Whisper, whisper, in your ear.

Have you heard of the thing that was, or wasn't?

LISTEN TO ME! LISTEN TO MEEEE!

Smallpox, ebola, cholera, typhoid... all swimming around in the muck under your nails...

Take home some of the literature. Take your time in making a decision. The Rapture Family is always open, any time of day.

...

IT'S A MONSTER!

Heart hammering in his ears, Lester snapped awake, terrified and disoriented. He lied there for several moments, unable to remember where he was or what had happened. The chaotic dream drained away as he stumbled into wakedness, becoming a tangled mess of screaming and darkness. As it did every night, the dream stole away as suddenly as it came, leaving him confused and unable to sleep further.

Sighing, Lester sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bed. The dim numbers on the newfangled clock he couldn't set read one 'o clock, AM; that meant... (he did some drowsy math in his head) he had gotten about three and a fourth hours of sleep in the last twenty-four hours. Same as yesterday, and the day before that.

During the day, Lester did everything he could not to collapse or start screaming from exhaustion. The pills the doctor had given him to treat his insomnia couldn't stop his nightmares, and they didn't make medicine that could. It was distressing to Lester to know that there was something wrong with him that doctors and medicine couldn't fix, as if he had some sort of incurable disease that he could only wait out until it killed him.

DISEASE! WASTE! ROT! All in the dirt and the muck and the darkness!

A violent tremor suddenly gripped him, throwing him to the floor and shaking him like a doll. The fit only lasted a few seconds, and it passed without further event. It left him numb and barely breathing, unable to move or think. A few minutes later, all was well again. He was able to sit up, take a few breaths, and rub the feeling back into his extremities. That was another thing; they made medicine to stop his fits, but they didn't know what caused them in the first place.

Lester knew. He knew that it was him trying to get out. The monster. The Spider.

By the time the sun rose in the morning, Lester had not slept much. A few winks, here and there, but that was it. At least he didn't have any more seizures or nightmares; they were banished by a dose of his antiseizure pills and a few pages of the Good Book. Still, no sleep came. He sat up for hours and hours, just staring out the window at the city outside. No people walked past his window that night, giving him no distractions.

Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, Lester would watch the street that his bedroom window overlooked. People passed by all night long, either on foot, wrapped in thick coats and scarves, or in motorcars, speeding by without a care for the people shuffling along on the sidewalk. Seeing them calmed him down, and made him feel safe. Surely, with all these normal people walking around, living normal lives in a normal city, there was no place for monsters. Monsters don't exist in such average, padded worlds: they live in dark, mysterious places where streetlights don't reach. Shadowy woods and black caves...

And underwater cities.

He smacked his head hard with his palm. There's no such thing, he told himself. No such thing! There is no Rapture. There are no Splicers. No ADAM. No Rapture Family. None of that ever happened, or so said his therapists. All those reassuring voices had told him over and over again that it was all some horrible dream conjured by him to cope with some unimaginable trauma.

Perhaps he had been imprisoned by horribly abusive parents, humiliated and tortured until he had taken on a strange, animal-like persona. Maybe he had grown up alone in the forest among wolves. It was all unclear, and years of therapy had produced no answers.

All he had that he could prove was the fact that he had been hideously scarred by his experience, and that he had undergone extensive surgery to repair those scars. A few remained: the left side of his face was missing most of its cheekbone, and the eye was damaged and full of cataracts. There were huge pox in his shoulders, legs and face where they had dug out abscesses and strange tumors, and his hands and feet were disfigured beyond repair. He had to keep his feet wrapped all the time to prevent the bones they had to break from drifting apart again.

That was all he had to visit during the night. No wonder he meandered in fantasy.

When the clock read eight o' clock, there was little Lester could do besides get up and get ready. He had taken all of his sick days already, and his boss was losing his patience. Slowly, with aching joints and heavy limbs, he pulled on his long, thin trousers and fluffy white dress shirt, brushed his few yellowed teeth, and carefully treated the gaping rip in his bald scalp before placing his black fedora over the whole mess.

