by Alec Birri
Dan spat into the basin. ‘They’ll get used to it.’ He reached for the soap. ‘They’ll have to.’
Brian went from concern to discomfort. ‘I suppose we ought to think about how we’re actually going to do it.’
Dan plugged the basin and ran a tap. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.’ He looked at Brian in the mirror again. ‘And jump off before we reach the other side.’
He smiled wryly, but Brian didn’t. ‘Some people would say we need our heads examined.’
Dan splashed water onto his face.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ Brian seemed to want to make a point.
Dan had heard him, but didn’t respond as he was busy washing his face.
Brian repeated it. ‘I said: some people would say we need to examine our heads.’
Dan brought some water up to wash his scalp and was about to pedantically correct the subtle difference between the two statements when his fingertips ran over what felt like dents. Eyes still closed, he slowed his movements and took a moment to identify how many, and where. He blindly reached for a towel and dried his eyes.
Dan opened them just as Brian brought his chin down to his chest. His head was scarred by a series of evenly spaced indentations.
Chapter Eight
‘How many can you see?’
‘Dan, how many times do I have to tell you – I can only see what you can.’
Dan lifted his chin off his chest. ‘What’s the point of having a helpful hallucination that doesn’t help?’ He went back to the mirror and ran his hands over his head for the umpteenth time. ‘Well, I can see four, but I reckon there’s eight in total. What do you think they are?’
Brian got up and looked over Dan’s shoulder into the mirror again. ‘Pretty obvious, I would have thought. Some kind of post-operative scarring. We’ve been under the knife for something.’
Dan furthered a second possibility. ‘They could be an illusion – like the rest of the injuries.’ He put his glasses on and prodded at one of the indentations. ‘Seem real enough, though.’
They both walked back to the bed and sat on it.
‘Doctor Frankenstein said he would stop lying to me from now on, so I should be able to ask if they’re real or not and what they have to do with the condition.’
Brian cocked his head to one side. ‘And would we believe him?’
‘No, of course not. I need to find someone unconnected with the trial to confirm it.’
Dan got up and went to the window. ‘It would need to be someone from outside, but we’re not allowed to leave the hospital.’
Brian joined him. ‘We may not have to. Plenty of visitors must come and go all the time – just ask an electrician or some other tradesman.’
They spotted a figure in the distance and spoke at the same time. ‘A gardener!’
Dan’s last attempt at trying to get someone to look at part of his body was pointed out. ‘Are you going to keep your clothes on this time?’
Dan ignored Brian and sat back on the bed. He looked at his minder through the open door. He was wondering how to get past him when Lisa blocked the view.
‘Good afternoon, Dan. How are you getting on with the exercises I left you with?’
She cocked her head at the untouched exercise ball and leaflet. Dan peered around her.
‘That’s okay, Lisa. I’ll be, er, leaving the hospital in the next couple of days, so won’t be needing physiotherapy anymore.’
She folded her arms. ‘Well, that means I won’t get paid, which means I won’t be able to feed and clothe my children. Do you really want that on your conscience when you, er, leave?’
Dan guessed all the staff must know about his suicide risk. He was about to give her short shrift when he noticed something different: she’d had a boob job done. Or, rather, Lisa looked as if she’d had a boob job done, but that was impossible as she was flat-chested yesterday. He smirked at what must have been done to create the appearance when she smiled back at him. His jaw dropped. She was now beautiful too. And younger, yes – much younger than he had remembered. Wider, rounder, and deeper blue eyes. Fuller and redder lips. A more petite, dainty nose, and curves he was positive didn’t exist just twenty-four hours ago.
The skinny, middle-aged woman he’d judged to be a hard-nosed lesbian was now a stunning blonde in her twenties. She looked like something out of Vogue magazine. He blinked a couple of times. She was still beautiful. Dan grabbed the exercise ball and squeezed it hard to check he hadn’t fallen asleep again. It hurt like blazes.
Lisa saw his pain and reached out to take the ball. Her hands were beautiful too. Not a wrinkle, vein, or tendon in sight – just a smooth, clean, fresh complexion. Even her nails were manicured. Dan was now used to the look of his own hands, but the contrast between her youthful grace and his evil-looking talons was still stark. What the hell’s going on with me? he thought to himself. He ran a hand over his scalp.
‘Lisa?’
Her appearance was so captivating, he had to look away to ask the question.
‘What are these marks on my head?’
‘They’re from your operation. Did you forget you had them?’
‘I must have done.’
Brian tossed his head in disgust at how easily Dan gave in to a pretty face. Dan tried shaking himself out of the siren-like grip.
‘Can we go into the gardens for some exercise today?’
Lisa thought that was an excellent idea and prepared his wheelchair. Dan couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was nothing sexual. No, it was like looking at something important he had lost or was gone forever – like the death of a friend or old flame he still pined for. The feeling was similar to viewing a photograph album and wondering how time could have passed by so quickly and unnoticed.
