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none-of-us-are-real-blog · 7 years ago

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(A quick story I wrote for a writing contest with some friends. I didn’t have time to edit, so it’s not the best but... The prompt was “A horror story about a table”)

“Who the fuck are you?” She shouted, the sleep that had been tugging at the corners of her brain chased away by adrenaline. In the corner of the small single person hospital room sat a man. He was curled in on himself, one arm clutching the other tightly, sound asleep, purple circles hanging themselves under his eyes, contrasting strongly against the pale of his skin.

While Louisa certainly was not weak, she was not particularly strong either. Nor did she know how to fight. Despite this, it was clear she could take him in a fight. Skin clung tightly to his body, bones and thin muscles showing through. He was small, both in height and structure. And he was unconscious.

The reaction to fight might have been a bit overkill and soon, but Louisa could not help it. The hospital she was in gave her the chills. She felt as though she was being held much longer than needed, her broken arm was healed more than enough to go home. Still, the hospital insisted on holding her. Instead of being worried of something being wrong with her, though, she became quite wary of the nurses and doctors, closely watching her blood pressure and other stats, silently observing her, holding her in the room to the extreme that she felt more a prisoner than a patient. All this had had her on edge, keeping her up at night and stressing her in the day.

Now there was a stranger in her room. Untangling herself from the warm sheets, she swung her legs over the bed and stood, repeating herself. “Hey, the fuck are you?”

Again, the man did not answer. He stayed in the same position, deep in his slumber. Although he did not move in his sleep, it was still clear to anyone with half a brain that it was not a peaceful rest. The corner of his mouth twitched every once in a while, a pained grimace evident on his ghostly face. A twinge of concern echoed through Louisa, and she stopped, crouching down to the man's height, and cautiously trying to shake him awake. Any aggression and fear she had felt towards him dispersed. After a few gentle shakes, he woke with a start, flinching back away from her, fear clouding his blue eyes. Louisa tumbled back, too, still wary of the stranger who had invaded her room.

“Whoa, hey-” She started.

“Who- Who...” the man managed to stutter out, confusion and fear dancing across his face.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to ask you.” Louisa said, calmly, trying to earn his trust. At least long enough to figure out who he was.

“I’m...I’m Elliot.” He stated, relaxing slightly as Louisa clearly had no intention to harm him. “Who are you?”

Before Louisa answered, her eyes drifted to his arm, still being clutched tightly by the other. “Are you hurt?” She asked. It was probably a stupid question, considering they were in a hospital, and the man was wearing the typical patient gown all the patients wore.

“I, well...” Elliot seemed to contemplate what he was going to say, clearly hesitant, mouth half agape in thought. The arm in question shifted slightly, and something poked out between his bony fingers. Louisa’s train of thought stopped immediately. What the hell was that? It was an earthy green and a thin, flat, slightly triangular chunk stemmed off from it, and at the tip was a-

A flower. A flower on a stem. Her eyes trailed down the stem to where it poked out of the skin. A thin, irritated cut was held slightly open by the plant growing from it. A plant growing in his skin. Growing in his arm. What the hell?

Following Louisa’s gaze, he too looked down, and quickly shifted his hand so it was covering it again. “I- wait!” He said, seeing the slightly horrified expression on her face. “I don’t-”

“Dude, what the fuck happened?” She interrupted, frowning in thought as her mind tried to go over what scenario could find someone a plant growing out of them.

“I don’t know...” His voice faded, a strange expression washing across his face. It was the same expression one might have when they misplace something important, such as their car keys, and can’t seem to find it. Or perhaps the look of someone waking up in the morning, trying to figure out if a memory was real or just a dream. Either way, it was concerning.

“OK, well,” Louisa began, just as confused as he was. “How’d you get here?”

Elliot shrugged. “I’m not sure about that either.” He looked down, slightly embarrassed. “I think I’ve gone mad...”

Louisa tilted her head. “You’ve what?”

“I just...everything here is crazy, there’s people with wings and tails and mad doctors and a table-”

“Whoa, hey, wait just a minute.” Louisa cut him off once again. Her mind was still trying to catch up. Wings and tails? Maybe he came from the mental section of the hospital. When Elliot had talked, he had waved his arms around in wild gestures, giving Louisa a clear shot of his entire arm. Loads of small flowers sprouted out from cuts, tinted red by irritation, small trails of dried blood tracing down from where they came. “Let’s back up to the beginning. Why’d you come to the hospital in the first place?”