He looked in his bathroom mirror, running a hand over his ruined features. What had he looked like before... this? Had he been handsome? Something about his sharp eyes and strong jaw suggested something at least an inch above hideousness, but it was long buried under scar tissue and deep frown lines. A lot of people would be turned off by his one damaged eye, let alone his bald, flaking head or his strange, misshapen body. Every part of him had something wrong with it, right down to his long, arthritic toes.

Breakfast couldn't last long enough. Lester halfheartedly chewed a Cup 'O Noodles and downed a cup of coffee with his morning medications, all the while staring out the window with misty eyes. The sky was gray and threatening rain, the dark clouds pressing down on the tops of the buildings and the backs of the people. Everyone outside was bent with effort as they walked, fighting the wind.

Shouldering on his long black coat, Lester stepped out of his apartment and into the hallway. Like the rest of his home, and like Lester himself, the hall was dark, dingy and coated in a fine layer of dust. The gloom hung in the air like a tangible miasma, making him cough and want to pull his woolen scarf tighter around his face. At least he felt a little less ugly all bundled up, a layer of softness and warmth between him and the world. It was safe, comfortable, and familiar, even though he didn't have much that he was familiar with: even though he didn't have any memories, it was nice to feel something that he almost remembered. A feeling, something he knew he had felt before, even though he didn't have any words or images to express it. It was the same thing he felt when he saw... her.

Jacquelyn Turner, the most beautiful woman he had ever met. (Well, one of the only women he could remember.) She lived down the street from him and worked at the municipal library across from the building where he worked- so it was like destiny. He got to see her every day when he bicycled to his dull little office job, and again when he stopped at the library to check out a book. Lately, he had been spending more and more time there, choosing to read in one of the huge, fluffy chairs with a free cup of coffee instead of alone in his dark apartment. All the while he stole looks at Miss Jackie, who sat behind the counter, chewing bubble gum and looking lovely.

Sometimes she'd even smile at him; it was the most wonderful feeling in the world. Her smile was small and shy, gentle, suiting her quite, mousey personality. Kindness showed in her calm green eyes, and it was adorable when she brushed a lock of her dark brown hair away from them. Every part of her was pretty and perfect, just like every part of him was misshapen and strange. Still, he thought he had a chance- she was, after all, so kind and good and pure that even someone ugly like him had her respect.

It was all in that wonderful smile she gave him.

He went on down the stairs, putting on his sunglasses and checking his pockets to make sure he had his pills. Satisfied, he crossed the lobby, ignoring the doorman's poisonous looks. That man didn't like him, for whatever reason. Maybe it was something he had said.

Outside, the air was crisp and cold. Lester settled deeper into his coat, stuffing his hands into his pockets. His breath puffed visibly in the chill air, and immediately he felt cold inside and out. The elements fought him as he made his way through the brown, frost-blighted courtyard and to the shed where his bike was parked, and the wind blew so hard it threatened to push him and his bike over.

At least the wind was at his back as he coasted down the street toward the office, and by the time he turned at the corner of Hadley and Arkham, the sun had even started to come out. Immediately Lester felt hot and uncomfortable under his heavy clothing and with the effort of pedaling.

But even if it was warm, his hat would never come off; even his doctors had advised him to cover up his bizarrely shaped skull, as it made even them uncomfortable. Lester didn't know what was so strange about it- all that was wrong was that his forehead sloped back in an odd way, making his head look a bit like an egg, or a bullet.

After five minutes, the squat shape of the library came into view. Lester stopped short, grinding the gears of his bike horribly. He sat there, just staring at the front end of the building, not even really knowing what he was doing. His pulse quickened: would she be there? Could he catch a glance of Miss Jackie as she walked into work, skipping along at that brisk, purposeful pace that made it seem like she always had somewhere to go or someone to meet.

Yes! There she was: he saw her dark blue sweater coming out of her dark blue motor coach in the parking lot. She walked that sprightly walk to the building, hugging her arms around her chest to keep warm. Even though Lester's vision was poor, he could still marvel at how lovely she was from across the street.

Did she see him? She was looking right at him now- he turned away, and pretended to keep pedaling down the street. Eyes down, shoulders even more slumped, looking uninterested and miserable. He couldn't look up to see if she was still watching, but he could still feel her eyes on him. Shame and embarrassment heated his pale face, and it felt even worse when he realized she could see it. Before he could humiliate himself any further, he managed to jump off his bike, lock it up with shaking hands, and duck into his office.

