Wretched, Part 3

Voices. I could hear voices. Perhaps it was they that roused me from the unconscious sleep into which the hammer had sent me so abruptly?1

Searing pain directly behind my eyes shattered my thoughts; I may have cried out in pain, but if I had, it was lost to the drum-like beating of my brain against the walls of my skull. I welcomed this agony however, for the simple fact that it meant I was still alive – the beast hadn’t killed me in the streets.2

Reluctantly, I allowed my eyes to drift open, expecting a rush of light that never came. When I opened my eyes, I expected to see the night sky – or even the sun, depending on how long I would have laid unconscious in the street – but the sight which greeted me was not the twinkling stars, or impenetrable fog: it was large white ceiling tiles, thick though they were with mildew of all colors.3

It took awhile for me to force myself into an upright position – or perhaps it simply felt that way because of the pain that shot from my head into my neck, back, and shoulders. Once I was sitting up, and the pain-induced blindness had receded, I looked about the room in hopes of collecting my bearings and determining where I was: this was a surprisingly simple feat. Small, square, white tiles on the walls, a simple chest of drawers, an intravenous drip – I was in a hospital.4

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been thrilled to wake up from such an accident to find myself in the trained care of professionals, but this hospital was thick with filth and mildew – worse, there was something familiar about it. I had no idea where I was, but I was quite certain that I had to get out.5

My gaze drifted back to the IV drip, filled with a thick, yellow slime, not unlike pus. I followed the trail of the viscous pus with my eyes as it spiraled through the old, warped tube. Though the pus advanced quite slowly through the tube, I was still horrified to find the tube attached to a needle that had been pressed into my arm while I slept; the yellow slime hadn’t quite reached my veins yet, and I wasn’t about to give it the time it needed to finish its descent. Immediately, I grabbed the needle and, in my haste, snapped it as I tore the hollow metal tube out of my body. Blood ran from the puncture wound, from which a tiny, jagged piece of metal stuck out; carefully, I took hold of the broken needle and pulled it much more slowly and cautiously out of my flesh, until I had removed it completely from my person.6

After discarding the needle, I wiped the blood off of my arm and onto the undressed mattress upon which I had been laid out. I stared at the blood for several long minutes, thrilled to find that it hadn’t spread and decayed as the red muck had in my bathroom.7

With renewed confidence that my sanity might be spared, I looked once more around the small, solitary hospital room I had been placed into; it wasn’t until my eyes had passed over the door that I remembered the voices I heard in my sleep. The words that were spoken were lost to my aching mind, but I was certain that the voices were real, and that meant that I was not alone in this decrepit hospital – whether that was good fortune or bad was yet to be determined.8

Upon my first attempt to stand, I became immediately lightheaded and fell back onto the mattress; I was also aware of the clattering sound of something falling off of my mattress with the force of my landing. I had to make several attempts to stand, before my head stopped swimming and throwing me off balance. Once I was on my feet, I looked down to see what it was that had fallen off of my bed; to my amazement, I found the flashlight that had been buried in the chest cavity of that emaciated cadaver, crucified in the alleyway. I retrieved the flashlight and took the time to examine it more closely in the dim illumination of my room.9

The flashlight was unlike ordinary flashlights, having a vertical body, rather than the typical, elongated, horizontal variety. It was certainly high quality, providing a clean, bright cone of light, and as I quickly discovered, it fit quite snuggly into the breast pocket on my shirt, leaving both of my hands free.10

The fact that I would need to keep both of my hands free unnerved me. What was that thing that attacked me in the alley, and more to the point, were there more out there waiting for me?11

My hand was trembling, I noticed, as I reached for the tarnished silver door handle. I felt a fleeting moment of embarrassment for being scared, but I knew that anyone else in such a position would also be frightened, and besides that, I was alone.12

Quickly, I threw open the door and stepped boldly into the hallway.13

The hallway outside my door was even darker than my room had been, and the floor was quite cluttered, I found, as I trampled things beneath my boots. After switching on the flashlight, I glanced downward: glass and plastic medicine bottles littered the floor, along with myriad colorful pills, all of which were dulled beneath a layer of dust. In some places, the dust was dark and thick, where intravenous drip bags and liquid medicines had been spilled.14

Behind me, the door to my room slammed shut suddenly, and I spun about in my panic; as my light washed over the door, I saw the room was marked as ‘S3.’ I had no intention of returning to that room, however, so its number was of no consequence to me.15

