My friend Ben and I were visiting his mother a few weeks ago. She lives in a little cottage on the lake. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s on the lake! That alone makes it fun.

I’ve been friends with Ben for years and we visit his mom‘s place pretty regularly. It’s about an hour away from the town we live in. It’s a fun place to hang out. It’s on the lake!

Anyway, we were up there visiting when she mentioned her employers were going out of town. She worked for a couple that had a summer home at the other end of the lake. She would clean the place, mow the grass when they weren’t there, little maintenance stuff.

The people she works for are very wealthy and their cottage is amazing. It’s a dream home, and it isn’t even their main home. Just a place they visit a few times this summer and for a weekend here and there.

My distaste for rich people made the decision to break in a little bit easier. Ben’s mother explained that they were going on this dream vacation to Bermuda. We all talked about how jealous we were of their good fortune. I had already started thinking about breaking into the place.

No, I didn’t want to take anything. Ben and I met these two girls a few weekends prior. Similar to us, they didn’t live in the area but had someone they visited there pretty regularly. We talked about hanging out next time we were all up. Taking them to a beautiful palace on the lake should definitely impress them.

After Ben’s mother told us about their vacation, I told Ben about my idea. We could swipe the key to the house that his mom has, invite the girls up, look like studs!

He didn’t like it at first. He took a bit of convincing. I wore him down like always, though. We planned on doing it the following week. We got a hold of the girls and they agreed to come. It was a simple, elegant, solid plan.

The night arrived and me and Ben went over to the house early. We wanted to take down family photos and other things that would make it look like we were breaking in. That house was even more stunning inside than we imagined.

“Holy shit,” Ben said as we entered the house.

“Are we sure they’re doctors?” I asked. “ This seems like a place fit for a rapper.

The place was big. We walked in to see a spiral staircase and a large, beautiful chandelier. We spent some time giving ourselves the tour. The place was filled with expensive looking things. A giant China cabinet, neat looking statues and artifacts, antique samurai swords on the wall.

“Maybe these people will adopt me,” I joked.

“You could just stay here till they come back and tell them you’re their estranged son,” Ben laughed.

“Yeah, that always works!”

We went around the house to take down any family photos. There weren’t many. We tried not to move too much stuff. We didn’t want to leave any evidence we had been there. These people are probably rich enough to get the cops to actually test for DNA like they do on TV. We obviously didn’t want them to know if anyone was in the house.

I would also think they would be rich enough to have cameras, but Ben’s mother was insistent that they did not. She would actually walk to the house and do a daily check because they didn’t have cameras. She had no idea why, but she said it was something they mentioned on multiple occasions. Hopefully, they weren’t lying to her. Either way, me and Ben were too dumb and drunk to care.

We got the house already and called the girls. We had taken down the few family photos that were hung. The fridge is stocked with beer. We checked every room except the basement, which was locked. Ben’s mom had a key to the house, but apparently not a key for the basement.

We had already been drinking quite a bit before the girls even got there. I could tell that Ben was buzzing hard. It was easy to tell with him. Sober, he was nervous about using the house. Drunk, he really really wanted to bust down the basement door to see what was down there.

“I’m telling you man, it’s something good!” He said. “ These people are rich as hell and they keep a lock on the basement? There’s got to be something valuable down there. Something crazy valuable. Maybe even a secret bookcase door!”

So yeah, I could tell that Ben was drunk..

“Which one do you want?” Ben asked.

“Uhh, I don’t know.. They might have an opinion on it.”

“Come on! I gotta know which one to put the moves on!”

“Oh, the moves?” I laughed. “You’re gonna put the moves on? Or are you gonna wuss out like you did with Mickey?”

“Screw you, man.. if I had gone to fight Mickey we wouldn’t have met these girls in the first place.”

He’s kind of right. Real quick, what happened was that Ben started pursuing a girl who had a boyfriend. She told him she had a boyfriend when they met, but that didn't stop him. He continued texting flirty things to her until her boyfriend found out.

