I find myself looking into a pair of eyes that just radiate madness, my body crushed and impotent, trying to come up with something halfway intelligent to say and all I can think of is:

“Why aren’t I in a hospital?”

“Because hospitals can’t make you better, silly.” Nurse Joey says in that sickly-sweet way you imagine bogeymen talk, all spiders and ants and crawling things.

“I need to get to a hospital. I need to-”

“Shhh. Mommy’s going to make it all better now.” She says and I see her turn a spigot just outside my field of vision. I can’t tell, but I know that something’s changed in the gas that’s pumped into my mask. It smells heavier now, its scent laced with a touch of rusted pennies.

With a motion, she removes the cloth from the top of her gurney and I look at the shining, bare-metal treasures underneath. I’m no doctor, but I know that these are only made for cutting. I look at her trembling fingers and I know that she’s not exactly surgeon material.

Then I see the face looking up at me from the germ-proof plastic wrapping and my testicles recede all the way up to my lungs.

Holes for eyes, wafer-thin lips, a hint of red hair, just waiting to get wrapped around sinew and muscle and bone. I think of delicate fingers twisting, changing, cutting until it finally fits.

“Mommy’s going to make you right.”

I try to fight back, but everything feels like a nightmare. Every motion slow, clumsy, every thought trailing across my mind slower than a slug. My tongue feels bloated and clumsy in my mouth, my heartbeat slowing down to a crawl. Nurse Joey pushes against my chest, forcing me to lay down and she feels stronger than my father, when I was six and he was bigger than God.

Nurse Joey picks something from the tray and holds it up to the light. From my point of view, held up against the white-hot bulb, it looks more like a lesion on the face of the sun. The way it glints, it reminds me of an old fat cat disappearing into the foliage, leaving behind it only a grin that’s all teeth and malice.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Soon you’re going to be pretty, Sammy. Pretty like a picture.” Nurse Joey says and the scream in my throat just won’t come out, choked by the gas and the pain. She brings the scalpel closer and I can feel it dragging across the side of my face. My nerves scream at me for a second and then fall silent. I see it, but I can imagine red seeping across the white of the sheets. I struggle against her uselessly.

“Stop wiggling around, Sammy or I’m going to mess it up. You aren’t going to be pretty, if I mess it up…” Nurse Joey says and I clench my fists. The hard black marble in my hand, left behind by the Chansey, inflates in my hand and my addled brain starts putting two and two together at what seems like a geological pace.

Mustering all my strength, fueled by terror, I mutter:

“Mommy? Where’s dad?”

Nurse Joey stops dead in her tracks, the red trail on the side of my face halting, still shedding red. I can’t see her, but I know the kind of look she’s giving me: one full of venom, quietly bubbling inside her chest. I think of bitter old fairy tale witches, whose magic mirror has ran out of lies and has showed them the truth instead.

“Daddy won’t be coming, sweetheart. Mommy made sure.” Nurse Joey says, her voice a distant, malevolent sound. The pokeball in my hand is slippery, my fingers barely holding on to it as I seek the release switch.

“But I want to see dad” I say and she’s suddenly over me, her face twisted in anger, her eyes wider than saucers, mad and terrible.

“Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up, you little shit!” she’s screaming, as I bring the pokeball in my hand down on her head, smashing it against her eye as hard as I can, pressing the release switch. Nurse Joey stumbles back, rolling on the floor. I hear the pokeball releasing as it clatters into the floor. Something coalesces from thin air.

I try to rip the mask off my face, but my hands are numb and useless. I try to roll off the slab, but my body won’t react. Only thing I can do is turn my head and try not to drift off to sleep.

I close my eyes for a second and when I open them, there something black and terrible, like smoke with the consistency of human flesh, pouring into the room.

I blink and I see Nurse Joey screaming, the red in her hair cascading off her, replaced by white.

I doze off for a moment and my ears are filled with the sound of screaming.

I look up for a moment and I see red specks of meat, caught between razor-sharp teeth.

I see a pair of eyes that bore into my soul.

Something hisses, another thing screams, gurgles, fall silent and finally, mercifully, the gas knocks me out.