The crushing chest pain was next. What followed was the final sickening shortness of breath from a dirge of blood cells damming up arteries and veins. Now his breath he could not get at all, not even
from his self-torn throat. His skin split further still from the excessive internal pressure. The flush of his sweating and the bleeding of his fleshy tissue has hued from cherry red, to pink, to blue, to purple as his lungs solidified and died.
The doctor could now see only the black nothing as the seams of his pantaloons parted. Solidified blood pushed its way thick and slowly out of the physician’s rectum in a long, concrete, bracken cylinder. It was like a blood-snake seeking sunlight, which was followed rapidly by fresher blood that came as a dam burst from the torn stomach.
People gathered closer now to watch in horror and dismay as the physician, the man in charge, threw up more of his blood. He had no cognizance of this. Dr. Blyte could no longer see anything as both his eyes lay dangling astride his nose. They were suspended by the optic nerves.
His heart burst. It made a majestic sound. It was loud like a full bladder that was being trampled underfoot. The blood that exploded from the ruptured heart muscle could be heard as it slammed itself into the ribcage inside his chest wall.
Dr. Blyte pitched forward to the ground. The impact concaved his face. His nose, chin, and cheekbones cracked and splintered all at once like kindling wood.
The physician lay still in the ever-spreading pool of his own blood. There was so much of it. As the circle of the pool widened, the crowd had to take several steps back to keep from its reach. The blood was much more than what should have come forth from just one lone man. But it wasn’t just his blood, was it? The blood of all his victims stretched itself outward.
The small crowd that had gathered to gawk at him now moved back. And as they did so they stole befuddled peeks from the blood inching its way relentless to their feet and back to the obscenely bloated form on the ground before them.
The crowd gasped open-mouthed with alarm, trying to take it all in. They were disgusted by the way his asshole popped noxious gas at them as the body began to slowly deflate. It slowly leaked out every ropey length of hyper-extended bowel onto the ground beneath him. It was plumping out from the underside of the physician’s body and popping open, heralding its contents with the terrible twin odors of sin and decay.
Every one of his over-taxed vital organs followed suit. All of his adipose tissue, as well as the putrid clumping bunches of tadpole-sprouting tumors sought their egress from the prison of his dead corpse.
Dr. Willelm Blyte’s skin and connective tissue began to curl and roll up on itself like scrolls from either side of where the skin had split, until they eventually met together at the center of his back.
In an eye-blink, thick mounds of orangey moss smelling of sulfur began growing across the doctor’s thoracic cage. The moss grabbed hold and climbed upward, using the ribs for purchase.
It was time for the parasites to leave their host. They did so in a mass exodus. The blood that had sustained them was gone. Their world was dissipating.
Dozens of fish belly white larvae as thick as your thumb fell out of his ears. Roaches, after tasting the air, to see which way the wind was blowing, decided it was time to go. And when they did, they rattled down his rectum in a yellow-gray bunch. Once out the roaches l spread to the four winds, climbing beds, feeling for new homes amongst those patients that seemed beyond noticing. Blind and tentative tapeworms emerged from the many splits in the still wriggling bowels. Some were mere fingerlings, but most were as thick as a child’s wrist and as long as a forearm. The Plague buboes that had never developed when the doctor was alive reared their ugly heads. They grew and were round like apples, pushing green-black corks from center tops. Stinging wasps came inside the hospital in a swarm as if they had been summoned to the feast. They each landed on a bubo and used their stingers to pierce a hole in the pustule. Arcs of dark waxy infected waste shot out of the buboes in every direction like a king’s fountain. Every place it touched, the eye-wincing sharp tang rivulets had pooled the dirt indentions of the hospital floor. Without delay, the ponds of foul waste began bubbling and sprouting forth tiny trees of dead flesh. The trees twisted in agony and knot holes opened up wide so that all could all hear their screams of pain.
