I spent a little over a month in the hospital, followed by half a year of intense physical therapy. About a week in, Ted strolled into my room.
“Hey there Cyr, I see you’re all right” he said in a deadpan voice, then chuckled dryly.
“Only half of me is all left,” I groaned through my heavily drugged haze. The idiot laughed quite hard.
“I mever knew you had a sense of humor, Cyr. Good thing, though. I’ve got bad news.”
I sat straight up in my bed, wincing at the throbbing below my knee. “Sir, I am not quitting.”
That left Ted speechless for what seemed like hours, though likely was only five minutes. After a long while, Ted spoke. “You didn’t have a choice, glad to hear you didn’t need any convincing. Out of curiosity, why are you so adamant?”
It was my turn to consider my words for five minutes. Ted stood there patiently, eyebrow raised. I couldn’t find the words to explain just how I felt, so I decided to lie.
“I’m a man of many things, but never have I been a quitter. This is no different.” Pretty convincing, ey?
Ted seemed to buy it. “I respect your determination, see you back on the job soon, then, I presume?”
“Yes sir,” I have a sloppy salute, losing the battle with the sedatives coursing through my veins. “I think I-“ I fell unconscious before I knew it.
Getting used to life on one leg was challenging, but it didn’t deter me. I needed to get back on my feet, er foot. I never did plan on dancing, so the loss didn’t really hit me as hard as most. Of any limb to lose, the left leg was my first choice.
While I was attending my therapy sessions routinely, I neglected to follow the restrictions. Dean, one of the detectives included in our briefing, was driving me around so I could keep up with the Doctor’s doings. I got an off the record tour of the area beneath the swamp.
It seemed as though a half natural, half man-made cavern had been hollowed out, lined with a complex ant farm of wires, and outfitted with excessive light fixtures. It was far too similar to the hospital I had been laying in, though somehow even more sanitized and immaculate.
The whiter than white tiles along the floor seemed impossible to dirty. Each step we took in our mudsoaked state left not so much as a blemish on that perfect floor. Nor did we cast the slightest hint of a shadow, largely in part to the intense bulbs set seamlessly into the ceiling.
It really pissed me off then. Not one specific thing in particular. How could such a vile man operate in such a pristine and professional environment? Why had this Doctor decided to explore such dark desires? What pissed me off above all else? How little I knew.
I had little hope of recovering anything of use from the site, hobbling around the various desks and countertops. Dean mentioned the place had already been stripped of anything crucial, as he left me his shoulder.
Enraged at how poorly this was turning out, I let my emotions get the better of me. I set a hand under a table, and with all my anger fueled strength, flipped it. Unfortunately, I tripped from the sudden shift in my balance, causing Dean to quickly catch me.
Fortunately, I hit the right spot. Whirring began in increasing numbers beneath our three feet, the table sank into the ground. As the table sank, a soft sucking sound filled the room. Dean and I drew our personal pieces, having left our service pistols at the station. Well, I wasn’t allowed to carry mine until I was off therapy, Dean just left his to not violate carrying his service arm off duty.
I suppose now is a good time to note our firearms. We were outfitted with a series of cutting edge equipment, from our new vehicles to the pistols we now carried. They were optimal for our objective, with improved accuracy, power, and easier to reload. At that time, M1911s weren’t available to most of the public, and we had to keep them under wraps.
Anyways, back to the now sunken table.
Dean and I retreated as the table disappeared, training our weapons on the dark space. After a minute of silence, Dean shrugged me off his shoulder, causing me to lean instead on another countertop.
Dean silently approached the pitch black void, until he finally was a hair’s breadth from the edge. He peered in deep, and deeper still. I half expected him to dive in, but was proven wrong almost immediately.
Violent splashing sounds erupted from the void, as Dean crumpled backwards, rolling face down and shivering. I hurriedly hopped to his side, getting down low so I could use my arms and push him over.
He was covered in a viscous greenish yellow mucus. It seemed to trail down from his mouth, speckling everything below that point.
He had covered himself in his own vomit. “Dean?!” I nudged his shoulder, concerned. I could tell he was alive, both by the rise and fall of his chest, and the tears streaming down his cheeks.
I crawled my way over to the opening, and peered in. It… it… it was a continuation of those terrible slides. Below us, a mass grave of humans with nonhuman appendages lay, with a single one showing any signs of life.
A body, I couldn’t tell gender or age, lay atop a mound of rejects. They had a human form, but everything below the waist was serpentine in nature. The skin turned scaly, as though suffering sever psoriasis. The scaly skin then turned into proper, reptilian scales. The scales glistened in the light that now trickled through the suffocating darkness.
Behind me, I heard shuffling as Dean found his senses. “Get Ted. Now,” I ordered, knowing I would be climbing to the surface on one leg. Wordlessly, Dean made for the ladder, and ascended to the surface.
The figure down below began trembling, then shakily rose their head. Glimmering, watery eyes locked onto mine, full of pain and remorse. They squeezed their eyes tight, then dropped their head. A sinew coated pair of webbed lips parted. At that moment, I was trapped.
Wordless melodies sprang forth from the depths, filling my heart with alien feelings of compassion and love, while clouding both my senses, vision and logic. I crawled close to the singing, the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. I was loosely aware of the tears as they washed away some of the grime plastered to my cheeks. I was loosely aware of myself as I felt the floor slip out from beneath me. I was loosely aware of myself as I landed on uneven, disgusting ground. I was loosely aware as the creature crept towards me.
