Mary was at her side again. Her face looked even more like a caricature of youth this time. She placed something on the table by Alex’s head, something Alex could not see, something that clinked cleanly like glass on metal. Something that now lurked with dread intent in the world beyond the reach of the mirror’s reflection. Hiding and waiting. Sweat broke out on Alex’s brow and ran into one of her eyes, salty and stinging. Alex felt panic grip her throat, threatening to choke her and slapping her face with a cold, clammy hand, demanding she recognize it.
‘Mary?’ Her voice was flat, trying unsuccessfully to suppress the rising tide of anxiety flooding up through her throat. ‘Mary, might I see someone, a doctor maybe or the police? Has my family been to see me? Have they been notified?’
Mary stopped fumbling with the bedclothes and turned to look at Alex. The face was old and her manner had become harsher. The make-up had dried, cracked and flaked away from her skin, which itself lacked the firm elasticity of several moments ago. Even the exposed area of her cleavage was dry and withered and her lips were now thinned, the ruby red lipstick smudged over folds of skin that were recently plump, full flesh. And her perfume was now tinged with a sharp, bitter quality.
Alex recoiled in shock, as if she had been dealt a hefty blow across her face. Her panic had become a suction implement, extracting all the saliva from her mouth and leaving the space behind as dry and tasteless as dust. She quickly realized that somehow she had to get out or summon assistance from someone else in the hospital. Looking at the nurse she wondered if she was in fact incarcerated in a mental institution, and that Mary was an inmate loosed from her restraints and now tormenting Alex.
Alex tried to dissipate the fear welling inside her brain and she tried to even out her voice, as if she were cajoling a child. ‘Mary, I’m sorry I shouted. I’m just a little scared, that’s all. I’m worried because I can’t remember anything. I appreciate all you are doing for me, honestly I do. I just wondered if I could see my doctor, just for a chat… and to give you a little break maybe?’
Gradually, without announcement and with the subtleties of sleep’s arrival, Alex was becoming aware of pain. Not a localized, sharp, breath-limiting pain, but more of a general throbbing of discomfort, with enough edges to make Alex’s subconscious register its nature and anticipate worse to come. Alex’s consciousness in turn recognized it and warned her she was now on a timetable. Something had been placed on the stand by her head, something that maybe this deranged harpy intended to wield soon. Alex was certain that it was not something pleasant.
Mary’s sudden ageing also terrified Alex. Were her perceptions askew due to her condition? The psychotic nurse could not have actually aged? Had an older, crazed inmate slipped into the room outside Alex’s field of vision and disposed of Mary, taking her place at Alex’s bedside? It seemed like her pain and panic were increasing at an identical rate, spurring each other on, as if in some headlong race to be the first to take control. She could try to manage the pain with a degree of will, but she could not afford to allow panic to attain a grip on her. If she was to entertain even the faintest hope of salvation she had to stay focused and in control of her faculties for as long as possible. Panic would, at best, cloud her judgment and, at worst, prevent her from taking advantage of any opportunity for escape.
Alex tried again, ‘Mary, you look, tired. Why don’t you take a rest and let someone else see to me for a while? You must be exhausted.’
‘Exhausted?’ Mary cut her off mid-sentence, her voice a rasping verbal punch as she raised her face to Alex once again. ‘Exhausted you say, exhausted… Exhausted.’ She spoke the word blankly, as if in repetition she would come to some understanding of it.
Mary’s eyes were dulled now, as if in death, and her skin was wan and without moisture. Then a look of remembrance fluttered across her features, momentarily brightening the dark orbs of her eyes.
She spoke as if reading a description from a dictionary. ‘Exhausted, wasted, washed up empty, nothing left, barren, spent, used up, tired, tired, so very, very tired.’
She looked through Alex.
She stared at some distant memory, beyond the confines of the four walls. Maybe looking for the sweet young girl that had stood in her place a short while ago, whilst her fingers entwined in the sheet covering Alex’s body, dragging it off without ceremony. Simultaneously she reached for the implement located on the stand by Alex’s head.
