The Sanatorium of Murcia

by Claudio Hernández

  In the damn mirror, he thought he saw Sadie's amorphous face as if she were inside a washing machine and her face crushed against the transparent door.

  It was her.

  And then he understood that this was not normal.

  He was beginning to believe.

  - "Maybe someone has thrown some powder that puts you," -Chase said to the mirror as if it were a person.

  Sadie's face moved away to show her entire body as if the surface of the mirror were the screen of the television.

  And she was naked.

  Sadie showed big tits that reached her navel. The belly was a mass of meat resting on her pubis. Faced, one could not see the gash of her pussy. Like you could not see Chase's cock. Both were amorphous barrel-shaped masses, which escaped those things through holes.

  Then a blast of cold air hit Chase's face, and he believed for a moment that he had returned to reality. The room was empty. There was only him, who at that moment was holding his flashlight, although he did not remember how and from where he had taken it. The fact is that the white light bulb drew circles on the floor, on the bed of broken springs and reflected in the mirror, projecting this, several beams in different directions. In the depths of the wall he had seemed to have seen a shadow with one hand raised and grabbing something with it. It was a knife. He aimed the light at that piece of wall and saw nothing after believing he had seen a man raise a knife over his head. It had been a bad move on his mind.

  Or was everything really happening?

  He was in the beginning again. Lost and dazed.

  He thought that his girlfriend Sadie would be a big ball in some corner of the room she had chosen.

  He began to sweat profusely despite the temperature drop in the interior of the filthy room.

  He illuminated the door.

  And he thought that moments before he was leaning his back on that rusty, blackened and stained surface that could be dried and black blood with the passage of time, caused him to raise a frown. The right. His jokes had gone down the toilet drain. Now he was a Chase with a severe face, maybe sad and above all, dazed.

  And everything was happening very fast.

  He had gone to visit a psychologist when he was thirteen because he had seen his friend under the solid wheels of a train. Some wheels like saws that had split in two his friend. The image was not pleasant, but he saw everything, and for more than two years he visited the skinny of the psychologist who was already on the verge of retirement.

  But none of that was the same as what he was living now.

  He heard the creaking of the springs of the bed.

  His feet, pushed by an uncontrolled force, had brought him to the edge of the bed. And at the other end, the springs sank and stretched like wires about to break under the light of the lantern.

  Then two figures were drawn in the empty air.

  They were the figures of two women.

  And they were naked.

  When they had materialized in front of his eyes, he saw one redhead and the other brunette. They were facing away from him. Their asses looked like two guitars on the sunken docks. The backs, similar, had a thin skin that concealed with timidity all the vertebrae of the spine. On the sides, one could guess all kinds of erect breasts like two perfectly inflated balloons.

  One of them he got to see the dark and hard nipple that supposed to have a first erection.

  Ghosts or not, everything seemed as real as the erection he had.

  And that if it was real because even the testicles hurt.

  He put the lantern on the little table that had an open drawer as if it were showing him a tongue.

  The flashlight illuminated both women's long hair.

  If it was all a dream, Chase wished he would not wake up for anything in the world.

  - "Who are you?" -his voice trembled.

  Was he talking in his dreams or was he being unfaithful to Sadie?

  - "We're the twins Nora," -one of them answered. The redhead. She was the one on his right.

  - "Anyone would say you're twins," -Chase said hallucinating. - "You have the color of the hair changed."

  - "Yes, that's true too, but look us in the eyes," -the redhead said as her fingers went to one of her eyes. They were jade green.

  This is a fucking dream; Chase thought as he prepared the answer.

  - "They are the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen."

  His cock was an iron bar.

  What was Sadie thinking of him now?

  She was dead.

  - "That's what everyone tells us, before abandoning us ..."

  - "What?" -Chase interrupted her. He had the vague feeling that it was not a fucking dream. The word forgetfulness, abandonment, was in the air again.

  They did not answer, only turned towards him showing her breasts moving like black water bags. Her nipples were erect, and now he had all four tits in front of his nose.

  Now Chase's cock was bursting his pants, and the bulge could be seen just below his belly. The testicles were made of stone. The cold that reigned in that room did not prevent Chase sweating copiously, and his heart speeds up at times. Contractions under the eggs made him feel the ass black. As if the anus had been closed with a sudden force when ejaculating.

  The dark-haired girl opened her legs slightly, and Chase could see it.

  That's a friend, when you see a real pussy, you can faint, his father said more than once before he turned eighteen.

  And now he wished to faint. Sadie was in his mind and had disappeared from the mirror forever and his life, although that, he did not know.

  What if I take this moment of magic or mental confusion and I fuck with these two beaches?

  It was a sinful thought, but the truth is that he had it and it felt good. Everything was so real and so frightening at the same time.

  - "Do you come with us? -The redhead asked him with the index finger turned into a hook that moved towards her tits.

  Now is when you're supposed to wake up. Because a bad blow to the head makes you pass out and see things that are not. -But that does not matter now. I want to continue. I need to keep living this. Fuck that guy with the crossbow. This is my moment, and I'm going to satisfy my cock.

