Content Warnings:  It’s horror.  Whatever.

CHUNK DEUCE__

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A cradle of medical machinery quietly breathed and hummed to life.  The nurse picked up her head.  Either this was someone new, or one of the tough guys had been killed.  She checked her clipboard.  Hard John and Thurston were out.  It could also have been Ralph, but he hadn’t died in ages.  Even he had to run out of returns eventually…

Susan didn’t have to be there.  Really, no one did.  It was just a personal interest, and a way to spend her time.  Her services were just useful enough that nobody busted her chops for hogging the light draft.  She looked on in concern equal parts genuine sympathy and morbid curiosity.

Of course she couldn’t see anything yet.  When the cradle came to life, you knew it was working on a body, but it would just be a sliver of bone and muscle, deep in the dark fluid.  Nobody even knew what that stuff was, but it smelled something between medical adhesives, alcohol, and sweat.

That sliver of muscle had a nerve, and that nerve had awareness, however slight.  Very quickly more nerves and muscle fibers joined it.  Other organs began to form from nothing in the fluid around it, and within a few minutes they were growing together.  The senses multiplied and compounded into greater and greater awareness, verging on cognizance.

By this time the body was large enough to see, and the nurse could see the yellow of extra fat cells over the chest.  Ralph, Thurston, and Hard John did not have breasts like that.  It was definitely someone new.  Again, part of her felt a gentle affection for this person, being born into this terrible life, but part of her was darkly amused at the prospect of seeing someone have to deal with that all over again.  Susan wore a strange smile.

The lights over the cradle swelled and glared.  The thing was shaped somewhat like a large bed with elevated back, but surrounded by so many tubes, wires, straps, pumps, and beige plastic with beige bolts that it formed something like a nest, trailing away into the unknown territory beneath the floor.

You’re in the hospital, the new arrival thought.  By then she could tell her body was incomplete, which could only mean that she had been horrifically mutilated in an accident, and would spend the rest of her life an object of revulsion and pity.  The realization would have been more shocking if the parts of her body responsible for those feelings were more developed.  Instead she was just consumed by a vast sorrow.

Susan noted the writhing.  Not as intense as it sometimes can be.  In her experience, people were either born in terror or sadness, and she had an idea how this one was coming in.  She leaned on the foot of the cradle and looked deeply into the biological mess.

Dejah remembered her name.  Nothing of life, just that one name.  Somebody could be calling to her, but she could not quite hear.  Somebody crying, probably just in her growing imagination.  Such phantasms receded as the cradle became more clear – the lights most of all, but the tubes as well.  She was in a spider’s web of the things, writhing until she noticed the futility of it.

Why could she sense more of her body now than when she’d first awakened?  Maybe the mutilation wasn’t so severe.  Maybe she was just coming out of some very strange anesthesia.  Her long black hair swirled around her view now, like she was underwater in the bathtub.

Underwater.  Time to come up for air.  She groped wildly for the sides of this tub, and had to settle for pulling herself out by gripping fistfulls of wire and plastic.  She vomited a fountain of the uncanny water, and bobbed there in the fluid, violently coughing until her lungs were fully clear.

Susan was surprised by how dark the new girl’s skin was.  It would surely be very pretty, when the slime was washed away.  Long black curly hair clung and clumped all around her like seaweed.  “Don’t try to speak until you are able, OK dear?”

Dejah couldn’t make sense of it.  Was she hallucinating?  Medical machinery should have sense.  Electrodes attached to key areas, intravenous injection sites, tubes for breathing or to drain infections.  The things around her were just so much bondage, in the colors and shapes of hospital equipment.  “Can we turn down the light?”

The light dimmed itself, relaxing as the birth reached its conclusion.  Susan said, “I guess we can,” and laughed softly.  “What’s your name, baby?”

“Dejah.  I’m an adult.  The hell is this?”

Susan pursed her lips.  “Hon, you should just try to relax and get cleaned up.  I can take you to a shower, get you some clothes.”

Dejah almost forced the issue, every waking moment increasing her sense of alarm, but bit it back.  No sense getting in a fight when you’re naked and covered in slime.  She could see the nurse putting on some kind of black rubber apron with long, gloved sleeves.  She looked down at her naked body, barely able to see anything of it through the reflections on the fluid surface.

Susan helped her out of the cradle.  “I’m Nurse Susan.  Pleased to meet you, Dejah.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say to that, learning new disconcerting things every second.  She was naked and covered in warm slime, though that quickly turned cold in the stale air.  This hospital room was covered floor to ceiling in cracked blue-white tile, like the showers at a public swimming pool – after a bombing.