Alex had no illusions now as to Mary’s state of mind. She was deranged. The sensations in Alex’s body were now more acutely tuned. Nerve endings were registering a more incisive hurt like little pins being sunk into her flesh all over her body, remorselessly. Alex closed her eyes against the pain as if with the black shutters of her eyelids she could occlude the feelings that sliced through her body, centered now in her limbs and on her abdomen.
‘Mary?’ Alex did not want to risk another rebuke from the nurse, in part because she was convinced the next reprimand would be of a physical nature, but the increasing severity of her pain demanded she speak. ‘Mary, I really need something for the pain, please. Just something for the pain.’
When Alex opened her eyes there was an awful moment of delay as the image she saw reflected in the mirror above was relayed to her brain and realization dawned. Alex now understood why she had been unable to exert any force in her limbs and why she felt such a dull numbness in her extremities.
Her four limbs were stumps, bloodied and bruised. The right arm was removed above the elbow, the left below the elbow. Her legs were amputated, one above and one below the knee. Excess skin mushroomed beyond the blunted edges of her arms and legs. Each clumsily sown member had the appearance of fleshy sweet wrapper or Christmas cracker. The stitches were thick, black and coarse, like those of a badly crafted rag doll.
Alex screamed and flapped her useless limbs like a fish flipped from its bowl, and she whimpered helplessly, ‘No. No. For God’s sake, what have you done? Where are my arms, my legs, where are they, you bitch!’ And she screamed again until the air emptied from her lungs.
As the horror of her dismemberment was being forced into her conscious she realized the cause of the pain in her abdomen. There was an open wound running from her midriff downwards, the flesh torn in an irregular pattern, and her internal organs were almost visible through the deepest section of the laceration.
Mary was bending over Alex now; the item in her hand was a syringe with a disproportionately long needle. Mary’s head lowered until Alex could feel the nurse’s breath, exhaled in slow, menacing groans, and it was hot against the tender skin encircling the rip in her stomach. Alex viewed the violence and brutality being performed on her abused body in the mirror on the ceiling. Her gaze was held firm by the restraints about her head, so she was forced to witness the unfolding atrocities.
‘No, please, no!’ she sobbed over and over again as Mary then bit deep into the gaping wound.
Seconds later the nurse then threw her head back to look at Alex with demented resolve, lengths of Alex’s own insides still clenched in her teeth and still attached to Alex’s body like stretched elastic.
Alex screamed in agony as Mary wiped the back of her hand across her blood-smeared mouth, releasing the grisly strip of tissue, as she smiled like an infant who had sneaked away to eat a stolen jar of sweets.
Alex tried in vain to arch her back to vent some of the hurt as Mary chastised, ‘Now, Alex, we’ve discussed this. You signed all the necessary consent forms, everything has been carried out with your full approval, it’s just a procedure, dear.’
And Alex shrieked in anguish and fury, ‘What the hell have you done to me, you crazy bitch? I never approved of you taking my fucking arms and legs off, you maniac! Help! Somebody help me, please!’
Mary replaced the covers, concealing Alex’s body again, and smoothed her hair sympathetically. Alex saw in the mirror suspended from the ceiling, that blood was already soaking through the sheet where the nurse had bitten her. Then Alex s
aw a section of the back of the nurse’s head was missing. Flesh hung in strips, necrotic and infested with plump, white maggots, and where the cleft was at its most severe, dead withered flowers protruded.
‘You need to calm down, dear, such a fuss and such profanities. Maybe we can speak again later, when you are a little bit more agreeable,’ Mary said softly.
Alex starred wildly at the nurse’s blood-splattered face as Mary slipped the needle into Alex’s eye and depressed the plunger to inject a black liquid directly into the soft jelly.
Alex slipped beneath consciousness into a fitful, nightmarish facsimile of sleep. Hours later the door to her room creaked open marginally. She fought back from the edges of her dreams to open her eyes and watch Jake appear by her side.
