EnEmƎ - Trojan Horse

by R. G. Beckwith

  “You can’t just voluntarily get your appendix taken out.” She replied. “That’s not what it means anyway. As for the nightmares, as difficult as it is, I don’t want to rush this. Wait a couple of days until your regular appointment, and if you haven’t worked past this on your own by then I’ll prescribe you something for sleep.”

  “Would you get your appendix taken out if you could?” I asked.

  “I had my appendix out when I was 12. I didn’t have a choice.” She replied, matter-of-factly.

  With that I got up and unlocked the door.

  “Thanks doc, you’re a life saver.” I said slightly sarcastically as I walked out the door.

  “Take care of yourself, Jace,” I heard her say as it closed.

  I smiled at Lacy and thanked her as I strolled by and toward the large glass archway, headed for the street.

  I stood on the sidewalk, looking side-to-side, trying to figure out what to do with my day as I lit a cigarette. Before I could even complete my first sweet, sweet inhale of nicotine, I clutched my side with sudden and intense pain.

  I screamed.

  The pain forced me to my knees and quickly escalated to a level that it caused me to pass out.

  Just as everything went black I saw Lacy, alerted by my screams, running over, looking concerned.

  I came to shortly after, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. EMT’s on either side of me were checking my vitals, shouting to each other and asking me questions.

  “Have you ever had your appendix out, Mr. Bradley?” one asked, shouting way too loudly, as if he were talking to an old man who was hard of hearing.

  “No, I haven’t,” I answered in an equally, unnecessarily loud tone.

  The two EMT’s looked at each other, in silent recognition of the jab I’d just taken at their bedside manner. The shouter blushed; the other one looked at me and spoke.

  “Well, it looks like you’re going to have to now.” He said it in a matter-of-fact way, but with an indoor voice. “You’ve got all the signs of a rupture; you’ll need an emergency appendectomy.”

  “I’m going to give you something to help manage the pain until we get to the hospital,” said the shouter, a little less shouty this time.

  Before I could get a word in edgewise the shouter quickly jabbed a needle into my neck and everything went black again.

  I came to a short time later. I’d been prepped for surgery and I lay relatively immobile on a gurney just outside the emergency operating room. Surgical staff were scrubbing and donning their surgical masks, beginning to gather by the O.R. entrance, near my bed.

  It slowly, very slowly, began to dawn on me that my feeling of immobility wasn’t due to being tied to the bed, because I wasn’t, but it must have been from whatever drugs they had given me. Not only did it seem difficult to move, but there was no sign of any of the pain I had felt earlier, or almost any other feeling at all for that matter.

  A surgeon approached me with wide, smiling eyes. His face showed the wrinkles that come with the experience of life that only a man in his late 60’s would have and he spoke with an Australian accent.

  “Well, Officer Bradley, I’m Doctor Banya. We’ll have you out of this spot of botha’ in a jiffy. We’re just gonna take you into the next room, put you unda’, take out that pesky appendix what’s been causin’ you this trouble and you’ll be good as new, I reckon,” the doctor said in very calm and relaxed way.

  In contrast to the EMT’s, Doctor Banya’s smooth and relaxed demeanour seemed to instantly relieve a tension in my brow and shoulders that I hadn’t realized I was carrying.

  Suddenly remembering something, the doctor turned back.

  “Oh, I almost forgot, you got a visita’! I told her she could speak to you before we operate, but keep it quick. The hospital won’t want to have to pay us all overtime because you were too busy talking the knickers off some bird to get your appendix out,” Banyan blurted out with a grin and a sly wink before walking away.

  Confused, I looked up to see Dr. Kiebler standing in the doorway. She quickly walked over to me.

  “Jace I’m so sorry that I didn’t take your dreams more seriously.” She said “Obviously what I chalked up to a repressed emotional response was actually your own body trying to send you a message to prevent the same fate as your father. I never even considered…”

  “It’s ok,” I interrupted. “There’s no way you could have known. I guess sometimes what we see in our dreams really can be literal, huh?”

  “I guess,” she replied.

  “I must be a very important patient to get my shrink to chase my ambulance all the way across town” I said with a sly grin.

  “It’s no trouble,” she said in a much more serious tone now. “As a professional, I feel responsible for my inaccurate diagnosis…” Her serious demeanour began to melt. “…and as a lifelong friend of you and your family, I’m here for support. I’ve had Lacy reschedule all my appointments for today. I’ll be here for you when you wake up.”

  We looked at each other for a long moment, but before I could find the right words to reply Dr. Banyan stepped in and grabbed hold of the metal railing of my gurney.

  “Come along, my boy, there’s no time to waste; we need to get you in here if you have any hope of sharing a romantic dinner with your friend this evening.”

  With that they began pulling me and my bed away into the O.R. so quickly that I could only exchange on last embarrassed glance with Dr. Kiebler.

  Before I knew it, I was surrounded by a surgical team. An assistant pushed a syringe into an IV bag and within moments my world once again slowly went black.

