Written by Remy Charles | Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved
Genre: Horror | Content Warnings listed below
I had a rare day off from work, so it was time to visit my boyfriend at the ER. Dorian has been a nurse for even longer than the four years we’ve been together and while I love him for it I hate this place. Hospitals always give me the creeps, and while he’s working hes not allowed visitors and so I wander. It didn’t take long before I started to feel more at ease, between the inviting aroma of the cornucopia of foods the cafeteria provided as well as the bright “healing” colors used on every wall by the absurdly overpaid decorator, no matter where you turned. There was something to be said for the comfort of repetition, a sign marker at every turn of the corner to mark your path. Some signs served as small reminder of the way, others as large instructional pieces of what could be found as you explored.
I took steps to ensure that I knew where I was, taking a mental note of each sign as I passed it so that when he called I could backtrack and spend what little time he may have with me. Careful as I was however, after an hour they all started to blend and bleed into one another and on more than one occasion I stopped to reread a sign to ensure that I was aware of my surroundings. It was during such an occasion as I was examining a display case containing archaic instruments of medicine past that my phone rang inside the pocket of my jeans. I retrieved my device and read the name brightly lit upon the display which caused my heart rate to elevate slightly.
“Hey you!” I answered, not attempting in the slightest to conceal my excitement.
“Hello gorgeous, what are you up to?” Dorian’s compliment caused my face to split into a grin that divided my face into ⅓ and ⅔’s sections.
“I’m exploring! This place is like a maze sometimes, but the frequent markings helped. How is work?” I had continued wandering, and while this should have been conscious, my feet were moving almost independently while my mind was lost in the sound of his voice.
“Oh you know, no one died so far so it’s a good day!” He was joking, and a great mood usually meant a calm day. I laughed at his crude humor, calling to mind the dazzle of his smile that stops me every time I see it. We talked about what we might do after his shift, and how it reminded us of a time from before with our friends when we ate out and laughed harder than ever before. This lead into how we miss those friends and we resolved to make more time, all the while knowing we wouldn’t. It wasn’t our their conversation had begun its descent into the 30 minute arena that he sighed,
“Sadly I have to head back, but Chloe this is fantastic please let’s do this again!” Dorian said very sincerely. It was clear that he had no interest in hanging up, however duty was calling.
“Oh no! Well thank you for talking with me on your break! I’m probably just going to leave and find something to do while I wait for the rest of your shift. Oh wow!” I finished my thought with a fascinated exclamation that utterly stumped Dorian. There wasn’t a single thing in the halls of this building that should have caught my attention this way, and yet I was entranced by something.
“What has you so surprised Chlo?” Dorian requesting details to understand my elation. My response was clouded with confusion and mixed with excitement in such a way that left Dorian with a bad taste in his mouth.
“What’s with this place?”
“What do you mean?” he asked with an amused tone playing in his voice.
“All of the equipment is so outdated, even the walls are painted differently here” I looked around for some symbol of information on my whereabouts and was unsuccessful. Here I could find none of the familiar signage that pointed me surely upon my path, nor did I find the typical happy shades of paint upon the walls to promote healing. Here everything was just dull.
“Where are you?” Dorian questioned her while silent alarms were going off in the back of his head. He wasn’t able to put his finger on it but something about what I was describing didn’t feel quite…right.
“Oh here’s a sign! H-wing? I didn’t know this hospital had an H-wing.” I was as perplexed as a rubix cube missing the colored sticker from one too many squares.
“Did you say H wing?” there was a strained note in Dorian’s voice, and it immediately caused my stomach to ice over.
“Y…yes”
“Listen to me carefully. Retrace your steps, and get the fuck out of there now!” I was terrified by his forcefulness, Dorian never talked to me this way.
“What the fuck, Dorian, this isn’t funny….”
“Do I sound like I’m joking to you?”
“Okay…but I’m really turned around and nothing looks familiar.”
“Chloe, H wing burned down 30 years ago. It doesn’t exist, so if you’re there you need to find a way out…NOW” his statement hit hard enough that I immediately slipped headlong just like Alice down the rabbit hole, into a panic attack. I gripped my phone mimicking a wrench covered in sweat as my chest tightened. I was frozen in place, unable to process my surroundings and like a statue not a limb moved from place. I swore I could hear someone hyperventilating which was strange considering no one was there with me, and the moment before I blacked out I realized that I was the one forcing in ragged breaths and making the awful sound as if glass is being circulated through a vacuum cleaner.
