The last thing I remember of my brother is the color red. It was stained all over the pavement. I’m still not sure how it happened. Perhaps a passing car neglected to see us, or our paths crossed an animal’s. It doesn’t matter anymore. All that does is what found us on the road.
Even in the middle of the night, I could see it as clear as the sun; a black ambulance breaking through the long shadows. Its shape was unmistakable, but the color somehow kept it from blending into the dark. It wasn’t a simple black, but an absolute absence of color as if somehow had cut a hole in reality and straight into the void beneath. Everything went silent as it approached. The birds, its sirens, and even the winds froze as it drew near. It was as if the whole world were trying to hide.
In its lights, I could see someone else lying on the road. They tell me he was my brother, and I have no choice but to trust them. I can not recall his face. Even his name feels like that of a stranger. They tried to remind me, but he is nothing more to me than a stranger. It approached slowly like a patient predator, stopping just beside my brother’s broken body. The doors opened, and out stepped a figure I swore was my own invention.
He wore a black leather apron covered in off-colored stains and a pitch white undershirt that practically glowed against the darkness. His hands were gloved, and he wore a surgical cap, mask, and a pair of glistening goggles on his head. Every single one of their features were hidden, and what little could be made out was concerning, to say the least. The skin peeking out from under his uniform with grey, discolored and glistened like wet meat. It reminds me now of the texture of a tumor, sickly but alive enough to suffer. I almost feel bad for him. I can only imagine what pain he must have been going through.
His goggles did not linger on me. Instead, he walked up to my brother’s broken and bloody figure and knelt down. He scanned over every speck of snapped bone and spilt blood with the poise of a trained professional. Sometimes he’d move a piece of my brother around or hold it up to the siren light. I’m not sure what he was looking for. Maybe he was merely inspecting the merchandise.
Before long, he stood back up, turned to the driver’s seat, and nodded. At that, another faceless figure came lumbering out of the vehicle. He was dressed in the same clothes and had the same cancerous skin but had the frame of a professional bodybuilder. Though he bristled with muscles, they were lumpy and uneven, like every part of him was from a different person. Regardless, he shambled out of the ambulance, opened the back doors, and pulled out a stretcher which he wheeled to my brother’s side. Piece by piece, he peeled my brother off the ground, dripping blood and flesh mounds all over the asphalt, and dropped them onto the gurney like scraps of junk. When he’d collected every last speck, he wheeled my brother away and loaded him into the back without a second thought. All while I lay there in a pool of my and my brother’s blood.
The smaller one took notice of me before long. He knelt beside me as he had my brother and carefully examined my broken figure. His gaze felt as though someone was dragging the tips of knives across my wounds. He might as well have been dissecting me then and there. But whatever he was looking for, he mustn’t have found in me. His gaze drifted from me without a second thought, and he stepped back into the ambulance just as his friend loaded up my brother. Just like they, they skunk back into the ambulance and, without another word, drove off into the dark until their lights vanished from view. The last thing I remember is seeing that damn vehicle melting into the shadows before blackness overtook my vision.
They told me I was lucky to be alive. With the amount of head trauma I suffered, it was a miracle all I was left with was a faulty memory. Everything before the incident is a complete blur. Everything. I can remember my Mother and Father just fine, though that was only after years of them recounting my life. It wasn’t so much the stories they told that helped, but the simple acts of hearing their voice and seeing their faces. They began to feel like real people before long, and in time, I could remember enough to call them family again.
My brother was not so lucky. They showed me pictures of him and told me all these colorful stories, but it wasn’t the same without him there. He was a face in photos, nothing more. It broke their hearts when I told them so. They’ll never say it, but I think they hate me deep down. As if I’m insulting him by treating him as a stranger. I tried to amend that most of my adolescent years, but nothing I did ever worked, and my stories of the black ambulance didn’t help.
They asked me if I could remember the incident yet didn’t particularly enjoy my answer. Doctors said I’d constructed the scene as some sort of coping mechanism. The black ambulance was just a stand-in for what really attacked us, they told me, but I didn’t believe them. I had experienced enough amnesia to know what a faulty memory felt like, and that scene was anything but. I swore by it even before I found the hospital and never once stopped trying to find that damned vehicle.