  Chapter 3 – Let’s Play Doctor

  I very slowly began to become aware of sounds, a pain in my side, screams, the sound of surgical tools scattering across the floor. When I finally came to and opened my eyes I realized I had awoken in a nightmare.

  A burning, seething pain flared through my side.

  I was on the floor, lying on my side. The gurney in my operating room had been overturned, and there was blood, some of it mine and some of it not, sprayed over the walls and pooling on the floor.

  A surgical assistant lay slumped on the floor next to me. As if in answer of my mental question, her head lolled to the side and her wide, dead eyes looked into mine.

  The pain screamed in my side again, matching the actual screaming from Doctor Banyan on the other side of the room, accompanied by the clatter of something striking steel.

  I slowly looked up, past my open wound in my side and toward Banyan, who was crouched against the floor behind a stainless steel surgical tool cart, its contents spilled and scattered across the floor.

  “AHHHRRAAHHHH!” he screamed unintelligibly.

  I couldn’t make sense of the clatter at first. My eyes saw it, but my mind couldn’t understand it, and I had to stare and focus for what seemed like an eternity, my brain at a complete loss to figure out what I was staring at. And then it turned, just slightly enough for me to catch part of its profile.

  It was a wrinkly, yellow, humanoid blob with big black eyes, minute nose and mouth, and long brown claws for fingernails that were scratching at the stainless tool cart that was serving as Banyan’s shield. It was the thing from my dreams. My eyes looked over it and I realized that the lower half was still covered in a gooey looking transparent sack of tissue with a cord trailing off of it. My eyes followed the cord and to my growing horror, it led to the gaping wound in my side. The creature and I were attached.

  I was repulsed in disgust and the true horror of the situation began to sink in.

  “I must be having a nightmare.” I realized.

  Truly, I felt there was no alternative. I must be lost in a nightmare. One of those really shitty ones where you think you’ve woken up, but you just woke up in the dream and the nightmare continues when the killer with the machete bursts out of your closet. I found some measure of comfort in the realization that this was all a dream and that it was some mental
manifestation of my guilt over my father’s death. It wouldn’t last long.

  The wrinkled yellow thing trying to savage Dr. Banyan turned, looked right at me and slowly blinked.

  “Yes, you are!” It said in a gravely, inhuman voice before swiftly turning back around and renewing his attack on the tool cart with a renewed fervour.

  I noticed the cord attaching us was pulled taught, the reason that this creature hadn’t just moved around the cart or thrown it aside. It couldn’t reach. That was the searing pain in my side, the cord being pulled tight, likely pulling on the sack of organs inside my body. The creature tugged and an intense, burning pain radiated through my side.

  The intensity reduced a few seconds later. Long enough for me to analyze and process the situation. The creature had gotten enough slack to get closer to Banyan and managed cut a long, bloody gash across the back of his left hand, causing him to let go of one side of his protective cart.

  As the creature began moving toward Banyan’s other hand, I recognized what I had to do. Turning away from the horrible scene, I reached one arm out as long as I could, gripped my fingers into the hard linoleum floor as best I could, and pulled my body across the floor. My arm muscle strained, pulling my body weight and dragging my legs as well as the horrible creature attached to me. My side erupted in searing pain. I moaned. And I’d only moved an inch. That inch however was enough to pull the horrible yellow creature far enough that he could no longer attack Dr. Banyan.

  The creature snarled in frustration and tugged back, making my internal organs part a macabre tug of war.

  I reached again and pulled. This time I gained 6 inches, along with a searing pain that overshadowed all the previous pain I had felt. This time I screamed much louder. The bug-eyed alien turned and looked at me with frustration and a heavy dose of contempt, then turned and dug his claws into the linoleum and pulled back.

  “Aaaah! You fuckin’ piece of shit!” I screamed.

  Fuelled by my own abhorrence and anger, I gripped the floor and pulled again, dragging myself another foot away, while the creature from inside my own body was digging in its nails, trying to move in the other direction.

  “AAAAAAH!” We both screamed at the same time, me in pain and the creature in frustration.

  With that, the beautiful figure of Dr. Kiebler burst into the O.R.

  “Jace!” she exclaimed, before stumbling back, aghast at the scene.

  I’d given Dr. Banyan enough room to cautiously begin creeping out from behind his hiding place.

  The creature wheezed and swiped its claws at Kiebler, nowhere near close enough to her to be a real threat. The action did have the effect of helping Dr. Banyan find his courage. His brow furrowed with anger and disgust as he glared at the creature. He quickly bent over, grabbing a large pointed surgical scalpel. He turned and drove the scalpel directly through the creature’s chest.

  “AAAAAAAAA!” The creature screamed, while swinging its long talons at Dr. Banyan, which he easily stepped back and away from.