In the safety of the building, he dug out his pills and swallowed one dry. The doctors had warned him about excess stress or anxiety, as it could trigger his fits or worsen his other conditions. What they had meant by... "other conditions," he didn't know. Or maybe he did know.

No, no no! It's not true. All of that nonsense was just that: nonsense. He wasn't a monster, and no malevolent force existed within him. He didn't have a secret, only a pathetic life of tragedy at the hands of some very disturbed people- the real monsters, and the only kind of monsters that exist: totally human ones. His condition was just that: only a medical condition that he could treat and control, one that had no consciousness of its own.

And that was that.

He hurried up to the third floor, choosing the stairs over the elevator. (Elevators made him terribly nervous.) Just in time, he dashed through the door, turned the corner and stuffed his timecard into the machine outside the office door as the clock hit nine 'o clock. Another day, another dollar. The door opened to the drab chamber of a hundred gray cubicles, and the sound a hundred pencils flicking over a hundred payment forms and copying them in triplicate. A hundred gears ground their teeth to dust to keep the machine of Eckholdt Private Insurance Limited alive.

Sighing, Lester found his desk and sank into his uncomfortable chair. He rubbed his temples, frowning deeply as he went over all he had to do that day. His low-level job had all the miserable grunt work that the higher-up, more educated employees didn't have time to do. Appointments, calendars, company events... boring, but it paid the bills.

Lester couldn't help but think he was above the job that he did; although he didn't like to brag, Lester was very intelligent. Without explanation, he had a frenzied passion for mathematics, and often did figures in a little notebook for fun. His long, nimble fingers could work faster than everyone at the office at even the most complicated problems, though it never did anything for his position. On the contrary: it only made him more strange.

"Hey, O'Hara!"

A gruff voice made Lester jump. His head sunk into his shoulders, and he pretended to be busy. In his head, he told himself to stay calm and just ignore the brute. Too late. Billy Marrdock leaned into his cubicle, a crocodile smile hanging on his doughy face.

"Oh. Hello, Billy. How are you?" Lester said, straightening.

Billy's smile grew even wider, and an ugly chuckle wheezed out of him like gas out of something dead. "Heh... heh heh. I'm just fine, O'Hara, but you ain't looking so good yourself. I think you should see a doctor about that thing on your face."

Panicked, Lester's hand went to his face. Billy laughed, and his watery eyes almost rolled back into his fat face. Lester realized with humiliation that he had been tricked.

"Hur hur hur HARF! Oh, sorry. Looks like it was just your nose!" Billy said, unable to contain himself. It took a huge effort for Lester to stay in his seat. His hand curled into a fist, and something inside of him twisted and struggled, raking its claws against his innards and making horrible sounds that only he could hear.

GRAAAHH! Kill him! Kill kill kill kill! Gene slave! Backslider! Kill the nonbeliever, now!

A tiny whimper escaped him, but he stayed silent. His fist relaxed, and he swallowed the rage back down. Without a word, he turned back to his desk and started his work. This drew an angry huff from Billy, who was always trying to bait a reaction out of him; Lester was determined not to give him the satisfaction.

"Freak." Billy snorted. "I know there's crazy in you. You're always sitting there, all twitchy and weird-like. Never talking, never doing anything, just staring with your big fish eyes in your ugly lizard head." He smiled, showing small teeth. "Yeah, that's what you are: a lizard."

Still chuckling to himself, Billy walked off, leaving Lester shaky and full of anger. He grumbled, cursing Marrdock for being an idiot and himself for being a coward. The feeling boiled over, and the paper he had pretended to work on crumpled in his grip; inside, the... thing was restless, drool dripping from its figurative maw, figurative claws flexing dangerously.

The doc says you should kill him. The doc says you can't change. The doc says to sever all ties.

"Stop, stop stop!" Lester whispered, smacking the side of his head. What was happening? He never heard voices before, and certainly not voices that said such awful things. Sweat beaded on his forehead as his fear grew; he was crazy, psychopathic even! He had a voice in his head that told him to kill people! How on Earth had his doctors missed this, and why was he feeling it now of all times?

