Excerpt: Nulles Fames

“Excuse me?” she asked venom in her voice as she stood up behind her desk to glare down at the two developers sitting on the opposite side of it.

They looked at each other and the bravest of them cleared his throat, “There’s been some, complications.”

She raised a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose and took in a deep breath and let it out again. “What kind of complications.”

“Well,” he said not wanting to upset her further, “it’s not really something explainable; perhaps you should come to the test room and see for yourself.”

She sat down in her seat, her limbs shaking with rage. “You want me to go down and see complications?” she said keeping her voice steady, but only enough that she wasn’t screaming, it did nothing to hide her rage.

The second man stood up at this point, “No, we only need you to come to the observation room, we can review the tapes with you from there so we can explain the situation.”

She stood up again and glared at them, “Fine, let’s go and this better not be some stupid little thing you could have done without telling me.”

The both looked at each other again and lost a few shades in color.

As soon as they stepped outside of her office she was bombarded with many different people all trying to tell her various things of various uselessness at the same time.

“Tanis, can you come here for a sec?” asked one of the new workers from the public relations department.

“Not right now.” She snapped and increased her pace, making the two developers trip over their feet trying to keep up with her. She took the stairs two and three at a time and was sitting in front of the monitors when two men finally made it down to the lab. “Hurry up.”

They both scrambled to bring up the images onto the monitor for her to observe. The first scene started rolling across the screen and Tanis folded her arms across her chest and relaxed a bit, her eyes transfixed to the screen. Her eyes widened in horror halfway through the scene and then she looked towards the two men in the room for an explanation. “What the hell is this!”

“There’s more.” Said one of them, which one she didn’t know.

She turned around to stare at the screen and watched several more video clips that showed the same horrific scene, just the people were different. She was stunned into silence, “ all of them, ALL of them react like this?”

“No, not all of them, but…”

She waited for him to continue and when he did not she stood up. “But?”

He sighed, “These people seem to have reacted this way only after prolonged use of the product, but the percentage rate is high, too high for this to be a marketable product.”

“Bullshit!” she yelled, “I’ve put too much time and money into this for it not to work. Fix it.”

The other man interrupted, “We’ve tried, it seems that nothing we do can stop this effect from happening, we can make the time it takes for the reaction to happen longer, but it only pushes back the inevitable.”

She swiveled around to look at him, a very tall woman already she was even more menacing looking while in heels, “What do you mean inevitable, what is the percentage rate? And what staves off this effect off?”

He gulped and involuntarily took a step back, “Well it’s somewhere close to eighty-five percent of the people that take this drug have that effect, after taking it every day for a prolonged period of time. The only thing that seems prolong the time it takes to come out is taking it every other day, or taking an iron and calcium supplement with it and even though this works, it only prevents it from happening for a little while longer.”

Tanis tapped her foot impatiently while listening to his spiel, “Alright, eighty-five percent. The fifteen percent that it doesn’t effect, do they have any adverse reactions? Also exactly how long does it take, and how long do the supplements hold it off for?” she asked and then something clicked before they answered her, “And how long have you known about this?”

The first man sighed, “we’ve known for a while, we told quite a few people, but the message never got to you, which is why we had to come see you in person today. They’ve been telling us the same thing you did, just fix it. We’ve tried and we can’t.”

Tanis was outraged, “How long, is a while?”

“Please, we’ll answer all of those questions and more, it’s not our fault, we’ve tried to tell you before, but you have to calm down and let us answer the questions in the first place.”

“Fine.” She said and strolled over to the chair, threw herself down into it and spun violently around to face them, “talk.”

“As for how long, we’ve known for almost a year now, we’ve been trying to tell you for roughly eight months,” said the first man.

“As for the fifteen percent, it depends, some just get the effects they’re supposed to, others have a few minors problems, about five percent of the fifteen suffer severe dehydration and sometimes internal bleeding as a result of overuse of this. This side affect for the most part has been taken care of.” The second man, the one standing the furthest away from her for fear of another anger outburst said.

“Yes and the effect usually takes roughly a month and a half to show up. Sometimes it’s less, or a little more, it depends on a few factors such as how susceptible the person is to addictions and how much, meat they’re used to consuming, along with their weight.”

“Then of course with the supplements, it takes anywhere from two to four months to manifest. That also depends on the same factors and the alternating days of consumption is a few days short of two and a half months until manifestation of the…er cravings I suppose we should call them.”

Tanis reached a hand up to massage her temples, “This is bullshit, complete and utter bullshit. Forget it, I don’t want to know all the rest of this bull. Tell me two things, is it this effect reversible and if it is how long does it take?”

The two looked at each other and then back at Tanis, “well so far it’s not a reversible thing, though we’ve not tried, the subjects have been, terminated when they’ve attacked. We can work on it and get back to you.”

She stood up, “ Good, do that, and here,” she said throwing her cell phone at them, “my office number and home number are programmed in already, I’ll get a new one. I want you idiots to call as soon as you figure out a way to fix or workaround this.” Then she turned to leave, but stopped to call back, “until then we’re going to add the following warning to the bottles for now. ‘May cause cravings for raw meat’