The Beast Inside Them All

The Beast Inside Them All

A Story by J.L Hunter

          Claudia looked down at her son, lying helplessly on the hospital bed. Her face was red and swollen, tears gleaming off her pallid skin.

          They had been fighting it for years. The cancer though was something bad, malignant was the term the doctors had used so fluently, so effortlessly. She herself could not force the word out of her mouth, only keeping it tucked away safe inside the vault of her mind. It fought back, no matter how much hope her son had, or how many radiation treatments and MRI’s and surgeries; it kept coming back twofold every time. They gave him two months. But from the look of him now, she didn’t think it would be that long. The doctors couldn’t argue with that, his vitals were steadily declining. He ate only fluids, taking all of his vitamins and electrolytes in tubes that ran from his arms to a big metal object that looked like a coat-rack with bags of red and yellow and white liquid inside them.

          Trevor looked depleted. Almost nothing was left but a thin almost translucent layer of loose skin wrapped around a frail skeleton. His beautiful brown hair was now entirely gone. The radiation had taken care of that. He looked like something otherworldly, an alien of the world they were in. Not human.

She pushed the thought away. Sleep hadn’t come easily for the past two weeks, when Trevor’s condition had increased rapidly. After one night she found him on the floor in a fit of convulsions, almost drowning in his own blood and vomit. They had gone to the hospital, and it was then, after they had run their tests, that she learned that her son would die.

          “I’m sorry ma’am, but there was nothing we can do.” The doctor stood above her, cold, calculating. He had done this many times before.

          She could say nothing, only dug her face into her palms and wept.

          He continued his part of the act, “We, can, keep him here. Actually we recommend him to stay, so that we can continue to pull tests and monitor his condition.” He was only digging himself deeper, and he seemed to realize it. After getting no answer from her, he walked back through double doors.

          At first she had declined. Told them that she wanted him at home, because if he was going to die, she was sure he would want to do so in his own bed rather than some cold hospital room. Then she decided that there would still be some hope. That was all that was left anyway. She would of course ask Trevor if it was okay.

          He agreed weakly, asking only if he could watch cartoons whenever he wanted. She said of course, tears in her eyes, and a big painful lump in her chest like she had just swallowed a bunch of sharpened razor-blades that were cutting her insides to pieces.

          Now she stood there, beside his bed, watching him sleep. She could tell there was only a little bit of life left in his body. He slept more often the last couple days than he had in the weeks prior. The nurses had increased his vitamin intake and had given him activities to do.

          When he was awake, all he wanted to do was go outside. Sometimes he would murmur in his sleep that he wanted to see the tall men, that they would take him home. What that was supposed to mean, Claudia had no idea. Things had begun to get strange, and the doctors and nurses all told her about the same thing. In the last weeks of a cancer patient’s life, they begin to get delirious. It was, as they said, because his life is draining away, his body deteriorating, but his mind is still trying to play catch up.

          Claudia was so surprised as to how the doctors could be so nonchalant about the death of a child. It happened too much, she thought, that it was probably the only way for them to stay sane.

          Then something happened. One day his vitals went up to normal. He opened his eyes and looked around for a bit. Trevor seemed to be dreaming, but his eyes stayed open, darting back and forth in the dimly lit room.

          The nurse on duty had come in, checked the paperwork and immediately called Claudia, who was staying in a hotel across the street from the hospital. Claudia came over as fast as she could, still in her nightclothes. She had almost wrecked trying to cross the street and into the parking lot.

          She ran into the room, but the vitals had all gone back down and Trevor was sleeping. Claudia asked the woman what had happened, and the nurse told her she didn’t know, that there was nothing that should have accounted for his body to react that way, to jump up and down that quickly. The doctor came in shortly after that and checked the stats, blood pressure, temperature.

          His body heat was high, too high and they were going to have to rush him into urgent care on the top floor.

          Now, she held her son’s hand, which was hot to the touch, like placing her hand beside a hot burner.           There were machines everywhere, beeping away constantly, their monotonous tone filling the small room. It was a sound she would hear forever, she thought, branded into her subconscious for as long as she lived.