Besides the creepy device she had come from, the only feature in the room was pipes near the ceiling, emerging, snaking, and sinking back into the walls at random angles.  Nurse Susan didn’t take her to a regular shower stall with anything like privacy.  She just walked her to a place where multiple pipes crossed, several feet behind the cradle.

Susan said, “Stay right here,” then went back to the foot of the cradle to sort herself out.  She quickly doffed the apron and picked up a bundle of cloth – a towel? a robe? – then, instead of returning to Dejah, she reached up to turn a valve handle on the nearest pipes.

Lukewarm water spilled out of tiny holes in the pipes above Dejah, and she miserably began to paw the slime off of her body, while the nurse watched and waited.  “There’s something very wrong with this hospital.  Is my insurance really that bad?”  Susan was charmed by her subtle accent, which made the word sound more like “insurants.”

“Yes, this isn’t exactly a hospital.  I don’t know from insurance, but I doubt it has anything to do with why you’re here.  Just try to relax.  You’re safe.  As safe as anyone can be in this life.”  In a sunnier life, Susan might have been half as dark as Dejah, but still clearly of African descent.  Age also had a paling effect on her, but most of the time, the kindness of her expression made up for it.

Dejah didn’t feel too self-conscious about her nudity.  Whether or not it was a hospital, it was a medical circumstance, and Susan seemed like a medical professional.  She let her hair fill with water and wrung it out a few times, her lean young body gleaming in full view of the mature woman.  But she wasn’t eager to continue feeling so exposed in general, so as soon as she felt sufficiently less disgusting, she said, “Turn this off, please.  Thank you.”

Susan turned off the water and met Dejah halfway with a big towel.  It was more coarse than Dejah would have expected, less white, but at least it was clean.  She followed it up with a thin terrycloth bathrobe in faded turquoise with white polka dots.

“This is the first I’ve seen of you all cleaned up.  You’re so beautiful, Dejah.  I really am pleased to meet you.  Was not a lie.”  She shook her hand.

“Um, thanks.  You look nice too.”

Susan laughed and shook her head.  “I’ll take you to the clothes.”

Dejah looked again at the strange object from which she’d just emerged.  Its structure just made no sense.  Even without understanding the engineering of a hospital bed, you could usually guess at the purpose of a join or a hydraulic component.  This was a profusion of technological nonsense, surrounding an abyss of mysterious dark fluid.  It should look like a shallow tub in there.  Why was it so deep and dark?  Sensory deprivation?

“What is that?”

“A cradle for babes like you and I.”  Susan led her through the only obvious way out of the room – an opening in the wall with no door – and through a similar opening on the other side of the hall.

The hall itself also caught Dejah’s attention.  It looked like something between a hospital basement and a subway corridor.  Why so poorly lit?  Where the hell was it?  And then they were in the room with the clothes – a laundry room, with several ancient machines chugging away in scuffed white enamel.

“I’m called Nurse Susan, but I should really be called Laundry Susan, because it’s most of what I do.  Sometimes I get help in here.  Have a look.  It’s mostly women’s clothes, so no point having a separate section for the boys.  Just how things shook out.  We do have men.”

The room was, again, poorly lit.  Nothing like a window.  Almost certainly underground.  Racks were sorted by size but otherwise chaotic as a thrift store.  Were those jeggings dark grey, dark blue, or black?  No way to be sure.  She put them on, with sparkle embroidered lavender socks, green adidas with yellow stripes, a red babydoll tee, and a close-fit black windbreaker with some cracking around the shoulderblades.  The only thing to tie her hair back was a selection of bandanas.  She chose a dark blue one, wondering why she didn’t remember her own tastes in clothing, reaching for mostly dark clothing from that rising sense of fear.  No, don’t run and hide.  That would be silly, whatever was going on.

“Alright, Laundry Susan.  Can you please tell me where the hell I am?”

“You keep saying ironic things like that and I’m gonna have to bite.”

Dejah threw her hands up and bugged out her eyes.  “What is it?  What?”

“Maybe I should give you the tour, y’know.  By way of explanation.”  The nurse cast a glance back toward the medical room, considering if she should stay there to watch the machine.

The tour will get me a better idea of how to get out.  Still, she couldn’t resist pressing the point.  She stepped closer to Susan, who suddenly snapped to attention.  Dejah wasn’t threatening violence yet, but wasn’t above an implication.  “Answer first.”