All that was perceptible at first was the sound of crackling flames. It was intense, like a fire consuming its fuel with greedy intensity. What I marked as truly strange while my senses all came back to me was that there seemed to be no odor associated with the sound. Fire always smelled of what it was burning, or at the very least it smelled hot. There was no question of the heat , I was sweating which only became increasingly profuse when I remembered that I was not asleep in my bed or along a camp site as would make sense. I snapped my eyelids back as dread filled my heart, making my extremities ice over. Lying on my right side, my arm had fallen asleep from the weight of my resting head. I was very lucky to not have cracked my skull wide open when I fainted. Resting uncomfortably I scanned my surroundings, and registered that I was in the same hallway that just moments ago I had been informed shouldn’t exist. Everything was in the exact same place, there was a singular detail that stuck out quite apparent as different…the doorway made of flames that roared within the wall directly in front of me. I rose from the cold linoleum floor, and stared intently into the vortex of spinning dark orange flames.
The fire rose in a surprisingly organized shape, swirling vertically to form a doorway approximately as tall as I stood, with the center hollowed out to reveal the most peculiar sight. I cocked my head to the side, not sure that I was interpreting the image correctly. The flames were solid, and yet appeared as if I could have moved freely through them and as I peered into the conflagration tapestry I saw it take shape. Copies upon hundreds of copies of the very room in which I stood, formed another hallway, this one festooned in fire, a repetition of the moment I was in and all iterations of me in each room. I took a deep breath, the heat of the room seared my lungs, and understanding I had no other choice I stepped forward. It is worth noting that often times we are faced with obstacles in life to which we resign ourselves to our own fate and take the plunge toward what we truly believe to be the only option available to us. My hand reached upward and outward, slowly nearing the threshold. I expected the intensity of the heat to increase as I got closer, but there was no perceptible difference. As the doorway snapped shut with the sound of the flames being introduced to a gust of wind, I was as perplexed as I was relieved.
While I mentally relived what had only moments before taken place, a brand new horrific realization bubbled to the surface of my mind. Where the fuck was my phone? I began to search frantically around the immediate area screaming with increasing volume,
“Dorian? DORIAN!?” hoping that he would answer me back, that I would find my phone and not be isolated in a hallway within a wing that didn’t exist. It didn’t take long for my eyes to rest upon the sleek design of a modern smartphone, complete with the piece of bitten fruit on the back plate. I lept toward the phone, closing the distance of a few feet with little effort despite having only just regained consciousness. Snatching the device from the clutches of my former resting place I spoke a silent prayer that the call was still active. As I twisted it in my hand I saw Dorian’s smiling face, his contact profile picture telling the story of a call not yet disconnected. I almost broke down into tears at the sight of him, sobbing his name into the microphone as I placed the phone to my face. I waited for a moment, then another expecting to hear his words of comfort and much to my dismay, there was no reply. I reverted back to yelling his name with increasing volume hoping that he’s playing a sick joke of some sort. I screamed until my throat was raw and my voice hoarse, and only stopped the descent into complete madness when a sound I wasn’t able to identify right away came across the line.
I tried to steady myself as much as I could, drew in a few ragged breaths before I tried to speak again.
“Hello?” I spoke the question, weighing far more upon a single word than what is sane. After listening intently, realization finally dawned upon my continence as to the broadcast I was experiencing. Someone was chewing. Without a second thought I disconnected the call and immediately tired to dial Dorian, my safety net, my mental stability into a new call. Where the sound of the phone ringing should have been pouring through the speakers, there was only silence. It wasn’t long before I finally accepted the truth of the matter, with the end of that call I was utterly alone. It wasn’t rational, nothing about this was rational including my reaction to being cut off from Dorian. I was enraged by the fact that he would leave me in this terrifying place without a lifeline, that he wouldn’t have found some way to me by now! So much for his “love” that he professed with “undying” admiration! What good was it if I was somewhere that in and of itself…ISN’T? When I escaped from this fun house of hell I resolved that it was time to let him know exactly what I thought of his spine!
I allowed myself a few moments to cry and to sob into nothingness to expel my despair. I chose to force it out of me and allow it to infest some other hapless person who may or may not deserved it. I remained standing, my face in my hands and tears cascading in between my fingers toward their final resting place among the linoleum. I shook my head and drew in a stabilizing breath that was made difficult from my nasal cavity being clogged with the crying.
After several breaths, I decided that it was time to think my way out of it all. In a moment of blinding clarity, everything became quite obvious to me. The doorway was a premonition wrapped in a dream! I couldn’t find a door, I must create one! My ability to set the hallway ablaze notwithstanding I scanned my surroundings to find some kind of appropriate tool to achieve my goal. In full recognition of the irony befallen me, I picked up a nearby fire extinguisher and planted my feet to set to work. Thinking of how ridiculous this all was, I grit my teeth and gave the extinguisher a mighty swing at the wall. The connection was solid and the impact cracked like a thunderclap in the empty hallway showering me and the all in chips of plaster. I felt empowered with the solid report of metal against the wall and reloaded the tool for another strike. As I rounded into the third swing for the fences, I worsened my laryngitis screaming like a Valkyrie on a battlefield swinging a sword into an opponent’s face.
