He was then sent by ambulance, saved by his former hospital comrades, the ones that laughed at him, to be sure, yes, and should he not be in a room, a patient himself, right this damn minute?
And yet he was outside by the flagpole, instead, staring up at the night. He watched the tops of the big old trees swaying in the chilled breeze. The two-way he used to carry when he was a staff member was somehow clipped to his waist and someone was paging him. He thought that it must be a mistake, he was just a junkie-fuck patient know, no longer a health care professional, but Westphal heard his name called again.
He unclipped it from his waist and brought it up in front of him and stared at it. It made no sense. He was sick as shit, and unconscious, but yet here he stood. The voice spoke again over the radio and it sounded like it was getting pissed. So, he answered it.
The voice was male, felt familiar.
“Westphal, you there?” asked the voice.
No way, couldn’t be.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he responded, not knowing what else to do. “Who the fuck is this?” he asked.
“Aw, c’mon Westphal,” chided the voice. “Is that any way to talk to your guardian angel?”
Westphal’s mouth went dry. He tried to swallow, nothing there. His heart began trippin’ on him. It was hard to speak, Westphal weakened with the effort.
“Who – what do you want?” he managed.
“He needs you, man,” the voice responded.
“Who needs me?” he asked, as forceful as he could. It came out a squeak. But the voice didn’t laugh, he told him the patient. “You’re kidding, right? Is this a joke?” wondered Westphal.
“No joke,” the voice assured. “And he will die if you don’t get here.”
“No way,” Westphal replied, strengthening with indignation now, puffing up; angrily shaking his head. No fucking way. “You know that disgraced junkie-fuck is no patient of mine,” Westphal replied, automatically sliding back into his professional role.
“You’re the only one that can save him, though. That’s what the fuck I know,” from the voice. “He’s dying right now.”
“That’s not my concern, call the one assigned.”
“You also know the patient has never been assigned to anyone,” the voice scolded, “he’s just monitored, on life support, and wishes to be fully resuscitated in the event of an actual emergency.”
“Then what’s the problem, sounds like he’s shittin’ in tall cotton.”
“He can’t breathe,” the voice said, “And he has been waiting for you.”
“Bullshit, I’m just a patient here now. I no longer have any medical privileges,” Westphal insisted, his heart beginning to chug, trying to keep away from the truth. “Besides, didn’t you just tell me the motherfucker’s on life support? That he’s got the machine breathing for him?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Well, then, what’s the fucking problem? I hear no alarms.”
“You don’t hear any alarms because after I disconnected his circuit, I turned them off,” Morbid informed Westphal. “We don’t need any assistance from the rest of the staff. Let’s not bother them,” he suggested sweetly. “We require only ourselves.”
Oh, fuck, what if he’s really -
“Yeah, but I’m way too sick, I -”
- me?
“You don’t want to let yourself die, Westphal,” Morbid asked. “Do ya?”
There was silence then. The seagulls cried out in the distance, a foghorn sounded. Police sirens pierced the cold night air. Westphal thought he might have heard a gunshot or two, but none of it mattered. It was just background noise in The Harbor, white noise like a ceiling fan or some Christmas music. You were Morbid and Westphal was You. And no amount of mental masturbation was going to make it go away. Just because You can’t accept it, doesn’t make it any less true.
“That’s right, buttercup,” Morbid told You, “Now You are getting it.”
An image, as sharp and as real as can be flashed whole inside your fucked up, drug addled mind. A complete image of you standing over the patients you hurt; the ones under your care. You hear Morbid chuckling evilly over the two-way radio at your moment of realization. You recoil at this, feeling your stomach revolt. You drop to your knees and vomit all over the concrete in front of you.
“And poor Mrs. Fussbudget has had enough of your therapy, Westphal.”
It wasn’t me, it couldn’t be! It was You, Morbid, not me! It was You! Why, for Christ’s own sake? She was someone’s grandmother, You sick fuck!
“Don’t worry about that old bat, my man,” the voice told him. “She’s already gone, but we aren’t.”
Oh my God, I didn’t really hurt that poor woman, did I?
“Oh for Christ’s sake, you fucking weak-willed sissy!” he yelled.
“Who did it?” Westphal demanded, “Was it me or You?”
“Me, You, what difference does it make,” he told Westphal. “You need to quit crying and get down here.”
