Read The Sick Stuff Online

Authors: Ronald Kelly

Tags: #Horror, #Short Stories, #+IPAD, #+UNCHECKED, #+AA

The Sick Stuff (6 page)

BOOK: The Sick Stuff
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He dug into the slice of chocolate cake and
brought the fork to his mouth. Zachary bit down and was surprised
when hot liquid filled his mouth. A spray of blood shot from
between the gap of his front teeth, splattering the tabletop with
crimson droplets. A second later, agony gripped his lower face and
there was more blood. A hell of alot more. In panic, he jumped up
from his chair, knocking over the glass. Milk washed across the
tabletop, along with dozens of tiny map pins, sewing needles, and
sparkling fragments of broken glass.

His mind raced, wondering how the objects had
gotten into the milk, but he found himself unable to think
straight. The pain in his mouth was nearly unbearable. He poked a
finger past his teeth and withdrew it quickly. The fingertip was
cleaved cleanly in half, dribbling blood.
Oh God, what's going
on? What the hell's in my mouth?
He glanced down at the
chocolate cake with the single slice cut out of it. Double-edged
razors winked with metallic malice from the layers of yellow cake
within.

He ran to the bathroom and looked in the
mirror. A single blade was wedged tightly between his upper and
lower teeth, anchored securely into gum and bone. The blade was
tilted at a downward angle and the rear edge was buried deeply into
the throbbing meat of his tongue, which felt as if it were swollen
to twice its normal size. He gagged, letting blood and pieces of
chocolate cake fall into the sink. Zachary carefully tried to force
his jaw wider, to relieve the stinging pressure and withdraw the
razor blade, but to no avail. His jaw was already stretched to
capacity. There was simply no way that he could extract the blade
by himself.

Zachary knew that he had to get to the
hospital. He was bleeding much too profusely and sharp pains had
began to shoot through his abdomen. He could imagine a swirling
concoction of needles and glass slashing his stomach into bloody
ribbons.
But I can't chance going to the hospital,
he tried
to convince himself.
If I do, I'll get caught for sure.
His
mind skipped from one option to another, but the pain that wracked
his body was too strong and it was difficult to think things out
correctly. He suddenly found himself not caring what happened to
him in the long run. All he wanted at the moment was to put an end
to the agony and the constant flow of blood.

He dug his car keys out of his pocket and
stumbled toward the door. Soon he was outside in the crisp autumn
night. The fog had intensified, growing heavier and more opaque. He
groped across the small front yard, trying to find his car. Zachary
located the front fender of the Lincoln and felt his way to the car
door. He climbed in and started the engine. Then he snapped on the
headlights and headed west toward the boulevard. He knew there was
a hospital less than a mile from where he lived.

The fog was so thick that he had trouble
seeing a dozen feet ahead. The headlights reflected off the heavy
mist and blinded him. Despite his urgency, he found himself driving
slowly. If he traveled any faster, there was a good chance that he
might unknowingly swerve into the opposite lane or end up wrapped
around a telephone pole, and that certainly wouldn't help his
present condition any.

Fifteen minutes later, he spotted a lighted
sign through the fog. Muted red letters proclaimed EMERGENCY. But
something was wrong. It was located on the opposite side of the
street from the hospital he had been thinking of.
What do I
care?
he wondered wearily.
Just so they fix me up.

He pulled up to the emergency entrance and
parked his car. He stumbled toward the frosted glass doors. They
opened with a pneumatic
swish
, providing him access to the
waiting area of the emergency room.

Zachary could only stand there and stare for
a moment. The place was packed. Dozens of children and their
parents sat along the sterile white walls, waiting for their turn.
The gathering looked huge. The corridor was long and narrow,
seeming to stretch a mile to the reception desk where a couple of
white-clad nurses sat.

He began the long walk to the nurses'
station. He tried to avoid looking at the children as he passed,
but still their bloody, pain-wracked faces invaded his vision. Some
he recognized from that night, while others brought no recognition
whatsoever. Many of the children had worn masks. Perhaps they had
come to his door earlier that night and he didn't know it.