Turns out, her boyfriend was Micky. Micky was big and scary and fresh out of prison. Everyone who hung out at the bars knew not to mess with him.

So Ben texted this girl, and Micky texted back. Ben felt brave behind his phone screen and decided to talk shit to him.

We were at one of the two bars in town and Micky texted Ben to meet him at the other one to fight. Leading up to this, Ben went on and on about how he was going to kick Mickey’s ass. When he asked him to meet him though, Ben suddenly changed his mind. We stayed at the bar we were at and that is where we met Sadie and Jill.

“My point is that you tend to talk big when the situation is hypothetical,” I said.

“Everyone does,” Ben replied. “ Everyone claims that they’d take a bullet for the girl, stand up to the tough guy, spit in the cops face, but until you’re actually in that situation, it’s impossible to know how you’ll actually react.”

“That might be the most coherent thing you’ve said all night,” I laughed.

I tried to get him to slow down on the drinking until the girls got there but with very little success. He was pretty gooned up by the time they arrived.

So we waited for Sadie and Jill. They seem pretty awesome. Ben and I met them at the bar when Ben was supposed to be beating up Mickey. We started talking to them and hit it off. We’ve been texting with them and planning on hanging out again, but couldn’t all get up to the lake at the same time before this.

“Hey guys, welcome,” I said as I opened the door and ushered them into our palace.

Sadie seemed blown away by the house. Jill looked less impressed.

“You guys live here?” Jill asked.

“We rent it,” I blurted out. “ It's pricey but having a place to come and get away is kind of priceless.”

Just being in a fancy house had already started to make me pretentious. I needed to dial it back, so I suggested some beer pong.

Things were going okay for a bit as we played pong, but I could see that Ben was way too drunk. I worried that he would tell the girls that we had broken into the place or just make an ass of himself in general. He was alright for a while, but then he got back on the basement door.

“I just cannot get that door opened!” Ben slurred.

“This is your house though, right?” Jill asked in a suspicious tone.

“Yeah! We’ve just never been able to get that door open,” Ben replied.

“I uhh.. yeah. The realtor said it was sealed off because it isn’t insulated down there. I say just leave it but Ben seems to be obsessed with it,” I said, trying to hint to Ben to shut up about it.

“Maybe we can get it,” Sadie said.

I started to reply. “Nah, it’s really not a…

Ben interrupted me. “There’s no way you can get that door open!”

I tried to give Ben the hint look again but he was not picking up on it. Sadie was now trying to yank the door open with Ben continuing to egg her on. My concern was that the basement might have more family photos or other evidence that it wasn’t our house. It was suspicious enough that we couldn’t get into our own basement. Still, I felt confident that they weren’t going to get it open.

Been charged his shoulder into the thick wooden door. He didn’t seem to make a dent. Ben and Sadie both started kicking at the door. On one kick, Ben pushed himself back into the bookshelf across from the door and almost knocked it over

Jill and I caught the shelf before it fell over and several things fell off of it. We picked up the trinkets, knickknacks, books, and eventually saw a key laying there on the floor. Then grabbed it and Shira enough, it was the key to the basement.

I got nervous as he opened it up. Aside from the fact that anything in the basement could give us away as imposters, it was also a little creepy that it was locked. Before I had time to think of a reason to avoid going down there, Sadie and Ben were already halfway down the stairs.

Jill and I followed them into the dark basement. As we felt around for a light switch, Jill whispered “Do you always bring dates to your creepy dark basement?”

“Dates?” I replied, sounding like a nervous 13 year old.

Moments after, Sadie found the switch and the lights turned on. It was still pretty dim and there didn’t seem to be much down there. It was a large open room that seemed to turn at the end of it.

We walked further in and back to where the basement turned to the right and there was a small area and another door. Just next to the door was a small table with a notebook on it.

