“YOU MORBID WESTPHAL”
STEVEN RAGE
Chapter One
SHIRK COMES CALLING
Pain Like Fire
It is getting colder than a witch’s titty in your hospital room. You can’t see him, but that’s how you always know. That God damned Shirk is here again.
Shirk stares his not inconsiderable malevolence and hatred at you. That you know without needing to see the rat bastard. You can sense his presence here and in the whole of the room. You feel that stare. You just know he’s going to fuck with you again.
Shirk sits quietly, sniffing periodically, in a chair across the room from you. His presence is making the room temperature drop perceptively.
The demon chooses this moment to thrust his heavy compact body up from the chair. He strides right on over to you and sits on the edge of your death bed which gives creaky protest to his other-worldly weight. Tiny cries of please-please comes muffled from the roomy sleeves of his stained-sticky cloak. The hood is turned up, the blood red eyes burn from deep within a face that is as old as pain.
“Well, well, look at you,” Shirk derisively smirks. “Looks like you’re still all dressed up but can’t get it up to go,” he scoffs and flicks a sharp-nailed yellow finger at your useless pee-pee.
You can still feel the pain, however, and your silent scream makes the life support machine sound an alarm. Shirk looks at you, mock worry fleets past his thickly wrinkled-leather face. He puts an index finger to his lips, smiling, teeth a mad jumble of yellow and grey and whatever the fuck Shirk eats for lunch, and makes like you and he need to be quiet.
Shirk giggles scratchily to himself; being the star of his own show. He reaches in to his big wizard-sleeve and removes a tiny screw-top vial of opaque granules, the movement eliciting another round of please-please from the teeniest-tiniest little humanoid you ever did see. He was hugging the vial with all his might, staring with over-sized greedy bug-eyes through the clear glass at the wonderful drugs inside.
It was mucky all around the center outside of the vial wall where the horny wee gnome had, on countless occasions, blasted his gravy. So much so, it became a crusty railing in which the naked gnome didn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy staring at the drugs, mewling for more, until he gets it, gets balls deep on the scum rail and ejaculates on the vial wall. Then he will pass out with a blissful smile, hugging god in a death grip until he wakes up, begging for more.
Shirk plucks the 2 inch long pleading creature from the vial and holds him between the second and third fingers. On cue, the gnome opens his mouth as wide as he can. He slips out a long tongue and swipes it wet all over his face while Shirk unscrews the lid and dips the little spoon deep into the multi-gram vial. The gnome smacks and smacks at the potent Plata, gobbling up as much as it can before being placed whole up the demon’s nose. Shirk snuffles up the big bumpety-bump, before rinsing and repeating, snorting what the tiny fiend couldn’t get to.
Shirk screws on the top of the vial while the spoon licks the thick Plata paste off his face. Shirk lets the tiny gnome, who is already thrusting at the empty air, grab a tight hugging hold onto the drug vial. Then the little beastie begins to hump the wall, squeaking like a cricket. Shirk drops them both back down into his sleeve, breathing heavy with dark ardor.
Shirk’s eyes brighten with an orange fire smoldering beneath a red-embered glow. He starts moaning to himself, slow-dancin’, swaying to the music.
“Love this shit,” he states, shuddering, hand slipping up under, beneath his cloak, “it’s just balls to jerk off to.”
Jesus, no.
“Slip a finger in my ass,” he says, “Second knuckle, hit that sweet spot…”
Jesus, please no.
“But I won’t!” Shirk exclaims with a hearty laugh, looking down at you. “Say!” he says, flicking you again, “You ever try it, junkie-fuck?”
Beside the sharp pain in the shriveled head of your doolittle, you can not answer, as Shirk already knows. The airway tube has the cuff inflated and is taped securely down your throat, keeps your shit from vocalizing at all. The breathing machine hums smoothly and expertly, filling your wrecked lungs with pressurized gases to keep your wracked ass alive.
