I do not know the exact day it showed up, nor know why it showed up. I do not know its motive, nor why it chose to target my particular hospital. What I do know, however, is the many nights of scorching agony it has caused to the patients, doctors, and visitors of this Colombian hospital for as long as I can remember.
I could have quit my job any day I wished, and that bright-eyed redhead nurse fresh out of grad school, my past self, could have lived without the sleepless nights caused by that monstrosity’s emotionless expression.
My name is Belinda, and I have worked as a pain management nurse at the De Sade Medical Hospital for the last forty years of my life. My job is basically to help patients manage chronic and debilitating pain.
I became a nurse because I wanted to provide my patients the dignity they deserved at the most vulnerable points of their lives. The job’s physical and mental demands burnt me out many times, yes, but the reward of empowering my patients to make sense of their pain should have been enough.
Paula Serrano became the first name etched onto the long list of victims. Hearing a patient cry in pain after waking up littered most night shifts and should have meant nothing special, just daily routine work.
On that one windy night of May, Paula’s piercing shriek unprecedentedly woke up our entire floor’s unit. Dr. Ricardo Arias and I responded to her anguished calls and found Paula flailing on her bed begging resoundingly for something to stop “pulling her away”.
As for any patient in this line of work, a nurse must conduct “detective work” to figure out the source of discomfort. Dr. Arias attempted to comfort the elderly Paula, who continued hyperventilating and shaking. When questioned about her pain, Paula remarked, “That ugly… ugly, UGLY, thing ripped into my stomach and… and tried eating my insides like a rabid dog.”
From my point of view, Paula did not have a gaping wound nor signs of any physical injury.
“Excuse me for interrupting Doña Paula, but which thing do you refer to?”
“The puppet with the expressionless face.”
Paula’s file revealed a diagnosis of Cronh’s disease, an inflammatory bowel condition. Dr. Arias, not amused by Paula’s story, retorted,
“Doña Paula, please take some deep breaths. I can assure no such entity exists. We can provide you with water and some sleeping medications. Would that be ok for the night?”
“It said once it has me, it will come for my husband and my son and then you and….”
“Alright Doña Paula, we will contact your family and see you in the morning.”
Had our physical therapy not worked for her? Had her medication failed her? In the months I knew her, she had never even spoken like this.
A week later, Paula passed away from infections caused by her Cronh’s disease. Dr. Arias much later wrote in an important letter he could never get her yelps out of his head. All the months of rehabilitation and work we did suddenly did not matter, and we could never save her.
When I heard the news, I began to sob uncontrollably and rushed to the bathroom’s sinks to wash my face. After turning on the faucet, I rubbed my eyes and felt bits of pain around them. Although I could not figure out the source of the pain, turning off the faucet revealed a certain presence.
Some humming once masked by the sound of the water now became audibly clear. As I gazed into the mirror in front of me, I noticed a stall door behind me slowly creak open. I wish I had never opened that door and ignored my instincts thinking a patient needed my help.
“Is everything alright, señora?”
I felt my stomach clench and my legs wobble in fear at the sight of its straight and deadpan face. In front of me, a female mannequin swayed its head back and forth, kicking its legs up like a toddler while humming some lullaby no child would ever sleep to.
This sentient object dressed in a nurse’s attire stared right into the depths of my soul, and after a few seconds waved at me, but never changed its facial expression. The rotten smell of burnt wood filled my nostrils.
I bolted out of the bathroom to various patient rooms to look for Dr. Arias, who had not even begun to process Paula’s death, much less a nurse’s claim about a sentient mannequin.
“Belinda. I am not in the mood for tolerating pranks. One of the nurses walked into the same bathroom and found nothing at the stall. Explain yourself or I will file an immediate report of malpractice.”
Lourdes Flores, the patient present in the room at the time and the one who would later become the second victim, commented, “Dr. Arias, with all due respect. You should first report the nurse with the creepy mask for malpractice. She gave me food I told the hospital many times I was allergic to.”
Dr. Arias, piqued with interest and taken aback, asked, “Which one?”
“That one right there.”
Dr. Arias and I turned around to see the mannequin walking down the hallway, never once looking at us or changing its expression. However, it stopped in front of Lourdes’ room and Dr. Arias went after it.
“You there, stop. We need to… ahh… eh..”
Dr. Arias held on to his head, as if suffering from a headache, and collapsed to the floor. The mannequin, at the sight of this, quickly shuffled away from us.
That became its cruel game, the game of pain; one I played for nearly thirty years. Its presence in the vicinity, regardless of whether visible or not, would worsen or trigger physical pain within patients, staff, visitors.
During the day, one could track its location by hearing which patients had sudden flashes of immense pain. During the night, it mocked tired doctors and nurses by haunting their dreams and by tormenting patients, young and elderly.
Patients found it everywhere from hiding in closets to walking down the hallways to even humming under their beds. We obviously tried to hunt it down, but in an underfunded Colombian hospital, what can one really do?
One night, a visitor named Josiah and a team of nurses cornered the mannequin near a window on the 6th floor. Josiah pulled a knife on it and claimed, “End of the road for you, stupid fucking puppet. You won’t harm my pregnant wife anymore.”
The mannequin, gleefully dancing in place, projectile vomited a nasty light pink fluid directly at Josiah. The fluid, whose identity we never confirmed through chemical analysis, melted and burnt through Josiah’s face such that he became unrecognizable once he recovered many months later.
The mannequin leaped out the window and as one nurse described it, landed on its four limbs and crawled off like a spider. Josiah’s wife would later birth a stillborn baby and told us she witnessed the mannequin carrying a doll, dancing around as if to taunt her grief. It still never changed its deadpan expression.
However, I would not yield defeat in this monstrosity’s cruel game. Sometimes I question whether my goal changed from helping my patients to defeating this thing. My husband divorced me three years into this job, citing that I had gone insane in my efforts to stop this thing.
Maybe I had lost my sanity because I lost many patients through my years, with most often citing visions or visits from the mannequin before death due to complications from their conditions. However, the mannequin killed not only patients.
Although he and I never looked eye to eye, I respected Dr. Arias commitment to combating patient conditions and this monstrosity. Alas, not even Dr. Arias’ mental fortitude stood its test. Remember Dr. Arias’ important letter I mentioned earlier? I found it next to his hanging, lifeless body.
Many nurses that I trained quit their jobs after their traumatic encounters with the mannequin. However, to this puppet’s disdain, I stayed and saved as many patients as I could. I would often refer them to different hospitals so they could avoid this thing altogether. After Dr. Arias passed, I felt like the only shield left against it.
However, I could not shield my own body from the withers of time. I received a breast cancer diagnosis just a month ago, and the malignant tumor inside of me never stopped growing. Like some cruel karma, De Sade became my only option for treatment.
As I sit on my deathbed now, I am writing my memoirs about a life devoted to defeating this emotionless abomination. From the side of my door, the mannequin’s everlasting gaze accompanies me. The creature is humming now, and no doctor in this cursed place is brave enough to make it leave me alone.
I never feared it nor did I fear death until I stared at it one more time today. Its face changed and it grinned for the first time, knowing its last enemy would soon join its many victims.