“We don’t exactly know, but as near as we can tell?  We’re in Hell, Dejah.  It doesn’t mean we did anything wrong or have to be here forever, but the most honest, straight answer I can give you?  Like the rest of us, you died and went to Hell.”

Dejah almost slapped her but stopped short, pointing one angry finger.  “No more jokes and bullshit, Susan!  What is this shit?”

“Please don’t hit me.  I get hit sometimes; don’t love it.”

Dejah shoved her aside and stormed the door.  She walked away quickly, to the left was as good a guess as any.  She could hear Susan walking after her.

“Be careful, baby girl!  It’s dangerous!”  The nurse stopped short and watched her go.  She didn’t want to get too far from the cradle.

Dejah broke into a run.  Her stomach was empty, her energy weak, but she had to find out.  The hall had random doors and openings that just went off into darkness or rooms with racks of whatever.  At last it came to stairs up.  That’s all you need; get where the sun is.

The stairwell still looked fully subterranean.  There was no hint of daylight from windows far above.  The lights were dim to dead, just enough illumination to see you were nowhere good.  She didn’t bother checking the halls at the first three floors she came to, then started whipping the doors open just long enough to glance.  The fourth and fifth floors were even more dark than the stairwell.  At least the stairs didn’t go on forever, even though they spent more of their depth underground than seemed reasonable.  The sixth floor she came to was the highest.

The hall there was at least as well lit as the floor she had come from, and the interior design suggested a different kind of space – tiles were broad and closely connected, waxed over in a way often used in older schools or hospitals.  Just a ghetto hospital is all.  The doors to some rooms were locked or otherwise too tight for a quick look.  The easiest to open were those swinging doors used for quick two-way access to operating rooms or walk-in refrigerators.

Again, they just looked like rooms of miscellaneous storage – deeply miscellaneous.  Gardening and mechanical tools, umbrellas, children’s clothing, boxes in cardboard pine and metal, spools of hose and wire and rope, toys, magazines, and household appliances.  The most brightly lit had two mature white men in it, kissing each other, close enough to be frotting through their clothes.  The younger of the two said, “Do you mind?,” and she kept running.

Everyone she met had been dressed in second-hand garments.  Nurse Susan’s scrubs, the gay couple’s flannel and jeans, they just looked faded and frayed.  The air was stale save for musty drafts, some ill miasmas pooling in every corner those drafts didn’t touch.  Like the air itself was growing different biota of bacteria in every still corner, disrupted and unified into a faint sewer ambience by the invisible current.

“Nasty ass…”  What?  She couldn’t complete the thought.

The hall was long, but not as much as that first hall had been.  She could imagine that one trailing away into an abyss.  On this floor, the end was in sight.  As she approached, she began to sense a change in air pressure, a shift in the white noise at the periphery of her awareness, that there was some larger area of the building coming, an open area?  Sure enough, the hall bent sharply at the end to floppy double doors, and beyond that, daylight.

It was an open courtyard interior to a tall building, each mezzanine with a stain-streaked concrete balcony, strung with drying laundry and planters of dandelions and other weeds.  The mezzanine she was on had no light but the day, and small braziers and lamps among the various tarp tents and kiosks and utility areas.  The homeless were everywhere; it was a squatter shantytown.  Had she just been in the care of a garden variety kidney thief with a weird sense of humor?

The gang wasn’t so organized that they immediately jumped on her, but she did catch a lot of attention as she briskly walked through, trying not to look suspicious.  A few cat-calls, but more of people wondering who she was, if she was new, if she was OK.  Haven’t you heard?  We’re in Hell.

There were pigeon coops and rats in cages, and enough people cooking or eating to make it clear those were being bred for food.  She whipped her head around, darting to avoid people’s eyes while she also looked for an exit.  That’s how she became aware of a growing group trailing her, trying to get her to stop.

“You should slow down!”  “Stick around, pretty girl!”  “Where are you going so fast?”

Dejah broke into a run again, ducking and weaving past anyone who tried to block her path.  She tried doors whenever she got a chance, but they were mostly locked, or clearly didn’t lead to halls.  Suddenly, she found herself cornered against double doors that seemed stuck or locked.  As they closed in, she yelled, “Leave me alone!,” but it came out so quiet and weak.

Then the doors opened from the other side, and she was able to slip past some confused teenagers to get into that hall.  It seemed so dark after being exposed to a little sun, even as filtered as it had been in the mezzanine.  Then sunlight again – an outer hall with doors to the right and windows to the left.  They were so milky from accumulated milky filth that she couldn’t tell what was out there.  The dimness of that light suggested a very narrow alley.