“Did ya?” he asks, you say fuck-all. “Cuz if you never have, you don’t know what you’re missing or I’ll suck you straight!”
Hydromorphone-methamphetamine hydrochloride, if you didn’t know, had the lovely sounding Trade name of Duradilauderal. It had an even cozier street name of Plata which is Spanish for silver and slang for folding money. The popularity for Plata was just beginning to be a prairie fire in the Midwest when your body had already wore out. Like a roofied starlet, the party went on without you.
“Probably the only drug you didn’t abuse, if I remember correctly,” shared Shirk.
Too true.
“Sometimes,” Shirk admits, “You stupid fucking humans do mange to come up with something worthwhile.” For emphasis, Shirk pats your skinny stump of a thigh. Then he trails his cold, wrinkly demon fingers up your leg to where the scars of Lilitu’s love bites began. He laughs as he remembers the night she made them at his behest. They were numerous and deep and all over his belly and chest as well.
“That was fun, huh?” Shirk asks. Seeing that you do remember, he chuckles afresh.
Fuck you, asshole.
“But this one is new,” he says and bends to closely check on your latest surgical procedure. This one involved removing the bottom half of your left leg. Your thigh draws to a close in a tightly stitched below the knee amputation. It was recent and still hurts. He gets in real close and smells it. He rises, wincing in mock sympathy.
“You got the gangrene, huh? Too bad, buddy, it smells like liquid shit.” Shirk states flatly, “I’m sure they had no choice but to chop it the fuck off and –Bam! No more leggy for Greggy!” There is still no response from you. “Bet that must’ve hurt like a mo-fo, butterbean,” he says with a nice stump smack.
Blood and light yellow serous fluid splatter the already dirty bed sheet. You howl silently as the pain like fire hits a big nerve cluster and heads north. You break into a sweat, teardrops roll unimpeded down your sunken cheeks and the alarms sound again.
“Anywho,” Shirk resumes with a comic sigh, “I guess I’d better stop playing with you, before the babysitter comes in and catches us.” He gets up, smoothing his cloak, looks back down to you. He says: “Stick around,” laughing at your restraint. “The Fat Lady’s warming up.”
Yes, I know this. Jesus-fuck, just go away!
“She’s coming to dinner, baby cakes,” Shirk warns you, “And grand-mama’s hungry.”
Piss off.
“Tell the old bat I said hi.”
God you hate that fucking guy.
Chapter Two
NOT BY HALF
Narrowing, Closing Down
You hear Shirk laugh to himself as he walks through the wall, unimpeded. A huge blocky slab of ice forms in an instant and he is gone.
The near-dark he leaves you in is fogging up from the ice melting and the hospital’s industrialized environmental heat control kicks on and ramps up.
Hell for you begins in the here and now, in your sickbed. You don’t need some snarky visiting evil jinn coming in here, constantly fucking with you and reminding you. You know how you got here, that’s for sure.
It is here you started planting your sins. It is right in this spot where you have watched with joy, in the bits of clarity, their budding fruits. You looking down and smiling as they piled high. The silent cries and screams and pleading troubled you not. You enthralled at restraint, too weak to fight back, aware of how wrong it was. She could not understand why you were doing all those horrible thin
gs to her.
Now the spill has covered you, laying still and unmoving yourself. Chemical restraints they call it, keeping you drifting in and out of consciousness, fleeting as a swirling passing breeze, then back down to the deep dark warm nothingness.
Because you cannot be baby-sat 24/7, strong leathers make sure you stay put, if you accidentally throw off the chemical shackles. If you ever try to heave yourself over the safety rails and truck right on out of this place. No way, Jorge, just forget about it; ain’t happening. You are here, my friend, for the duration. The Big Man says so.
This is why you are wrapped in your sick bed, dying slow, perfectly still, alert in this moment. Not surprisingly, you seek your only form of comfort. You search for the dark cloth to pull over this pesky alertness, but then you feel something under the covers with you.
