I stare at the strikingly clinical door in front of me, crowbar in hand. I'd had this place inspected before moving in, and there was no mention of it. Nor was it disclosed to me when the lawyer read the will in a businesslike monotone.

"And to David, my home." He described it at my request.

"A 2 story colonial just outside the city." paraphrased at least.

After months of living, I noticed subtle differences in the flooring of the home. It was an older house, new to me, with floorboards in need of an update. Some sections felt different than others once you walked them day to day. One spot was so much harder than the others. Loe(?) and behold, mysterious new doorway.

Now I'm prying it open. They release and slide smoothly, and I stumble with the sudden shift of momentum. Its dark, the entryway above me to this extension snuffing out any light. I shine my phone light and see a light switch. Flipping it on reveals nothing, theres no electricity on here. Maybe a breaker needs flipped on? A scan reveals the outline of a laboratory.

The best way to describe it might be... economical. A soft white tiled floor with a central drain. Tile walls too. The place looks like it's meant to be sprayed and cleaned constantly. Several areas are sealed off into little plastic cells. Inside those cells sit what... cages? Cages. In another area are equipment. You're not sure what they are exactly. Scientist stuff.

You approach the equipment. It's covered with a layer of dust and as you move it around you sneeze. Damn allergies are always so bad this time of year and I'd forgotten my medicine this morning. To drive home the point, my eyes start to itch and I can feel the redness spread through the white of them.

I start to loosely catalogue the items. Needles, some beakers and expensive looking machines and microscopes. It reminded me of my college chem lab, minus the incinerator and other more macabre items you begin to find alongside biohazard warnings.

I find several hazmat like suits hung in these areas as well. As I near the cages and an awful smell hits me like a wall. An odor of rot lingers and dread balls up in my stomach like a bowling ball and starts sinking into my lower interstines. I sneeze, making me inhale more and reach right after. Through watering eyes I see blurred figures, small in cages. I rub my eyes to clear them with the back of my free hand. I realize I'd never turned off the light and do so.

Looking back up I see dead birds and mice. Sectioned into their own plastic bubbles, I see tiny corpses in different states of decay. I see another door. Debate leaving. Decide this is the last one before I report this. I look again at the plastic. In one bubble, small fungi seem to grow about the bodies... In another, carcasses sit in dried excrement. Curiosity takes me to the door.

Setting the phone done with the flashlight up for a comforting dome of light, I pry it open taking a step back as though something might burst from them or the darkness. I step on my phone and stumble back, phone shooting forward as though we were magnets flipped to a matching polarity. I manage to catch myself before spilling all over the floor. The phone catches the door tracks and leaps into skitters ahead each clack of the phones class on tile revealing tableaus of the horrors ahead like dry lighting in a dark night.

Clack, More cages but larger. It flips.

Clack, bodies. Primates. Clack, a human laying halfway out of a cage. Clackclack, it lands light up in front of a hazmat suit crumpled over a control console. They all set in similar states of decay like the site of some forced cult suicide. The console sat near but outside the small isolation domes. resigned, headgear missing. It's bare head lulled to the side with stripes of flesh dangling alonside it's medium length clumped hair. A dark pool resting just under it. A pistol laying on the floor on the opposite side.

The room is cramped. Small enough that the phone light gives the full impression albeit dim and slightly fuzzy. I numbly approach my phone, shock demanding I get out right now, I just need the light. I sniffle, the air is dusty.

I grab my phone and begin to sweep it around me as though something might be still living in this death chamber. As the light crosses the leathery corpse I catch the soiled state of the cage, pools of what might be dried vomit are streaked around the cage. Dark decayed blobs the same shade as the pool by the hazmat sit in crusted patches of stomach acid and mucus taking in light different than the tile.

Coughing and gagging, I turn to leave. By the time I hit the door I came in my stomach cramps like I'd suddenly been punched by a world class boxer. It briefly brings me to my knees. That was less important, though, than the quickly following realization. Attempting denial first I force myself to investigate the scene closer to ease my mind. Allergies were bad. How can I blame them for that cramp?

I can't, of course. The broken hazmat headgear sits beside the cage. The corse is riddled with bullet holes. I'm not a detective, but it seemed to me, or I just want to believe, hazmat underestimated their test subject. The subject fought at some point, removing it in the struggle. Hazmat took the time to have a last drink. A bottle. So they cleaned up however the victim spread whatever contagion they were experimenting with. As well as shooting the primates in the other containment area.

I don't know how it spreads. In a daze, I walk out of the lab fixated on the exit. Once I cross the threshold of nightmare into the house I vomit. Bright spots of red and lunch. I search for who to contact. I call. They are on their way.

I don't know how it spreads. I don't know when I was infected in my brief time there. Symptoms overlapped and who knows what that dust was... how could it have been still active after being sealed for however long it took for the inheritor to put it on the market? I tell them this as I think it. They tell me not to panic.

"He shot himself," I tell them my voice shaking like a manic violinist's vibrato. "How bad would it have to be for him to choose that over whatever is seeping into this house?!"

"Please ma'am, do not panic. They're on their way," the person responds dryly.