Elliot sighed. “I got into a car crash a few months ago. I broke a few of my ribs and there was light trauma to my lungs...And then a few weeks ago my lung collapsed because of it. It was supposed to be an easy fix, and I could leave in just a few days, but,”

“But they kept you here.” Louisa finished, thinking of her own situation.

Elliot took a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah.”

“They’ve been keeping me here longer than I should be, also.” She said, trying to comfort him.

“Th-that’s because they’re using us!” Elliot blurted out suddenly.

“What?”

“In the basement, where they took me, they were, uhm, they were taking patients down there. And, and when you went down, there was a lot of, I mean at least I thought I saw, er, I-” Elliot stumbled painfully over the words that flowed out of his mouth like a waterfall. Louisa couldn’t make heads or tails from what he was saying.

“Dude, slow down.”

Elliot nodded and took a breath, starting again. “They took me downstairs, they said it was for treatment and...” his voice trailed off, not confident in what he was saying. “I saw people who had wings spurting out of their back, and some of them had beaks and talon feet. And then there were some with tails and ears and wolf-like snouts, dark horrifying black eyes, and then there were those who had robotic limbs, eyes torn out and replaced with lights, wires spewing from unnatural gaps in their bodies.

“And then there was a table.” Elliot said this as though it had great meaning.

“Wh-” Louisa’s mind was reeling. God, he really was crazy. “I’m- OK, you know what? We’ll address all that other stuff later and I’ll humor you at the moment. What’s so important about a table in the midst of all of the other things you saw?” She asked.

“They took me in the room with the table. They were still cleaning blood off it from the last victim, who was being carried away on a stretcher. And they might’ve been the most horrifying one...but the table. That’s where they do all of the experiments, I think.”

“Experiments?”

“All those people I just told you about?”

“Oh. And so you were an experiment?” Louisa said, raising an eyebrow.

“I, uhm, I think so. I went under when they put me on the table, and then I woke up in a strange room with...with these...” He looked disdainfully the leafy things sprouting from him. “And then a doctor came and put me under again. And then I was here.”

Louisa figured that all of this must be from the anesthetics. He was hallucinating from them when they took him to the operating room. But the flowers? Maybe he was delusional, he did something that got the flowers growing out of his arms, came to the hospital for help, and then made up with the whole story. But what would cause such a thing to happen?

Louisa was lost. There was no doubt in her mind that something was wrong with the hospital. But Elliot’s story? That was beyond the point of reasonable belief, the type of story that someone could write a book about, not something that would happen in real life.

Elliot saw the disbelief on her face. “I can take you there.” He said, desperate for her to believe him. His eyes were wide and haunted. “I can take you there and you’ll see.”

Louisa sighed. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? A doctor scolding her for going where she shouldn’t?

Sighing, she agreed. “Yeah, sure.”

His face lit up, looking happier than a kid on Christmas. “Yes! Let’s go!” He shakily rose to his feet on unsteady legs, opened the door, and scurried out. Louisa followed shortly behind, walking normally, unlike Elliot who was trying his best to be sneaky and looking every which way to be sure no one was watching. He stopped at the end of a hallway, of which at the end was a door

“There.” He said.

Having finally stopped and just stood still, Louisa observed that she was at least a head taller than Elliot.

“Well, are we going in, or?” Louisa asked impatiently.

“Uh, I guess...well, n- maybe this wasn’t a good idea, OK? We should go back-”

“Oh, no.” Louisa quickly said. “You promised experimental furries, I want to see them.”

“What, they weren’t furries-”

“Now come on, you coward.” She grabbed him by his normal arm and dragged him to the door.

The descent to the lower level was unsettling. If Louisa disliked the normal, clean, bright hospital, then she absolutely despised the dark, dank staircase that was tucked away underneath. Dark, but not dirty. Just as the upper level, it was stark clean, and Louisa presumed the walls were just as white as the rest of the building, but could not be sure in the lighting.

Elliot was still being dragged by his arm, resisting slightly, clearly unhappy to be going back down. She could feel him shaking slightly.

Stopping she turned to him. “You OK?”

He laughed, a short burst of laughter that held no humor. “Am I OK? No, yeah I’m fine. We’re just going down to where they fucking turned me into a human garden and the horrible monsters live, no big deal!” He hissed in a hoarse whisper.

Louisa felt a bit guilty for making him come down here. While she believed his story was insane (and he probably was too), he was still clearly terrified. But, hopefully, when they got to the bottom and Elliot saw there was nothing to fear, he would remember what actually happened to his arm. Louisa was genuinely curious about the plants.