He reached the desk and tried to appeal to
the nurses, but the blade wedged in his mouth made communication
impossible. He could only grunt and groan. A squat nurse with black
hair and cold gray eyes as hard as stones regarded him stoically.
"Do you wish to see a doctor?" she asked.

Of course I do, you stupid bitch!
thought Zachary, but he simply nodded to get his point across.

The motion sent fine beads of blood flying.
They speckled the nurse's starched white cap, but she didn't seem
to notice. "Please, fill these forms out in triplicate. Take a seat
at the end of the line and we'll be with you as soon as
possible."

Zachary stood there and stared at the
complicated forms that the nurse handed him, unable to believe what
was going on. He glared at the woman in angry protest, but she
simply ignored him, going back to her own work. Zachary took a
pencil from a cup on the desk and headed back to the far end of the
waiting area.

On his way, he was again assaulted by the
horrible faces of injured and dying children. Some were curled into
fetal balls, while others writhed and spasmed in the concerned arms
of mothers and fathers. He saw faces that he hadn't noticed during
his first walk. They were vaguely familiar; the faces of children
that he might have encountered on Halloween nights before, perhaps
in Houston, Seattle, or Denver.

He turned his eyes away from those ashen
faces with their shredded, bleeding lips and pain-glazed eyes, and
stared down at the hospital floor. It was an inch deep with blood
and vomit. Floating in the filth were needles, ground glass, and
razors. They twinkled at him like sharp-edged stars in a violent
and turbulent sky.

He reached the end of the narrow hall and
found an empty seat. He sat down heavily and gasped out loud. His
entire intestinal track felt as though it were being butchered from
within, as well as his lungs. It was becoming difficult to breathe,
but still the air wheezed in and out, whistling almost musically
around the razor blade wedged in his teeth. He looked down at the
insurance forms in his hand and shook his head in bewilderment. It
seemed to be in some language he couldn't comprehend. His trembling
hand jittered above the paper and, slowly, the pencil did a jerky
dance across the forms, filling them out despite the muddled
consciousness of his agonized mind.

He stared up, eyes pleading for someone to
help him, but he found no one sympathetic to his misery. A small
girl who was dressed up like Ragged Ann smiled brightly at him. She
reached into a Halloween sack and took out a bite-sized Snickers.
Zachary's heart leapt as he recognized the candy bar as one of
those he had sabotaged. He tried to say something, but was
physically unable to. He watched as the child bit the candy in half
and swallowed it. Moments later, convulsions wracked her
six-year-old body and a bubbling, white foam shot from her nose and
mouth.

Zachary looked back down at the forms and
found that they were all neatly filled out and completed. The
dark-haired nurse walked up and took the paperwork from his shaking
hands, which were jittery and black-veined from the poisons that
coursed through his bloodstream. "Good," she said with a flat
smile. "I see that you're finished. It may be quiet a wait, though.
Due to the chaotic situation, we're calling all patients
alphabetically, rather than order of arrival."

Alphabetically!
his mind screamed. He
gagged and gurgled, trying to talk some sense to her, but the
effort only brought on an agonizing sneeze. A thick spray of bloody
mucus erupted from his nostrils, staining the nurse's clean white
dress with gore. Zachary stared at the fragments of broken glass
and shredded nasal tissue that decorated the material. Again the
nurse seemed not to notice. She turned and headed back to the front
desk.

Waves of sickness and pain washed through
him, and he watched in horror as the twinkling tips of a thousand
tiny needles and nails forced their way from the pores of his skin.
They skewered the flesh of his arms and legs, making it torturously
uncomfortable to sit in the hard plastic chair.
I can't
wait,
he told himself.
I'll die if I have to wait here much
longer!

He started to get up, but when he turned his
eyes to the double door of the emergency room, he found that they
were no longer there. Only a wall of stark white cinderblock
stretched before him, blocking his exit. He turned his gaze back
toward the narrow corridor. It seemed to stretch to infinity. The
nurse station was so far away that he could barely see it.

"Next," called the nurse. Her voice echoed
off the sterile walls of the clinic as if she were yelling from the
pit of a deep canyon. "Andrew Abernathy."