He swallowed when he realized the implications. What if it was true- what if he was something dangerous?

Once again, he reprimanded himself. That was so silly it almost made him laugh. Almost. Still, it was entirely stupid and preposterous: maybe he had made a mistake with his medication, or perhaps it was a symptom caused by his lack of sleep. No matter what strange things his tormented psyche did, it did not make that place any more real, or make him any more of anything but a sad, miserable man.

Splicers don't exist.

Fortunately, the rest of the day went by without incident. He managed not to kill anyone, and as long as he avoided Billy and his jibes, the strange new tenant in his head stayed quiet. All day he managed to keep his fear swallowed down and hidden, but inside he was in a constant state of terror and close to tears.

Five. By that time, Lester had his head down and his teeth were cutting deep into his tongue, he was so tense and afraid. Auras came almost constantly, his confused, nervous brain sending desperate distress signals to him. It was even worse now that he had taken the maximum dosage of his medication, and it still wasn't stopping his anxiety. Nothing could stop his knees quaking or the rush of violent auras from gluing him to his chair, which was shaking as much as he was.

As soon as the last bell at the warehouse downstairs went off, Lester nearly flew out of his seat and out the door. He didn't even time out; all he could see were the doors and the way to the safety of his apartment. It wasn't until he got outside and saw the library next door did he snap back to reality: what about Miss Jackie?

Horror dawned on him when he realized that now, with this new, strange disorder he had, he could possibly hurt her, even kill her. Right now, however, he couldn't afford to worry about that: he had to get home and... do something! Stop this from happening, maybe.

The sun was going down. Leaving his bike behind, Lester ran his awkward, stooping run down the street and to his building.

He didn't see the young lady watching him from the parking lot across the street, who had noticed him staring at her that morning. She pursed her lips in confusion and concern, unable to understand and unwilling to investigate. That man was strange, and before she had moved to the city, her parents had warned her about strange men. So, without another thought about him, she hopped hurriedly into her car and drove off.

As if he were being chased, Lester slammed his front door closed and slumped against it, gasping for breath after his run. His hands were quaking violently, and his stomach bucked wildly with every movement. Now he was having strange, unbearable pains in every part of his body, making everything much, much worse.

What was happening to him? Everything was getting blurry as his eyes lost focus, and his whole body began to shake. It wasn't like one of his fits- it was much more painful and physical than any one he had before, and the tremors were far more intense. It was like the whole room, no, the whole world was tossing him up and down like he didn't weigh anything at all, and it showed no sign of stopping. For what felt like hours it went on and on, until finally he was left twitching and strangled on the floor.

At least it was over. Slowly, carefully, Lester pushed himself up and took a breath. Something felt different. Something felt wrong.

Desperate, he swallowed one of his pills, ignoring his instructions. He figured it would come back to bite him, but this probably counted as an emergency. After a few minutes, everything seemed better, and the medication seemed to be taking effect. He relaxed, taking a few deep breaths and fighting to keep calm.

Then it happened. All of reality fell apart.

A horrible, inhuman scream ripped out of him as something deep inside of him gave a great lurch. There was a creaking noise, although he had to have imagined it, but soon the creaking gave way to a grinding, snapping, groaning noise, like a plank of wood being bent in machinery. Lester screamed again when he realized it was his spine.

It had to be his imagination! There was no way that sound was... there was no way! The pain was getting worse, and it was radiating to every part of his body. He retched, coughing up his pill, most of his lunch and then his breakfast, before flopping uselessly on his back and struggling for a breath. No chance came, as he was up and seizing again a second later. The grinding went on, and suddenly he felt like he was being forced to curl into a ball, like a huge hand was pulling him apart and then crushing him into a little lump. This was it. His body was failing, and he was going to die.

But he didn't die. He lived on, and the strange sensations continued. His trousers were getting uncomfortably tight without explanation, and so were his shoes. Drool dribbled down his chin as his jaw popped out of place and his neck snapped around, the motion slinging thick, slimy stuff onto the walls. Something fell from his face with a splat onto the floor, and it felt like someone was pulling on the loose skin on the back of his head. Pins and needles spread all over him, and the tightness grew worse all over, too. His limbs hurt the most, and his elbows and kneecaps popped loudly, as if they were being struck. But then, almost anticlimactically, it stopped. All was quiet.