The body of the physician itself now seemed to shrink as its waste and decaying fleshy sinews provided a growing medium for all the Hellish aberrations. An immense hunting spider crawled out from within a chamber of the doctor’s burst heart. When it fully unrolled itself it could cover the hand of a man. It was the lightest tan in color, hairless, with dozens of bright red eyes and thousands of mite-sized babies crawling all pell-mell over each other, riding on their mother’s back. She stopped not too far away as there came now a white rain of maggots. They were being spit with popping corn sounds from out of the hair follicles. They rolled and tumbled from the scalp like a spilled bag of breathing, wriggling rice. Mother spider got herself low to the ground. The baby spiders were off her and in the midst. They were eating as many of them as they could.
A whole microcosm of a monstrous and wicked world had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of a dead drinker of blood. And that was all the witnesses could bear. They turned away soundlessly, averting their eyes and stopping up their noses as best they could. Almost as one they did.
They shook their heads to lose the images, but it was to no avail. The small crowd who bore witness would have a long and difficult time coming to them. Try as they might, they cannot wipe away this scene of butchery and carnage.
They will never be able to stop thinking about what they had seen. Because the nightmares that will linger in wait for them, they are just behind those closed eyelids. Like all the very best dark-time imaginings, they are a child’s toy top, just waiting to be spun loose in our own version of understanding.
We will never be free.
It shall always be as fresh as a daisy new.
THE END.
"VYVANSE IS A VERY CLEAN LONG-ACTING, HAPPY-SPEED"
“VYVANSE”
IV
Shitting in Tall Cotton:
CHESS MASTER HAS BEEN right about everything. She told me there’s nothing she can’t do, there’s no move she can’t make and there is no game she can’t win. I can’t disagree with her. After all, I’m sitting pretty in Paradise Acres. You’d think I’d be happy. Instead, I am crying in my comfy recliner, trying to get my courage up to do the do. I’ve got the knife right here. I’m getting comfortably numb enough to go through with it. I should just do it, already: right here and now. Get it over and done with, once and for all. My name is Orlyn Farr and the guilt pounding inside is just straight fucking killing me.
There is no one nearby. I am all alone as the distant cold sun shines on me. It cannot distinguish between the sinner and the saint. This is good. I turn my face up to feel its chilly kiss. I am above ground and beneath the solar-farmed, GRID powered, force field. We are protected plenty here at Paradise Acres. Trees and shrubs, flowering plants and grass flourish here. The GRID keeps the Little Ice Age conditions on the outside, where it belongs.
My flat looks out onto an Eden-like stretch of park land. The expertly designed and rigorously maintained park is exclusive to the rich seniors that live here. I am one of them. I can see my contemporaries as they troll and stroll about the grounds, with varying degrees of difficulty. These ancient shells represent the very top of the social and economic food-chain. Paradise Acres houses only those of us connected enough or rich enough, to buy back our geriatric years. A much smaller, but significant number of residents were lucky enough to win their spot by playing tournament BINGO.
Here I sit, still contemplating. All the residents here at Paradise Acres are continually monitored for our vital signs. The Medical care here is top-drawer. I am being monitored, too. No exceptions, so I will have to time this deal just so. If I’m going to go through with this, I’ve got to yank out all t
he indwelling sensors with quickness. The Medico machines are so fast. They will be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. It will make an interesting race: to see if the machines can get here before I expire. They probably will, but I have a very sharp knife and the proper amount of guilt required to see this sad business through, down to the bitter end. They won’t be able to re-animate me. Two big slices in the proper locations and I am done for, no matter how quickly help arrives.
The knife is on the table, right beside my right hand. It is all ready to rock and roll. I pour myself out another double-shot (why not?) of single malt and slug it back. I can feel the Demerol injection I gave myself earlier. It’s reeling in me, reeling me in. The Demerol sends out marching army ants of foggy bliss. They are taking no prisoners. I’m smoking the very best cloned bud-smoke that can be had. The smoke is priced per gram like posh cocaine. Here I’m a chimney stack. I’m treating this huge spliff of shiny-haired purple shit like it is only low-grade brick-packed dirt weed. I indulge in this manner, pert near every day. I will continue to be coddled in this amazingly civilized manner until the day my old ass kicks. This could be next week, or two decades from now. In a lot of very real ways, the timing is up to me.