At the far end of the hall, some children were playing dominoes.  Close enough now, she could see that was a dead end.  Turning back, the crowd was coming in after her.

“Hey, kids.  I’ll give you fifty bucks if you block them for me.”

“Make it fifty thousand each and we might think about it,” said a girl.

She shook her head in confusion, then just started kicking out the glass of the nearest window.  The crowd quickened their pace, and their shouts.  The glass gave way easily enough, though it was run through with wire mesh that held it together in a mass of fractured layers – two panes of glass, the rime on the outside like peeling exterior paint.

No, no, no!  Dejah refused to deal with another moment of this hobo kingdom.  She leapt into the window frame, bracing herself in place and leaning out until the mesh gave.  For a moment she was freefalling, but someone grabbed her by the jacket, and she crashed back against the building.

“Don’t be crazy!  Come on, girl!”

At first she could barely see, but then she got the lay of the land – as much as she could.  Yes, the hobo who grabbed her jacket might have saved her life.  She could not see the bottom of the alley from her vantage.  But being in their grip like that was intolerable to her.  Why was she so afraid of losing her freedom?

The alley was narrow enough she could kick off the squatters’ building and reach the chain link on the other side.  She did it, almost yarding her savior out of the frame and into the pit.  People cursed and yelled after her, but she didn’t listen, hanging onto the brutal wires for dear life.

Down would be the sensible direction to move, but the darkness was also terrifying.  She crawled along the fence toward the left.  There was an end there, perhaps wrapping around a corner to somewhere else?

The fence was nearly flush against another building – just an endless wall of brick, dead ivy, ancient tar, and pigeon shit.  She couldn’t see anything worth trying to breach the fence for – no window that might lead to a more sensible way out to a street.  Or a less grabby bunch of homeless people.  She kept on, around the corner.  Luckily, the fence kept going.

Now she could see a bottom to the alley.  It was a very, very deep ramp.  Did it go all the way down to the floor which she’d started from?  A white guy drove a motorcycle down there, returning to his people, perhaps.  She might run into more traffic at the bottom, but she couldn’t resist climbing down – her fingers were in agony from climbing that nasty old metal.

Dejah was on the concrete of the alley again.  She glanced back toward the building, where the white man had driven the motorcycle.  There was no door; he must have driven straight into a dark crack in the wall.  She could almost imagine he had made the crack by crashing through it.

No more nonsense.  She jogged up the ramp as fast as he could, gasping raggedly.  So steep.  Whatever trepidation she held about the city beyond, it was overwhelmed by relief from reaching level ground.  She leaned against a wall to catch her breath.

The alley didn’t open onto the street, but onto another intersection of alleys.  They were so long she could only see the street distantly, but the traffic noise and honking was intense.  Exhaust defined the air, like to live in this city must be carcinogenic.  Had to be rush hour, and in the darker half of the year.  Dusk was falling so quickly that she wondered if she was moving in slow motion.  Her hands still felt raw from climbing on the fence – evidence that not so much time had passed.

The streets would be the perfect place to blend in, to disappear until she could figure out what had happened.  Whatever it was, it had hit her memories like a sledgehammer.  She still couldn’t remember her own last name!  She picked the shortest alley and walked briskly.

This is it.  This is the real world.  What had that fake nurse even said?  Nothing.  Nonsense.  Somebody laid this concrete down, to allow access between the buildings for trash collection of back door delivery, or egress for emergency exits.  There are doors on these brick walls that should go into businesses or apartments or even vacant buildings, waiting for new tenants or to be demolished and replaced.  Normal things.  Occasional splashes of graffiti, bits of paste left from posters that had deteriorated in the weather.  Bits of garbage here and there, a single rat scurrying in the distance.

But something was off.  Certainly, Dejah had never been in a city with this bad of air pollution.  She hated knowing that she was losing a little life with every breath she drew.  At dusk, aren’t shadows usually blue or purple, maybe grey?  The shadows here were dark rust, reflecting a sky above that was fully discolored with smog.  Vile.

Yet she didn’t choke.  It was almost as if she was used to it.  Must not have any asthma she’d forgotten along with her identity.  The traffic ahead looked so terrible.  Nobody crossed the view on foot, no pedestrians here.  The street was a slow moving wall of steel and glass and tires.