There wasn’t much for me to investigate. The police found no trace of a vehicle present that night nor evidence an ambulance was called to our location ahead of time. As far as they were concerned, I was a traumatized yet imaginative boy trying to make sense of a horrible tragedy. But I knew what I saw. I scoured the area for years and posted my questions on every supernatural blog I could find. You may even find some of my posts in this very chain. Nothing ever came of it, though. I heard more than my fair share of ghost stories, but they were only ever that. Stories.
I wasted so much of my youth chasing them down. My doctors told me it wasn’t healthy to obsess the way I did; perhaps they were right. Not that I cared. I felt so owed it to my brother. If I couldn’t remember him, I could at least find out who took him and what they had done with him. I couldn’t let him be a stranger in a picture frame. He was my brother, and I cared for him. I had to. If I wasn’t his sibling, I’d never be me. Not entirely, at least. There would always be that tiny crumb of myself missing. Some part I lost in the crash and would never get back.
It wasn’t until about a month ago that I finally found a lead. I was visiting home for my summer semester and had decided to indulge myself a little bit. I went for a little joy ride if you will, and with all that I drank, the crash was inevitable. As is expected of me, I remember very little of the accident itself. By some tremendous stroke of fortunes, only I was involved. As I lay there, bleeding out on the asphalt for the second time in my life, I saw something in the distance.
The night went silent once again. The darkness crept in all around me, and from it came flashing lights and creeping wheels. It was exactly the way I remembered it: a dark shell that shamed the shadows and the unmistakable outline of an ambulance. Only something was off about that one. It didn’t crawl from the dark as the first had. The driving was sporadic and janky, almost like they to were intoxicated. They swerved around the road before coming to a screeching halt right next to me. The door flung open, and out stepped a slim figure identical to the one I had seen before. This one, however, held himself very different. His posture was slack with a noticeable slouch, and his hands dangled from his shoulders. He strolled over to me with the demeanor of a bored college student and squatted down next to me, cold gaze bearing down on me.
“Late night, driver! Ha!! You owe me five fangs!” He shouted as another figure crept from the vehicle. This was one different too. Though he was leaner than the muscular one I’d seen before, he was leagues and leagues taller. His body unfolded from the compartment, and he rose until he loomed over the ambulance. Every inch of him looked stretched out to the point where it verged on snapping. His body was rigid, like he was trapped in skin too tight, and despite his towing stature, he was as quiet as a soft wind.
They circled the wrecked car, gazing at me through the shattered window and torn steel.
“Looks real nasty too. Think there’s anything to salvage?”
The tall one didn’t say a word.
“Well said, big guy. But anyway, let’s justify that paycheck.” The small one adjusted his goggles before looking at me. It was hard to move at that moment. Part of it was because of the injuries I had sustained, but also out of fear. Some small portion of me wondered what would happen if they took me away. Would I be left like my brother, a memory so easily forgotten? After everything they might do to me, would it even matter if no one remembered? Would I just be a passing thought?
I’m not exactly sure what I did after that. Panic swelled in me just enough to spur some slight movement, even if it was as minuscule as a twitch. The short one jumped back and exclaimed, “Oh hell. He’s alive. Hey, meat man. Can you hear me?”
Having that thing talk to me directly was all the more horrifying. I tried to move away but could little more than lurch.
“Huh. This is a little weird. Big boy, you ever talked to a human before?”
The slender giant stayed quiet.
“Me neither. What’s the protocol? Do we take him to storage like the others?”
Still, the giant said nothing.
“No, I didn’t read the manual. It’s like five hundred pages. Fuck it, just leave him there. Even if he does remember us, who’ll believe him?”
The giant repeated itself.