He touched her cheek with his hand and gave her a sad little smile, which she returned. He whispered, ‘I love you, Mummy. Hurry up and get all better and come and play with the nice nurse lady and me. We are playing at hiding from the bad nurse. I’ll wait for you, Mummy, hurry.’
And he was gone.
***
Mary sat at her desk in the reception area of the hospital. Many figures drifted by. Some aimlessly shuffling. Some confused or desperately seeking answers to their plight. Some springing from the walls like rabid monkeys, knocking over the rambling figures. Some engaged in hysterical conversations with themselves.
Then one being entered the hall and she recoiled. An inhumanly tall man dressed in black, stooped and aged, regarded her for a second as he passed. Mary reacted like a cornered cat, rising from her chair to retreat with teeth bared, hissing and lowering her head. She did not hold the man’s stare and did not look up again until he had passed by, then she re-seated herself at the desk and continued staring sadly in the dirty, cracked mirror before her.
Chapter Thirteen
A figure walked slowly down the road that spans the middle of oblivion. Its attire was completely black; black close fitted boots, to just below its knees, dusty black trousers, dirty black shirt and a black, crumpled fedora hat with the brim turned down against the wind. It wore a large, black overcoat made of burnt, seared skin, glistening as if perpetually wet. The coat billowed in the ferocious wind and made the figure appear as a giant bat, a bat grounded now with its skin rippling like liquid, as it ambled along the desert road. The coat was so large that it required a gale to keep the skirt from the surface of the path, for if it were to fall, it would gather round the thing’s feet like an enormous rumpled, slumbering snake.
The figure leaned into the wind as it pushed forward. It was a wild, preternatural gale, whipping about the figure in gusts of dirt and dust and creating small whirlpools of fine grit and sand along the side of the road. The night doused the figure in harsh moonlight and washed it alternately silvery grey and shimmering black, the light refracted on the wet material of the coat, as if on the gently undulating face of a great, dark lake.
The figure turned its head sideways as it progressed and regarded the scenery it passed. Desolation. Apocalyptic desolation. A vast, sprawling landscape of destruction, twisted structures, both natural and engineered. And everywhere dust, dirt, the acrid wind and deep, low, menacing, heavy clouds. And the smell of pandemonium, a thick odor of vomit, sulfur, blood and metal, waste and want, crawling to the figure over a sea of human bones that were bleached white and almost translucent in the gloom.
The figure was abnormally tall, maybe nine feet tall. Its shoulders were long and absurdly square, slanting upwards as if a similarly curved hanger was still concealed inside its great, black coat. Its tread was methodical, its huge shoulders moving in conjunction with the long, purposeful strides it pitted against the wind, beating at its juice-less face. The stiff cadence of its step almost resembled a huge wooden puppet, animated from somewhere high in the malevolent skies; long, spindly limbs, stiffly jointed and moving along the wasted terrain like a soul making its way assuredly into Hell.
There was no betrayal of the time it had taken the figure to arrive at this point in its journey, neither in its actions or behavior, and similarly no hint of how far it still had to go on its pilgrimage. It carried a suitcase in its right hand. The case was so large and heavy that a normal human, like the one inside the suitcase, would have to push and drag such a big and cumbersome item of luggage. But the case dangled free of the ground because of the excessive nature of the walker’s height. With its suitcase bulky and swaying, the figure pushed on through the Armageddon ravaged land like a giant on holiday.
Inside the case was folded a woman, perplexed and afraid, she knew not where she was, or why she was there. She was aware of the darkness and of the confining dimensions of her environment. She was unable to flex her limbs to offer resistance to the soft walls that entrapped her. She half remembered terror beyond imagination and she knew she was connected to that horror, or had even been subjected to it. But her subconscious mind wrapped an iron fist around those memories to protect her sanity from further assault and she could not glimpse the abominations within. She whimpered like a puppy chastised for fouling itself on the carpet, and then she fouled herself.