  The unreal was confused with the real. There was no one there except him, beside the bed and them, the forgotten ones crawling along the walls and on the floor, like dark, elongated spots with claws like spatulas, as if they were monsters.

  However, his eyes still came to those two beautiful naked women. He would ride with them while the delirium lasted. He would put his tongue in their mouth and eat them by the nose. Then his chubby hands would caress those stony tits, and his tongue would lick the nipple of each one of them and finally, the final act would come, to soften the desire of his stiff cock like a stick.

  But that did not happen.

  The light from the flashlight flickered as if someone was playing with the switch. The two women were different each time the light enveloped them. And they stunk. A foul odor filled Chase's nostrils and lungs. Like a flash, they were naked and desirous and other times like stunted bodies hunched and full of lumps, with hair in front of their faces. A long white and yellow hair that hid the two blotches that made up their eyes. Eyes with a deep look, full of hatred and pain. A look that sometimes Chase could see and his cock deflated like a balloon exploded with a needle. Then his heart accelerated, and he thought it was all a fucking nightmare. The pain in the shoulder returned and became increasingly unbearable. It started to bleed. The silky red liquid ran down his bare arm, covered with sweat, and the drops stopped at the tips of his fingers, waiting for some movement, to drop into the emptiness until he crashed to the ground like a raindrop.

  He was motionless by the bed, and those shadows grew in number and crawled toward him. And they seemed to have eyes, very dark, like a scribble on paper, but they were there, staring at them and Chase was discovering with horror how their eyes were dilating. How they opened horribly.

 
; Now those two women were two skeletal bodies full of deformed lumps all over her body, and her tits had disappeared after a big sore and scab. Their blood was almost greenish. The pus had taken over all her flesh, and the pussy was simply a slot filled with pus and polyps that could be seen from a distance.

  Now there was nothing attractive about them.

  And Chase wondered once more if everything was real or he was getting crazy. His face numbed and he touched himself with both hands. One of them bloodied and left traces of her own blood on one cheek. He did not feel the touch of his fingertips, while the heart was a horde of muscles throbbing frantically. He was seeing the horror that the forgotten ones had been suffering for a long time. Now everything fit, but it was too late. The man with the crossbow pursued something. I chased them. Faces rotten and full of monstrous deformities with the face made up by blots. With a dark, deep and full of hate look.

  Was Chase ready to die of fear?

  The answer was written on those faces and in the shadows, that were approaching him. His heart hit his chest cavity like a hammer, and a tingling paralyzed his feet. All the fat mass. Those more than a hundred kilos of weight seized by all the nerves of his body that responded to fear with rigidity.

  The heart is a muscle and can remain rigid, he thought, after seeing those faces with their mouths open like the entrance of a subway. Dark and endless. Suddenly there rose in the air a sharp scream more intense than that of an ambulance, but it did not oscillate but was continuous, growing stronger. A shout that made the hairs on your body stand on end, what impressed you and those entities. They appeared one by one, and at the end of the wall, there was a lady in black.

  It was a woman dressed in a black dress of the last century. With cuffs embroidered in black with thousands of threads crossed like a spider's web. A veil covered his face. A face that could not be seen. At least she was straight, not stooped over like the others, and the ruffle of her skirt was right at the end of black boots, and her footsteps were heard, like the sound of a door in the frame.

  Chase felt his fingers stiffed of the impression and realized that his heart would resist little. He felt an intense pain in his chest and his mouth opened in a distorted grimace. His eyes remained open, tearful and glassy. And he began to see everything black, while those faces shrieked at his fucking face, with their mouths erased more than a hand span of length, from the eyes to the chin. His heart stopped pumping suddenly and he felt pain. Much pain.

  He did not even have time to think that he would soon wake up from that horrible nightmare. But it was not like that because everything was real. As real as his body collapsed on the springs of the old bed that was crushed by the weight of his body in a thunderous thump and the squeaking of the legs of the bed on the dusty floor of the room.

  He had died of fear.

  31

  Carlos was already on the first floor, and he had left behind the screams and cries. He knew what was happening on that crazy night. With his face full of blood, his neck and part of his chest, he kept dragging his heavy boots on the floor now, on the first level. They were still there. The Forgotten. He saw them everywhere, and when he was about to pull the trigger, the silhouettes faded with the darkness of the night.

  And at no time did he wonder why he shot the spectres with pellets and arrows if they are, energy, and nothing else. His delirium obfuscated him in the idea that it was not possible to hunt them or eliminate them, but the most prudent thing was to run to another place.

  But he insisted on it.

  Not far from his boots anchored on the floor, Taylor was behind a door.

  Although he did not know it.

  32

  He had chosen the first room that had found. It was the much larger room than the previous ones, and he had noticed that the bed was different. Very different. And in the center, like a spaceship, there was a big support in the dark, full of rusty flashlights, almost as wide as dozens of red sea bream eyes looking at one side of the wall. It was not horizontal. Apparently, someone had turned it towards the wall, as if in a stampede people left their shoes, but in the Sanatorium without stampede, there was someone who had set the surgical lamp or also known as "Cialitica"*. Then, the bed was actually an operation table.