“You know, I like our little chats.” The small one remarked in jest before he shuffled back into the ambulance. The giant, on the other hand, lingered for a time, his cold eyes passing over me as I lay trapped in my car. He never said a word, but I knew precisely what he was thinking. It would be easy. All he had to do was reach a spindly hand and pluck me from the seat like a grape from the vine. I could already feel his long fingers wrapping around me, strangling the blood from my limbs as his nails scraped against my skin. With the little strength I had left, I tried to move again, only to barely twitch my finger. He seemed to notice that and leaned in close to me until his face was right next to mine. Strangely enough, as close as he was, I couldn’t feel his breaths or hear any sign of life. I’d have sworn he was dead if I hadn’t seen him move.
Despite my fears, he didn’t take me from the car. Instead, he straightened back up and marched back to the ambulance. He folded his limbs back along their joints and slid into the vehicle just as it became pulling back into the darkness. The last thing I saw was their siren lights vanishing into the shadows and leaving me barely conscious in the wreck of my car.
I wasn’t lucky that time, but I didn’t need to be. The crash itself wasn’t nearly as severe as my previous accident, and so I was able to recover in a few weeks. Moreover, I did so with a newfound determination. After all this time, I finally had a lead, and I wasn’t going to let it slip through my fingers. The road I crashed on was close to where I’d had my previous accident. That couldn’t have been a coincidence. When my parents finally allowed me to start driving again, I began patrolling that stretch of road at all hours of the night. I thought that if I waited out there long enough, someone would do something stupid, and the black ambulance would come to pick up the pieces. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait for long.
It was a week ago when Cricket had his accident. From what I’ve heard, he’d been in a very similar boat to me. Between the alcohol and his busted headlights, he didn’t stand a chance. I saw the wreck long before anyone else. Against the empty night sky, the fire could be seen for miles around. I raced over in my own car just in time to head the crackling of the flames to be smothered with perfect silence. By the time I arrived, I saw fading lights outlining an impossibly black vehicle in the distance. Ignoring the flaming wreck left on the side of the road, I sped after the ambulance without a hint of hesitation.
I’m not sure how long I drove after it. The road couldn’t have been more than a few miles, but we never seemed to turn off it. The ambulance simply continued into the darkness as what few landmarks skill visible were slowly swallowed by darkness. The land melted away until I couldn’t even see the road anymore. Just the ambulance plunged ever onward into nowhere.
Eventually, though, the darkness did pass, though where I found myself, I did not know. The trees lining the roadway seemed wrong. I could tell as much from their outlines alone. The branches were naked and curved, slithering through the air like frozen serpents. There were no jagged edges or sharp splits. If anything, they had more in common with veins or rivers than trees. It was odd but quickly forgotten when we arrived at our destination.
From the shadows was born the hospital. It didn’t come into view as much as solidify from the dark. To the naked eye, it was similar to water rapidly freezing into ice. The light leaked from the windows was dim, making it hard to discern any details. Mainly because of those very same windows. They weren’t lined up in orderly rows but scattered haphazardly across the structure. Additionally, they were all of different sizes and proportions, with some being more like trapezoids than squares and others barely bigger than keyholes. Put together; it resembled a child’s drawing more than an actual hospital.
That wasn’t the strangest part, however. As the driver pulled up to the building, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, one of the windows blink. At the time, I thought the adrenaline was warping my vision. Now, looking back, I find myself cursing my idiocy.
As the ambulance approached, I stopped my car a good distance from the facility. Though desperate for answers, I knew better than to get too close too soon. I turned my car off and watched the ambulance with hungry eyes. It slowed as it approached the abstract building but never stopped. Instead, the walls it was aimed at split open and stretched wide like a toothless, gummy mouth. A sickly yellow light leaked from the building as the ambulance rolled inside. The maw closed shortly after, leaving me in utter disbelief.
There was a part of me that wanted to run. After what I’d seen, I couldn’t blame it. As loud as it cried, however, it was little more than a whimper compared to my brother’s silent memories. Whatever horrible things happened in there, I had to know. I exited my car and crept towards the building with bated breath. The air festered with the smell of rancid meat, and the ground caved under my steps like wet paper. Those sensations only grew as I approached the hospital. Even if I saw any doors, I wouldn’t have gone for them. Instead, I crept towards one of the windows and perked through.