Dan settled into the wheelchair and tried to put it out of his mind. Lisa pushed him into the corridor. He was reminded of being outside his previous room and coming face to face with the occupant opposite. Only this time he wasn’t looking at the disfigured form of a man with the same condition as him, but at a person who could not have been more different if he’d tried.
The orderly stood up to acknowledge Lisa’s charge and, straight away, Dan was struck by the man’s handsome looks, height, and muscular physique – Dan felt inadequate by comparison. He only saw the orderly for a few seconds, but it was enough to acknowledge the hospital appeared to have gained a second perfect physical specimen in the prime of youth. Dan made two fists to ensure he was still awake.
They had to wait for the lift and Dan’s eyes wandered down the corridor to see yet another beauty like Lisa in charge of a similar wheelchair. The occupant looked straight back at him, and Dan just had time to think it was someone he knew when both doors opened and each party continued their respective journeys. Dan promptly forgot about him.
Lisa took Dan down to the ground floor and, after passing further impressive examples of human perfection, Dan realised his mind had found some new way of torturing him during his waking hours. If the indentations on his scalp were real, his next step would be to establish any link.
He studied his hands. They couldn’t be more opposite to these new hallucinations – not knowing the true nature of his condition was frustrating. Lisa wheeled him down the corridor that led to the conservatory, and Dan wondered if his fellow patients would be just as imposing.
‘That’s all I need,’ he said to himself. ‘Gary looking like a miserable Sean Connery.’
They entered the conservatory and Dan was relieved to see his brain had chosen not to represent them as paragons of youth for some reason, but all the same they were different. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but everyone appeared to be ‘normal’. Not just in the social conduct of conversation, reading, and the playing of various board games – they looked better too.
The condition they all shared was still apparent but visually acceptable now. Some even seemed to have been cured of it – until Dan drew closer and realised the damage was still plain to see. He scrutinised his hands for a third time in as many minutes. What is this?
As Lisa wheeled him out of the conservatory, they passed Gary, who put his head down when he saw the two of them, giving Dan the chance to confirm a third thing they had in common – head scars. Dan was now more determined than ever to confirm their reality. Lisa pushed him onto the patio and he was pleased to see the gardener still working about twenty yards away. She applied the brakes.
‘Right, how do you intend to impress me first?’
Dan didn’t take his eyes off the groundsman. ‘I think I could walk all the way from here to the bottom of the garden and back again without any help whatsoever.’
He turned to smile, but had to look away when the sight of Lisa made him feel just as inadequate as the orderly did. His eyes then caught sight of the barbecue and he recalled the feeling when being made to re-enact his accident with it – a sense of being played for a fool. Only this time it seemed to be Mother Nature enjoying the experience at his expense. He faced the gardener again.
‘I’m impressed with your ambition already! Okay, off you go – I’ll wait for you here.’
Dan placed both feet on the grass and stood up. It was another glorious day and he turned his face up to bask in it. He dropped his head again when the sun’s rays seemed to eat into his skin. The pain stopped, as did a feeling of melting around his face and neck.
‘Damn these hallucinations,’ he said to himself, but not before wondering if nature wanted to finish something she started six months ago. Dan concentrated on the man in the distance and walked.
He was soon close enough to see a flowerbed being tended. Various plants and shrubs proliferated, with tall sunflowers dominating the scene. He was just feet from the gardener when Dan heard a thump and one of the sunflowers shook. A petal fell from it. The sun glinted off the blade that was brought down for a second time – the plant then crashed to the ground. The sunflower appeared to be in full bloom and, when the head of another healthy-looking specimen shook, Dan quickened his pace. He made a fist on the way. It still hurt.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing? There’s nothing wrong with those flowers!’
The second plant was about to tumble too when the gardener stood up.
‘I’m afraid they’ve had their day.’
‘What are you talking about? They’re beautiful!’
The gardener surveyed the remaining thirteen plants. ‘You mean they were beautiful.’
Dan scanned them. The sunflowers were tall, with the familiar dinner-plate of seeds, but their stems were starting to bend, leaves drooped and petals lay on the ground. Their heads no longer appeared capable of looking into the sun – just like Dan. The feeling of nature playing him for a fool increased.
‘But there must be something you can do – it seems so wrong.’
The groundsman took off his gloves and placed both them and the knife onto the ground. ‘I could, but it wouldn’t last for long and they’d never be as beautiful again. I’m afraid nature won’t let us keep anything young forever.’
Dan’s stomach turned. The gardener pointed out some seedlings.
‘Why persist with the old when the young can take their place?’
Dan sank to his knees. Lisa ran to him.
The gardener was concerned. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I just need to sit here for a while.’
Dan rested a hand on the grass. The individual blades and small wild flowers between reminded him of something. He half expected to see a bumble bee and wasn’t disappointed – the flowers in the bed were teeming with them.
The gardener explained the cycle of life. ‘Nothing gets wasted.’ He gestured towards the slain sunflower. ‘The leaves, stems, and head will go to compost and the birds will eat the seeds.’
As the man spoke, a sparrow alighted on the dead plant and did just that. Dan looked, but his brain made sure he saw something very different. The hallucination this time was of a crow pecking at the eyes of a rotting cadaver. Dan closed his own, tight.