  The light of the flashlight illuminated on the double yellow, and full of leaves mattress. It was dirty and right next to it was a metal table full of utensils to operate. All of them, including long clamps, were rusted and ripped in a dull metallic cubicle.

  Cialtica lamp*: íshadowless operating lamp with four reflectors is adjustable and very easy to manipulate. Not only can it be used as an auxiliary illumination source for large operations, but it can also be used singly for smaller surgical procedures. The lamphead can be rotated horizoontally within the range of 180 degrees, and the cross arm can be adjusted (https://www.proz.com/kudoz/spanish_to_english/medical/306054-lampara_cialitica.html)

  Everyone had taken their flashlights behind them, and in this case, it was no exception. Taylor, who would have made a good pair with Riley for his cunning, had also decided to keep in his pocket the shorts, the mobile phone in case the coverage returned. She suspected from the start that this had been no more than a simple power outage on the repeater in the area. So, she rechecked the coverage. Nothing. There was no line under the touchscreen. With a gesture of obfuscation, she kept the mobile phone in the back pocket of his trousers.

  However, her boyfriend was Luke, t maniac with glasses and other things, who like the others, had not run away with her. Each one on his own had hidden in a different place like a scared animal.

  In one of the shattered walls, there were two windows open in the light of the moon, full that night. The greyish tongue licked his slippers and gave a gloomy look to that place already, disturbing.

  Her fingers grazed the bed and the tools of the operating room, like someone who rubs with the velvet back of a fur coat. Hers was just curiosity. To date, she had not seen an operating room, much less one abandoned for a few, how many years. Since 1962 she remembered. Or at least that's what Riley had said in his boring speech While walking, almost quiet despite everything, the room, curiosity was eating her everywhere. She imagined how they would manage in those years in such a distant place, so far from the first city, which she did not know the name.

  She imagined what kind of surgeries would be carried out in that operating room. Was it to remove the bundles? Cutting them and drain them? Amputating? This latter was not necessary because she knew it was leprosy and what it consisted of, and she knew that the limbs ended up coming off alone due to the necrosis. She felt a strange sense of pleasure at the thought of all that. It was as if she was suddenly turned on by the most disgusting thing in the world.

  Her mind continues cold and distant at the same time, while nothing strange happened, but everything had an end. In Murcia, there was a saying that said; "with the time and a cane, even the green ones fall". She had heard that from Riley, from one of the many times when he talked about the customs of Murcia.

  Her lips slightly stretched as she remembered this. However, it was not the time to remember anything, much less to smile. I was trapped.

  Carlos passed by walking right next to the other side of the door. He stopped and after an ominous silence kept walking, this time panting with his boots until the sound was lost. She had turned off the flashlight at that time and had waited behind the stretcher. When everything seemed to return to normal, she turns the switch on of the torch with his thumb.

  Then, she saw her.

  Her eyes opened like dinner plates. They were of a light blue color, and in those moments, they shone like the lantern. Her mouth closed and the blood had turned over when she suddenly saw her.

  She was a woman with long hair that crawled like the threads of a mop on the floor. Her head was bent right over the ground, and that thing dragged her chin along the rough ground. Her arms, curved and anchored to the ground, like the legs of a giant spider, moving slowly. Her fingers
looked like nails sinking into the ground as if it had suddenly turned to mud. The legs had taken the same shape, like arcs, just behind those rickety arms. She was naked, and her hairy purple skin could be seen. In the center, like the body of the spider, the back was full of deformities. She breathed like an animal, but she was not sure if that was her breathing or just the panting of a beast.

  Taylor, that of a fool, did not have a hair, she knew for a fact that she was witnessing something supernatural. That that was a ghost, and that was approaching her, moving strangely, like an arachnid. She could not see her face, at least for the moment and then she saw them.

  Shadows came out like tongues from under the stretcher and behind the surgical lamp. They did not have any form at the moment, they were only elongated, and they spoke.

  -We are the forgotten ones. Now you come for me?

  She had heard it so clearly that it seemed to have whispered in her ear. She looked around to see if there was anyone else in the room, what she knew that it does, but she could not see anything but shadows coming from the broken walls. And then she knew that she was not alone and a sudden fit of madness she thought, that this man saw them equal to all of them. To those shadows. That being moving on the ground. Crawling towards her, on the move her twisted limbs and movements impossible to perform under normal conditions.

  The light from the flashlight flickered for a moment and then she knew that she was not alone. Now the dark tongues licking the walls and the floor were transformed into almost human silhouettes. Like drawings made by innocent hands of little ones stunned by the nightmare of the previous night after telling her that if they did not fall asleep, the man in the bag would come and take them to the forest to never return.

  It was time to feel how her heart echoes in her temples and began to sweat copiously. This time the air was thick and sticky, and there were no drafts of cold air. If not, it was quite hot, but she felt the temperature of her skin coming down quickly. She knew the mechanisms of an anxiety attack or worse, a panic attack. She was starting to have this last. Her feet began to tremble, and she could not ignore what she saw because that was real. They were there, showing up.