Inside, there was what I assumed was a hospital room. There was a tiny bed, several machines surrounding it, and a door on the opposite wall. Everything was distorted and discolored through the filthy glass, but there didn’t appear to be anyone inside. I felt around the frame before finding a grip and sliding the window open. An unusual warmth spewed out from the room and caused my skin to prickle. The musky haze settled against my skin, covering me like a thin slime, not thick enough to wipe away but not thin enough to ignore. The room itself offered no comfort.
I had hoped its oddities were mere distortion from looking through the glass. The bed was indeed twisted and sloped up and down in the middle like a hillside’s jagged back. I don’t know what creature would find that contraption comfortable, and at the moment, I didn’t care to find out. The walls themselves were discolored like slightly bruised skin and what appliances I could see seemed fused to the surfaces. Some of the cabinets had the same general shape, but the corners that met the walls and floor were smooth and slowly melded into the walls. My gut swirled as I looked around the area. The feeling I’d made a terrible mistake nauseated me and, on any other day, might have persuaded me to flee. But not that day.
Whatever was happening, the strange room didn’t have my brother, and I dismissed it in single-minded determination. I crept across the room and towards the door opposite my makeshift entrance. In the center of said door was another dirty window, and through it, I had a decent view of the hallway. The walls continued the sickly yellow hue and had several blood-red doors lining them. There didn’t appear to be anyone out there, especially not those tumor men, so I cracked the door and crawled into the hall.
The hall was remarkably similar to a normal hospital, which led me to wonder about the other rooms. Keeping an ear out for the slightest hint of life, I itched towards the closest door and peeked through the window. Inside was a similar setup to the room I’d snuck into. The only difference was that this one was occupied. I could see a shape resting on the bed. Its crooked form nestled perfectly into the groove even as its blubbery body drooped over the sides. Flashes of white came from the foot of the bed where I assume its mouth was, but they were scattered and crooked as if someone had shoved too many teeth into its gums.
Through the door, I could hear what I assumed were two sets of breaths; one steady and quiet, the other ragged and erratic. Judging from the shuddering, I assumed the latter belonged to that creature. Next to it was a long pole that I thought was part of an IV bag, but instead, hanging from the hooks were a pair of lungs. Even through the glass, I could see them shrinking and inflating with a steady rhythm.
I ripped myself from the door the instant I recognized the contraption and staggered back in shock. It was real, I told myself. A trick of the light, perhaps. If I stepped through that door, I would see it was indeed an IV bag. Nothing more. A flimsy lie, I know, but one that kept me determined. Somewhere in there was some trace of my brother. I didn’t expect to find him alive, but I did plan to find out what happened to him.
Avoiding the doors like they had the plague, I dashed down the hallway, looking for any sort of map. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the rooms I raced past. The patients within were hard to ignore even through the glass. Some had ribs that sprung from their sides like massive, spidery legs. Others resembled piles of giant, flatworm-looking creatures swarming together in a roughly humanoid shape. The least strange of the inhabitants resembled a huge porcupine, but one covered in teeth instead of quills. It was hard not to think of all of them as I raced passed or what would happen if I disturbed them. I hoped this place truly was a hospital, and they were all too sick to do anything. Although that made me wonder; if I was in a hospital, then where was the staff?
I found my answer before long. As I rushed down the skin-colored corridors, a terrible shriek cut through the silence. It was a guttural sound that brought images of mangled throats and shredded tongues to mind. I stopped dead in my cracks as my bones shook from the screeching. My mind flung in every direction at once, wanting to run, hide, or simply do nothing all at the same time. Eventually, I’m sure I would have run away after hearing something so ghastly. It wasn’t until the voice that I considered otherwise.
“Jesus! Hold him down, you ass!” It was closest to another human being I’d seen in that place. I should have known better, but I was desperate for something familiar. Following the voice down the hall, I found one of the doors had been left open and from it spewed that horrible cry. With my every instinct saying otherwise, I crept close to the frame and peered through the doorway.
I’m not entirely sure how to describe the scene that lay before me in that moment. I suppose I should start with the room. It was similar to all the others, with a few key differences. Beside the bed was a box standing in four fleshy poles. It was no bigger than a microwave and had a hole in the front that let me see inside. Within, I saw an honest to god human heart hanging from the roof by its arteries and frantically beating. A fleshy tube, similar to an umbilical cord, extended from the box and embedded in a massive, flailing arm.
