a subpar chemist and, because of this, he thought, a subpar son. His father, Dr. Graham Loyd had been a Fellow at the Royal Academy of Science, a professor at Harvard, and a Nobel Laureate. Karl filled prescriptions. He spent his nights trying to uncover the secrets of obscure biochemical reactions and phenomena. For his six years of work in this field the prematurely grey Loyd had succeeded in only three things: First, he had been thrown to the curb by his wife of twelve years, second, he had estranged himself from his father, and third, he had been forced to declare bankruptcy, twice. As he sat in his study, as he liked to refer to his apartment’s cell-like bathroom. He contemplated the options left to him.9

The obvious choice, for the despondent Loyd, was suicide. He thought long and hard about how to increase his lot in life, how to reconcile with his wife and father, and how to make something of himself. He couldn’t help but think that somehow he could make a difference. All this despite the fact that he was a pale, bordering on malnourished, 43 year old with a bad haircut and an even worse smell. Having finally decided, after about two hours of introspection, to take his own life, he entered his bedroom, went into his closet and searched the top shelf for his pistol. As he moved some blankets to the side, looking for the gun, his hand bumped into an old Bell jar, sending it to the floor with a crash. As he looked down he became even more depressed, it was the preserved hand he had stolen from an amputee who had decided to keep his lost limb for sentimental reasons. It had been a wonderful curio that Karl loved to take out when with company he deemed worthy, which amounted to almost anyone who came to visit, with the exception of his birthday hooker.10

After leering at the shattered glass and formaldehyde preserved hand for almost ten minutes, Karl finally decided that he would like to have the hand, which he was fond of referring to as his “roommate,” by his side when he finished himself off. So he went about cleaning up the floor of his closet, scooping up bits of glass and mopping up embalming fluid. Then, after drying it off, he placed the disembodied hand on his bed. As he shuffled around his apartment, making sure that everything was just right for his coup de grace, Karl began to think that the hand was moving around his bed. He might have thought it was the puppy he used to keep in the apartment with him, dragging the hand and disappearing as he approached, but she died a while ago. He paid no attention to this, though. He was certain it was his mind punishing him in advance for removing it from its secure bone case and placing it all over his sheets.11

Finally, he was ready, the time was right. He waited for midnight, sitting naked on the edge of his bed when, to his horror, the hand jumped in his lap and took a big handful of Karl. As it started stroking, like a passionate Latin lover, he grabbed it and painfully ripped it off of the Loyd family jewels. His bloodcurdling screams rang throughout the apartment and, surely, the whole building, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. After a minute or so he threw the hand to the ground and started stomping it, but it still moved, even as its bones snapped and blood poured from the unattached wrist. At long last Karl started firing at it with the gun that he had planned to kill himself with. The palm of the hand was destroyed but the fingers still attempted to move. Then, in spite of the horror taking hold of every fiber of Karl’s being, he had an idea. This may just be his chance to uncover some amazing new chemical reaction. So, as he sat nude on his blood stained shag carpet, Karl began to laugh joyously, and that is just how the police found him twenty minutes later. 12

213

For nearly two years Karl Loyd sat in his prison cell, the soft light coming from his window providing him little comfort. His thoughts were plagued by the memories of that fateful night. He couldn’t get the image of that hand out of his mind. He knew what he had seen, even if the police were too stupid to believe him. After they had taken him away and crime scene investigators had come to collect evidence they found no disembodied hand, just a large patch of bullet holes in his apartment floor. The next day, when he had finally come to his senses he was certain they couldn’t hold him for long, after all, he had only put a few holes in the floor. They had no case to make based on the possession of human remains, because, according to them, there were no human remains. This revelation, however, was quickly torn asunder when an officer had come into the holding cell at the police station and read him a new and very disconcerting charge; murder. The gun shots that he had fired through his floor had gone right down into the apartment below, and into the head of the residents’ seven year old grandson.14

So in his cell he stewed, knowing he could never be free, going through the motions of each passing day, trying to find a way in which he could finish the job that had originally led him to this place. Each time he tried he was put under close surveillance, it had even been suggested that he be moved to a mental hospital until he was no longer a danger to himself, but the powers that be were less than enthusiastic about protecting the life of a child killer. Then, one Friday night, as he was watching television in the prison common room, he saw the news story that he thought would set him free. An Iraq war veteran who had suffered massive injuries in a car bombing in Fallujah had taken his own life in his hospital bed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. What was strange about this suicide, however, was not the means of death or even the motive; the young man had suffered terrible burns and even the amputation of his left arm. What struck the police as odd about this killing was that the glass used to kill the Marine had finger prints from his own left hand all over it, the hand that was, at the time, supposed be in a freezer on the other side of the building. A technology expert had dismissed this to a glitch in the Federal database occurring when prints taken from the shard of glass used to kill the victim had been run through the computer. With the circumstances all pointing to suicide and no other prints being found on the glass, the reporter said, it was decided by the authorities to simply close the case and leave the Marine’s already grieving family alone.15