Oh, fuck, not again…
Through the foggy dim light, cold drizzle falling soft on your bits of exposed skin, you see her.
The hand grasps up your leg, dark blue and crawling. The night-light glow, showing through the growing fog of melting ice, illuminated the bone-thin and veiny dead hand. Her old face comes into view. Her mouth is screaming silent. Her eyes are red and leaking, reeling you in, you stare hard at her as she grabs your crotch with her other hand. She tugs and pulls her way up, the tired green covers slipping past her wigless, spotted scalp, blue with death, hands icy on your bare stomach. You screaming noiselessly, the breathing tube keeping you alive placed through useless vocal cords. She uses the hair and loose skin on your withered chest for purchase. Your head is rigid and your neck too drugged and heavy to move. Her horrid breath is leaking out of the great black hole of her dead mouth as she reaches your face. She grabs hold of your life support connection and pulls the circuit from your breathing tube. She drags her dead, decaying self, one more tug and she clamps her hole of a mouth onto your breathing tube. She begins to suck on it, aspirating the life right out of your lungs.
The breathing machine alarms shrilly, but no one comes. You crash inside, darkening your peripheral vision, narrowing, closing down. Your heart thuds crazily in your chest. You lose your hold on consciousness and you lose, are lost.
Finally, as the only thing left of This is the faraway alarm of a cardiac arrest and the only thing so far of That is the scent of sulfur and sugar, the code team arrives.
They come wading in and save your sorry ass, again. They pull you away from That and back into Hell’s waiting room. Back to your bed, back to being resuscitated by a whole fucking squadron of scrub-clad heroes. Fifty bills an hour times twenty of these motherfuckers and you ain’t worth the scratch, brother, not by half.
The heroes bring you back, successful, slowing down. Just now noticing the cold water puddling their clever-stupid multi-colored crocs on their sore wet feet, wondering from whence this shit came.
Fuck fuck, dumb-ass donkey fuck, you think. I’m still here. Show some mercy and gives us some morphine, you fuckers, you yell in your mind. You need to go under, rest. Because you know they’ll be back. And so must she.
Chapter Three
MORBID IS BORN
Fun To Watch Them Try
Morbid pushes the fingers of both shitty hands out of your rectum before pronating the hands, flipping them around. He grips the rim of your anus and pulls it all the way open. Morbid’s long, lank hair shows first, you blissfully unaware, narcotized following your Code Arrest into unknowing. Blood and snot-thick feces spilling shiny out as Morbid is born.
His head and shoulders start popping out, his hands on the hospital mattress, gaining purchase, pulling and squeezing all the rest of the way out of you. Born whole and ready to do what you no longer can.
Morbid lay between your leg and a half breathing heavy and wet. He spits filth out of his mouth and nose, wiping chunky green medicine shit out of his eyes.
Morbid eases himself gently and quietly over the safety side rails of your bed. He stands naked at your side, looking down at you.
He begins to laugh then. It is a slow and wet throaty chuckle at your expense; at your weak impotence.
“Now see what you made me do,” Morbid whispers to your passed-out ass. He ran filthy shit-snot fingers through your remaining strands of hair. “I don’t know why you think I’d stay away,” he tells you. “I have far too much to do and far too many patients to -hmm- well, look in on.” He explains, “And, well now just look at you, weakling. You are too sick to do shit, so I guess if our work is to continue it’s up to me.”
Morbid pats you on the head before turning away. He goes to the dirty isolation hamper and digs through the infectious linen, searching for something that is clean enough to wear outside of your room. He locates and selects a likely set of scrubs and a coverall. A pair of your unneeded hospital booties completes the outfit. Morbid scoops them up and heads toward your bathroom and the shower you would never use.
Not that Morbid minds the filth and foul odor he was born with, oh certainly not. But hospital people have nasty, territorial habits. They tend to stare at waste and stink covered creeps, ones with no business being there in the first place. And that simply won’t do.