The creature resembled a giant starfish flipped on its back. Five arms extended from the center, their backs having the texture of skin, albeit covered in protrusions and bumps similar to an actual starfish. On its belly appeared to be rows and rows of what I first assumed were suckers. If only. The cups were instead full of eyes. There had to be hundreds of them, all blinking and squirming as the arms thrashed about. Around the creature were two tumor men struggling to strain the thrashing limbs. One was clad in muscles like the one who’d help take my brother, but the other was smaller and leaner. I didn’t recognize him until I heard his voice cut through the clammer once again.
“I said hold him down! I gotta find a space between the eyes!” It was him, alright. The talkative one that almost spirited me away. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about until I saw the needle in his hand. At least, I believe it was a needle. He held it like one would a throwing dart, and there was indeed a needle sticking out of the front. Hanging off the back of the needle was a semi-translucent sack of meat that glistened with the same sheen as the rest of the hospital. It looked like he was trying to stab the needle into the creature, but those wailing arms weren’t making it easy.
A chance came, however, when the big one’s grip slipped. The tendrils it had held back slipped free and smashed right into him, pinning the brute against the wall. Those eyes seemed to melt over the tumor man as the arm pressed against him. All the eyes flew to the figure as a hungry look passed over them. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but from the way the brute struggled against the creature, it couldn’t have been good.
As bad as it might have been, it gave the smaller one an opportunity and one he didn’t waste. The arm had stopped thrashing as it melted over the tumor man, so his companion took the chance to jam his needle in the space between the eyes. Another bone rattling cry erupted from the creature, but soon its movements began to slow. The scream died down, and its arms fell limp onto the floor, freeing the larger figure. However, he didn’t escape unscathed. One of the lenses of his goggles was shattered, and behind it could be seen an empty socket gushing blood. I can’t say for sure what happened, but I imagine that creature has one more eye in its collection.
“And that’s why you don’t look Patrick back there in the eye. It makes him hungry.” The small one remarked.
The bulkier one stared at his companion with a blanket expression.
“Oh, calm down, you big baby. I hear they just dropped off some new meat man at storage. I bet he’ll have an eye you can use. Come on.”
My heart skipped a beat because after he finished, the tumor man started guiding his friend to the door. I sprung away as fast as I could and ducked inside the next door I saw. It wasn’t the smartest option, but there was no time to be smart. I shut it just as those two demons stepped out into the hallway and kept my eye on them through the door. Thankfully, it didn’t appear they noticed me and marched on out of view.
Relieved by my stroke of luck, I took a moment to compose myself. My every instinct told me to flee, and it was hard to argue with them. But something the tumor man said stuck out to me. When I’d had my second accident, that figure mentioned taking me to somewhere called “storage,” and just then, he’d repeated it. Was that where they kept the people they took? Was it where they kept my brother? The idea alone was enough to smother my concerns.
I scurried out of the room and after those two monstrosities. Both were far enough that my footsteps went unheard, but I still kept myself low to the ground. We wove throughout the hospital, passing through what I assume were other wings. One was labeled “Vein Drip” and was noticeably different in appearance. However, the walls were less solid surfaces and more dense thickets of veins weaving through each other like crimson vines. I could feel their pulse through the soles of my shoes, though I tried my damndest to ignore the sensation.
Another ward was labeled “Bone Meadow” and looked simple enough compared to the previous space. I only saw its differences when I caught a look inside its rooms. More tumor men surrounded a brightly colored creature resembling a giant slug. They held all sorts of different bones, which they shoved into the creature one at a time. I have no idea for what purpose they aimed, but the last thing I saw was a piece of the slug contort and protrude into the shape of a human hand, bones and all.
Thankfully, there weren’t many of those wings before my unknowing guides arrived at their destination. It wasn’t a wing but a single room with “storage” written over the door. Moreover, it looked no more special than everywhere else in the building. If anything, it looked more familiar, almost disappearing into the wall. Regardless, the two swiftly entered with the door shutting behind them.