          Beep. Beep. Beep.

         The nurse came in, “Hello Mrs. Annette. How’s he doing?” The young blonde motioned over to Trevor, still asleep.

          “He’s fine.” Claudia’s voice was shaky. She was surprised she could even talk at all. With all of the crying she did, she thought she would lose her voice by now.

          “Good. I just need to check a few things. I’m sure your getting tired of this by now.” The girl, whose name was Stacey, did her best to be polite. Claudia appreciated it, but this late in the game, brownie points don’t mean anything.

          “I think he’s getting tired of it more than I am.”

          The nurse, Stacey, nodded. She went to work, pulling the sheets of paper that continuously printed out and examining them. She walked over and pulled a clipboard that had been hanging off the wall and jotted some things down.

          Claudia hadn’t meant to be rude to the girl. She was only that way because of lack of sleep, and was sure everyone understood the state that she was in now.

          She sat down on one of the seats beside the bed.

          “Okay, everything is normal. Body temp is unusual though.” Stacey said in Claudia’s direction.

          Claudia was stuck on the word normal, “What does that mean anyway,” a shrill laugh issued out of her mouth, “I mean, you all say it, but what does that mean exactly?”

          “What is that Mrs. Annette?”

          “Normal! God damned normal!” Tears poured down her cheeks and fell in droplets on the tile floor.

          Stacey stepped back slightly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s only the condition hasn’t changed, that’s all.” Her already mouse-like voice retreated down to a whisper.

          Claudia didn’t say anything. She wiped both eyes dry with her sleeves. Without another word said, the girl left the room.

          Now only silence. Except for the beeping.

          Beep. Beep.

          She wouldn’t have left, didn’t want to either. But about an hour later the doctor came in and said it would be better if she got some rest, that they would call her if anything happened. Reluctantly she did.   But she didn’t get any sleep. Couldn’t even close her eyes to doze off for even thirty minutes.

          There was nothing she could do, and she knew it. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t want to be there for Trevor, for her son when the time came.

          She lay there in the bed, on top of the covers with the clothes that she had been wearing all day still on, listening only to the silence of the room. Somewhere deep within her mind the beeping continued, following the beating of her heart like some crazy song. Her chest rose and fell with each breath she took.

          Alone. That is what she is now. The cancer had caused her and her husband to separate, although they still weren’t officially divorced, neither of them wanting to fill out the papers. Neither of them wanted to be away from each other, but the imminent death of their son was impossible for the both of them to deal with.

          It would have been better if they were still together, to bear the storm hand in hand, but she knew in her heart that it would never happen, she would have to bear it herself and hold onto whatever it was she had to hold onto. Even if that was faith, and hope that things would turn around for the better. Hope was a wonderful thing, but it could also be a terrible and awful thing, standing back, mockingly laughing and pointing it’s long talon-like fingers at her. It was something sought for, but she didn’t one hundred percent believe that it would happen the way she wanted.

          Her cell phone had been sitting on the nightstand, and all of a sudden it started buzzing. She forgot she had put it on vibrate. What the hell was she thinking?

          She picked it up. It was a little after three in the morning.

          “Hello?”

          “Hey, it’s doctor Ellis. We have a situation here.” His voice was strained, almost as if he were panicking. That was not a good thing.

          She said, “What’s wrong?”

          “The nurse. She’s dead.”

          “Who-What? What happened?” Claudia felt out of her body, guiding her mouth to speak only because she knew she had to.

          “Stacey. Trevor’s nurse is dead. We found her… um … just please come down here right now.”

          She had never heard Dr. Ellis sound like that before. Something bad had happened. And the girl, he said she was dead. But how could that happen? She had just seen the girl, spoken with her not four hours ago.

          Dropping the phone on the ground she ran out the door. Being out of body made the time it took for her to get down to her car and cross the street to the hospital indefinable. Later she would look at the series of events with confusion and disarray as she pushed through the huge glass double doors into the main lobby of the hospital and ran across the many corridors to the elevator up to her son’s room.