When they finally got to the bottom, Louisa ran straight into a door.

“Ah, fucking shitty hell-”

“Shhh” Elliot hissed. “They could be listening.”

Louisa didn’t know who “They” were, and wasn’t going to ask. She fumbled around for the doorknob, found it, and opened the door. And then was immediately blinded. Bright lights beamed out from the room in front of the duo, just the same as the floor above. Looking at the door they entered from, a large stain stood out like a sore thumb. Louisa tried to move forward, but Elliot wouldn’t budge.

“Come on, dude.” She said.

“I, I can’t...” He said.

She sighed. “Dude, there’s nothing to be afraid of, OK?”

“But I saw-”

“Yeah, and you were probably high as fuck on all the pain killers and anesthetics!” Louisa exclaimed. She still felt somewhat bad for him, as he was clearly terrified, but at the same time she was at her lengths end.

Elliot considered this. Looked like he wanted to believe it. Finally, he responded. “OK.”

And they walked on into the unknown.

Pain. Endless, unwavering ebbing and flowing of pain. She tried to think. She couldn’t. Why couldn’t she think? Why couldn’t she open her eyes?

After a few minutes of silent panicking and effort, she discovered she could open them. And good glorious heaven, was it a bad idea. The bright lights beamed directly into her eyes, the pain shooting through her skull intensifying. A few more minutes passed. Silent minutes. The inside of her head empty. It felt like someone cut it open, stuffed it with cotton, and then did a half-ass job sewing it back up.

When Louisa finally could open her eyes, and the pain had receded enough for her to make coherent thoughts again, she sat up. A hospital room. She was back in her old hospital room? Maybe Elliot and his monsters were all a dream. She laid back down and closed her eyes.

“LOUISA, HELP, HELP THEY’RE HERE-” someone screamed from an adjacent room. Their voice was hoarse, as though they had been screaming for hours. She shot up. Elliot. It wasn’t just a dream? Well, shit. Her legs didn’t want to move, and she wasn’t sure they would hold her weight. Louisa remained on the bed.

“Elliot?” She called back. “You OK?” A dumb question, considering from the tone of his voice he most certainly was not. Silence sounded back. No, not silence. If Louisa positioned her ear the right way, and listened real carefully, she could hear it. A quiet whirring noise, like a drill at the dentist.

Whether or not her legs would cooperate, Louisa would get to Elliot. She had to. She made him come here, anything that happened to him was her fault. And, she had to admit, she had grown quite fond of the strange man in the short time she had known him.

Her legs didn’t fail her when she tried to stand up, but it felt like they would. The room still spun slightly, and it felt as though someone was giving her a fucking lobotomy. She walked on. On to the door, which opened with effort. And then to the hall.

“Elliot?” She called out, quietly. Probably too quiet for him to hear. The room was brightly lit, yet shadows still danced ominously in the corners. Shelves covered the walls, jars of weird substances with names only someone with a medical license could understand. Books, on birds and the spine and wolves and robotics. An unidentifiable sound escaped from a door to the left, and after it Louisa went.

She didn’t know what she was seeing. Cages and cages built of glass, filled with creatures. Creatures that almost looked human, but not quite. Just as Elliot described. Was she crazy too? Still dreaming? Or, perhaps, he was telling the truth. A cage was marked “Homo Aves.” Inside, people with large wings perched on branches and sticks. Some of their faces had large beaks, resembling a plague doctor mask, sticking out of their deformed faces. Eyes large and black, somewhere between a birds and a human. Others were perfectly normal humans besides the wings. They were all asleep. Louisa decided it best to stay that way.

Then another cage. People with puffs of fur, ears and snouts, dog eyes, claws, some walked on all fours, others bipedal, and few somewhere in between. It was not time for humor, yet Louisa couldn’t help a small chuckle. Furries.

Robotic people were next. Cyborgs? Strange gaps in their bodies, places like where their elbow should be replaced with wires and screws. Some had third robotic eyes attached to their foreheads, skin around it bumpy and red and disfigured. At this point, Louisa was trying to block it all out. Down the long corridor she walked, walked on in search of Elliot, who was nowhere to be found.

Louisa didn’t want to go on. She didn’t want to find anymore people. Not after she found some that were awake. Some had eyes still full of humanity. Others were devoid of it. All held a broken look, a look of pain and emptiness, forgotten people, deleted from the world. She didn’t want to look into their eyes anymore. She didn’t want to be here anymore. Become one of them. Removed from the world. Not human.

