Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  "Come out, Candy," cooed Nurse Armbreaker, and Franco's eyes went wide in anticipation as from behind the screen stepped... a green jelly-monster from his worst nightmares. It was as if a huge and wobbling mound of jelly had been formed into the shape of the perfect woman. Candy was semi-transparent, and apparently made from some kind of wobbling sentient vegetable matter.

  "Candy?" moaned Franco, struggling weakly against his bonds. The amber liquid had made him as weak as a new kitten. And his mewls were about as manly.

  "This is Candy," said Nurse Armbreaker, voice stern, face a puckered focus. "She is a Viss, from the Gregfarory System, Cluster XXII. She is a perfect alien-human hybrid, and unfortunately, riddled with a variety of, shall we say, diseases. It would be an interesting experiment, for Clinic purposes of course, to see what effect these deviated bacterium have on a singular entity human body. Proceed!"

  "Whoa!" shouted Franco, "just wait a goddamn minute!"

  The Viss, Candy, proceeded. She walked coquettishly across the clinic experimentation room, past beds and trolleys, past cabinets of drugs and sterile stainless steel pans containing sterilised medical implements, most of which looked like deformed birthing tongs, or over-large scalpels.

  "Wait!" roared Franco, but Candy was in full flow, body wobbling in an exaggerated manner, breasts wobbling more than any breasts had a right to, and she reached the edge of the trolley and placed a hand on Franco's chest. It felt like being handled by a wet fish.

  "Hello," said Candy, and started climbing aboard him.

  "Geroff!" shouted Franco, struggling, but Candy engulfed him with her green jelly and placed her mouth over his, and her vagina over his hardness. He sank into her in all directions, and screamed, muffled, as she began to hump him.

  It was later. Much later. Franco opened a beady eye as if coming round from a particularly bad drinking session. He groaned, the after effects of the drugs kicking his system like a kid with a ball. "Shit," he said. "Bollocks." Then just for good measure he added, "Arse" to his triumvirate of waking expletives.

  I cannot believe that, he thought.

  I can't believe what she did to me!

  It, he corrected himself. I can't believe what it did to me.

  I feel quite abused.

  Argh.

  As full consciousness invaded his system and he realised he was still in his waking nightmare, he spied Nurse Armbreaker and gave her his worst scowl, the one with thunderous eyebrows and squinty eyes and a pouting mouth full of broken teeth. It had little effect; she was talking animatedly to several skinny little limp doctors with officious looking clipboards.

  So, thought Franco. It's gonna be like that, is it?

  He pulled at his straps. They were tight. They were strong. Stronger than Franco, anyway.

  Then he spied the... alien. The Viss, Nurse Armbreaker had called it. It was cowering against a wall, wobbling and green, and seemed somehow smaller now and Franco felt a sting of pity. The creature seemed somehow demure, submissive, and he realised the Viss was as much a victim, as much a prisoner, as he.

  OK. Plan of action? Don't get stabbed with a hypodermic again! That seemed like a good one. Nurse Armbreaker started towards him, trailed by a gaggle of beefy nurses and feeble doctors. They were all subtly deformed, with spots and lesions around their mouths. Franco frowned. Several of them scratched at their genitals.

  "And here," said Nurse Armbreaker, "we have Specimen 12,568. Franco Haggis. Human, or as near to human as we've been able to acquire. In poor health, judging from his complexion, his beer belly, and his manically exaggerated libido which hints at childhood repression and problems mating with others of his species for long periods of time."

  "Less of the species," muttered Franco.

  "Ahh. The specimen is awake." Nurse Armbreaker pulled free a long scalpel, which gleamed in the glow of The Clinic's lights. "As we can see, the Viss has successfully infected our human specimen with a variety of diseases, and it will be educational and extremely valuable to medical science to see how they deform, coagulate, spread and mutate.

  Franco strained to see his own penis, but couldn't quite get the elevation required. Deform, coagulate, spread and mutate? Franco went a little bit cold, and a little bit dead inside. Franco had never been infected in his life! Or nothing he could readily remember, anyway. Or at least, nothing that hadn't been cured by a fifty-day course of QG nuclear antibiotics. This sounded serious. This sounded like... alien VD.