I collapsed to the floor, knees buried in pieces of what used to be a wall that now was a broken and busted remnant, the confused puzzle of what was. I thought briefly that it was an amusing allegory for my mind. As I caught my breath, I looked up and allowed my mind to finally register the sight before me. I expected to see the inside of a wall, studs and concrete, perhaps the husk of insulation left over from the bygone years of its placement. I remained staring at the truth, for an indeterminate amount of time. It is said that time is relative, and so that moment may have been the next part in a continuation having spanned a century for all I could understand. I am utterly incapable of comprehension regarding the sight before me, as the wall broke away to reveal what could have been described as solid muscle mass. Glossy and wet in appearance, there were thick and too long to follow chords that resembled the blue veins of a muscular structure woven across the tissue seemingly feeding the surrounding area with blood.
As I was studying the confusing mess before me I read that the main reason I ceased pounding at the wall was that my fire extinguisher found purchase within the tissue and was now stuck. A smell suddenly hit me that was altogether impossible to explain yet everyone knew it at the core. It was like meat that had been left in a glass container for hours underneath a sun that had heated the container and surroundings to above 90 degrees fahrenheit. If the smell wasn’t enough to me choking back vomit, the ichor that was starting to ooze from the wound served as the catalyst to almost push me over the edge. With a very similar sound effect to mashed potatoes boiling, the air escaped from the damaged area and the viscous black ichor allowed gravity to pull it to the floor as slowly as molasses moving downhill on a cold day.
I shifted my weight to stand and move away from the wall, placing my hand into the plaster chucks of wall, only to find that these pieces weren’t plaster at all. Without having taken the shape of any that I was aware of, I seemed to have broken pieces of bone from the wall and away from the muscle tissue on the inside of the wall. My mind was reeling with this newest discovery, how the hell could bone be hiding muscle fiber and how was that what the wall is made of? I wished desperately that I could be telling Dorian what was happening, and he could be making sense of it all and talking me off the cliffs of madness that my legs so longed to catapult me from. I pushed myself backward across the floor, coming to rest against the far wall. Closing my eyes I rested my aching head against…whatever I was now resting my head against. At this point, anything was possible and I wasn’t all that interested in overthinking it. I just needed a moment to rest and figure out my next move.
It was during this all too brief respite that a sound found my ears that filled me simultaneously with hope and the most palpable and most pronounced dread I’d experienced in my entire short life.
I heard the echo of footsteps. They were slow, almost deliberate in their cadence and there was no mistaking them. One right after the other, moving ever closer to my position and carrying with them the only hope that I had for maintaining my sanity. I opened my eyes and strained to see the end of the hallway where the sound was coming from. I couldn’t just stand here and allow whatever horror may be approaching to just appear, it was time to leave. Much to my dismay, each time I would walk the length of the hall, I would find myself exactly where I had started no matter which direction I chose. For the first several occurrences, I completely ignored that when I rounded the corner I had not entered a new corridor but remained within my eternal length of passageway. Upon my 5th passing of the corner I was revisited by the utter most dread I had ever felt in any moment prior to my capture within the endless hall. It was as if another sense all together took foothold within my mind and twisted my stomach into knots, though for the most merciful however brief moment I couldn’t figure out why. The lights within the hall are beginning to flicker, causing the area that was previously bright with a sickening glow to darken.
It is there at the far end of the hall, standing just off the threshold of the corner that I finally saw what the source of my skin attempting to crawl directly off of my body was. The figure is short standing no more than five feet total in height, and their entire body is covered in mint green scrubs, including the nose and mouth. They were quite thin, almost gaunt as the cloth draped over their form, and they had a large glass jar containing a mystery item that the spectre continued to reach in and retrieve. It’s hand enters the jar, rises to the covered mouth, then enters the jar again. I was stunned in a way not too unlike a seizure. It was chewing and making an identical sound that came across the phone just before I gave up on the call with Dorian. I squinted in its direction, trying to see what on earth was in that jar,and the realization sent sickened shockwaves through my entire body. It was eating human eyes.