I didn’t follow them inside. Instead, I found a nearby empty room with a view of the storage room and waited inside. Time passed at a snail’s pace before the tumor men strolled out. The bigger one had stopped covering his goggles, revealing the glass was broken. Through it, though, a new eyes stared out, but one with an iris as red as a ruby.
“There you go. All better, see? No need to go talking to the Chatterbugs. I don’t think either of us want to deal with the paperwork, right?”
The giant turned and started marching away.
“Right. You’re welcome!” The small one then waltzed off in the other direction, leaving the storage room open for me to speak to.
A smell like bleach and turpentine struck me as I opened the door. It was honestly less bearable than the stench of rotten meat that’d followed me through the hospital. The inside was pitch black at first, with the only light seeping through the open door. When it closed, however, a series of bulbs started flickering to life and gave me all too good a view of the room. One I’ll not soon forget.
In design, it was nothing more than another long hall, albeit one that extended indefinitely. Two walls rose on either side of me, with the roof vanishing into the distance. In another time, I might have admired the impossibility of it all, but not after what I saw.
They weren’t even people anymore. Each floated in massive glass barrels, or what was left of them, that is. The lucky ones only missed an arm or a leg. Others were nothing more than a brain suspended in pus-colored fluid. There had to be thousands, maybe millions of them; incomplete humans stacked in endless rows. Each were kept in a container of dirty glass embedded in an otherwise meaty surface. In some sick joke, the walls had more life in them than the people. It was a crypt, I thought at first, and one that stretched on forever. I stared in open-mouthed horror at the sight for what had to be an eternity. While I’d figured there would be bodies, I could not fathom the sheer magnitude of their collection. How long had this place been around, I wondered. And for what reason would they do so? Even now, I can only make guesses, and none of them give me comfort.
My brother was the foremost on my mind despite all that I saw, and not in a good way. It was only then that I truly realized I was never going to find him. He was lost to a sea of broken bodies and empty eyes. Another sack of flesh waiting to be picked apart. How could I find him amongst that carnage? Would there even be enough of him left? Or had that place already carved away so much? Maybe I’d seen him in those creatures. Perhaps it was through his eyes they had looked at me, or on his feet, they walked? Or had they gone to one of the many abominations that place had taken in?
It broke my heart to finally turn away from the sight. I would have left the room entirely if my eyes hadn’t caught something in one of the jars. It was the last thing I didn’t realize I wanted to see: movement. The jar was kept at ground level and held little more than a brain, heart, and a single, ruby red eye. An eye that, as I looked at them, blinked. I gasped as my heart leapt into my skull. The eye gazed at me from its perk in the muck with a life it should not have had. I hoped I was seeing things, but then it blinked again and again and again and again. With every second, it grew more and more frantic, acting with as much violence as it could while never looking away from me. It was trying to tell me something, and I understood all too well.
I’m alive. Help.
I did the only thing I could think to do. I strode forward, grabbed the edges of the barrel, and pulled on them with all my might. Sinew and flesh snapped as I tore the container from its fleshy perch. It shattered against the ground, sending its content splattered across the floor. A smell like ammonia burned my nose as the noxious liquid pooled at my feet, but I didn’t care. I brought my foot down on the brain repeatedly until it was nothing but mush scattered across the floor. Only when I was sure it was dead did I stop. Then I looked around, however, and saw millions more eyes staring at me from the walls.
You have to understand, they were never going to get out. Too much had been taken from them. They couldn’t hope to live outside those jars, and I couldn’t possibly have saved them all.
I slammed the door behind me seconds after bursting back into the hall. My heart raced like it never had before, and it only got worse from there.
“Oi!” I turned to follow the voice and saw one of the tumor men standing down the hall. “The hell we’re you doing in there?”
Every inch of me froze while that thing strode towards me.
“I said, what the Hell were you doing in there? And what is that smell? Oh, I see. You fancied a little midnight snake, right? Asshole. You know how hard it is to get those humans? And you know who has to get them? Me! So don’t go making my life harder just because you got a little famished.”