Yet she walked on. She wasn’t a pussy, Louisa told herself. Nothing was going to stop her from helping Elliot. And then punching a few doctors faces in. The door at the end of the horrible horrible hallway emitted a few noises.

She opened the door.

”Elliot” She said, louder than she should have. There he lay, on a stretcher among others. But she was only focused on his. She gently shook him awake, for the second time that day.

“Elliot? Come on, wake up, dude.” The flowers were much larger now. Looking at where the protruded from the skin made bile rise up, burning the back of her throat. She shook harder. He started to stir. Other things in the room stirred with him. She ignored them.

“Wh-Louisa?” He questioned, finally conscious.

“Yeah, it’s me, dumbass.” She said. “Come on, we have to get out of here.”

Elliot sat up suddenly, winced, and looked around wide-eyed at where they were. And then he screamed.

Louisa jumped. The fucking idiot? What was he doing, someone was going to hear and-

Oh. Oh good glorious god. Louisa saw what he screamed at. And then had to stop herself from screaming with him. On the other stretchers that filled the room, horrifying grotesque monsters sat, staring at them. Horrifying grins held shut by stitches tracing along their mouths. Eyes wide and a deep, hollow black. Their skin looked as though someone had held a blowtorch to it. Their noses were melted in, as were their ears, which were at this point just ear-shaped lumps of skin pushed into their heads. They looked as though they had been human at some point.

Her hand flew over Elliot’s open mouth. He slowly got up, and they silently started moving for the door. Dozens of black eyes followed their movement, their awful grins only getting wider. They didn’t blink.

Louisa groped for the doorknob. Tried to opened it silently, walked out silently, closed it.

And then she screamed. She couldn’t help it. Any form of logical thought was chased out of her brain, replaced by the replaying of horrors they had encountered.

Following the scream was footsteps. And clawing and muffled yelps and laughs and giggles and shouts. The doorknob jiggled.

“Oh my god, they’re coming Louisa, they’re going to fucking kill us-”

“Shut up and move,” she grabbed him by the arm once again and ran, down the hallway and past the atrocious hybrids, through the door into the room of shelves. Where was the exit? She looked at Elliot, who offered no help. The footsteps grew louder, slapping of bare skin on tile floor. One walked out into the room. The villainous glee on his face grew, and with a muffled, low giggle, it reached a misshapen hand up to its mouth and tore off the stitches. Mouth free, a sharp, insanely loud ear piercing shriek rang out from it, triggering more and more sounds of tearing and shrieking from behind it. Blood oozed from its torn up lips, screams echoed through the hallways. It moved again, towards them, a painful gate that was uneven and slow. Louisa looked around the room as fast as she could. ”Think, think, think, think, think,” she angrily thought to herself. Looking for a way out. There. A door. A familiar door, somewhere hidden deep in her memory. The door with the large brown stain on it. She ran as fast as she could, carrying her and Elliot’s weight, as Elliot seemed to have shut down completely. She would too, if their lives weren’t depending on her. Up the steps, so many fucking steps. Each one sent a jolt through her sore body, a spike through her pounding head. Something yanked on her arm, hard. No, not something. Someone. A yelp. Elliot’s yelp. The world slowed as she turned around, watching as he was torn from her grip, falling down into the crowd of twitching, shrieking monsters. Blood flew up. She screamed. Her mind said to go get him, to save him, but the instinct to survive programmed into every human forced her legs to up, up, up and away from Elliot’s broken body.

She was back at the hospital. Adorned in normal clothes this time, the patient gown left behind a month ago. She’d come back every day, in search for her partner in crime. Dead, probably, but Louisa wasn’t one to give up. The doctors knew nothing. The police found nothing. In terms of evidence, there was nothing. He had disappeared.

This time, Louisa wasn’t going to ask questions. She wasn’t going to rely on anyone else getting her friend back. She was going to take matters into her own hands. The door to the basement sent a surge of anxiety cutting through her body. Ignoring it, she continued. Down all the stairs, to the door with the brown stain. To the hallway with the strange people. To the place she found Elliot and the monsters. She stopped at the door. What if they were still in there.

A voice cut through the silence. Though, it was more a shriek. Through the horrid shrieking noise, she could make out a word.

”LOUISA,” It shrieked. There was something familiar about the voice. Something she couldn’t quite put a name to.

Something slammed against the door.

A face.

A deformed, melted, misshapen face.

Broken, black eyes.

Ears melted into skull.

Elliot’s face.

#writeblr #story #short story #original writing #horror #hospital

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