“It makes all the difference in the world, you sick fuck!” Westphal shouted into the two-way, oblivious to the staff stopping to stare at him.
“Okay, sweetheart, calm yourself,” the voice told him. “I did it, if it makes you feel better. But you let it happen, so tuck up your fucking pigtails and get down here before you let another one die!”
“You really think I need to come?” Westphal wondered; his attention finally veered away from poor dead Mrs. Fussbudget.
“Just quit dicking around and get here before everyone else does. Hike up your skirt, you dog-fucking coward, it’s time to face the music. His sats are dropping pretty fast.”
“What are they?”
“76%, cupcake,” Morbid stated, “and it’s a quickening snowball. You know how fast it’s going to slide now, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Westphal said, “I can’t get there in time, please stop it.”
“If I do, will you still come?”
“Yes. I pretty much have to, don’t I?”
“That’s right.”
“Because there is nothing left for me here,” he said. “I am all done.”
“Right again,” Morbid agreed. “They are all gone, Westie, all of them. Your wife and her baby left you long ago. Sammy and Chip are gone and even Shirk is getting tired of fucking with us.”
“I know.”
“We’re a bust, my friend. It’s time for us to cash in.”
“You’re right, but I can’t come, you know, right this second,” Westphal stated flatly, “I’m feeling off and I need to get right.”
“I know,” Morbid assured him. “We will wait, I’ll re-connect him. He will stay on until you arrive, but don’t fuck around.”
“I – I know, I won’t but I need some time,” pleaded Westphal.
“He will be fine if you get here in twenty,” said Morbid.
“Twenty.”
“Yes, Westphal, twenty minutes and that’s not a lot to get where you need to be. It’s time to break out the syringe that Shirk gave you and quit fucking around. You know what I mean, jelly bean? We don’t need to hide it anymore. We are way past that. Shoot yourself up and arrive high.”
“Okay.”
“We don’t mind. It’s better this way, if you think about it.”
“You’re right.”
“And don’t forget the scalpel and 4.0 silk.”
“Of course, I’ll bring them.” Westphal was silent a moment and then: “I have to come,” Westphal stated, resigned. “I mean, I made it, right?”
“That’s right, genius, welcome to the fucking parade,” Morbid angrily replied. “It is all your fault and you need to get down here, so all three of us can lay in it,” he finished, the two-way going silent.
Westphal dropped his two-way into a garbage can and walked quickly inside. He needed a private bathroom.
He was rolling up his sleeve before You even hit the door.
Chapter Sixteen
GOING HOME
You see now the one Westphal calls Morbid put the two-way down on the table beside your bed. He looks down at you and smiles. He glances up at the clock on the wall.
“Watch this, junkie-fuck,” he tells you and points up to the clock. He straightens his finger at the minute hand, high up across the room. The minute hand moves in an instant to twenty minutes later.
Morbid smiles brightly as Westphal stumbles in: mumbling incoherently. He makes it to the bedside and looks down at you, side by side with Morbid. It’s looking up at a frameless mirror, seeing those two together.
“We’re all here,” Morbid replies, “Just the three of us devil may care Jolly Rogers.”
Morbid immediately cocks back an elbow and just straight shoots out with his clenched fist, right into your waiting face. Stars as fireworks are detonating behind your tearing eyes.
You blink through the pain, staring in revulsion and hate at yourself and yourself, standing there at your sick bed.
Morbid winks once at you. He then spins clockwise and folds himself into Westphal, who’s stoned ass jerks and warbles with the possession of Morbid.
Westphal’s trouncey-bouncey eyeballs snap forward, and then right down at you. He reaches into a pocket, retrieves a super-sharp scalpel, an O.R. swing-hook and some 4.0 silk stitching thread.
“Time to go home,” he says and stabs you in the supra-sternal notch with the scalpel. He slices speedily distal downward, through hard sternum and thin flesh, to just above the navel. He guts you from stem to stern.
You cry out, soundless, alarms silenced, as Westphal pulls you open wide, cracking open your ribcage as easily as a lobster’s tail. He shoves his head inside of you, followed by shoulders, arms, torso, and on and on until he is all the way in.
Through the violation and searing pain, you feel Westphal turning over, closing the busted ribs like a coffin lid. Facing up, you feel him sewing you closed from the inside. The surgeon’s thread slides out through flesh and back in. Westphal sewing your gaping wound shut, as quick as a goose shits.