If you’d asked me then, I’d say I was a dead man. That thing would be on me in moments, and I’d be thrown in a jar to be torn apart. But then it stopped about halfway towards me and leaned forward.
“Hang on… Don’t I know you?”
My eyes darted around, trying to find anything resembling an exit.
“Yeah. You’re that human in the-ohhhhhh, shit.”
I didn’t wait for him to reach further and shoot down the hallway like a bullet straight from the barrel. Behind me, the tumor man started screaming something, but I was long gone by the time he thought to do anything. I wasn’t sure where I was going as I tore through the hospital. My only thought was to get as far away from the tumor man as possible. However, by that point, it was too late. All over the walls, I could see hundreds of mouths opening and letting out an ear-bleeding screech all at once. I can only assume they were an alarm and one that no doubt roused the entire building. There must have been hundreds of tumor men alerted to me while I was stuck in the middle of their facility. It’s only by pure luck I’m still alive to this day.
My manic dash through that HellHell eventually brought me face to face with a T intersection that had a series of signs growing from them. There were a variety of horrifying wings, but one at the very bottom read “Back Exit” with an arrow pointing down one of the hallways. I would have barreled down the hall then and there if the sound of footsteps hadn’t come from the other side.
Turning, I saw the lengthy tumor man crouching only a few feet away with his head scraping against the ceiling. Unlike me, he didn’t hesitate. He pulled off one of his gloves and exposed his languid skin. The meat on the limb quivered before the skin unfurled back like the petals of a flower. Within was what I thought were the bones of a hand but were, in fact, five long chains made of bone. They were lined up side by side with razor-sharp ends that resembled finger bones. Then, one by one, they began to peel away from each other as the chains sprung out of the sockets and sprung towards me like vipers.
I turned and resumed running just as those sines swiped through the air where I once stood. It sounded like slicing meat and followed me no matter where I went, always just a step behind me. Every so often, I saw them out of the corner of my eye, some striking the walls and others stabbing the air right next to me. All the while, I could feel the floor shaking as that tumor man crawled through the halls behind me. It was by no skill of mine that I survived. If that thing didn’t have so much trouble moving through the halls, I don’t believe I would have made it.
Before long, I rounded a corner and came face to face with a hallway that ended in a door marked “Exit.” It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The tumor man tendrils rained down on me the whole way down, some even stabbing into the door, but they were too late to stop me.
I burst outside with a triumphant smile on my face but didn’t waste a second enjoying my freedom. Through the thicket of twisted branches, I saw the vaguest outline of my car captured in the light leaking from the hospital. The sound of the screeching alarm followed all the way to my vehicle, as did the lengthy tumor man, but thankfully the latter was slowed by the tiny door frame. It gave me just enough time to pile into my car and speed away from that place. I didn’t even know where I was going. All I did was pick a direction opposite the hospital and smash the gas pedal.
An hour or two later, the shadows gave way to the sun, and I found myself barreling down Interstate 70, five hundred miles from my home. It took another hour before the police could snap me out of my panic and pull me over. I was saddled with enough tickets to bankrupt the nation, but other than that, I was able to walk away unscathed. Physically and financially, of course.
It’s been hard to forget what happened, though lord knows I’ve tried. My parents have been less than supportive of my efforts. As far as they or anyone else is concerned, I got drunk once again and then chased down by police three states over. Although, I’m not sure how much help they would have been. Even if they believed me, what good could they do?
I hoped to find some shred of my brother there. Now I pray there’s nothing left. No one deserves to be reduced to some slab of meat for that HellHell to chop up as it wishes. And all for the sake of healing mutilated abominations. So I hoped he died that night and that he’s not still there, hoping in vain for someone to find him amongst the crowd of butchered bodies.
I don’t know if those creatures will leave me alone. I doubt it. My instincts tell me they’re on their way right now, and if that’s the case, I want to leave something behind. Something to let people know I was here, that I’m more than a memory. Maybe one of you knows what’s going on. Perhaps you can find me if the worst should happen. And please, be careful. I don’t know what those things want, but they seem drawn to the injured. So don’t give them a reason to pay you a visit.