          There were doctors and nurses everywhere. Some were standing just outside of room N34, which was Trevor’s room. She could hear the steady, relentless, beeping inside.

          Beep.

               Beep.

          It was funny how such a small thing, almost nothing at all, the weightless abstract feeling of fear could cause physical discomfort. A constant searing pain was shooting up through Claudia’s chest, like heart-burn but a thousand times worse. Everything seemed to move in slow motion.

          Each heartbeat like a heavy drum. She walked into the room.

          There was Dr. Ellis, standing next to Trevor’s bed, with a thick book of papers which he was studying carefully. He appeared to be muttering to himself. He looked tired, stressed; now Claudia believed he understood what she was going through herself, except it would continue every day. Every damned day.

          Her son was laying on the bed, the blue and white hospital sheets pulled up over his chest, revealing only a pale face that was nearly invisible against the white pillow. A network of blue and purple and red veins traveled the length of his neck, upward along the sides of his face until it stopped just below Trevor’s temples. She thought of roots, for some insane reason she thought about the tree roots that had coursed through her grandmother’s backyard, protruding out from the gigantic oak like outstretched tentacles. Whatever, it seemed, was eating away her son could now be visible through his thin, transparent, flesh.

          His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling faintly. Part of Claudia had thought, known, that her son was going to be dead when she walked into the door. She held her breath while walking into the doorway, letting out the gust of wind from her lungs when she saw that he was in fact okay. For now.

          Dr. Ellis appeared to have just noticed Claudia, standing about two feet into the room, “Come in Mrs. Annette.”

          He gestured toward one of the seats next to where he was standing. She crossed the room and sat down without a word.

          “Nothing is wrong with your son. I just want to get that out of the way. I know you thought that something had happened to him, but I have to honestly say that his situation has not changed.”

          Situation. The words doctors use to describe some things. Trevor’s situation. He might as well be talking about some character in a movie or something.

          “Actually. He appears to be at a steady incline. His body vitals are beginning to incline dramatically.” He looked down at Claudia, who had not changed her expression since coming into the room. She was not sad or happy or relieved. It was hard to do any of those things when doctors for the past two years had been telling her that her son would be okay, that her son needed to be put into the hospital, his vitals this, his vitals that. The last thing, and the most true statement they had told her thus far is that he was going to die; putting the truth out there seemed to be what she had wanted from the start, regardless of how painful that truth really was.

          If a doctor were to describe what she was going through, they would probably call it shock induced trauma, a psychological problem that should be addressed. They would scribble illegibly on a piece of paper and hand it to her so that she could get some things worked out.

          “Mrs. Annette, your son is getting better.”

          The words stung as she heard them. Why in God’s name would he lie like that?

          He continued, “That is what we are trying to figure out at this moment. We really don’t know at this moment as to why his stats have gone up so much in the past hour.”

          For the first time since entering the room, Claudia said, “Where is the girl?”

          He knew what she was talking about, but doctors will be doctors, “What girl?”

          Claudia gave him a contemptuous look, “You know good and well what girl I’m talking about. Trevor’s nurse, I don’t remember her name. She died?”

          “Yes.” Dr. Ellis hung his head, “I don’t think now is the best time for that. We have her body safe and out of the way, but we need to focus on your son.”

          “You don’t think I’m concerned about my son? I only mean when you called it seemed like you thought there was enough relevance about the nurse and my son to mention it over the phone.”

          His blue eyes gleamed in the soft artificial light of the room, “I apologize Mrs. Annette. I was merely distraught, she had been on my team for a few years and we are all exceptionally close to one another.”

          I’ll bet you two were close, she thought, it was always like that, the doctors get all the girls and can drink and smoke and have the occasional psychotic break down, and have an excuse for their self-depraving, often volatile behavior. Claudia’s experience with doctors during the years of her son’s cancer treatment had changed her opinion about the field of doctors who were the ones left in charge of life and death, dramatically. During this time she had come to know the lingo that they used, their tricks of morality, the mere façade of ethics they tried to disclose upon their patients to make them more comfortable with the unstable person behind the mask and surgical clothes who was left in charge of their life.