Tearing my eyes from the macabre snacking, I studied the figure for a few moments before I began to register the decoration all over the scrubs. There were multiple smears across the chest and arms and trailing the legs that change the coloration of the figures garb. The smears glistened in the waning light and within seconds I was arrested by the gaze of the figure. I had seen this gaze before, but in this moment I couldn’t perfectly place it. It wasn’t until the spectre shifted their weight forward and lean into the hall slightly that it hit me like a brick to the face. The figure’s eyes were a pale yellow, like a lion on the hunt and they were glowing. The realization brought me to a pause long enough to fail to notice that the figure had begun sprinting toward me! I hardly had the time to register the sound of broken glass on the floor before I was slammed against the floor hard enough to knock the air from my chest and I began to panic.
It seemed to have the hands and feet of a human despite the feline like eyes, the fingers of which became frighteningly apparent as they moved toward my mouth. The hands were gloved in what may have been latex at some point but now were difficult to identify with the gore still attached to them, and this creature seemed to intend to put their fingers into my mouth!
I thrashed wildly but to no avail as what seemed like a man was now sitting on my chest rendering me completely unable to move. He forced my mouth open and held it so with only one hand, allowing a chunk or two of the gore to slide into my mouth at the same time. I was entirely unable to control myself as I wretched and began to vomit while laying on my back, the bile rocketing upward into the air but not evacuating my mouth entirely. I lay there gasping for air, coughing and gagging threatening to vomit even more and he reached his other hand into my mouth and found purchase on my molar furthest back on the bottom right side of my jaw.
I was absolutely convinced that I was going to choke to death on vomit and surgical gore. The surgeon rested up on my chest seemed satisfied with himself in the tooth that he’d found and steadied himself for just a moment. Just as I am about to blackout, he dug his nails through the gloves and into my gums, giving a spectacular yank on my tooth. I screamed bloody murder! The pain that filled my mind outweighed my drowning in my own bodily fluids and expelled the liquid all over the surgeons hand just for it to slide back down into my mouth as he gave another great pull on my molar. Each pull involved violent wiggling and his fingers pressing ever more deeply into my gums, each time attempting to free the tooth from its roots and its grown home. Its strength seemed immeasurable as it could hold open my jaw with on hand despite my most violent efforts to clamp down and bite its fingers off.
He took a deep breath in, pressed his knee against my throat and pulled on more time while pinching somehow even harder and was finally successful in obtaining his prize. With this an explosion of light and white hot searing pain ripped through my head like a bullet through my gray matter. For a split second I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think about anything but the incalculable pain I had just been visited with. The Surgeon relinquished its hold of its knee on my neck and its hand in my mouth and I instantly rolled over to vomit with every ounce of strength remaining in my body. This time there was blood mixed with bile mixed with some other unidentifiable objects that if I had looked more closely I may have been able to identify but with the truest notion of my soul had no intention whatsoever of doing.
I could hear it humming to itself and steadying myself on my knees and hands turned my head to look at the surgeon. It pulled its face mask down to take a closer look at the tooth, its skin having rotted away in some places and stringing together in others I can still identify when it looked upon my tooth with admiration and smiled. My horror grew as it opened its mouth and popped my tooth inside. The sound of the crack and crunch as it began to chew on it is exactly what I expected it to sound like, the cracking of bone. It closed its eyes and tilted it’s head back, enjoying its morsel until it had chewed it into oblivion and heartily swallowed.
Just after this horror show was over, it turned on heel and walked down the hall the way it came, disappearing around the corner and into a place I now knew I could never go. I shakily regained my footing and stared at the ceiling. I was now covered in my own fluids both blood and stomach contents and I began to weep. I released an ear splitting scream, finally accepting the truth of my fate.
The lights shorted out with a deafening crackle as the electricity battled with all its might to reignite the area. Within an instant the lights blazed to full illumination, revealing a grotesque scene filled with those who were trapped here within the wing as the blaze ravaged the halls years ago. Every soul whose flesh was scorched, limbs consumed by the rage of the fire appeared and surrounded me. Charred flesh and twisted expressions leered at me as I took in the scene engulfing me just as they had been swallowed within the end of their lives. The nauseatingly sweet smell of burning flesh invaded my nostrils and produced somehow more bile within my mouth before I recognized it. I spat to clear out my mouth before breathing in deeply to scream as loudly as I had ever screamed in my life. I would have broken glass with the decibel for which I was aiming, if the scream had not caught in my throat. The lights died once again and just as quickly, the mangled and twisted corpses shambling toward her with nothing short of ravenous hunger, the dead whose flesh was blackened as tar and peeling from their bones and whose faces were twisted from melt were gone.
Trembling, I looked all around the hall with full expectation of a new abomination rounding the corner. It wasn’t long before my ears picked up on the sound of electricity surging through the lights once again, a harbinger of a new and sinister threat set upon me. I breathed deeply through my nose and split my mouth open to form a chasm through which my terror could escape and taste sweet freedom.
Only the stench of rot remained.