Morbid showers himself clean in his birthday suit, the muck washing in soapy cascades off of him and down the drain. He did this while considering his evening’s assignment; his entertainment. And he had an idea of where he should begin.
Morbid liked to work with women the best, elderly women. He did not only indulge in the split tails, but that is his preference. They amused him because they had lived a great while, been party to the many varied experiences. They had a long, weary road kind of toughness to them. They were spunky, usually, and almost always fought back.
The old gals couldn’t begin to match Morbid’s strength and determination, but it was sure one hell of a lot of fun to watch them try.
Morbid got himself dressed, slipped on the booties and left you and your room behind him.
Looking for love in all the wrong places.
Chapter Four
FUSSBUDGET
Like Winter Warmth
Mrs. Fussbudget was on the sunny side of eighty and was in the Skilled Nursing Facility unit of Harborside District Hospital to recover from her knee replacement.
She contracted a nasty pneumonia which required the placement of a trachea tube for easier breathing. It sat secured in the center of her throat, down by the notch. Now that she was feeling that much better, Mrs. Fussbudget decided she hated the trachea tube. It made everyone who came to visit stare at her like she had a neon sign flashing below her chin.
She battled also a blood born infection. The sepsis almost did the old girl in. She was in a coma for a month. The antibiotics had finally worked all their man-made magic on Mrs. Fussbudget. She awoke to feeling weak, but hungry, always a good sign.
The mechanically softened food was wretched: cold and devoid of flavor. The texture always reminded her of just how sick she’d become. But now, she’s so much better. Well enough to allow her family to begin plans on finishing her recovery with home health.
The family cherished Mrs. Fussbudget and they were anxious for her return. They were delighted to have her off the breathing machine and home, they were told, in only a few days.
They were all to be quite a disappointed lot. But life is nothing if not pain, suffering and loss. And why should they be immune.
She awoke to no family visiting, but there was a lone man standing by her bed. He looked down at her. His lecherous smile lingered on her, roving with his twitchy eyes, long after her smile faded like winter warmth. It made Mrs. Fussbudget uncomfortable.
“Grandma,” he asked the little old lady, “May I have a cookie?”
For the first time, Morbid reached out to her.
Chapter Five
WORKING GRAVES
Easy Cake
Westphal pulled his tiny car into the parking lot of Harborside District Hospital. He selected a spot near the exit and killed the motor. He sat a moment, using the c
orner of his driver’s license to snorkel up a bump of the white lady, and yet again. He put the cola away and sat, reflecting on his chances. Really of how he didn’t have any more, how he’d let them all run out.
Too many missed shifts, too many doctored piss tests, too many pleading visits to the licensing board. Too many iced vodkas and baseball chalk lines of MDMA and cocaine to go high and wide. Too many muscle relaxers and sedatives, more vodka to come down, just too many.
Westphal’s eyes hurt as bad as his head. His shift began at 7pm and ran unrelenting until 7am. Working graves at the end of his career in a Skilled Nursing Facility. It was pretty fucking pathetic. Westphal can’t even see forty yet, but instinctively knew the score. That this glorified nursing home, working only as needed, with no benefit package on night shift gig is the only work left for the likes of him.
Westphal checked his reflection, interested not in appearance but survival. He needed to see how red his eyes were. They were pink and shiny from the bud he smoked on the way to work, having already panicked from being too fucking high to think straight. He smoked the joint on the way in hopes of coming down at least a little.
With the shaking hands Westphal also had to hide, he squirted liberal splashes of eye drops. He wiped the streaming extras as they sloshed his cheeks. The burst capillaries as gin blossomed memories of what he’d become.
Westphal dry-swallowed an acetaminophen and codeine tablet. He dropped in his mouth some tongue-numbing mint gum. He chewed on it, hoping to obliterate the smell of weed, liquor, and an unchecked fungus. It grew on his gums and tongue and was making his teeth hurt constantly. All of this done in preparation to go in and baby sit a veggie or two for the night.
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