          A dawn of realization came across Claudia’s mind, “You think there is some connection between my son and that girl’s death. You do, don’t you?”

          “Ma’am, I-”

          “You can’t even say it, you cowardly doctors are all the same, afraid to tell the patient what they really need to hear. You’ve been doing it for years, and not just to me, but everyone else. Calm them down, make them feel at home, because these things, these things that happen in this awful place can make a person go crazy.”

          She hadn’t even realized that she had gotten up from the chair and was standing nose to nose with Dr. Ellis.

          “You have the chance to tell someone what is on your mind! Well, here I am! God Damnit here I am!” Her voice had raised to the point that there were other doctors and nurses poking their heads into the room.

          Claudia was literally hot with anger. Her face was reddening, tears streaking across her face. As if on some other dramatically different plane she was cold, inside she shivered as if she were standing out in the snow with nothing on but a short sleeved shirt and a pair of shorts. She was trembling, her hands shaking so badly she was almost unable to wipe the tears away from her eyes.

          “Please sit down, let me explain this,” Dr. Ellis pleaded, “It is only extreme coincidence that Stacey’s death and your son’s increasing health occurred in the same timeframe. That is true, but your son was the last person to have seen her, being she died in the bathroom immediately after checking his vitals for the midnight shift.”

          He closed his eyes, seemingly trying to block away the image of the girl, like someone just waking up from a bad nightmare, closing their eyes to dispel the demons of the night. Claudia had sat back down, resting her elbows on her legs and rubbing her temples like she would sometimes do when a headache would not go away.

          She could hear the doctor take a long, deep breath in and exhaling it in a sigh through his clenched teeth. “All the blood in her body was drained out. Like she had been emptied. Her eyes busted, her eardrums exploded. She bled to death from every opening, every pore.” He stopped to gather himself and then continued, “We in the medical field have never seen anything like this in our careers as doctors. I’ve called the board, reviewed every medical book I have on what could have caused it, but nothing fit’s the description. There is a virus in South America that will cause you to constantly bleed from the nose and mouth. But there have been cures, and as far as I know, her nor anyone in the hospital have been to Peru lately.

          Claudia couldn’t believe this was happening. If her son was going to die, she wanted it to be as peaceful as possible. All she wanted was a straightforward answer to her questions and to know exactly what was going on so that she could help the one person who mattered most in the situation, Trevor, her son. He was the only thing that had any resonance in her life, not even her dull, unsatisfactory life, which was now filled up with taking care of him, and when you took that only responsibility of a parent away, there is nothing left but an empty cask.

          She felt like an abandoned house, filled with things that used to be, but that aren’t anymore.

Finally, she said, “I want to go home. Both of us. Please, we need to go home.”

          A look of perplexity rose into Dr. Ellis’s face. At first, Claudia didn’t think he was going to respond in any way, and then shaking his head, “No. You don’t understand. Mrs. Annette, your son is getting better.”

          “Don’t say that.” Her voice was strong, firm, already having decided, she would not back down. Too long have the doctors been saying that.

          “What are you talking about? We need to run further tests, but his heartbeat, even his temperature that had been increasing is now steadily decreasing. Please, I’ve been his doctor for three years now, and after all this time he’s never had this rapid of a recovery rate.”

          Claudia shuttered at the word recovery, like she had just been splashed with a bucket of cold water, “I’m sorry, but I’ve been his mother for eight years. Don’t think you’re going to use how long we’ve been in this hell as an excuse to pretend to be his father figure. You are nothing but his doctor and don’t assume otherwise.”

          She turned around, walking toward the far wall and stopped, “We need to go. Now.”

          “Mrs. Annette, in the respect of the hospital we-”

          “I don’t care what respect or authority you think you have or deserve, but we need to leave, I need to see my son for the last time not in a hospital bed.” Claudia returned to where she was sitting, staring at the place where her son was, underneath the sea of cold blankets.