Jill quickly picked up the notebook and started looking through it. It seemed to be a lot of shorthand notes. We didn’t look very closely before Ben opened the door and stumbled into another pitch black room.

“This one ain’t locked so I don’t have to break my shoulder again!” Ben slurred.

We followed him in and were again in a dark room feeling around the walls for a light switch.

“What was that?” Sadie asked nervously.

“What was what?” Ben replied.

“I heard something wei..”

As she started speaking, I found the light switch. When they came on, she stopped mid sentence and started screaming.

The light revealed multiple tables with people strapped down to them. The horrific site was difficult to process all at once.

The first thing I saw was a normal looking man stripped down to his underwear and strap to a table with an IV in his arm. He was conscious and wide eyed.

I am mediately rushed over to try and help him. Everyone was screaming. Sadie continuously yelled “this is a joke right!”

Aside from the normal looking man, there were three other tables in the room. And one was a person who was almost completely dismembered. They were attached to machines. Both legs and one arm were missing. A closer look revealed that their lips had been sewn together.

On another table, there was this monstrous looking thing that almost resembled a human being, but looked like it had elephantitis or some thing. It had bulging muscles and what looked like tumors all over its body. It was heavily restrained with a gag over its mouth.

On the fourth table was a person that looked like they were dead. It just looked like a corpse that had started decomposing. It was moving though. The best way to describe it is as a presently decaying human being. It didn’t seem possible that it could move with how badly it was decomposed. There were visible ligaments and muscles.

The screaming continued as we all tried to grasp what we were seeing. It was a frenzy as we rushed to try to help these.. “people”?

“What the fuck is that!!” Sadie screamed at a pitch that made my ears ring.

“We have to help them!” I yelled.

“What the hell is this place!” Sadie screamed again. “Who are you people! What did you do!”

“We didn’t do anything!” Ben shouted.

“It’s not our house!” I yelled.

“What!” Sadie angrily responded.

“Not sure that an explanation is top priority right now, but we were just trying to impress you,”I confessed.. “Okay? Ben’s mom works for these people. They’re out of town and we had access to the key. It was a dishonest and lame thing to do but again, not top priority right now. We obviously didn’t know they were down here. Either way, we have to set these people free. This is fucking sickening..”

We spread out and started removing the restraints. I went to the captive man, The only one who still looks like a human being. I removed his arm and leg restraints. The moment his arms were freed he ripped the tape off of his mouth.

“Don’t let them loose!” He screamed.

“What?” Ben responded while unlocking the restraints on the tumor covered captive.

“Run,” the normal looking captive screamed.

It all happened so fast. Sadie unlocked the decaying man at the same time Ben released the tumor covered one. They both leaped off their tables and a rampage ensued.

They thrashed and threw pieces of the tables and the machines attached. I grabbed the normal looking captive and tried to help him start moving as we all ran out of the room.

The two other captives seemed to be chasing us. We were already running due to the shock of what we had seen.

I got to the stairs behind Jill. I looked back to see the large tumor covered “person” grab Sadie. It threw her into the wall so hard that I could hear bones crack. She fell lifeless to the ground after impact..

I didn’t have time to process it. They were still pursuing us. We ran up the stairs and slammed the door moments before the two captives reached the top of the stairs and started charging the door.

In a panic, we tipped the bookshelf across from the door to the basement into the basement door. It kept them back for the time being, but they were starting to break the door itself with their constant attempts to charge through it.

“Oh my god! Sadie!” Jill screamed.

“What was that! Ben screamed before turning toward the captive. “Who are you?”

“Those psycho doctors abducted me!” the captive replied. “They’re experimenting, supposedly for science. That isn’t it though. They are fucking sadists!”

“What are those other things?” Ben asked.