Lisa caught up and knelt down. ‘Are you okay, Dan?’
‘We’re all going to die.’
She made light of the comment. ‘We certainly are. Along with taxes it’s one of life’s certainties, I’m afraid.’ Dan didn’t respond. She put an arm around his shoulders. ‘Do you want to go back inside now?’
Dan opened his eyes and pulled himself together. ‘Yes – but I’d like to try on my own again.’
He put out a hand and both Lisa and the gardener helped him to his feet. Dan set out in the direction of the conservatory.
Doctor Adams was standing in the entrance to the corridor at the far end of the conservatory when Dan arrived. The grip was tightened on the gardener’s knife.
Dan’s brain lost no time in ensuring he continued to witness further hallucinations of death and decay. Everyone but the staff appeared to be withering and dying right before his eyes.
He watched in revulsion as Gary put out a hand, only for it decompose and putrefy, until all that was left was a desiccated husk of bones in a shroud of rotted skin. Dan knew it was his brain playing with him, but it was still a sickening sight.
He looked at the rest of the patients who, like the dying sunflowers, were no longer capable of holding their heads up. He tried to ignore the horror of disintegrating hair and flesh falling from their bodies, like the leaves and petals of the ageing plants. Dan knew there was a message for him here somewhere, but didn’t care. He just wanted to get to the person responsible for it all.
Dan’s hands were becoming used to pain, so he pressed a thumb against the edge of the blade. The threshold of agony reset. Blood ran over the handle at the same time so Dan squeezed it harder to maintain his grip.
Tracy stood next to the doctor. Dan had seen her become slimmer and prettier almost by the hour, yet her beauty still took him aback. She was now even younger, renewed almost back to her teens. For a moment he thought the orderly from outside his room had replaced Adams, but realised he too had undergone a similar transformation; early middle-aged spread, jowls, and greying hair had all gone, to be replaced by a firm, young, and muscular appearance. The comparison between them and the decay of living corpses all around could not have been starker.
That difference made Dan stop. Decay and renewal was the message, but he couldn’t think what that had to do with the condition. What was his brain trying to tell him? Something tugged at his elbow and Dan looked down to see Alice presenting him with her doll. It too was in an advanced state of decay and crumbled to dust the moment Dan touched it. Alice’s decomposing face pleaded with him to do something and, illusion or not, he implored the doctor to help her but just as before, when Dan couldn’t breathe, Adams did nothing.
Like the rest of the patients, Alice’s features were putrefying fast – her already thin lips soon melted away into a grotesque smile of rotted teeth. Dan looked at Tracy, only to see her lips become fuller and redder in response. She ran her tongue over her own teeth as if to show off how perfectly pearl-like and uniform they were. She appeared to be revelling in her restored youth at Alice’s expense.
Maggots entered and devoured Alice’s wide-open eyes and on through the rest of her now exposed skull. Dan turned to Tracy again and to his disgust, her eyes became rounder, fuller, bluer, and even more beautiful in response. Even her hair seemed to parasitically absorb what little life Alice had left in hers.
Dan didn’t care that it was all an illusion. He snapped. ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER? SHE’S ONLY A LITTLE GIRL!’
Tracy’s response was incredulous. She put her head on the doctor’s chest and stared adoringly up at h
im. A physically perfect young man looked lovingly back down. She then took the doctor’s hand and placed it on her swelling abdomen. Dan closed his eyes and raised the knife to strike, just as the gardener reached from behind and took it from him.
The condition meant Dan didn’t notice, and he continued with the intent, only to place a bloody hand on the doctor’s shoulder. The exertion sapped Dan’s energy and he had to hold on to recover. The two lovers then looked away and into the corridor behind, where there was movement. They separated as if encouraging Dan to investigate.
A frail old man blocked his way. He was stooped and his limbs and head shook. Saliva drooled profusely from a slack jaw. He stared back at Dan. The old man was by no means in an illusionary state of post-mortem decay like the rest of the patients, but he wasn’t far from it.
Dan experienced a strange empathy for him. He put out a hand to try and express it, just as the old man did the same. His hand was covered in blood, too. Dan looked the old man in the eye, but both became distracted by something cold, hard and metal-like between them. They turned to see their hands were flat against each other, and straight away Dan noticed they were identical in every respect – right down to how the blood dripped off each.
Dan stared at his reflection in the mirror. ‘BUT I’M A YOUNG MAN!’
Not any more he wasn’t. He raised his hands to his face. How could he have got it so wrong? How could he have mistaken the wrinkled and wasted flesh of a decrepit old man for the burns and accident damage of someone in the prime of life? Because of what had been done to his brain. That was how. What they had done to him on the trial. He now understood the meaning of the hallucinations. He now understood the condition. Whatever had been done to him and the other patients had increased their rate of ageing. They were all dying of old age – half a century too soon.
Dan wanted more than ever for the torture to end. He had to die. He must die, but then it struck him. The orderly, Lisa, Tracy, Adams, and all the rest.