          Dr. Ellis said blankly, “We’ll get everything ready. But I’m afraid the soonest is going to be later tonight. If you want to go back to where you are staying and get some rest, be welcomed to do so.”

          “I think I’ll stay right here.” She said.

          “Very well then.” And he was gone. Behind him the door closed shut with a sort of finality. A slamming closed one part of her life, that is how it felt. She sat there in the pale luminescence of the room with the constant beeping being the only sound she could hear.

          That day, the last day, it rained. Inside the room, where she had spent most of her time, she couldn’t hear the constant shower. The one time she went outside, to have a smoke, the sky was a morose and hopeless gray. No blue could be seen through the thick wall of clouds.

          She stood under the awning in front of what was called the cafeteria hall. A walkway to her right led into a park-like area that was lined with benches and various religious statues. The normally green grass appeared to be dark and sodden. And the statues seemed like wretched gargoyles to Claudia more than respectable biblical figures. They should be admired, not feared, she thought. It was about eleven o’clock. She hadn’t bothered eating anything, and only letting the thought cross her mind she realized she hadn’t eaten anything resembling ‘real’ food in the past two days.

          Claudia remembered vaguely munching on a can of mixed nuts and drinking about a gallon’s worth of mountain dew. She was surprised she hadn’t gotten sick yet, and figured that her current mental state probably wasn’t too far away resultant of her lack of nourishment. She thought she would have the cafeteria order up some food later; Claudia didn’t really feel like standing in line and sitting with a crowd of noisy people.

          Turning to go back inside, squishing what was left of the cigarette on the wet cement and flicking it into the trash can she heard the commotion traveling to the elevators and a set of double doors that were strictly prohibited except for the hospital staff.

          She could see the stretcher and the body that laid on top of it, exit the set of double doors and was pushed toward the ER by a group of white-clad surgeons and nurses.

          Claudia ran after them. The hallway was busy with people, most of them excited by what was going on. The group of doctors raced forward and Claudia had to push away some of the dumbfounded men and women to catch up. Finally the stretcher disappeared into the main emergency wing doors. They had come from the urgent care. She knew it. Had seen a few of those doctors racing across the hall a few times before. One of them was Dr. Morray, the doctor who had originally been on Dr. Ellis’s team but had been promoted to head of the emergency medical staff. She liked him, more so than she liked Dr. Ellis who contributed nothing but false promises and vain hopes.

          Dr. Morray, she believed if he were still Trevor’s doctor would tell her straight up what was going on. She decided to return to the room upstairs to see what was happening. When she got out of the elevators and stepped into the hallway of the fifth floor she could tell immediately that something was wrong. Like early that morning, there were people everywhere, cluttering the hallways in crowds. Men and Women in white coats and badges clipped to their collars hurried back and forth between the rooms. She looked around for Dr. Ellis, but he was nowhere to be found.

          Claudia walked up to the desk. The woman sitting behind it looked very distracted; she was looking over her glasses to the computer screen and hen-pecking the keyboard, jabbing at it like she were trying to kill something.

          “Excuse me.”

          The lady didn’t look up from the monitor. Claudia saw that she looked as if she were about fall asleep at any moment. She raised her voice, “Excuse me Miss.”

          “Oh… OH! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there. How can I help you?”

          “I need to find Dr. Ellis.”

          She prodded the keyboard a few times and moved the mouse around a bit, “Okay. It seems he is dealing with a problem right now.”

          “Please,” Claudia said impatiently, “I need to see him right now.”

          “…and so do about six other people. We have to have you wait until he is ready to see you.” The lady had become agitated and Claudia realized that she would be absolutely no help.

          Without really meaning it she said, “Thank you anyways.” The woman didn’t say anything in return, only went straight back to what she was doing.

          The hallway was long, and full of people. It would have been impossible to find Dr. Ellis if he hadn’t been talking to two other doctors at the end of the lengthy corridor. Claudia caught up with him. He saw her before she was able to say anything and motioned towards one of the small offices to their right.