“People.. They used to be people,” the captive said somberly. “The corpse guy was already there when I got here. The doctors claimed they actually found a way to reanimate a dead person, but I have no idea if that’s true. The juggernaut there, he got the worst of it. They did all sorts of surgeries and muscle implants while constantly injecting him with steroids and other chemicals. They even said they gave him “radiation treatments”. They fucking exposed him to radiation! I don’t know if they were trying to create a beast or what, but they did. They aren’t big on anesthetics either. Just what they did to me was more painful than what I could even imagine.

He lifted his shirt and showed us the incision mark on his side.

“I don’t even know what they took,” he said. “Probably my kidney.”

“How long have you been down there?” I asked.

“A month? Five months? I don’t know.. I haven’t seen the sun in a while.. Every moment has felt like a lifetime.. How about we just get the fuck out of here?””

There were two only two doors out for such a big house. The front led to a long driveway, which led to the main road up top. The back led to the lake beyond about 20 feet of.. yard. (Just trying to paint the picture.)

Jill, Ben, the captive, and I ran for the front door. I guess the plan was to run until we found a place where someone was home or had a working house phone. This house did not and almost the entire lake is a cellular dead zone. (An aspect of the lake I used to enjoy..)

We were about to open the door when we saw the lights.. Headlights..

“Oh my god. Is that them?” I asked nervously.

The car turned into the doctors’ driveway.

“I recognize the car..” the captive said in a somber tone.

“Let’s just jump em!” Ben shouted. “It’s four against two!”

Ben continued, but the captive interrupted him.

“He had a gun when he approached me. He said he was robbing me. I put my hands up and offered up my wallet, but when he came up behind me, he jabbed me in the neck with what I assume was a syringe. I’ve been locked in that basement since..”

By this point, the car had pulled in and parked. The lights in the house were on. They had to know someone was inside. We saw the doctors get out of their car and start walking toward the house.

We turned and ran for the back door. We rushed through the house. As we approached the hallway near the basement door, one of the violent captives jumped out in front of us from the hallway.

It was the decomposing one. It was horrifying looking and even though it was smaller than the tumor covered beast, it seemed to be throwing around heavy objects with ease.

When it jumped out, we practically ran into it. It immediately grabbed Jill and started thrashing her around. The captive and I both grabbed the nearest objects we could find and started hitting it, trying to save Jill.

I grabbed a glass statue a little bigger than my fist and the captive grabbed a candle holder. We just started wailing on the thing until it lost its grip on Jill. While all this was happening, Ben used the distraction to sneak around the creature and run out the back door.

Jill fell to the floor and quickly scurried away from the decomposing creature. We all started backing away from it as we saw the larger monstrous captive emerge from the hallway.

We could hear the garage door opening as the two creatures moved toward us. There was nowhere to run. One way led to the creatures and the other led toward the real monsters.

“Thank you for saving me,” the captive said as we all fearfully awaited our fate.

“I don’t think we did save you,” I replied.

“Yes you did,” he assured me. “What goes on in that basement is a fate worse than death. No matter what happens, you saved me. So, when I say run, run!”

“What are y..” I started speaking but he interrupted me.

“Just do it!” He yelled.

He grabbed one of the antique samurai swords off of the wall, something I felt dumb for not thinking of sooner. He took a few deep breaths and pulled off the swords cover revealing that it was wooden.

“We’ll ain’t that some shit,” he laughed.

He lifted the wooden sword over his head and started running toward the creatures. Moments after he took off he shouted “run!”

Jill and I tried to get around the creatures as the captive attempted to distract them. The larger one quickly got a hold of him and through him violently against the wall. Both of them ascended on him, beating him mercilessly. We tried again to get around them but there wasn’t a lot of room to get through. We turned toward the front in a panic and saw one of the doctors standing there in the doorway.

The doctor smiled and casually pulled a small device out of his pocket. He pointed it in the direction of the creatures, hit a button, and they both screeched in pain and fell to the floor. He then pulled a pistol out of his other pocket.