Your heart, beating crazily, now gets the sharp point of Westphal’s internal scalpel. Fresh blood squirts full from your stabbed and torn cardiac muscle. You can feel and hear Westphal’s suckling sounds as he sups on the blood spilling out unimpeded from your broken heart.
Your hold on sanity snaps completely as your blood pressure bottoms out. The alarm shrills again, the heroes summoned once more. They won’t make it. Not in time, anyways, and that is fine as a finger-fuckin’ to you.
You lose your hold on life. As things go fast black and mute, you could swear you smell the sick twins of sulfur and sugar welcoming you to That.
You awake and the room is cold and dank. The night-light still glowed, but less, more diffuse, making the shadows dance. You reach up, no more restraints, feel for the breathing tube. In a panic, you pull it out, lean over the side-rail and vomit on the floor. You drop the cuff-inflated tube on top of the mess you left. You breathe deeply, smelling the foul odor change in the hospital room. It seems long past rotten to you.
You climb over the rail, standing for the first time in who knows. Your stump is open and oozing all sorts of thick warm fluids onto the floor, but it doesn’t seem to matter to you any more.
The dizziness decreases as you slow your breathing, afraid of what sure as fuck seems like toxic fumes. You begin for the door, but are stopped.
A gnarled, leathery hand comes from behind, slides sharp talons down your chest. The horrible stench getting worse, a smell of sickeningly sweet decay, gas bubbled popping out of the colon-ass of a carcass.
The adrenaline is an incendiary in your heart as the beast’s mouth clamps on your neck. Pain, great and sure, wrestles with fear for domain. You suck in a big breath as the claws dig in.
The creature begins to feed on you while you stand rooted, motionless. You can’t escape its grip and even if you could, there’s nowhere to go.
Another pair of hands and another mouth slides up your leg and stump; feeling, tasting. A growling mouth bites your groin, where the blood runs deep and candied. You shriek so hard it is silent, save a highly pitched squeak that escapes as an afterthought.
As the first two feed, they wrap their scaly demon tails tight: one about your waist, and the other sliding up and into your stump. It begins to feel its way around in there.
A third comes then from behind, cackling evil mirth in your ear. Her dead hands are cold and her wigless scalp is spotted. Her tongue darts outward, flicking your terror-quivered cheek like a snake’s fork. With foul spittle staining your face, she moans and gargles around a mouth full of your mess.
“I just wanna taste you,” she says, “Now we can be together. There is no one left to keep us apart.”
Her hand pierces your back like perfectly honed surgical steel. The hand splits flesh and grabs hold your spine, gripping tight. You feel an iron fist around bone. Then, without hesitation, you are tugged back into the black and through a wall with a deafening crash. Where there awaits bitter cold, wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Chapter One
THE TRAGIC CIRCLE
Endless, Forevermore
You land hard and settle on your bottom. You look up and see, with swelling dread, the myriad of the doomed and damned. They dance perfectly Chaotic to the endless soundtrack of their eternal agony.
You are horrified and glance quickly about for any means of egress. There is, of course none to be had. Instead you see Shirk. He is sitting on an oversized Gothic style throne, sucking up drugs as he laughs, oh so gleefully.
The pain is huge from her fist, violating the new hole in your back. It makes you scream anew and makes her moan all the more: in and out, in and out she fists you.
“Looks like love to me,” Shirk observes. “I hope she’s willing to share,” the evil jinn adds as he steps down from his throne, shrugs off his cloak and follows his erection toward you.
“Oh, fuck, no,” you whimper in pain and fear. You cry out with all your might for the Holy One to save you.
At your presumption, Shirk is angered greatly. The demon grabs you by your bitch ears and gags you, fucking your mouth, forcing you to swallow what he giveth.
Mrs. Fussbudget is merely amused. Her laughter is a gargle and she plunges all the more, professing her grotesque eternal love for you with her blood wet fist. You know nothing but pain.
The Dance Chaotic begins, for You Morbid Westphal; once the more again. Time is wound up like a cheap spring-loaded toy. It sure does look like another go around the mulberry bush for you, butterbean.
You awake shivering in your death bed. Because it seems 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.
God Damn it all.
….end
You Morbid Westphal Page 7
