The world seemed to slow as the headlights blinded him. Mathias had known that it was a bad idea to go out drinking on a shitty night like this. A horn was blaring somewhere nearby but it felt faraway. With his wits only half about him he lunged, only to slip on the slick asphalt. The faded yellow stripes of the crosswalk grew closer and closer as he fell, feeling like a dream. An instant thought crossed his mind that the impact of the ground would hurt, before the Mercedes slammed into him. All of the air was crushed from his body and his arm slammed painfully into his ribs. He lost consciousness almost instantly, only vaguely recognizing himself flying through the air. The contrast of extreme pain and the exotic sense of flight baffled his mind as the world went black.
A hum awoke him, interspersed with odd clicking noises. The smell of blood and raw meat almost overwhelmed his senses. If it were not for the incredible pain he would have vomited. Except that he couldn’t open his mouth anyway, what felt like a thick coating of dried mucus covered his lips. As he tried to see he realized the same was true of his eyes. Wanting to wipe them he tried to move his hand but found it restrained, a slimy coating holding it in place. This is where claustrophobia got the best of him. A scream bubbled at the back of his throat, a hum of terror he could not release. Mathias panicked and struggled, he felt the restraining material stretching, his eyelids and lips felt like they were about to tear.
Finally with a scream of pain he tore his arm free, his lips felt like they were bleeding but he could taste air. A clicking noise stopped his struggling. With his free hand he removed the crusting over his right eye, the sticky scab pulling away leaving trails of mucus behind allowing him to blurrily see. In front of him was a world of red and black, shadows moved across his weak vision until finally the clicking noise seemed to be right in front of him. A shadowy mass reached down, a distended and clawed hand reached for his face. He could tell it wasn’t that of a human, too many joints in each finger, and a strange sickle-like vertical nail sat like a scalpel at each tip of what appeared to be more than eight fingers. As it neared his face Mathias did the only thing he could, he bit it. Whatever was attached to it screamed as he bit tasting metallic acrid blood flowing down his throat. Another limb came from his left and struck him across the face. It hurt, leaving a ringing in his ears, he blinked and the world became white for a second.
When his eyes cleared he found himself in a hospital room. Light blue walls with some old floral pattern, a flatscreen tv hanging in the corner. His mom stood to his left holding her hand, and he realized directly in front of him was a doctor whose hand he was now biting deeply into. Mathias immediately released his grip on the poor man’s hand. The doctor cradled his bleeding limb as a nurse led him away. Blood Mathias realized was also in his mouth and matted on his beard, he quickly tried to wipe his mouth only to find his left arm still immobile. It was at this moment his brain started to freak out. He vaguely remembered getting hit by a car, and now he was in a hospital room, his left arm was in a cast, his legs seemed fine? His right arm was in a cast but it appeared to have originally been hung on some sort of line attached to the bed but now hung uselessly at his side. His mom was repeating his name, it was getting clearer by the moment. “MATTY!” “Moaom” He replied through a blood filled mouth. Swallowing unthinkingly he almost gagged but his mother began talking.
“I’m so glad your alright Matty, I can’t believe you tried to commit suicide!! You should’ve talked to me, I love you! You're such an idiot, how could you do this!!” Mathias did not immediately understand what she was saying, so many words so fast, and his head was pounding. Suicide? What was she… he flashed back to the night before, drunk, slipping into oncoming traffic, they must have thought he had tried to dive in front of a car to kill himself. “Mom, mom, MOM, on the third nearly yelling, his mother stopped her onslaught. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself!” “It’s alright Matty we will get you help, a therapist, maybe a psychiatrist. I’m sure they’ll have some drug we can get you that’ll pick you back up.” “Mom” he paused for a moment, an anti-depressant might not be the wors… “Nevermind, mom I sipped on the damn wet pavement because I was drunk off my ass.” She gave him the side eye, “So your not suicidal?” “No” “Not even a little bit.” “No.” “You're just an idiot.” “Ye… yes I guess so.” “Well you're going to have to explain that to the social worker they sent. They may still send you to therapy just to be sure.” With a sigh Mathias sat back in bed. “Well god knows I could use a little of that I’m sure.”