The closer she came, the more alarming that became.  They were in each other’s bumpers, all scratched up like a demolition derby.  By the time she reached the mouth of the alley, she could hear screams and cursing under the din, see sparks thrown by random low-speed collisions.  Instinctively, she flattened against the alley wall and observed them.  The hell was going on here?

Every driver was in the grip of an unreasoning fury, angling and jamming and scraping against each other to the extent every car was scratched.  Some were so damaged they were surely totaled, but could still limp along with bent frames and shredded tires.  A car burst loose from the gridlock and the ones behind it rushed into the void so fast they shoved it into a spin.  It smashed through a storefront and was stuck there, spinning wheels in place.

Dejah turned to go back into the alley, when suddenly she saw a black man coming out of there in a ragged sweaty flannel shirt and blue jeans.  She backpedaled away from him farther away from the alley, even though he wasn’t looking at her.  Intensity in the set of his frame mirrored the madness on the street – every muscle taut with adrenaline and yet slouched with the fatigue of an unbearable existence.  He reached the curb and looked at the shredded remains of a piece of car frame.

“Oh my fucking GOD!”  His bellow was loud enough to clear the ruckus.  “I fucking knew it!  Street parking.  Street parking!  FUCK!”

She fell down and quickly scrambled to her feet, now hearing bloody mutterings from the traffic that seemed pointed at her.  In the moment she glanced that way to see those jeering contorted faces, the man pulled out a heavy semi-automatic handgun.  The glint drew her attention his way again, just in time to see him pull the trigger.  His skull abruptly slackened like a paper bag, contents blown out the back and top, and he fell.  Dejah didn’t wait to see him hit the ground, before she fled in a blind panic.

More gunshots.  Helicopter drone from above.  Distant machinegun fire, like something from a war movie.  She found the only way to keep the drivers from paying disturbing attention to her was moving past them too fast to track.  That only worked as long as she could continue in a straight line on congested streets.  Any time she came to an intersection or other loosening of the gridlock, cars jerked her way, crashing into each other or crashing into walls.  She kept hoping for another alley or an open business to duck into but everything was walled off or blasted out, or had rage cases coming and going through them.

When Dejah did find an alley, a few cars tried to chase her inside and crashed into each other, jamming that entrance.  She heard gunshots but didn’t hesitate, running into darkness.  She felt like she was floating but moving too slow to escape, like in a funhouse corridor, imagining the bullet impacts as she went, half wanting it to happen.

A perpendicular side alley opened up and she nearly fell into it, crashing against the brick wall.  No way she could keep running.  She fought down rising gorge just because she was afraid it would pin her down long enough for someone to catch up, and then dared to look back the way she had fled.  Nobody pursued her.  Perhaps they had killed each other.

Dejah slumped to the concrete and gripped herself, shaking violently.  That’s why the hobos stayed in that building.  It was impossible out in the open.  There were only three ways to go in that alley, and every one led back to the streets.  Maybe she could break into a building, but would it also be full of maniacs?  Would it have running water and food, or would she die of thirst, too afraid to brave the streets again?

Something skittered into view at the end of her alley and careened off the wall, then ran toward her.  A hidden reservoir of energy shook her free of the ground and she backed up against the wall at the intersection of the alleys, trying to comprehend this new development.

A dog.  A small black dog, too large to be a chihuahua but too small to be a french bulldog.  It had slender legs but was covered in moppish curls like Benji.  Still, it was charcoal grey, face nearly black in the dark of the alley as it approached her tentatively.

“The stillborn motorrad cannot shake its caul,” the dog said, in the rich and powerful voice of a woman.

Dejah’s eyes widened and her body tensed again.  The dog stepped closer, into a weak shaft of light, revealing a face like a hideous ewok, and continued, “My lord, the Least of the Damned, would have you live.  Ha!  You’ve only just died!”

Terror moved her body and one vanished moment later her mind raced to recover itself.  Where were you?  Running from the horrible, unthinkable thing that scurried behind, howling for its master?  The street is light, it should be safety, but there’s something wrong with it.  What was it again?  Too late, she’d emerged from the alley again, and flattened against a wall.  The sluggish river of grunting steel reminded her.

One of the road ragers broke the line, leapt the curb, and plowed toward her.  Paralyzed, sure to die, she was shoved out of the way by a flying jump kick.  Metal exploded behind her, and she staggered and twirled across the sidewalk.  Racial slurs, swearing, crunching bodies, but seconds later, gunshots, loud and fast, drew her attention.

The beautiful gunman and his ugly dog turned to face her.

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