Sandman

A Story by KioneCookie

Julian has to escape this asylum, this hell-on-earth. No matter how hard she tries, she always ends up about to be cut into by an insane person.

The room at the end of the hall is her last chance at finding an open window on this floor, or else she’s going to have to backtrack the whole hall and try again downstairs. As she approaches it on careful, practiced footing, she peers into an open doorway. She visibly winces-she could never be fortunate enough to stumble into a room without a patient viscously cutting into someone.

The person seems preoccupied with something accompanied by the whirring of a power drill. Julian’s bare feet touch cold tile, and every footstep is careful precision in order to avoid stepping in anything else that might be on the floor. Her eyes never leave the back of the other presence in the room. Whoever’s ‘study’ she had stumbled upon isn’t going to be a friend, and she’d like to keep from introductions.

This is a horror movie parody of an operating room, with blood streaking its cold grimy walls and a harsh fluorescent light in the center of the room. The rest is a blanket of darkness around the concentrated whiteness haloed over the patient, which Julian is careful to stay in the margins of as she skirts around the edge of the room. She makes the mistake of reaching out in the dark, and her fingers immediately grace something cold, something fleshy. She directs her flashlight lower to investigate.

A hand. That’s a hand. She stumbles, nearly dropping her flashlight in the process. The jolt had caused her to bump into the shiny table, making it rock loudly on its clattering legs. In tandem, the sound in the middle of the room falls to complete silence. S**t. S**t s**t s**t s**t s**t. In morbid shock, she backtracks towards what she hopes is the alternate exit to the room. But this isn’t the way she’s come in, and there’s no door here.

She grasps at the handle of an open locker in the dark on instinct, immediately shutting herself into it as quietly as she can, given the circumstances. She presses herself as far back as she can, breathing coming out heavy. She covers her mouth with a hand, watching in mute terror through small slits in the door for evidence that she’d stirred the person’s attention. This was stupid, she’s stupid, and now she’s going to have to find her way out of this situation.

The man lain out on the operating table was out cold. Supplies were-and had always been-scarce, including anesthetics. But this surgery would require the man to stay still, to keep from screaming and trashing. And so all was going well!

Their drill bore through the flesh, easily, simply. It was like cutting a frog open in school, peel the skin away. They would have to skip the part where they snapped all the ribs backwards, but hell, they could still cut through one or two...

And then, a sound. Mid-cut, Kione stopped what they were doing, glancing over their shoulder to try and find the source of the disruption. And yet there was nothing to be seen, not a soul that they had not brought here by themselves. Well then, where could the little intruder be? Where had that rat scurried off to? Removing their drill from the partially opened chest cavity of their patient, the doctor pulled a dirty sheet from the tableside and laid it over the man. “You sit tight.” They said lowly, leaning down so that they could speak directly into the ear of the sleeping patient. “I’ll be back in a moment to care for you.”

Couldn’t be too long though; even if they had placed certain measures to keep the bleeding under control, they had to come back quick. Turning around, the blades of their drill dripping blood on to the floor while they walked, Kione made their way towards the source of the sound. They knelt, finding the severed hand of one of his old patients having been disturbed. Well! Seemed like their new friend had accidently misplaced one of the pieces scattered about. Probably shocked the poor fool too.

That still did not answer the all-important question; where in the world had they gone to hide?

Couldn’t be far-Kione had turned about too fast and the operating room only had two exits-and they did not think that they would’ve gotten that far. Stalking over to the darkened corner, they cast their eyes about-ah, there. That locker had been opened before-they would know, they kept a saw in there, which they had removed for one of their earlier procedures.

“Where of where could my baby be?” Kione began to sing softly, pointing their drill to the side, turning slowly, slowly, about in a circle. “The lord took him away from me...” They stopped, the head pointing directly to the slits in the locker. In the dim lighting, they doubted that the hider could see the smirk that played on their lips.

“He’s gone to heaven so I’ve got to be good...” Now they approached the locker, starting the drill and then turning it off, repeatedly as they did so-a threat. Not that they would like to stab the visitor and waste his body for...improvements.