At that moment a doctor walked into the room, a different one as far as Mathias could tell both of this man’s hands were unmarred. “Hello Mr. Masters, I am glad to see you awake. I’m Doctor Salles and I will be taking care of you until you leave our care.” He was a handsome man, in his 30s, dark hair and copper skin. A slight scruff you might see on a Hollywood actor, clearly confident in his demeanor in his clean white doctor's coat. His eyes were a dark brown, overall a very pleasant looking person, but his voice. When he spoke it was deep but unsettling, like a strange echo of something else hiding below it. Mathias shook his head, the strange dream from before rearing in the back of his mind. The clicking… he snapped back to attention at the sound of his name again. “Mathias, you were in a car accident, luckily it appears you were in mid air when the car struck you so the damage wasn’t as great as it might have been and luckily according to the police report you landed in some bushes so overall about as good as it could have gone. There was some minor internal bleeding and you've broken your left arm. You also cracked a few of your ribs on the left side. Your right arm was bruised badly from the landing but luckily didn’t break and finally your legs have some minor contusions but are overall fine.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
That was honestly much better than he had hoped, maybe that whole being drunk makes you ragdoll thing was true. The fact that his drawing arm came out relatively unscathed was incredibly lucky. Though he did have a growing feeling of dread, what was this all going to cost. “Thank you Doctor Salles, I’m sorry about.. um … the other guy I bit.” Dr Salles bright white smile shined again, don’t you worry about Dr. Brandon, he can handle a bite or two. Just focus on recovery.” The biting statement and the doctor's teeth made him shiver. “And just how long will his recovery be?” Asked his mother, smiling at the doctor. “Well the arm will take about 9 weeks to heal, the rest should be good to go in a month or so. You’ll be staying in the hospital for at least a week so we can make sure you don’t randomly implode but otherwise you should be back out in the world soon enough. A week… that wasn’t so bad, he would have to get his mother to bring him his tablet from home so that he could work on commissions during that time. “Well I have other patients to see, just let me know if you have any questions, I'll come to check in on you later.” He walked out the door throwing a weak wave as he left. Maybe Mathias’s eyes were still blurry because he could have sworn the man’s mouth corner stretched, almost to his ear when he smiled.
Mathias turned to his mother. “Mom I’m going to need you to go to my apartment and get my tab…” “Don’t worry Mathias.” “What do you mean don’t worry! This is going to be expensive as hell, and artist guild insurance isn’t exactly gold standard!” “I used your father’s insurance money.” “What… but mom.” “I can’t have you shouldering massive medical debt, we got a good sum from your father’s life insurance… I can’t think of a better way to spend it.” Mathias teared up a bit, his father had passed away the previous year, he had had health complications for years but with the pandemic he couldn’t hold on anymore. His mother had received a fairly sizable insurance payout that his father had planned years in advance. He hadn’t wanted her to have to work after he was gone. “Mom you shouldn’t have… I would have figured it out.” “ Just think of it like your father’s last gift.” She carefully hugged him to shut him up, and tears filled his eyes.
The rest of the day was uneventful. He was told a social worker would be coming to visit him in the morning, a rather depressing plate of mashed potatoes, applesauce and something that might have been meat was fed to him by a bored nurse and he basically watched Maury reruns while half awake. If any of you have been homesick from school before and not had cable you’ll understand the blend of cringe, excitement and sheer shock at what some people will do to each other while somehow also feeling complete apathy for all of them.
Mathias found it difficult to sleep, bound up as he was. He couldn’t even twist and turn in bed. Blinking lights and beeping machines from down the hall helped lull him. But every once in a while a sound would make him flinch. The keyboard of the floor desk attendant clicking, the hum of the vents helping to recall the drone of his nightmare. Just a dream brought on by trauma, he didn’t know where the things he saw and felt came from but it must have all been in his head. He would forget it just like every other dream. Eventually he closed his eyes and let the sounds of the hospital put him to sleep. For hours he slept alone in the room.
As the lights in the hospital were dimmed and those in his room were dark, a figure walked through the halls. Rather than walk it seemed to glide, audible clicks like a typewriter as it moved. Like royalty it made its way down the halls, people seemed to look through it, not noticing the menacing figure. It had to duck as it entered his room. It loomed above him, a dark red cloak covering an entirely too thin body beneath. It stood over him for several hours. No one who passed the doorway seemed to notice or care about the figure that would have filled them with fear, 9 feet tall and covered in a rust colored cloak. The shape of its body beneath was inconsistent, lopsided, bumps and masses appearing where none should be. It seemed to hum, a sound like a meat being ground with rocks.
A man came in, almost crouching or bowing. He cradled a ruined hand, bandaged into a near ball, whispering, “I’m sorry.” He paused, seemingly trying to gather his thoughts., “ I tried to stop him, I don’t know how it happened. What they are looking for, I couldn’t find it in his mouth.” Horror gripped the man for a second as he avoided looking at the darkness within the hood. He scrambled for something to please it. “Maybe a cat scan or an x-ray will find it! I can easily come up with an excuse for another x-ray!” The creature tilted in recognition. Its cape split in the front. The doctor whispered, “ No I can fix this, please, I can fix this!” A shadow dashed from within the cloak, a tendril dark and scaled. It drove itself into the doctor's silently screaming mouth. The doctor struggled and flexed as it ran through his body, once deep enough it stopped. Still alive, the doctor's desperate eyes looked into the darkness. All at once long spines extended from the tendril piercing the doctor from within. Their glistening points rose a foot out of his skin. The creature let out a sigh of pleasure before retracting its limb. The spines sawed through the doctor's flesh on the way out, flaying him like a blossoming anemone. Blood geysered to the ceiling and coated the walls.
The thing turned back to Mathias. A thin clean tentacle slipped from the whole where a human's face would be. It gently stroked Mathias’s cheek, Mathias nuzzled it in his sleep taking comfort in the touch. It retracted the tentacle and faded out of existence leaving Mathias to curl up in his bloodstained hospital room.