Dark as Coal, Part Six

Megan Whitely had the shakes again. Standing outside the hospital doors, she tried to look as sick as possible…which wasn’t too hard for her to do. A bad drug habit will work wonders on a person’s body…and not in a good way. It had started with alcohol…then some good old Mary Jane…and then heroine. Now…it was whatever she could get her hands on. Usually she got them off of her boyfriend..but they had broken up. He had started to lose interest when she had started to lose her teeth.

Megan tried to control her shaking. She didn’t want to appear to be a total pill-head. But some friends of hers had had some success in scoring a pill or two at the hospital before. They had told her who to talk to…how much money to bring. There was always someone who needed a little extra cash. Not that she had much cash to give. She had stolen some off of Hank, her ex-boyfriend, just before he left. She had pawned her son’s Wii system to get the rest.

Trying to mix in with the crowd, she stole her way through the side door and made her way down the mostly empty hallway. There weren’t too many people working this late at night…just a bare bones staff. But she was looking for Chuck…the night janitor. According to her friends, he was always good for a little “pick me up.” And she really needed picking up right now. Where could he be?

She rounded the corner and saw a security guard walking toward her. Snaking back around the corner, she dived into the stairway. It was dim in the stairway…not all of the lights were working. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest. She didn’t need to be nabbed by some dumb old rent-a-cop right now. She was sure that he hadn’t seen her….she hoped.

But what if he did, she thought, he could be out there right now…calling the cops to come and get you.

“Stop it,” she muttered to herself, trying to control her breathing, “He didn’t see a thing.”

She would wait here for a few minutes just to be sure that he was gone…and then she would look for Chuck again. If she could hold out that long. She was really starting to feel sick.

Something scraped on the floor behind her.

Stifling the scream that had come tearing up from her lungs, she whirled around. The staircase ended behind her. Underneath it…there was only darkness. It had sounded like something had moved under there.

“Is there someone here?” she hissed through her missing teeth.

Nothing. Not one sound.

“Chuck?” she hoped that it was him. She could get her fix and get the heck out of this creepy place. She never realized just how spooky a hospital at night could be.

And then the darkness moved. Something…someone…came shuffling out of it toward her. It was a man…a patient. His hospital gown was flapping along behind him.

“Jeez mister,” she tried to crack a smile with her ruined mouth, “You really scared me. Are you lost?”

The man didn’t say anything. He was staring at the floor like he didn’t know where he was.

Great, she thought, an escapee from the mental ward. Just my luck. Well….I’m not getting involved. I’m getting the heck….

And then he looked up into her face…and she saw his eyes. His dark, dark eyes that burned with a cold, black fire. And she found that she couldn’t move….she couldn’t blink….couldn’t even breathe.

“I’m hungry,” the man whispered in a rough, low voice…almost a grunt. And then he started to walk toward her.

She tried to scream….but no sound came from her mouth. She couldn’t look away…even when he started to feed. But she could feel the pain…..oh God! She could feel the pain!

Large tubes streamed out of the man’s mouth and gouged themselves into her stomach….sucking and pulling. She could feel small teeth at the ends of the tubes start to eat their way into her guts…tearing and crunching.

Red pain tried to push her down to her knees…but the force of the tubes kept her upright. They jerked her body from side to side…trying to get to the juiciest parts of her insides.

Other tubes had erupted from the man’s ears. These sprang toward her and impaled her neck…right at the jugular vein. Hot blood spurted out…but not a drop touched the floor. Other tongue-like tubes sprang from the man’s skin and lapped up the drops in mid-air.

She tried to scream. The agony of being eaten alive was unbearable. A large cramp hit her as the thing continued to eat into her intestines. She smelled a stench and realized that it was her. She could smell herself being eaten. The last thing she saw was two more large tubes erupt from the man’s eyes. And then…they impaled her own eyes….eating them before continuing on to gnaw their way into her brain.

Finally….death came to her.

And still the crunching and slurping and sucking continued.

Until next week….class dismissed.