“So I can see my baby when I leave this world...-“

With a final lurch forward, they tore the door to the locker open, swinging their arm around to level a hefty punch to the woman’s gut. “Well! Good evening pal! What’cha doing here all alone? Aren't you here for an appointment, a little checkup...?” Another blow to the woman, aiming for the back of her head. Careful with the drill, don’t want to hurt her too badly now. “You should've just come on in, hm? You didn't want to be rude you say? Well it’s all good, I forgive you.”

Hopefully that would be enough to keep her from running. If it wasn’t...well, it would be time for a little exercise.

F**k the patient on the table, this would be fun.

Julian escaped while the person’s back was turned, and she turns into a dead-end room. The remains of what looks like a lab and various organs are littered around it. She grabs a scalpel from a nearby table, hoping it’ll ward of the person.

The person’s laugh echoes through the room, and it almost freezes Julian there. She watches, wary, and expecting some sudden movement, but it never comes. Instead the so-called doctor keeps talking, sauntering lazily forward. The other’s words almost don’t make sense to her, the lightness to them, like they’re having a friendly conversation with a willing participant, like someone was about to turn around and let her know she’d been Punk’d.

Julian could almost laugh, if she wasn’t so terrified. Instead she’s shaking her head in mute terror, lamenting absently on her last chance to look threatening. She watches the drill disappear behind the others back before her eyes shoot back up to the person’s face, like a deer in the headlights. For one crazy moment, she entertains the thought of agreeing, wondering if maybe it’ll give her the time she needs to escape. But she knows, really, there’s no trusting people in this place.

Her memory finds the patients she had seen when the incident first occurred, huddled around the man on the operating table, one of them holding out the knife for her to take. She hadn't taken it then, she wouldn't now. She couldn't.

“Stay back,” she repeats, trying to sound like she means business. “Not interested, man.”

She doesn't want the person to get any closer. She shuffles away from the other, backtracking across the floor until her back meets a wall and dread drowns her again in its undertow. She recognizes what she’s crawled through is blood too late, when it’s already all across her palms. The doctor’s content enough to follow her there, walking towards her almost cautiously. Do they really expect her to take their offer? “Please,” her voice weakens as her glance bounces around the room erratically in search of the door. “Don’t, I’m not afraid to use this.”

But of course she is. Every part of her body language reads fear, and the person before her can see it, plain as day. The scalpel in her hand is shaky, unfamiliar, and something she’s not sure she has it in her to use. Well, better find out.

The second the ‘doctor’ gets close enough, the second her heart rate skyrockets, she lurches forward, looking to bury the blade in the other’s knee, to yank it jaggedly downward if she could-if she got that far at all.

The sharp pain in their knee told them that the shaky little woman in front of them had managed to gather up some small trace of guts and lash out with a borrowed scalpel-something which the doctor could not decide whether they were angry about or pleased for. Air left their lungs in a violent whoosh, managing a sound that was a mixture of a strangled grunt of pain and a laugh of plain amusement. It came out as something almost animal, something primal.

They wanted to be angry, they wanted to lash out at the girl standing right in front of them-but anger would not be a good friend. No, oh no, anger would sour the relationship, anger would damage the goods! It was the sure-fire way to lose the game before it even begun.

“Haha! Ah...that hurt there buddy!” Even though they laughed, their eye glinted dangerously, even more so as they grabbed a hold of the arm that held the scalpel no embedded in his leg. Their grip tightened, squeezing the other person’s arm as they leaned in some. “You need to be careful when using tools like that...you might actually HURT somebody! And they’re for helping not hurting!” They pulled at the woman’s arm, trying to squeeze her wrist tight enough to make her let go of her hold on the medical instrument.

In that same motion they were leaning forward, their hot breath on the woman’s face. “Unless you lied to me about wanting to be a new assistant, huh?” Kione knew they had won already. They knew they had won the moment they heard this woman trying to scamper away. But now their victory would be on another front as well-they would make this woman do what was probably unimaginable for a person who held onto their morals so strongly.

What bullshit, morality was long dead.

They were going to play the teacher. Yes, they hold this woman’s life over her head as a threat, make her get her hands bloody with the patients the doctor had so carefully gathered. She would learn a thing of two about really being in control. This little creature would look back at every complaint she had made and she would regret it. But first, the knife in their leg.

“So what do you say? Crash course in medicine, free of charge. No tricks. Promise. Or...you could join up as one of the patients, huh?”