“What the f.. What.” I struggled to get a word out.

“Are you wondering how I did that?” He asked. “It’s a handy little device. Invented it myself! It’s an implant inside of them that delivers a shock and then releases a heavy sedative. It’s a safety measure that I never had to use before today. That leads me to my next question. What are you doing in my house?”

“I swear I wasn’t trying to steal anything or anything like that! I just. Your house is really nice. I wanted to impress the girls,” I said in a panic.

The doctor looked over to Jill and said “Wait, you didn’t bring them here?”

“No,” she replied. “I got invited to a hangout at a lake house. I didn’t know it was this one until we got here.”

“What! You know each other?” I yelled.

“What a silly coincidence!” the doctor laughed. “Jillian is my daughter.”

I don’t know how I missed it when I took down the family photos. Maybe she wasn’t in them? Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention?

“You knew about this, Jill?”

“Some of it.. I had an idea of what they did but I didn’t know it was here and I didn’t know they would be in the basement..”

“I know you’re probably disgusted,” the doctor said. “This research is potentially groundbreaking though. We’ve made incredible discoveries with our research. Human testing is the only real recipe for progress. sometimes ethics can slow scientific discovery and sometimes they can grind it to a halt. We all know the Nazis were despicable, but the research they collected from their human experimentation was so fascinating that our government made deals with some of them. Everyone knows this is the way to get things done, they just don’t want to be the ones doing it.”

“I don’t know where to start,” I said, still struggling to process what was happening. “What could possibly be the reason for that? What research was that for?” I asked while pointing at the tumor monster.

“Well that one did get away from me a bit,” the doctor laughed. “ We were studying radiation. How could we limit the effects on an exposed person? Are there preventative measures we can take? This research could become important very very soon. It didn’t go as expected though and we started tinkering with his brain. I essentially lobotomized him and he became a rage machine. The other was actually reanimated over a day after his death. Did you ever think he would say something like that? Of course there are quite a few gizmos and gadgets running his body, but it’s still a revolutionary breakthrough.”

I was trying not to sob as I muttered “Can I go? Please.. My friend got away. He’ll go to the cops. If you let me go now I can catch him and stop him.”

Oh.. that won’t be necessary,” he replied.

The doctor then finger whistled loudly. Moments later, a woman’s voice could be heard from the back door yelling “now?”

“Now,” the doctor said.

After that, the other doctor walked in with Ben. She had a gun pointed at him and walked him into the house. My heart sank as that was the only leverage I could think of. It is the only way I thought I could get out.

“You know I’ve been watching you guys,” the doctor said. “You really thought there weren’t cameras here? That’s why we came back. I considered just sealing up the house and leaving you to the beasts. When I saw that my daughter was in the house and we had to come home early.”

“I didn’t want to go into the fucking basement..” I muttered.

At that moment, I felt empty. It was just this dreadful awful emptiness. I looked over at the two monsters on the floor next to the mutilated body of the other captive who tried to give his life for us. I thought about how many chances we had to not go to that house, to not go into the basement…

The doctor paused for a minute, then began speaking again.

“I watched my house get broken into. I watched my test subjects being released. I watched my lab and my home being destroyed..”

I started speaking but the doctor stopped me.

“I then saw one of my test subjects get a hold of my daughter, my only child.. You bravely attacked it, allowing her to get loose while your friend ran like a coward. Instead of helping you guys, he used you as a distraction,”

The doctor paced around the room. He walked over to his wife and Ben and took a long look at Ben who was shaking wildly. The two doctors then whispered something to one another.

He walked back over to me.

“I have an offer for you, he said. “ you saved my daughter, and for that I owe you. But, you did break into my home. You guys did cause a lot of damage. Most of all, you lost me my newest test subject. I need a fresh one for something we are working on. I want you to give me your friend over there.

“What!” Ben screamed.

The other doctor pressed her gun to his temple and told him to shut up.