          Once inside, he closed the door.

          She saw his face, the purple bags underneath his eyes, his skin a sickly pale that made Claudia think of rotting meat, although she was not entirely sure why.

          For a moment they stood there without saying a word. She broke the silence about a minute and a half in, saying, “This is bad isn’t it?”

          “I don’t want to say it is. But I’m not going to say it isn’t.”

          “What’s going on Dr. Ellis? I mean really.”

          The doctor crossed the room and sat in one of the swivel chairs, when he did it made a whooshing sound and slid down a few inches. “Please, take a seat.”

          “I’d rather not,” she said.

          He sighed, long and weary, “Another one. His name was Bradley Shraver, an intern in his third year of med school. I knew him very well. Everyone I’ve known very well, I mean their like family to me.”

          Then something happened that Claudia had never seen from a doctor. A single tear coursed down the side of his face, his eyes swam, the pupils drowning in a pool of gleaming tears.

          She remembered the body on the stretcher, everyone hurrying to get him to the emergency room. For some reason Claudia knew the boy was dead, like something had told her that he was passing as she saw him. Maybe his spirit told her. She remembered seeing how his body convulsed, leaping from the gurney as if something was trying to yank him up with an invisible string.

          Maybe his spirit told her, whispering wet sounding words, beyond a throat full of blood.

Despite how little she cared for Dr. Ellis, seeing anyone standing there in the state that he was in made her feel pity for him. For just one minute, she would let down her guard, there was nothing else she could do.

          “Is my son safe?”

          He looked up, “Of course he is. I have another doctor watching him as we speak. Bradley had been seeing to him after Stacey…”

          Dr. Ellis stopped cold. She could feel his words being cut off like the edge of a freshly sharpened blade. The icy cold of it sent chills through her flesh.

          He got up, went to the phone and dialed three numbers. “Hello, this is Dr. Ellis. What is Bradley Shraver’s condition?” He nodded a few times. Claudia tried hard to hear what was being said on the other end, but couldn’t.

          “Okay. Thank you.” He hung up the phone. For a moment he stared at the wall. A calendar, featuring a shiny blue mustang of what Claudia thought was an older model. There were pictures as well, and that is what she thought he staring at. In one a child stood facing the camera, grinning broadly from ear to ear. In another there was Dr. Ellis with a beautiful blonde, they were somewhere at night, colors and bright lights everywhere and she assumed it was at the fair or some carnival.

          He turned. At the instant that Claudia saw his face she realized what had happened. The boy had died, just as she had known before Dr. Ellis called to confirm it.

          Still she asked, in a whispered, hushed tone as if afraid to wake someone, “What happened?”

          “Dead.”

          He looked absent, his body there in the room with her, but his mind elsewhere. It took only a second for Claudia to figure out where his mind was- in the same place hers had been for years now- her son. Trevor, who lay helpless in that other room. He had been asleep the last time she had seen him, before going outside to smoke.

          Before saying another word, Dr. Ellis went through the door, pushing it open furiously. Claudia followed directly behind him. The entire place was now chaos, as no doubt word had reached the doctors and nurses about the young intern. Although none of them correlated the deaths with her son. Because that would have been crazy. That would have been insane.

          The door was closed, and Dr. Ellis opened it slowly. The room was warm, Claudia could feel a waft of heat pouring out from under the pulled curtain. Ellis slid the curtain open.

          The light was still dim in the room, but there was some other light coming from the other side of the room.

          As they entered, Claudia realized that the television was on. It was odd that this was the first thing she noticed, but it was. Then she saw her son.

          He was sitting up in the bed, cross-legged, his head craned up toward the television. Some cartoon she had never seen in her life was on the screen, the characters moved back and forth rapidly, with almost twitchy movements that was oddly maddening to look at.

          “Honey!” Her tone was of pure perplexity. All the feeds had been pulled off of him, the tubes that were attached to the bags of different colored liquid were laying strewn on the floor beside his bed. There was some kind of liquid on the floor, their feet made wet sloshing sounds as they crossed the room. The heat was emanating from Trevor, exuding from his presence like a heater blowing in all directions; she had begun to sweat, beads formed on her forehead and at the nape of her neck.