Lester laid on the ground, unable to see or feel anything. He wasn't aware of his shoes finally giving way and popping off his feet, or the large rip growing on the back of his jacket. He wasn't aware of anything.

Snuffling, he pushed himself up, and peered around nervously. Heavy, hot breath puffed out of his crooked mouth, spattering foam and drool on the floor. His one good eye scanned the room, flashing in the last bit of sunlight, but dull with animal stupidity. Lester O'Hara wasn't home anymore: only the man- the creature he used to be.

Where am I? What happened?

Unable to understand the situation, Lester could only watch through its eyes as the Spider flexed its new claws and stretched its new, gangly limbs. It took a moment for him to discover that he wasn't alone in his body anymore.

It's real! I always knew it was real! I'm a monster, I was always a monster!

The Spider sat, arching its back to remove more of its restricting clothes. The rip in Lester's jacket grew until the whole thing simply tore off and fell to the floor, leaving him in his shirt. His poor trousers came along soon after, ripping away from the Spider's much wider, more muscular hindquarters. With a shake like a dog, the Spider stepped out Lester's outer clothes and stretched again with a hideous smile. Lester felt its pleasure, too- it sickened him.

Hijacked in his own body, Lester was totally helpless. The only thing he could do was move the thing's eyes a little bit, and that let him see what had happened. His horror made the thing laugh.

In the bathroom mirror, which he could see through the open door, he could see a huge, pale shape. Crouched gracefully on all fours, it stretched six and a half feet from head to toes. It had wide, dexterous feet with long, curved claws, and spindly fingers that twitched, itchy to do something terrible. Hunchbacked and fang-faced, the creature he had become was something out of his nightmares.

It was from his nightmares. This was the voice whispering in his head; this was the thing crawling under his skin. This was Phineas Hull, the man he was born as. The genius mathematician who was invited to the secret underwater city of Rapture by Andrew Ryan, only to destroy his brilliant mind with splicing and lose every bit of sanity, dignity, and humanity to Doctor Sophia Lamb and her Rapture Family. She had taken him and turned him into a mindless killing machine, a Spider Splicer, built to eliminate enemies of the collective and pray to her bar sinister child.

But what happened? What happened to Phineas the monster that turned him into Lester the man? He didn't have time to ponder, as Phineas had better things to do beside lay around and let his passenger think.

With a mighty kick, Phineas launched off the ground and crashed through a nearby window. He charged off into the growing night, screaming and cawing like a wild animal as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop on his long, powerful limbs. Lester couldn't fight his will, not even if he tried: Phineas owned this body first, and was determined to keep it.

His consciousness growing weak, Lester exerted his last bit of strength to steer the creature's eyes away from Miss Jackie's house. It worked, and Phineas thundered off far away from the one person Lester could protect from him.

As the sun sank under the horizon, Lester O'Hara disappeared with it. Dark and smothering as smoke, a sort of unconsciousness overtook him. His vision melted away, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

Now the night belonged to the Spider.

##################

ON WRITING SPLICERS:

As a long-time member of the Bioshock fandom, I've always been confused by the fixation on Big Daddies and Little Sisters. Certainly, they're very sad, unfortunate creatures, but that's all they really are: creatures. Each one, at least in-game, has the exact same personality and traits as every other one. Even if the LSs still have human minds and some higher form of thought, they're only children, and children have a more limited range of emotions than adults in addition to their lack of life experience. The Big Daddies do not even have this: although they can be humanized, there's only so much the big, lovable brutes can do as characters. Another trend I've noticed is that, despite Levine's efforts to make them both sympathetic and relatable, most people tend to cast Splicers as either totally heartless and almost demonically irredeemable villains, or as faceless cannon fodder, or as a person who retains their superpowers without the side effects of insanity and deformity, removing some of the drama from what makes the Splicer character. Of course, this is not always the case, and I have enjoyed many stories built on these very principles, but what I've always wanted is a story where truly monstrous Splicers are cast as the human beings they are.

TL;DR: I love Splicers. They're fun to write and think about. So I ranted a little bit about them, and sounded like a total jerk about it. :D