  "Oh Gods," he muttered, and did a quick self-diagnostic. How did he feel? Not in his head, nor even his body, but down there in his little willy?

  Actually, when he thought about it, and focused all his attention on his groin area, he felt quite odd. His Roger felt a little bit inflamed. In fact, it felt like a different size. Hell, it even felt like a different damn shape!

  "Let me see it!" he blurted out, a sudden fear and hypertension taking hold of him and squeezing, hard. "I want to see it! Curse you, I want to see what you've done to me! Damn that alien VD!"

  Nurse Armbreaker gave him a stern look, and lifted the scalpel, speaking backwards to her gaggle of supporting staff. "Here, we will pop it and see what emerges..."

  However, as the scalpel lifted from prone to attack, Franco took the only opportunity he could. The scalpel passed his hand, and he grasped it in a sudden jerk, reversed the blade and cut neatly through the leather strap. His right arm snapped up, clutching the scalpel. It gleamed with a nasty silver light.

  "Hey!" came the gravel gasp of Nurse Armbreaker. "Specimen! You can't do that!"

  "Can't do what?" Franco slammed the scalpel down with a stabbing motion, cutting a long bloody streak in Nurse Armbreaker's thigh. She screamed, a long canine shriek, and grabbed the blood-gushing limb. "Get him! Murder him! Kill him!"

  Shit, thought Franco. Bugger! This game's up!

  The scalpel whizzed through the air, parting the leather of the second strap. Now he had both arms free. A doctor rushed at him armed with a long needle dripping amber nectar. Franco's upper torso twisted, as the thick needle flashed past his eyes, and he poked the scalpel into the doctor's masticating, frothing mouth, straight into the back of his throat. The doctor stumbled back, vomiting blood. Franco leant forward, missing the swing of a fire-axe (fire-axe? howled his mind, where the hell did a fire-axe come from?) which embedded in the trolley with a thud. Franco deftly slit the straps on his ankles, elbowed a nurse in the face, bursting her cherry-red lips and forcing her to drop the scalpel she carried in fat fumbling fingers, then leapt from the trolley, which squeaked a little, shifting on its little chrome wheels. A doctor snarled in that curious way only a doctor can snarl, and Franco hurled the scalpel. It embedded in the doc's eye, and he hit the ground on his back, twitching.

  "I'm a bloody damn specimen, am I?" roared Franco. He was good and mad now. "Infecting my todge with diseases and alien VD! I'm just not bloody having it, reet?"

  He whirled, grabbed the axe from its temporary embedding in the trolley, and wrenched it free. He stood, naked, quivering, dangling, holding the axe and scowling with hatred. Then he looked down, and almost dropped the axe at the sight of his little fella. It was swollen, engorged, and most definitely blue. It dribbled a toxic looking blue substance. It was, to all intents and purposes, an infected alien todge.

  "Noooooo!" howled Franco.

  "Now you listen here," snapped Nurse Armbreaker, stalking forward, limping on her slashed leg and wagging her finger at him as if reprimanding a naughty child. Her bun quivered. She looked most seriously exasperated... As if the naked man with the axe before her was someone to be chastised, and not avoided like a heady dose of bubonic plague. "This has gone far enough! You are Specimen 12,568. You have been delivered here for our medical purposes, and you will do exactly what you are told you naughty little man, put that axe down on the floor this instant and step away from the trolley!"

  Nurse Armbreaker was used to getting exactly what she wanted, when she wanted. She was used to being obeyed
- instantly. Which was why Franco's actions quietly surprised her.

  Franco swung the fire-axe, and lopped off her head.

  Nurse Armbreaker's decapitated noggin rolled sideways and gave a slap as it hit the floor. A half-hearted fountain of blood came from her carcass, which folded to one side. Nurse Armbreaker's eyes stared up at Franco, and her surprised mouth was formed into a surprised O of utmost surprise.

  Franco glanced up at the remaining doctors and nurses, perhaps ten in total, who had armed themselves with a variety of twisted medical implements, a curled needle here, a corrugated scalpel there, and for the first time Franco realised everything in The Clinic was slightly twisted, slightly bent from the norm.

