Donald Marshall

Dean knew something was amiss in his world, but he was unaware how amiss until he opened his mind and paid attention to what was being hidden in plain sight.

He had never been fond of lizards or other reptiles. Something about the texture of their scales or the look in their eyes unsettled him deeply. Some people joked about his fear of snakes, and he let them. If they thought he was afraid of snakes, they'd be less likely to notice that he was more afraid of run-of-the-mill lizards. It had to be their movement, or their tongues, or something. In any case, he hated reptiles in general and lizards in particular.

Like most people in this day and age, Dean enjoyed the Internet and the various boons of technology. What started out as simple wiki walking around articles of more obscure topics slowly grew into an obsession with conspiracies and the occult. Anything that seemed to be on the edge of reason was fair game for him. Most people dismissed it as a quirk, and he was fine with that. Being quirky was good for being interesting to most people, yet also for being deemed harmless enough by potentially dangerous factions. That suited Dean just fine.

One day, while looking up potential aspects of human cloning to sate his curiosity, Dean bumped into something that grabbed him and would not let him go. There was a page on a man named Donald Marshall containing a passionate missive, a call for attention from humans. As his eyes skated across the somewhat rambling text, Dean's heart ached for Marshall as he read the tales of the cloning facilities and the depravity these clones were subjected to. It seemed that authorities from all over the world gathered to subject these clones to awful tortures, according to Marshall, and that Marshall had been subjected to such agony himself.

Then, Dean happened upon a certain illustration, one of a grotesque, reptilian alien creature, one with eye stalks, claws, and rough-looking scales. He felt a shudder wrack his body. This creature seemed to be every disgusting feature of reptiles stitched into one awful creature, plus some aspects that did not seem to belong on an earthly creature. This creature, according to Marshall, was called a Vrill lizard. These lizards were bodysnatchers capable of inserting a proboscis into a human's eye and injecting a foam to initiate a sort of parasitic transfer. The lizard would then die and completely take over the human host.

The whole time, Dean found himself wincing and running a finger around his eyes, checking to make sure that he didn't have the one swollen eye that Vrill "drones" had. His eyes seemed fine to him, but how could he know that he wasn't some kind of special drone that had been made to forget its origins? Going back to an earlier topic he had read over, how did he know that the Illuminati weren't cloning him for their underground bases as well?

Once again, Dean shuddered. At the very least, Marshall was capable of making a strong, visceral impact with his words. The world's leaders, as they become more corrupt, were dancing in the vile, rough claws of these Vrill, and the Illuminati played the accompaniment. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. He felt his faith in the world plummet, a sinking feeling in his chest.

Something seemed to exceed a boundary in his mind, and it was almost as if his terror wrapped around to something else entirely. He might not have the courage to hunt lizards or clones, but the least he could do was ensure that Marshall's tale stayed alive after his heart finally failed him. Dean was determined to spread the word and do anything he could to preserve Marshall's words.

After all, the enemy could have been lurking anywhere. The more aware, the better.

To be continued....