  The yellow creature began writhing and convulsing on the floor, black ooze bubbled from its mouth. We all took a second to look at it, and each other. Then a dark black fluid began to quickly run from the creature, through the cord connecting us, toward me. We all looked at each other in panic, not knowing what, if any, danger this presented. I hurriedly scrambled my hands along the linoleum and caught a firm grip on a bone saw resting on the floor nearby. The black fluid had already reached my end of the cord and begun entering my body, but that didn’t stop me from chopping off the cord, letting the majority of the black ooze splutter and spray across the operating room floor.

  A few minutes later we had righted the gurney and Dr. Banyan was stitching up the hole in my side.

  “What the fuck is happening?!” exclaimed Kiebler, watching in amazement.

  “That was worse than the time my grandpappy saw the Bunyip!” Dr. Banyan exclaimed with a half chuckle, managing to maintain his humorous demeanour despite our present situation.

  I’m so sorry Jace, I’m so sorry, how could I have known? That was. What the hell.” Kiebler was becoming hysterical.

  “It’s okay; it’s not your fault,” I managed to mutter.

  “We’re all a bit out of our element I think, love.” Banyan offered with an easy grin and a smile. “The one thing I know is that nothing on God’s Earth that can be blamed for this sorry mess. You just stick with us, love, and we’ll be able to sort out this mess.”

  Kiebler seemed to ease a bit, and I took the opportunity to introduce them. My psychiatrist and my Emergency Surgeon, who at the moment were probably the two people in the world I was closest to.

  “It’s a pleasha’ to meet you, Dr. Kiebler.” Banyan said, extending his bandaged hand for a shake.

  “Thank you,” She stuttered, still in shock, processing the events of the day. “Just call me Allison.”

  “Well, I hate ta be the one to dredge up the obvious reality of the situation, but we need ta report this ta someone,” said Banyan.

  All three of us exited the Emergency O.R. into a hallway of silence.

  The building was quiet. There wasn’t a person in sight.

  We worked our way down one flight of stairs, across a lobby where we found the admissions desk strangely abandoned, and then out the large sliding glass doors of the Emergency entrance.

  The first thing I felt as I walked out the door was the oppressive California heat, hitting us like a wall. The first thing I saw was groups of men and women, marching like soldiers, armed with rifles, herding frightened citizens into groups. I noticed that one group all wore medical scrubs and laid flat and lifeless on the ground.

  Chapter 4 – Armored Soldiers

  It was surreal. I couldn’t believe it. The California sun seemed to beat down on us, brighter and more sweltering than usual. The three of us, Kiebler, Banyan and myself, stood in awe. Regular citizens carrying shiny, silver rifles, marched, pushing people into a herd. Some were arguing and emotionally pleading with their own family members or loved ones who continued to stare, unmoved and silent. People were being pulled out of their cars and dragged down the street, forced to huddle in packs or literally lifted and tossed into the backs of military trucks. I tried to convince myself none of this ever happened.

  “I’m sleeping,” I exclaimed out loud. “I’ve got to wake up.”

  “If you’re sleepin’, mate, I hope you bloody wake up soon,” responded Banyan. “If your mind is responsible for this bleedin’ nightmare, you betta wake up soon.”

  We stared, aghast at the situation unfolding in front of us. It was like Auschwitz with a bright, smiling sun.

  As we stared, dumbfounded, a cargo truck pulled up and half a dozen armored soldiers hopped out. Armored soldier unlike any kind of armored soldiers I’d ever seen before.

  They were covered head-to-toe in shiny silver armor, with green mirrored visors covering their faces, and large futuristic-looking silver rifles. They looked around, assessing the situation. One seemed to direct the group and point in different directions. One of the points was directly at us. We shrunk back against the brick wall, trying to become invisible against the hot brick, but to no avail. The group immediately dispersed into teams of two, and one team headed directly toward us at a brisk pace.

  We all froze as they approached, at least our feet did.

  “What’s goin' on here, mates?” blurted Banyan. “Those are some bleedin’ crazy suits ya got there!”

  The pace of the two armoured soldiers slowed to a walk about 10 feet away. With their rifles drawn at waist height, they ignored Banyan and seemed to examine the scene, looking at the building and examining our rag-tag group. Their green helmet screens seemed to scan us up and down as if they’d never seen a person before. They hunched and examined us. What they were looking for I don’t know, but it started to feel like when someone’s dog won’t stop sniffing you until it becomes irritating. One armoured mystery man seemed to have taken a particular in
terest in me, examining me and slowly standing until that green mirrored visor was an inch from my nose, as if we were staring into each other’s eyes.

  “This one’s clear.” A metallic, robotic sounding voice came from the audio speakers under the side of each jaw.

  The two armoured soldiers looked at each other, then there was a dull hiss, the sound of an airlock depressurizing, and the green visors on their helmets lifted over their heads revealing two stern and serious looking men. One was a black man with short cropped, so short that it almost wasn’t there, hair. He seemed slightly older than the average foot soldier should be and appeared to have the age that made me wonder if he was a general or something. The other was white. He looked a few years younger, but equally serious. Oddly, his helmet also contained his long flowing blonde hair and scraggly sideburns that would have fit the image of a hippie more than a soldier.