          She looked at Dr. Ellis who had quickly went to turn the pumps to the IV off, then back to Trevor. “…What happened? Honey, what happened?” For some reason she was afraid to touch him, to come even inches toward his burning hot skin.

          “These vitals are off the charts. Oh my God.”

          Claudia looked up from her son to Dr. Ellis, “What’s going on here?”

          Before Dr. Ellis could respond, someone came rushing into the room. The man was young, most likely an intern as well. He came about two feet into the room and stopped, probably because of the heat or the liquid all over the floor.

          “Where is Dr. Levine?” Ellis asked. The man was breathing harshly, as if he had just run from one end of the hospital to get there.

          “He… He’s… something happened… I don’t know, there was… a lot of blood. His eyes… oh my God… his eyes just exploded right there in front of me…then the blood…” The young man looked like he was about to pass out.

          “Calm down… what do you mean ‘his eyes just exploded’? Calm down and tell me what happened.”

          The young man leaned against the wall, depleted, “They just… popped. We tried to do everything we could, but there was nothing that could have prepared us for that. Then there was blood, just pouring out of him. From his mouth, eyes, ears nose, even his damned fingertips began to bleed.”

            Claudia looked as if she were about to be sick. She leaned over beside the bed and spat a thin line of mucous onto the floor.

          “Jesus.” This was Dr. Ellis. “Jee-sus. Okay, go and see that everyone is alright. I don’t want anyone else in this room, contact Dr. Morray, tell him we need him here immediately.”

          The young man, looking now like a boy only a few years into high school said, “Sir, I need to go home.”

          “Okay, just do what I asked you and then go on.” Dr. Ellis said. Then when the boy was gone, he turned and walked over to where Claudia was standing. He reached out and put his hand on the top of Trevor’s head and pulled it away almost immediately. Claudia saw that his hand was red, like he had just touched a stove burner or something.

          He knelt down, so that he was at eye level with the boy. “How are you feeling Trevor?”

          Nothing. He only kept on watching the television, unblinking, his wide eyes seemed far off.

          “Your mother is here. You don’t want to talk to your mother?”

          Then he said something unintelligible under his breathe, so faint that neither of them could hear what he said.

          “What was that Trevor? What did you say?”

          Claudia only watched, she didn’t know what to do, what to say to him. She felt lost in a world that had been drifting away into madness for the longest time and had now taken a sudden plunge into a sea of unsteady, brackish water.

          “They deserved it.” 

  Trevor said in a voice that was not quite his own, his eyes not diverting away from the T.V screen. Another show had popped up, this one was colorful but dark, some odd textures were used that made the images on the screen seem a bit twisted and uneven.

          “Who deserved what Trevor?” Dr. Ellis said sternly.

          “They told me what would happen if they didn’t die. They told me what would happen if their heart kept on beating. All of us would die instead.

          “What would happen? Who said these things to you?” Claudia spoke up now, frustrated and scared,           “You need to tell mommy and the good doctor.”

          “They told me that the world has gone bad. Like an apple that has been left out for too long. It would be ate up by little bugs. But what they told me that we are the bugs now and we are dangerous. Like a poison apple, from snow white. I remember that movie, I want to watch it now. Can I please, and then we can go outside and see the men.

          The world spun, as if on the center of a gigantic swivel and Claudia was in the middle of it. She fought hard to catch her breath, consciously inhaling and exhaling as if she would forget how to do so. She thought that she was going to suffocate, her tongue as dry as cotton inside her mouth. Trevor it seemed was gone, the boy who sat in the bed before them was not her son, but a vessel, an empty container and something else had gone inside his body, stole his fleshly outer shell like someone hijacking an airplane.

          Nevertheless, she said, her eyes full of tears, “Yes honey, of course we can.”