The tears that fall free from my sobbing eyes would make my recent laser corrections sting something terrible, if it wasn’t for the Demerol. My sad display counters my opulent surroundings. This is the sort of despair poor people have, or sick people. I am neither. According to my last full-body scan, I am completely disease-free. I am comfortable inside and out. I will never, ever have to see a dark, dank underground tunnel again. I will never have to breathe in everyone else’s stinking re-cycled breath. I will never have to watch my own breath plume out cold and rancid before me; always shivering, never getting all the way warm. Here in Paradise, I can stroll about the park, the entire length and width, in super short sporty-shorts, if I choose. I can go to the Recreation Center and dance with the blue-hairs, or visit the brothel if I crave something I’d want to look at naked. I can get prescriptions for any flavor of narcotic I desire. Any and all of it at any time I desire. I am this rich. Yet I have a knife nearby. I am so very sad.
I think of Chess Master and then the little girl. She didn’t deserve what she got. Not by a long shot. I should have opted-out.
Determined, I reach for the blade.
“There are two classes of men; those who are content to yield to circumstances and who play whist; those who aim to control circumstances, and play chess.”
-Mortimer Collins
III
Mr. Big Winner:
I’M THE LUCKY ONE.
My knees popped and cracked as I stood victorious. I stood too quickly, too excited. I forgot to hold my breath. I took in a big one to let loose my WHOOP. The sedative in the foggy mist made me swoon as soon as it touched my wet lungs. I could barely rebel out my victory yell. Hands grabbed hold of me from all directions. They belonged to the Halflings that made up most of Chess Master’s goon squad. Hands are a bit too generalized. Nevertheless, I witness a cacophony of swirling flurry of flesh, feathers, fur, claws and scales. In a furious rush a protective shield is forced roughly over my face. One of the more expensive dental implants in my mouth has been loosened in the exchange. I tried my level best not to choke on it as they try to hustle my old ass out of the gaming hall.
The goon squad surrounded me on all sides. The swarm of players de-crying their fate got shakily up from their places before the BINGO screens. Dozens of them began hurling themselves at us. The goons hit the oldies with neural disruptors, making them vomit and shit themselves. The biggest goons used their thick and strong iguana tails to snap at and toss bodily the other geezers out of our way. The weakened geriatric bones of these hapless players shattered on contact. It was soggy and gruesome to hear. Their screams were deafening. If I’d still had a heart, it would have been wrenched right out of me.
I watched as a goon’s fistful of claws sliced across a senior’s carotid artery. The hot spray lashed out, stinging my eyes and making my cloudy cataracts blunt even more so. I couldn’t see for shit, but I really didn’t need to. The oldies were fighting for their very lives, attacking me and my guards as the exit neared. A blue-haired wig flew past my field of vision. I could not even see who it belonged to.
It was bad. Even through the mask and face shield that was meant to protect me from the knock-out gas, I could easily smell the fear as the shit exploded out of hundreds of dying assholes, seemingly all at once. They were begging for mercy from a God that is long gone. A still twitching robotic lower leg prosthesis for a below-the-knee amputation bounced off one of the goons clutching me. The sedative mist was getting thick. The dull, yellow lights came on, sending a ghastly glow on all the frightened, saggy flesh. A pair of corneal implants flew by, hit a wall and bounced on the floor before being crushed by the panicked herd. The noise in the confined space of the gaming hall was deafening. The goons kept shouting orders in my near-deaf ears. With the noise I, of course, couldn’t hear a blessed thing.
