Chapter 17 - Formaldehyde

The tall building was five or six stories tall. Jack had climbed the stairs all the way to the roof exit one day. The door was locked, so he was unable to get to the roof. It would have been fantastic to see the world from up there, but the door was locked and he had no where to go but down.
Each floor had a few odors that were very strong, but there was one odor that overpowered the rest. Jack wandered into the hallway on one of the floors and walked past several rooms that looked like laboratories. There was a black formica table with a sink and a natural gas spigot in one room. Another room had a small inflatable play pool with murky green water in it. The room he finally walked into to get a closer inspection had wall-to-wall shelves full of various sized bottles and jars. Each glass container had a light brown liquid in it and some strange looking creature. Most were fish specimens, but there were a wide variety of creatures as well.
As he looked around the room, he noticed a large dark brown glass jar near the front of the room. It was marked with a picture of a skull and crossbones and had the word “poison” written beneath the picture. A flaking piece of yellow masking tape described the chemical contained inside the jar. It was Formaldehyde.
There was a second door inside the room he was in that had an incandescent light shining from within. Suddenly there was a large crash from behind the door. Jack’s instinct was to get the hell out of there, but he froze and waited for what might come next. He heard muffled voices that were escalating into an argument.
“Jesus Christ asshole!” said one voice.
“I told you to wait a second!” said the other.
“You can’t do it that way, get some paper towels!” said the first voice.
“The teeth, get the teeth!” said the second voice.
Jack decided it was time to move, fast, but when he turned to leave he almost walked into a large white lab coat with two huge arms and a barrel chest. He saw big hands coming toward his face and then black nothing. Then silence.