          Dr. Ellis had been quiet for a long time. Sometime while Trevor was speaking he had stood up and was looking around the room, his eyes darting back and forth from the television to the medical equipment on the other side of the bed to the floor.

          “Is something wrong? Did you do something bad too? Do I have to punish you like the others?” 

          He said this to Dr. Ellis, who immediately spun around to face the boy.

          “What the hell are you?” He sucked in a mouthful of warm air.

          “I am what they want me to be. You liked me didn’t you? Maybe a little too much, like to touch places you shouldn’t touch. Bad man. Yes you are a very bad man.

          “No!” He screamed. His entire body was shaking tremendously.

          Claudia stood there, facing Dr. Ellis, “What is he talking about? Did you touch my son?”

          Dr. Ellis began side-stepping along the wall, inching closer to the cabinets. “Of course not, Mrs. Annette. Why would I do something like that?”

          “Why would he say you did?”

          “He’s lying!” His words jutted out like razor blades. Claudia looked back and forth from him to the thing that used to be her son. He was smiling, a serene expression swept over his face.

          She responded with just as much ferocity as he did, “You’re saying that a boy who has cancer, at the end of his life, is lying about you touching him inappropriately?”

          “That’s not your son!”

          “I think he has more important things to worry about.”

          “Go outside mommy. Leave this place. I don’t want you to be here. I love you, and I miss you, but this man needs to be punished for what he did. Not just to me, but to others too.” 

          As he was saying this, Dr. Ellis reached for a pair of surgical scissors, nearly as long as his forearm, that had been lying on the cabinet.

            “There is a beast. Inside them all. Waiting to be woken up.”

          In an instant Dr. Ellis lunged at Trevor, and then a split second later he stopped. It was as if he had hit a brick wall, or reached the end of an invisible rope tied to his midsection. The doctor’s expression was blank as he slowly raised the dangerously long scissors up to his neck, the metal gleaming in the dim florescence of the lights overhead. The heat of the room had become almost unbearable, sweltering like the air near a blast furnace. Claudia knew she was going to have to leave soon, to leave her son.

          “I don’t want to leave you, honey.” She said, hoping that her words would change his mind about what he was going to do with the doctor.

          For one moment he glanced over to her. She had been backing away, toward the open door the entire time, and was only a couple feet away. “I love you.” She wept.

          “I love you too mommy. I have been gone for a long time, so don’t be sad for leaving me here. I don’t want you too see what is going to happen. Bye mommy, I love you too. Maybe later we can go outside and see the men, maybe this time go with them.

          Then she was gone. The rest of the hospital was just as it had been when they had gone into the room about fifteen minutes before. She would leave, get into the car and go back to the hotel and pack up her things.

          Claudia never spoke to anyone about what had happened, and the four deaths had remained a mystery on the six o’clock news for years after the event. From then on, she for some reason would look to the sky, especially at night, and stare at the stars, just as her son had done before the sickness had overwhelmed him.

          He had a job to do. That was the solution she finally came to terms with. Her family had told her to see a therapist, because she was unable to explain to them why there was no body in the casket at Trevor’s funeral. They all dismissed her as having gone crazy from his death.

          She was alright with that, because she knew what happened. The stars hung motionless against the black night sky, like thousands of diamonds strewn across the backdrop of something infinitely vast.

          Claudia saw the stars. And every time, thought of her son.

                                                             

              The beast inside them all.

              Waiting to be woken up.


           The End.

© 2016 J.L Hunter


Author's Note

J.L Hunter
A story I found in one of my old emails entitled "Stories I don't want to lose". Not the best. Definitely a 'trunk' story as they call it, but a little enjoyable read back when I was at my most productive.

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Added on August 8, 2016
Last Updated on August 8, 2016

Author

J.L Hunter
J.L Hunter

Pensacola, FL



About
Writer. Father. Lover of cheese. Umbrella salesman. Badger enthusiast. Doorknob. Cup. Also, cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarettes. And beer. Smoke. Sizzurp drinker. Lemon flavor, never grape. more..

Writing
The Curse The Curse

A Chapter by J.L Hunter