  The doctors and nurses, also, wore an O of surprise on shocked faces.

  Franco grinned.

  "Come on, let's dance, fuckers," he said, and with bare feet slapping the tiles and his blue todge swinging in rhythm, he charged at them, hefting the axe.

  When it was over and Franco stood in pools of blood, staring around himself as his fury bled away, he looked down at himself again, at the streaks and smears covering him as if he was some savage at the end of an esoteric religious ritual. Which, maybe, he was.

  "Damn and stinking chipmunks!" he snarled. "Now, where's me clothes?" He turned, bloodied axe still tight in his grip, but could see no clothes, and more importantly, could see none of his weapons. "Damn and raggedy whores! Will nothing ever go right for me? It's like the whole Quad-Galaxy is constantly against me!"

  His eyes fell on the jelly alien. She quivered, yet smaller now, her great wobbling breasts deflated, her rotund arse a mere shadow of those great ripe peaches which had been pounding on Franco's thighs only a few short hours ago.

  Franco stalked forward, feeling the heat of hatred rise once more within him. The Viss cowered, covering her head with her arms to create a quite bizarre vibrating image of semi-transparent woman vegetable.

  All work and no play make Franco a dull boy, he thought. He lifted the axe. Blood dripped in long gloops from the gore-streaked head. Tiny slivers of sharpened steel could be seen through the gore, and the terror of the Viss reflected in this polished steel mirror.

  She infected you, snarled Franco's hate.

  She poisoned you with her toxic fucking.

  She has diseased you for an eternity...

  Franco weighed the axe thoughtfully. Kill her. Kill it. It deserves to die! It is an alien, a heathen, a simple jelly vegetable woman, an abomination against all life...

  Franco scowled, and threw the axe to the ground. "Hey lass," he said, "there's no need to be frightened. I'll not do you any harm. I know now, I understand you're a prisoner here just like me, they infected you, just as you infected me. We're both victims, yeah?"

  The jelly woman stood, and turned, and seemed to be looking at him with jelly eyes, although he could not be a hundred percent sure because everything was green, her eyeballs, her eye sockets, her head, and all merged in a gentle wobbling manner.

  Franco took a deep breath. He held out his hand. "Are you OK?"

  "Yes," came the softest, most gentle and, ironically, most feminine voice Franco had ever heard. It was the voice of an angel, the voice of a queen, the voice of a goddess. "I am Greya."

  "Nice to meet you," came Franco's gruff response. He looked around. "Now then, how the hell do we get out of this damned hell-hole?"

  Greya turned, and pointed at a solid brick wall, painted in the sterile puke-green colour which could only appear on a hospital's deranged palette. "That way."

  "But it's a wall."

  Greya stepped forward, and her arm seemed to enlarge suddenly, swelling and punching out with savage unstoppable force. Bricks exploded, steel shrieked, dust billowed, and within a single second there was a rough and crumbling doorway.

  "Now it's a door." Franco gulped, as Greya's arm returned to normal size, then he glanced at the axe, and gulped again. He was pretty sure it would take more than a simple melee weapon to destroy this particular creature.

  "This way," she soothed, taking him by the hand.

  "OK," squeaked Franco, scooping up the axe, and stepping through the portal.

  Keenan stepped from the oil-smoke stairs and found himself at the edge of a playground. Keenan had seen this sort of thing before, in huge hospitals built around central hubs or courtyards; an outdoor space, usually a square, surrounded by towering hospital buildings and used by unfortunate children staying in hospital for whatever reason. Keenan had always suffered uneasiness around such medical playgrounds, for whilst their intentions were obviously noble, they simply reminded him of disease and death... and not just disease and death in general, but the affliction of the young.

  He glanced around uneasily, his guns feeling wrong in his hands. What is this place? What am I doing here?

  He realised immediately that they'd been forcibly separated, and intuition told him it was VOLOS. So then, a test of some kind. A test before they progressed to meet the maker of Sick World? Keenan gave a sick smile. How fitting, he thought.

  He moved forward, slowly, carefully, gun tracking and waiting for the next enemy. Around him the windows were like eyes, small, square, black, and lacking any emotion, any sympathy. They were a testament to sterility; the sterility of medicine. The hopelessness of the dying. The bitterness of the dead.