“I know my research probably disgusts you, the male doctor said to me. If it’s any consolation, the tumor guy over there was a human trafficker. We were put in touch with him when pursuing a test subject. He had all these girls. We didn’t need girls. We needed a male subject, so we just took him. He may have suffered, but those girls went free.”

“So, you only do this to bad people?” I said.

“I’d be lying if I said yes. We try. if I’m being honest though, the most recent one right there hadn’t done anything wrong that I know of. I want Ben. You know he’s a bad person. He left you and Jillian to die.”

Ben began to speak but the female doctor pushed a gun into his head again and he abruptly stopped. He was sobbing by this point.

“I can make you rich,” the doctor said. “Here’s the deal. You leave me Ben. You walk out of here. You go home and forget what you saw in the basement. Tomorrow, I put you on payroll after making a hefty deposit into your account. It will be a large lump sum and you will get continuous payments for doing nothing other than keeping our little secret here. Shoot, we could even become friends!”

“I don’t get it, I said. “I mean, you’re in control here..”

“I want you to make the choice, he replied. “It'll make you feel responsible, and less likely to tell someone. You can leave the money on the table, and I’ll shoot him in the head. Quick, painless, merciful. That, or you can take my deal. On paper you’ll become an employee of mine. I’ll make up something. Within 24 hours, you’ll be a wealthy man with a continuous and generous income. Ben stays here with me and becomes my new test subject. Either way, you can leave.”

I looked over to Ben. He began pleading for me to say no. He had seen the same thing I did in that basement. He saw the dismembered test subject that was still alive.

“Don’t be crazy man.. This is crazy! Don’t do this!” Ben cried.

I looked over to Jill.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Ya don’t get to pick your family,” she shrugged.

“What’s it gonna be?” The doctor asked.

“Dude! Don’t do this!” Ben shouted.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I looked over at Ben. It took me a minute to work up the courage to open my mouth and speak.

“Remember what we were talking about earlier, Ben?” I asked.

“What are you talking about,” he angrily responded.

“We were talking about Micky. How you said you were gonna beat him up, but you wimped out when the opportunity came. We talked about how it’s easy to say you’d do the tough thing in a hypothetical situation.”

“Dude… Think for a minute,” Ben pleaded.

“I bet that in a hypothetical scenario, you would have tried to save the girl rather than using her as a distraction. You would’ve come back to help us rather than leaving us to die..”

“I just ran! Was I supposed to tackle the thing!?” He shouted.

“You were right,”I said calmly. “Everyone claims that they would take a bullet for the girl, stand up to the tough guy, spit in the cops face, but until you’re actually in the situation, it’s impossible to know how you’ll actually react..”

Ben continued pleading and shouting, “No no no no!”

He didn’t say anything else. Just “no” over and over and over.

I guess that’s the moral of the story. Simply that we do not know how we will really react in a hypothetical situation. I somewhat disagreed with that sentiment when Ben said it earlier, but I get it now.

The doctor kept his word. The following day, I checked my account balance and there it was. More money than I expected to make in a lifetime. The following week, another large payment was deposited into the account.

I’m obviously not proud of what happened. The guilt will follow me to the grave. I don’t like to think about what might be happening to Ben at any given moment. I don’t want to know. I’ve tried to compartmentalize it the way people do with tragedies in different countries. You distract yourself and pretend that horrible things aren’t taking place.

If nothing else, this is my confession. A dumb idea to break into a nice house to impress girls turned into a night that changed our lives. The police have no leads as to where Ben is. The doctor established an alibi for me and I was quickly dismissed as a suspect.

I guess it makes me a bad person. Although, the lines between good and bad tend to blur quickly when something unexpected happens. We always find a way to convince ourselves that we are a hero rather than a villain. Good intentions can fade fast sometimes and you really never know how you would react in any given situation until you’re actually in that situation.

I’m sorry..