With no clear idea of where to go, I turned around once again and began to walk to the left. As I progressed down the hallway, I kept my eyes on the escalating room numbers: S4, S5, S6, eventually ending with S14 at the end of the hall; also at the end of the hall was a single wheelchair, laid on its side atop an old, filthy mattress. It seemed odd that the wheelchair was clean and new, while the mattress was old and covered in the same black rot that had adorned most of the ceiling in S3, but I wasn’t going to concern myself with something so trivial as a wheelchair in a hospital.16

Since I was standing near the door, and had no idea where I should be going, I approached S14 and pushed the door open; it swung freely, yet was accompanied by the loud groan of ancient, rusted hinges.17

S14 was slightly larger than the room I had woken up in, with an undressed bed laid across the center of the room, and a metal chair laying on the floor at the base of it. As I scanned the room with my flashlight, I felt my chest tense with fear as the light fell upon a figure perched on the far side of the bed. The figure had its back to me, but I could see that it was definitely female, with slick, reflective skin, and dressed in a white nurse’s outfit. The smooth, shiny skin, and the fact that the figure was completely still, led me to the conclusion that it was simply a mannequin – a thought that certainly eased my racing heartbeat.18

I moved further into the room, now that I was certain that there was no danger, and began to look more thoroughly around the room. Truthfully, I had no idea what I was looking for, but I was lost and afraid in an abandoned hospital – I’d have been happy just to know where I had been taken.19

Something passed through the emanation of my flashlight, casting a shadow against the wall that cast the entire room into darkness. I fell back onto my rear from my crouched position, momentarily panicked by the shadow, and it was from there where I watched the mannequin rising slowly from the bed using only her legs, while her arms dangled at her sides like those of a marionette.20

My eyes followed the thing’s body, starting from her legs and traveling over her torso, until they came to rest finally on her head – or rather, the twisted parody of a human head. The nurse’s head was thick and bulbous, and seemed to twitch and pulsate, while red and black slime oozed from fat, fleshly ‘lips’ that seemed to appear randomly in the folds of skin.21

I was paralyzed with terror and wonder as I stared up at the inhuman creature, I couldn’t even will my limbs to move as it turned shakily towards me, began to stumble in my direction with legs that seemed to be without joints.22

Finally, when the tumor-headed nurse was on top of me, I forced myself to spin around and crawl frantically away. Behind me, the nurse raised her arms stiffly overhead and pursued me with a speedier gait, now that she knew she had prey.23

Just as I began to stand, her hands landed heavily on my shoulders. Her vice-like grip sent a renewed pain throughout my body, and a simple shove sent me tumbling over the chair and slammed my face against the tiled wall.24

I scrambled to my hands and knees after landing heavily upon the dust-covered floor and looked over my shoulder; behind me, the nurse was also on her hands and knees as she crawled stiffly over the bed, her myriad ‘mouths’ opening and closing and spilling fresh fluids down her bulbous face.25

The nurse’s intentions were quite clear, and I had to prevent her from getting and closer to me so that she could do me further harm. My hand shot out, grabbing for anything that might prove to be a decent weapon; my grasping fingers closed around the leg of the fallen chair.26

Before me, the nurse-creature tumbled off the bed like a rag doll, smacking against the floor with a wet, sloppy sound; her bubble-like head sprayed fluids into the air as it impacted with the floor.27

I was the first to get back to my feet, now wielding the heavy, metal chair before myself as I’d seen lion tamers do a hundred times before – only my beast was no domesticated lion. For a moment, I only stood there, watching the creature slowly force herself up onto her knees; I questioned myself for what I was about to do…28

Finally, just as the thing was straightening herself, I raised the chair overhead and brought it down hard upon her head and back.29

The blow was accompanied by the nauseating sound of viscous fluids being forced out of her fleshy head, and caused the nurse to tumble back to the floor, where she landed on her hands and knees.30

Once again, I raised my awkward weapon over head, and swung it down on the creature, and once again, her head was compacted, which forced more of the thick, sticky fluids out of her body and onto the floor.31

How many times did I swing that chair down on that bizarre creature in nurse’s clothing? I had lost count. Each time I struck her, tearing open her shiny skin, dislocating bones, spilling inhuman fluids, she would continue to move and force herself back up, leaving me with no choice but to swing again.32

When the nurse finally ceased to struggle, I watched as her head deflated, shrinking as the remaining fluids spilled out of the numerous fat lips. My weapon – the chair – was left warped and broken, covered in the thick slime that the nurse seemed to have an endless supply of within her.33

Due to the poor condition of the chair, coupled with the fact that it would have been a terribly awkward thing to carry with me, I threw it back to the floor; when the chair hit the linoleum, several of the bolts finally broke free of the seat, causing one of the square, metal legs to fall away. I looked towards the corpse of the nurse, and back to the leg of the chair; reluctantly, I retrieved it… There might be more of those things out there.
34