  And something smelled.

  Something smelled bad.

  Keenan stopped, fake grass crunching underfoot. Before him were a row of four swings, a climbing frame set with two slides, a rubber tyre suspended by chains, and a sand pit. A cold wind blew, and autumn leaves drifted crackling across this sterile playground. Keenan shivered. He looked up at the stars, but there were no stars in this place, just a terrible velvet blackness which coated the sky like tar. And then he remembered: he was far under the world. In a fake place. An ersatz hospital world. A sick world.

  Keenan turned, the cold wind ruffling his brown hair. His eyes narrowed, and he saw movement at a window. It was pushed open by thin white arms, and Keenan saw a young girl there, no more than ten years old. She leant out slightly, looking down at him, and something chilled Keenan to the core of his soul. She was pretty, with long black hair, but her eyes were black, lacking emotion, devoid of empathy. They stared at him as if he were a bug in a killing jar.

  Keenan fought the urge to wave, and he watched her watching him. Her lips moved a little but no words came out.

  "Hello," said Keenan, voice quite low. He didn't want to advertise his presence. But then, if this was a test by VOLOS, anything of danger already knew he was there. "Shit." He raised his voice. "Hello, girl; can you show me the way out?"

  "There is no way out," she said.

  "Where am I?"

  "The playground of death," she said, and turned, as if talking to somebody within. Keenan saw the back of her head, then. It was caved in, crushed, showing yellow shards of bone emerging from a pulped skull. He could see blood, and he could see the terrible blue-grey of the girl's brain. Even from this distance he could distinguish maggots crawling in her flesh, in her living tissue, in her brain-matter, and Keenan felt the urge to vomit well swiftly inside him -

  His hand slapped over his mouth, as along the hospital wall more windows opened, high and low, right across the expanse of the hospital face. Behind, he heard clasps being undone and hinges squeaking, and Keenan turned and watched as a thousand windows were opened by a thousand children, all eerily quiet, all staring with the same black eyes, the same lack of emotion, the same essence of the damned.

  "What is this place?" he whispered, spider-legs creeping up and down his spine. Keenan shivered again, his hackles rising, his blood chilling, his heart stopping, his soul dying, as he turned and turned and turned, and watched the hundreds of children, each with a very special wound or illness or disease, each and every one different, unique, and special.

  One girl had no eyes, just bloody eye sockets. A little boy had a slit throat, blood pumping down his chest.
Another boy held hands out with only stumps for fingers clasping the sill. A girl had a screwdriver in her head, the shaft protruding around bubbling brain-matter and blood. Yet another had facial burns, a little girl had a disease of the mouth and nose which left huge, gaping holes in her face through which her working soundless jaws could be seen. More and more and more, each affliction unique, each devastation destroying a child's happiness, future and, ultimately, hope.

  "Stop!" he cried, pain flooding him.

  "Welcome, Mr. Keenan," said the first girl who'd appeared. Keenan stopped his cycle of turns, and stared at her. His mouth was dry, head pounding, and by God he could have savoured a long cool draught of Jataxa spirit. The whole fucking bottle, in fact. It was on days like this Keenan wished he was dead; dead and eking out an existence in damnation, with his murdered little girls.

  Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, he thought sourly. There was no such thing as a cure, he knew. Remission was just a temporary shelter until the day he began again. Keenan licked his lips.

  "Who are you people?" he said, eventually, voice a lullaby. "Why are you all here, like this? Why are you all so..."

  "Injured? Wounded?" The little girl smiled, although her black eyes held no emotion, no humour, no understanding. Her eyes were piss-holes in the snow. Portals to another, darker, dimension. "This is the Children's Ward, Mr. Keenan." She savoured the words, her little pink tongue like a quick, darting fish. "This is where we come to suffer, to be tortured, to feel agony, and to die."

  "No," said Keenan.

  "Yes," said the little girl. "I am Amra. I am here to show you that dreams are worse than reality, I am here to show you that life can be worse than the horror of imagination; I am here to make you suffer, Mr. Keenan. I am here to make you pay."