One of the doomed tried to shove his way into our group. I don’t think the goons even noticed him at first. He began hacking and coughing. His face turned as dark as frost-bite as the old fart tried to gamely bring up his artificial lung. He probably meant it as a bribe. When they finally did take notice of the lunger, the goons straight dome clocked the poor sap.
By then the floor was slippy-slick with urine, blood and feces. I was the moving middle of the goons. They held on to me tight enough for it to have been painful. Even so, I slipped on the wet floor, completely out of control. I was sliding most of my body one way, while my right leg went the other way. My poor knee exploded as it folded under me. I hit the deck, but the goons hauled me straight once more. I was cringing as my destroyed leg was bent at a painfully inappropriate angle and was being dragged on the floor behind me.
It got progressively worse, the closer we got to the exit. Another contingent of goons awaited us on the outside of the plexi-glass viewing wall. The bettors were banging raucously on the wall beside them, just like the deranged hockey fans of old. The rich bettors were all drunk as a skunk and high as a kite, spitting while they yelled. Their breath smelled of smoke and drink and real meat protein. Their pupils were the size of dinner plates.
The crowd on the inside with us was all bunched up. They threw wild punches at one another, choking the shit out of each other with an all-out, end-of-the-world kind of madness. All the while this Roman spectacle played across the view screens, far and wide. It was the most popular sporting event in the world.
Betting on the right player to be The Big Winner is one thing, but most of the Fed Notes made on the tournament involved what was happening right here and now. Bettors bet on everything. They bet on who dies first, last, the fights, how close their horse made it to the wall before succumbing, who was hurt, in what manner, and on and on.
The players’ pleading shouts overwhelmed the sedative mist that was supposed to make them docile. It’s not working and things were just getting worse.
As we neared the exit, the goons were locked and loaded. They began inadvertently shooting down anyone that wasn’t me or a goon. Bald heads and liver-spotted faces disappeared in an exploding vapor of blood and brain. The door opened and the goons forced me through the opening and the safety of outside. We found ourselves in the hallway, right next to the viewing wall. The goons shut and secure-lock the door to the gaming hall from the outside. The gomers were pasting themselves pleading against the wall.
The bettors screamed with both joy and dismay at those who made it to the window. The big time ticked down. The cyanide pellets were dropped and they broke open in perfect deadly harmony. The players panicked anew. The bettors keenly observed through the glass as well as the over-hanging viewing screen, the order in which the horses were dropping out of the race. And they did not die straight away. Cyanide takes up all the oxygen receptor sites, so dying isn’t instantaneous. The sedative mist is supp
osed to calm the players down enough to be accepting of their fate. This crowd was anything but docile.
The betting crowd wasn’t much better. They got themselves so worked up, that they were practically foaming at the mouth. They were shouting at this one to hang-in there, and that one to just fucking die, already.
The players were suffocating to death, no matter how much air they were able to breathe in. And because the sedative mist was short-changed, they all died with their eyes wide open. It was horrifying to witness.
After making a hole in the betting crowd, the goons tossed me and my fucked leg onto a stretcher. I pulled the mask and face-shield free and let it drop to the floor as they hurried me along. They wheeled me to the VIP Infirmary. Just as I pulled the displaced dental implant from the back of my throat, we rolled through the door. I felt an instant of relief. I made it. I clutched the dental implant with a tight fist as the Medico machines took over. They shot this old boy up, straightaway, thankfully narcing me into bliss.
What a fucking day. I was still awake, but feeling no pain. I glanced over to the partition. The curtain separating us was billowing out and I caught sight of the poor fuck who’s donating his knee. I say donating, because I suspect it wasn’t the boy’s idea. He was kept on stand-by because we were matched, him and I. My body won’t reject his parts. There is a great deal of Fed Notes to be had from genetic harvesting. Fresh viable organs also bring in money, but if you can find an exact genetic match, your avatar can keep you alive far beyond what is your right. Like everything else, harvesting takes Notes and connections.
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