He saw a miniature clown stand up a short
distance away. As the kid headed down the corridor, he turned and
grinned broadly at his tormentor. A profusion of bloody razor
blades sprouted from the chubby cheeks of the four-year-old.

Stephen Zachary felt other small eyes, both
living and dead, burning into him and he turned away, unable to
meet their stares of gleeful accusation. He waited on pins and
needles, knowing that an eternity of suffering lay between the
letters of A and Z.

 

OLD HACKER

 

Ever since I was a barefoot young'un in these
Tennessee hills, I regarded the old man with downright disgust. Or,
rather, that particularly nauseating habit of his.

His name was Jess Hedgecomb and he lived out
in the West Piney Woods near Hortonburg. Folks said he was
something of a hermit; just a lanky, old geezer who lived all by
his lonesome in a two-room shack by Silver Creek and roamed the
forest, trapping and hunting to make his meager living. He was
harmless enough, I reckon. He had a sad way about him, but he was
friendly enough in conversation and was known to flip a shiny
nickel to any kid who happened to be standing at the candy counter
when he sauntered

into Dawes Market for his weekly groceries.
Yeah, he was a harmless, well-meaning old man, I'll have to
admit.

But he still had that godawful habit.

My papa called him Old Hacker, more out of
amusement than anything else. See, whenever the old gent was
standing around shooting the bull with the regulars on the porch of
the general store, he would get this strange look on his face just
before he was gonna clear his throat. The racket he made was kind
of funny and kind of scary at the same time, especially for a
young'un like me. Then, with a turn of his head, Old Hacker would
send a great, gray-green glob of phlegm into the dirt road -- or a
spittoon, if one was handy.

Like I said, it was a nasty habit, one I
wrinkled my nose at every time I laid witness to it. However, as I
grew older, I began to notice something that gradually changed my
revulsion into a strange fascination.

~ * ~

It began during the summer of my sixteenth
year. I was working for Mr. Dawes part-time; sweeping up the store,
stocking shelves, and pumping gas out front whenever a customer
pulled up.

One sweltering July afternoon, I was helping
load cement sacks into the back of Sam McNally's pickup when I
suddenly heard that ugly sound. Old Hacker let loose with a glob of
mucus that landed no more than a yard from the truck's left rear
tire. I shook my head in disgust, glanced down at the ugly mess,
and nearly fell clean off the store porch.

That streamer of green spittle was a-twisting
and a-wiggling in the clay dust like it was a danged mudpuppy! I
looked over at Sam, wanting to call his attention to it, but
thought better of it. When I glanced back down, the thing was gone.
Not dried up by the scalding summer sun, though -- I mean it was
plumb, lickety-split
gone
.

It happened again a couple of weeks later. I
was pumping unleaded into some out-of-towner's big Buick. Old
Hacker was sitting on the porch, playing barrel-top checkers with
Mr. Dawes. I just stood there, watching the old man, waiting for
him to cough up a hefty lunger. Directly, he did just that, sending
a glob to the side, so that it hit the white-washed porch post.

Half in horror, half in awe, I watched as it
inched its way up the post like some slimy green worm. When it
reached the rain gutter, it stretched out and barely caught hold. I
held my breath, sure that it was gonna drop to the ground with a
splat. But, finally, it found its footing and disappeared over the
slope of the corrugated tin roof.

Almost afraid to, I looked back to the
checker game. Much to Dawes' surprise, Old Hacker skipped the
remaining three of his reds, winning the game. Then the old-timer
turned and stared straight at me, flashing me a knowing wink. It
spooked me so badly that I pumped two gallons over the amount the
stranger wanted and had to pay for the mistake out of my own
pocket.

That weekend I hiked out to the West Piney. I
had my .22 rifle and my hound dog, Bones, with me. But taking
potshots at blue jays wasn't my only intention for walking the
woods that day. I had half a mind to drop by Jess Hedgecomb's
place. So I did.

Old Hacker was reared back in a caneback
rocker, his feet propped up on the porch railing and his nose
buried in a dog-eared copy of the Farmers Almanac.

"Mornin'" I called out. I had a nervous
feeling in my belly, the kind you get while waiting in the
dentist's office, listening to his drill at work.

BOOK: The Sick Stuff
9.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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