[Sleep… so tired…] the unintelligible song spoke though not in words. I could feel its meaning, despite not comprehending how or why. Through the haze, I began feeling exhaustion tug at my very being. I needed sleep. And I didn’t have a choice.
As my consciousness was pulled deeper and deeper under the tsunami of impending sleep, I felt the creature slide right up to my side. Something primal within comforted me. Told me to embrace the creature that held me. Whether it was willing or not, I obliged that command, wrapping my arms around the creature’s torso.
My last thoughts were ‘this can’t be it, I can’t die here. I’ve got to catch the doctor. I can’t die here. I can’t.
As much as I panicked, the somber song soothed me further and further. The irresistible lulls washed over me again and again, until finally, peace washed over me, and the world went black.
I hadn’t fallen into a deep sleep, so I was relatively aware of my surroundings as events unfolded, though rest was so nice and inviting. So difficult to resist. Nearly impossible to resist.
“Cyr!?” Ted called from up above. “Jesus christ!” He cried, realizing what lay in the hole. Shockingly, he didn’t lose his lunch. If I were in a better condition, I might have even admired him a little. Sadly, I lay on a mountain of monster corpses, held in the arms of a monster that may or may not be alive.
I tried my best to respond, but my mouth would not respond. I tried to raise my head, but it was heavier than lead. I did all I could, flexing and straining my muscles, until finally, my arm shot up. Though I was not the one to do it. Icy skin held my forearm, raising it up, towards Ted. If I had faculty over my body, I most likely would have recoiled, but I was not in charge at the moment.
Ted yelped slightly, then fell quiet. After a moment of contemplation, Ted called down. “We mean you no harm. We will help you. Do not hurt us or we will do what’s necessary.” Tactful as ever, Ted, absolutely brilliant.
I heard what sounded like rope drop down, near my legs. Seconds later, multiple squelching impacts were made from where the first had. Ted spoke again, this time from far closer.
“What are you two doing?!” Ted sounded deeply disturbed, either at my embrace on the ground, or the composition of the ground. Both were appropriate causes of disgust.
Just then, a loud crash burst from above, freeing me just enough to force my eyes open. I saw nothing. Nothing at all. The light had vanished. I knew I wasn’t blind as I could clearly see a faint, shimmering glow from within my arms.
I managed to slowly tilt my head and gaze downwards, realizing the creature in my arms was glowing brighter and brighter by the second, until hitting a plateau of illumination.
We had adequate lighting to see at least fifteen feet in any direction, though the scaled creature was not capable of moving on their own.
Pairs of steps approached us, two people hauled me to my foot, and Ted scooped up the lantern creature. I did my best to hobble along on my one leg, but Dean and the other person, who I was unfamiliar with, dragged me most of the way.
Claw marks and various colors of stains lined the tunnel we followed. All along the floor, walls, and even the roof, signs of life and death struggles were evident. It didn’t take my normally sharp mind to pick up on the fact that marks lead both towards where we’d come from, as well as away from it.
The drip drip drip splat pattern from oozing cracks in the roof weren’t reassuring either. The air was muggy and thick with rot, though it wasn’t unbreathable. That meant we weren’t going too much deeper, or, wishful thinking as it was, we could be climbing to the surface.
The lantern suddenly flashed brighter than a shooting star, illuminating the feral, crouching figure that was about to pounce. The thing never had the chance, as nearly a dozen rounds were unloaded square in its back all at once.
The rabid creature collapsed, quickly bleeding out in a balled up heap. “Let’s get the fuck outta here!” A frantic voice shouted from across the beast’s corpse.
We moved in a group, sidestepping nearly a dozen swiss cheese corpses. just as the dying light of day appeared, the light at the end of the tunnel, a loud CRASH echoed down the tunnel. We hastened our pace, finding our escape had been barred off.
CLAPP CLAPP CLAPP a static, slow clapp sounded out. “Bravo and thank you for terminating those pesky rejects” a cold, staccato rasped. “Please do me the favor of ending that little one, in your arms. Then you are free to go, for now” the voice of who I only assumed to be the Doctor giggled in childlike glee.
“Fuck you!” I shouted in defiance. Like Ted, I could be an idiot at times. The key difference between us, I have my idiotic moments. Ted has his intelligent moments.
“Lose a leg and you still have such a loud bark? Fascinating!” The Doctor mused. “You would be a marvelous test subject for foreign attachment. I simply must have you-!” The Doctor’s maniacal dialogue was cut off as Ted fired into the ceiling. This caused a squirter of muck, followed by a steady trickle, right onto his head. He stood there, unflinching.
“Our fearless leader, correct? Ted, Todd, or something? Or would you rather I call you-“ the Doctor was cut off once more as Ted shot yet another round, producing a second stream of liquid mud onto his head.
“Let. Us. Out.” Ted spoke with such conviction, unlike any I’d ever thought possible from him. He spoke with such authority in his voice, even I felt compelled to listen. “You are a monster. We will not work with such ungodly scum. Let. Us. Out. Now!”
“Whatever you say, Teddy boy. Just know I was willing to talk.” The Doctor laughed a hoarse, croak of a laugh, fading out until the speakers fell silent. The bars retracted up into the ceiling. No sooner had they been retracted, we all leapt to our freedom. The gate did not close behind us. Nothing leapt out at us. All that we heard was a new onslaught of laughter. I preferred the chittering beast over his cruel, callous laughter. I almost missed the creature that took my leg in that moment.