Silentium

The dust scampered in hysteria as the crash of the carton shattered the silence.

With her vision still groggy from her slumber, she stumbled half-blind towards the fallen box of documents that fell from the shelf. Kneeling before photographs strewn across the floor, she pursed her lips in annoyance as she hastily gathered them into a heap.

Amidst her cleaning, the dust found peace and drifted quietly back onto every surface of the reseach lab.

The stillness of the air seems to be anticipating something.

Her sleepy eyes widened as she saw the photograph attached onto yellowed research paper. Pushing her black framed glasses onto her nose, her lips now parted slightly in amazement of her discovery.

In the next moment, her entire body went into a frozen stance---her mind was whirling and ordered her heart to stop beating.

Her shocked expression started to molt as a smittened smile curled at her lips. Her fingertips came together lightly and flipped the stapled pages.

Specimen A.

How could she never cared?

There were only several brief lines written about the specimen. It barely exists---so little known about it, it's almost like a legend told among every folklore.

But it bears an uncanny resemblance to Unus, her prized specimen.

Hours and hours of study delegated to the research of that specimen. One that drove her to the brink of insanity. Time was at its expense, which she could no longer afford to give. With that, she destroyed all the aparatus designed to capture it.

Since then, she has been sleeping amongst this wreckage, waiting for something new.

She hurried back to the desk and disposed all those field notes and coding sheets that were irrelevant.

She swallowed her saliva that was the first drop of liquid that flowed down her parched throat since a very long time. With trembling hands, she set aside that cup murked with tea stains to make way for a glass bottle.

The dust fled again. They were unsettled by the powerful excitement simmering inside her.

She grab a felt tip pen and scribbled across a strip of paper. She stuck it to the adhesive side of a piece of tape and smooth it out gingerly onto the surface of the empty bottle.

The Perfect Specimen, says the label.

The bottle may remain empty forever.

But for now, let it be filled by all her hopes and dreams.