After watching the report Karl’s eyes were wrenched open, he couldn’t believe it; another moving arm. The rest of the prison seemed to take the explanation of a glitch in the system as nothing strange. “Fucking cops can’t do anything right,” another inmate chuckled to himself, but Karl knew better. Apart from being just a chemist, his father was also a respected expert in computers and criminal justice and had been handpicked to help design the computer system used to store fingerprints and other crucial data on criminals across the United States. If his dad had designed it, he begrudgingly admitted to himself, it must work. More than once he had gotten a firm beating for his wild conspiracy theories and rants about disembodied limbs so he kept his thoughts to himself, but he knew what he had to do, he had to call his father. 16

317

It was almost 10 in the morning when the phone started ringing in the master bedroom of Loyd Manor in Cardiff, Wales. Graham Loyd and his mistress, Candy, had already fucked twice since they woke up. For a man of 72, Loyd had the libido of a 24 year old German porn star. Candy wasn’t so thrilled, but she liked the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. All it took to end this relationship was one instance of sexual failure; she had to be on her game every minute of every day if she wanted to keep her sports car and hot tubs. Graham sat up and turned to the table next to his bed, to look at the caller ID. When he saw it was the prison where his good for nothing son was being kept he just grunted and turned away.18

“Baby, get the phone,” he said apathetically, in a deep Welsh accent. She just looked at him for a second, as if to say “I’m not your servant.” “Baby, did you hear me,” he asked brusquely. Not wanting to start a fight, she got up and walked over to the blaring telephone.19

“What,” she said, with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man asking for ketchup for his last meal.20

“Who is this,” barked Karl. 21

“It’s your new mom, sugar,” she said, having decided to have some fun with the little prick. In response to this Graham ripped the phone out of her hand. Before speaking to Candy he covered the receiver so Karl couldn’t hear him.22

“I never, and I mean never, want to hear you say anything like that again. Never say a goddamn thing that ever equates you to my wife. You’re not my wife, and you never will be, you’re the stripper that sleeps with me, do you understand,” said Graham odiously. 23

“I’m sorry honey, I was just-” she began.24

“I don’t want to hear it, whore, now just answer me this, do you understand,” he asked again.25

“Yeah, of course,” she said, beginning to get frightened.26

“Good, now make my breakfast,” said Graham, at that Candy quickly and quietly got up and left the room. Graham lifted the phone up to his ear, only to hear Karl yelling obscenities on the other end. “Is that any way to talk to your father?”27

“What the hell? Dad,” said Karl, thoroughly taken aback.28

“Your damn right it is, now what do you want?”29

“Dad, I have to talk to you about something, you know that fingerprint database you set up for the American government? Well I just saw a new report relating to a ‘glitch in the system’,” said Karl.30

“Fucking impossible, I set it up myself,” said Graham, thoroughly disinterested.31

“Sorry to tell you dad, but they found took some prints off of a piece of glass some Marine supposedly used to kill himself, and the prints on it were from his left hand,” said Karl, dangling the final, crucial detail just out of reach.32

“So, what does that mean, so he uses his left hand to kill himself and it must means there’s a problem with my programming,” asked Graham, starting to get pissed off.33

“Dad, he was in the hospital for injuries sustained during a roadside bombing, one of which involved that very arm being amputated,” said Karl, matter-of-factly. 34

Graham was silent for what seemed like an eternity. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His son was a good for nothing punk and an attention whore, but on the other hand this would be far from the strangest thing the old scientist had ever heard. For a minute or two he thought of any possible explanation for this, first for a logical one to shove up his son’s ass, then, for anything that made the unlikely scenario that limbs were coming back to life and killing their owners even feasible. Dr. Loyd reached into the drawer of his bedside table and pulled out a half finished cigar. He wasn’t what one would call a chain smoker, but it helped him think. As the silence on the phone grew greater, so did his confusion. Then it hit him, the Shea Hypothesis. 35

“Dad,” asked Karl, a little concerned at his father’s pause, which, considering its length, was starting to portend any number of frightening scenarios, from stroke to abduction by eco-terrorists. At that Graham was brought back to Earth.36