A twig from a stripped, dead tree spiraled from its resting-place amongst the dirt and debris and tumbled towards the walker. It stalked the figure for a short while, bouncing along the road before it launched itself into the air and danced along the top of the black case held by the giant. It snagged the clip at the back of the case and loosened the mechanism. Then it somersaulted along the width of the case and leaped back to the ground where it skipped and turned at the mercy of the wind’s vagaries. The laws of physics began to work on the clip. An imperceptible trembling of the lock began as it took the strain of the load whilst half-open. Neither the carrier, nor the carried, noticed the changes, until there was an audible springing noise and the lock fell open.
The tall creature’s head turned and its face inclined with studied deliberation as the opening of one lock redistributed the weight of the woman inside the case. The walker’s face was ancient and withered. The skin was as cracked and parched as the barren, desolate place it traversed and its eyes were empty and insensate. The walker’s fragile attention now dissipated and left only abstract interest behind as the captive woman’s body pushed against one side of the case’s interior. The remaining closed lock groaned as it began to give way under the uneven pressure it now bore. The woman inside the case heard the faint sound. So did the walker, even though its ears had long ago rotted into rank, gnarled growths of suppurating flesh, which had fallen somewhere alongside its long footprints on the unending road.
The lock protested one last time, then sprang, one side of the case falling away to leave the walker grasping the handle, its features switching now to mild perplexity. Out of the case poured the living contents, the petrified and soiled woman. The giant walker now fixed what was left of its eyes, dull pools in gashes, lidless and dead, on the woman. The woman retched and thrashed her head from side to side, trying to comprehend where she was. She attempted to assimilate the hellish scene around her, the grotesque case carrier and any means of escape that might be available. The giant smiled a sick, corrupt, putrid smile, as out of place on its decayed face as a panic button in a coffin.
The woman tried to rise to her feet, to push herself erect but the attempt was ineffectual. Confused, her vision blurred and painful, she stared at the disproportionately tall figure dressed in black, with the slit of a mouth still twisted into a deranged grin. Slowly and methodically the stooping carcass removed its great black hat to reveal a head that prematurely ended an inch or so above the line of the lifeless eyes. The brain was exposed, jellied, glutinous and slipping awkwardly over the rim of the grey, protruding skull. Scarlet strands still clung to the inside of the hat as it was separated from the brain tissue.
The giant’s huge, thin hand reached inside the coat that seemed to inflate each time a gust of dry, gritty wind hit it. From a concealed pocket the giant produced an over-sized needle and thread and began to
insert the latter into the former with concentrated precision.
It spoke to another being for the first time in decades and its voice was as hollow and dry as old bones. ‘I haven’t finished yet, Alex.’
The lips of the woman who lay prostrate at the boot-clad feet of the giant quivered and her eyes widened inquisitively. But the repugnant face of the tall, aged figure merely cocked its head as if surprised by the woman’s failure to grasp its meaning and it nodded what was left of its head towards the woman’s legs.
The woman, who until now had only scanned her surroundings and the unnatural form towering over her, lowered her eyes to inspect her own body. She wore a loose fitting garment, off-white in color, and a gown of some description, like the type worn in a hospital. But what protruded from the gown almost stopped her heart, as if a sliver of lethally sharp glass had been rammed into her chest. The woman’s mouth fell open and a cry as desolate as the ruined city about her leaped forth as remembrance smashed down the door that protected her mind. The giant knelt by Alex’s side, needle poised.
Alex closed her eyes tightly and sobbed, ‘No, no, please no.’
Then she heard the rasping breath close to her face, rancid and hot as the giant began to stitch.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Open your eyes, Alex, open your eyes.’ The words drifted down like soft snowfall to where Alex’s mind hid.
She became aware of herself again as her eyes opened and she stared blankly at the man dressed in back. She lay by a fire and she perceived the giant through the blaze, his features seeming liquid as they were bent and distorted by the play of the flames. Alex slowly began to piece together the debris of her memories. It was like sifting through ashes of time, trying to reconstruct the picture from crisped, curled fragments of the jigsaw.
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