Dr. Zoome and the Mad Scientists - Draft 2

The tape. The story of the tape. The story of the tape is the story of Dr. Zoome and the Mad Scientists.

It all starts deep in the forest, and not in some witch hut or science lab in a garage, but a place a little more familiar: along the beaten path, but slightly off of it at the same time. It was on this path that Dr. Lomax Zoome, on one of his daily constitutionals (which invariably involved him stroking his chin as he strolled, eyes to the sky, not directly ahead of him) started to stray slightly from the given trail and soon found the path of his vision hurtling groundward...along with his whole body. For he had tripped. On a tape. The tape.

It took a minute or two and an exclamation ("man alive!") or three for him to realize what had happened. For his eyes to find the tape. Immediately he was struck with a sense of profundity, yet he could not understand this sudden gravity, only that it weighed immensely on his second heart and forced all attention, all consciousness really, to the black cassette that lay just near his left foot. The black tape. With the gray sticker. Dr. Zoome moved slowly, as if not to scare it away, and gently picked it up. As he did, he noticed a bizarre inscription, but couldn't read it, for it was in a language he had never seen before. And he knew every language, from French to Farsi, for he was, after all, Dr. Zoome. But this language was a new kind of foreign.

So, naturally, the first thing he did was bring it to the witch. The witch was as scary a sight as any, a balding, bespectacled hag named Raken. But she was tapped into a dark knowledge that showed her things mere mortals, even mere mad scientists, would never be able to discover on their own. Raken took the tape into her hands, held it in up in the air, took a good look at it and then...screamed.

"What is it, Raken?!" questioned Dr. Zoome.

"This tape...this tape..." Raken was soon cut off as, holding the tape, her head flung back and she went into a deep trance, her gray eyes suddenly flooded with black.

In a deep, inhuman voice she added, a few moments later, "The tape. The tape stays with you. The tape..."

"Yes?" asked Dr. Zoome, heart pounding.

"The tape is you."

Before the good doctor could ask anything further, the witch's head fell forward and, not looking up, she handed the tape back to him, once more stating, back in her own voice, "The tape is you."

"...But where did it come from?"

Raken looked up, eyes gray again and as she opened her mouth to speak, she let out another scream before fading into black smoke and then disappearing completely.

Dr. Zoome stood there for a few minutes before coming to a private realization and turning around to leave the hut and head home to the science lab in his garage.

Months went by before anyone in the nearby town heard from Dr. Zoome again. In and out of the lab came a small group of familiar faces: Veit Ignatius and Gustaf St. Gabriel, fellow exchange students and, eventually, college dropouts, and Father Francis Fogarty of the local church. The man of the cloth often left in great distress and the dropouts, also musicians of sorts, often looked half alive whenever they lurched out, usually near three in the morning.

Back at the pub, Veit and Gustaf would be pressed for details by drunk townies, and they'd respond only with scared eyes and weird murmurings about how "we all messin' with somethin' powerful. We ain't in control. We ain't in control. Things ain't right. God help us all."

One of these townies happened to be a fledgling record exec, Robert Rinehart, who developed an even deeper curiosity than his many partners in inebriation. So one night he followed Veit and Gustaf back to garage lab in the woods, awkwardly darting behind trees as he stalked the dropouts. Once they were inside mysterious garage, Rob was alone in the cold night. As he crept ever closer to the building, the silence of the evening gave way to the sensation of sound pounding through the ground and up through his chest. By the time he was against the wall, he could no longer tell if what he felt was rumbling sound waves or his heart discovering new limits of deep, rapid percussion.

Peering through the small, dirty window, he could see only blurs jamming blob-like instruments and bolts of electricity storming the private sky of the garage. Squinting to achieve better perception, his eyes soon opened wide again as a silhouette passed alarmingly close to the window. Rob then ducked out of sight and, after he heard the most inhuman cackle that his hearing could ever hear, he bolted home.

Bolted straight through the door of his house, slamming it locked behind him. He then flew into his bed and flung the covers over his head.

And his night was still far from over.

In the deepest bang and blame of REM sleep mind trips, he found himself floating in white space. The fear of earlier had not yet subsided but it was now mixed with an incongruous comfort. It was like an excitement teasing at the edges of absolute terror while nestled in your favorite blanket. Soon, he was not alone. Falling to his knees from white oblivion, eyes to the ground, Father Francis Fogarty clasped his hands and began mumbling nervously, quietly.

"Father?" Rob urged with a swallow.

Father Fogarty looked up, eyes not so much gone as...transparent. Through the father's eyes, Rob could see only further white oblivion.

"Dear child of the light, there is something you must have," said the holy man in a tremulous voice.

"Something I must...have?" asked Rob, voice shaky and low.

"Something...I must give. Something that I must pass on before it is too late..."

Francis stopped and looked over his shoulder. "I haven't much time. This," he said, turning back and producing the tape, "Does not belong to me. The tape is not me. The tape...is not me."

"Father, I don't understand..."

Father Fogarty placed the tape gently on the ground and looked once more over his shoulder. "They are coming. The tape is not theirs, either. Not anymore. The only way for us to ensure that it never disappears...that they don't ever take it back..." In the distance, they both heard the echoing, nearing drones of something speaking, shouting, but in no familiar tongue. "...The tape is not me. It is not them. It is," Fogarty tapped one finger to the tape, the bizarre lettering twisting and snapping until it formed an altogether new inscription. An inscription that read:

Dr. Zoome.

"The tape. The tape is him." Fogarty lowered his voice to a whisper as he stood. "Now go!"

Like a shrinking vortex, the white space was quickly sucked from Rob's field of vision and as he headed deeper back into the black, he swore he could hear a scream...

He then jolted awake in bed, shaking his head, laughing off the night sweats as nothing more than a crazy ass dream. He was comforted by this bullet train of thought until...until he saw the tape.
The tape on his night stand, nearly invisible wisps of black smoke trailing off of it.

Where did it come from? He didn't know. He only knew that it was now his responsibility. And that the tape was Dr. Zoome. And that the tape. The tape must be heard by all.