“The Shea Hypothesis, something that a friend of mine, Dr. Mike Shea, came up with at the Mount Eagle Research Institute.” said the elder Loyd finally, “A hypothetical scenario wherein a recessive gene all people of European decent carry suddenly becomes dominant, most likely because of a massive change in environment like gratuitous pollution or global warming. The gene will cause our bodies to produce relatively harmless, but totally unique bacteria that act as a parasite to dead pieces of the flesh that spawned it.”37

“So if a person producing this bacterium were to lose their arm, the arm could become active again, through these parasites,” said Karl.38

“Yes, but the really frightening thing is that the bacteria act as a colony, and are incredibly vicious and intelligent. In an effort to preserve their life span they attempt to kill their original creator, so as to take hold of the body. The problem for the bacteria is that they are too weak to take control of a whole body and, without their proper food source, die quickly. This doesn’t mean, however, that they don’t have time to kill their creator and, theoretically, escape.39

“Unfortunately the bacteria are almost impossible to detect, too small to be seen, and even if we could extract them from a subject, they can’t survive outside of the flesh of their host for more than a few seconds,” said Graham. As he explained this all to his son the more and more dumbfounded he became. On the one hand the Shea Hypothesis was the only thing he had ever encountered outside of a horror movie that could explain a recently amputated hand coming to life and killing its previous owner, but then again, the whole thing was starting to sound like a horror movie (and a bad one at that) in the process. 40

“Dad, what do these bacteria eat,” asked Karl, having what may have been the first legitimate stroke of genius in his entire life. 41

“Why does that matter,” asked Graham.42

“Dad, the night I was arrested, for killing that little boy, I was shooting at a disembodied moving hand. My neighbor had to have it amputated after a car accident and decided to keep it, some kind of morbid souvenir. Well, one day I was over his house complaining about his punk son banging up my car. Well one thing led to another and I sort of stole the hand. That night I knocked the jar it was being preserved in off of my shelf. The hand had been amputated years before, but it still moved around like a madman,” said Karl.43

“Shot in the dark here, it was preserved in formaldehyde, right,” said Graham, his suspicions all but confirmed.44

“Yeah, how’d you know,” asked Karl.45

“Well beside the fact that it’s the most popular method of preserving dead human flesh outside of Egypt,” said Graham, trying to claw his way through the almost religious reverence he had for the stupidity of his son’s question, “The chemical combination of formaldehyde is the only thing, besides their own waste, these things can feed on.”46

“So that mean’s the Shea Hypothesis is correct, right” asked Karl hopefully “That’s a good thing isn’t it, I mean Dr. Shea had to have a solution for this, right?”47

“Son, do you know what a Doomsday Theory is,” asked Graham.48

“Of course,” responded his son, as his heart sank in mind blowing, almost paralyzing fear.49

“Well, you’re standing smack dab in the middle of one.”50

451

Karl Loyd couldn’t believe what he had just heard, it was just too surreal. He know he didn’t have much time left with the phone, and line of rather muscular men who had not been among women in many years was growing behind him. He couldn’t think of any response to what his father had just told, he just stood silent for some time until, finally, he just hung up the phone.52

Karl wasn’t sure whether to cry, laugh, or piss himself. He was surer now than ever that he wanted to die. He hadn’t bothered to ask his father the nature of the impending doomsday, but it didn’t really matter, he wanted to die alone, not in some great apocalypse obliterating him and everything else on Earth in single blast. He left the bank of phones on the far wall of the prison yard and began walking around. He needed to die, but there was no foreseeable way wherein he could accomplish this task. He just walked around lamenting his group death, forsaking the opportunity to get a firm, if not lethal beating by proclaiming the coming Armageddon to his fellow convicts. He just walked around sullenly waiting to be called back to his cell.53

When he finally reached his cell he noticed that it smelled sterile. It was like an incredibly strong, industrial strength Lysol. He smelled the small cell, trying to figure out where exactly the stink was coming from. Eventually he realized it was his toilet. The small metal bowl had been cleaned that day and in it the sanitation crew had left a fair amount of the putrid liquid they used to clean the place up in sitting in the water, just asking to be gulped right down by any inmate not entirely satisfied with his lot in life. Loyd had no cellmate, so all he needed to do was wait for nightfall and he’d finally be able to end it all without any meddlesome corrections officer doing something stupid liking him to the infirmary.54

This time he decided to forego the theatrical element of nudity and just got down in front of the cold metal basin and started gulping. Almost immediately he began to think that maybe he hadn’t thought this mode if death through so well, sure he’d die, but it wasn’t going to be a quick death. First, he began to feel like he was drowning, he couldn’t draw breath into his lungs. Then, before he blacked out, he could feel the lining of his throat start to rot away. Then, after about ten minutes of incredible pain, Karl slumped over and died in his cell.55

At around the same time his father was making a call to Chicago, Illinois. On the other end of the line was Dr. Mike Shea, tenured Chemistry professor at Northwestern University.56

“Hello,” answered Dr. Shea.57

“Hey, Mike, it’s Graham, um, I have to be quick about this, but do you remember the Shea Hypothesis,” asked Loyd.58

“Oh my God,” said Shea, choking back laughter “what was I thinking when I came up with that schlock?”59

“Mike, its coming true,” said Graham solemnly.60

“You’re out of your mind, Graham, how could the Hypothesis come true? It was dealing with a nonsensical moral warning, I only pitched it as a way of discouraging pollution,” said Shea, chuckling.61

“Well then you explain how my boy came to see a hand moving around the floor of his apartment,” demanded Graham.62

“Look, Graham, I don’t know how to explain that, but there is no way in hell that some old fucking limbs could ever just come to life and, um, what was the last bit of that nonsense,” asked Mike, apathetically trying to remember the rest of his long forgotten environmental fairytale.63

“They kill their old owners,” said Graham coldly.64

“How the fuck, especially considering all evidence to support this claim comes from your suicide case cunt of a son, could you believe this? You have a Nobel for God’s sake, even I don’t have one,” said Mike in disbelief of his old friend’s stupidity.65

“Well, there was this case of a guy, a Marine in Maryland, who killed himself with his left arm, an arm he had lost due to war injuries,” said Graham, growing desperate. “They ran the prints on the glass he cut his throat with through the database I designed, you telling me my son’s a fuck up and my system’s a dud?”66

“Now I wouldn’t question your work, you know I know better than that, Graham. But let me tell you about my brother Ryan, the one who’s on the board over at ExxonMobil. You remember that his business didn’t exactly start legitimately? Well, on his first arrest, when they went to take his prints, the moron processing him started having him mark his left prints on the paper for the right hand. When they take the personal info for the military they do it with a greater speed and less care than when they take prints for criminals. Let’s be honest, if it happened to my brother, do you really doubt it couldn’t happen to some Marine,” said Mike. Upon hearing this Graham began to feel like a perfect fool, how could he entertain, for even a second, the demented notions of his demented son?67

“God, Mike, how did I come to this,” asked Graham, sounding defeated. 68

“Don’t even worry about it, you’re a good dad, you just want to have some last good memory of your son,” said Mike. “I don’t blame you, he killed a child, but you can’t bring yourself to hate him, so you need to justify any fleeting love. He ain’t a bad kid, He should be in an asylum, not a prison. That poor boy didn’t mean to kill anyone, except for a hand, apparently. Give him a call, and get him some help, okay.”69

“Alright, well, it was good talking to you, Doc Shea,” said Graham, smiling miserably to himself.70

“You know I hate it when you call me that,” said Mike. “Well take care, Graham, and look after that son of yours.”71

Epilogue72

The next week was a blur for Dr. Graham Loyd. First he heard the news that his son had taken his own life in a particularly brutal fashion. Then he received the autopsy results, the poor young man had been suffering from a malignant brain tumor, one which had been growing for almost three years. In a way it had come as a relief for the old chemist. The coroner had told him it had likely caused intermittent delusions, which could have triggered the onset of schizophrenia. After getting off the phone with the boys down at the morgue Loyd began to feel slightly like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, but just then a new one fell hard upon him. He realized that it had likely been his Doomsday prophecies that had led to his son’s suicide. He just sat on his bed, looking at the floor. When Candy had come into check on him he had beat her savagely, before kicking her out of the mansion. 73

Graham then made an executive decision; he would make amends for his son’s death in the most fitting way possible. He would lop of his own hand; a blood sacrifice to God. So he slowly went into his huge, chrome, kitchen. He went into his massive knife set and found a blunt instrument, something to make the amputation count. He went over to the cutting board and, biting down on his wallet, he got to work. It took almost a half hour to remove his left hand. After his grisly work was done he collapsed to the floor, hoping to bleed out through the fresh stump. Alas, his death was to come that day, but not through the means he intended. As he sat gushing blood onto the checkered, linoleum floor, his hand started to move. It turned towards him and, with the ferocity of a serial killer, it throttled the last breath out of Dr. Graham Loyd. 74