BeauTiful (WARNING: NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART OR WEAK OF STOMACH!)

[Kingmaker]

Be fairly warned, gentlemen and ladies. I pull no punches in this story. Expect violence and heartlessness.

I awoke in the hospital. It looked normal, smelled normal, it felt normal. But I sensed something was wrong. Maybe it was the odd silence. Maybe I noticed that rusty blood smell that the lemon cleanser was trying so hard to cover up. Whatever it was, it gave me goose bumps. The gown I was dressed in was thick and sickly green, just like every other hospital I’d ever been in. It itched. Bad. The nurse showed up, after I had been pounding the button for a little over forever.

“You haven’t even had surgery yet. Are you in pain?” The nurse’s face seemed painted on, every facet of her face over exaggerated, extreme.

“No, but I also haven’t had supper yet. I’m starving.”

“Oh, of course. But we can’t feed you. No solids for twelve hours before your surgery. Otherwise, the gallbladder might rupture.”
I had an odd feeling in my gut that she was saying that just to get rid of me. She walked out, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Her exaggerated features scared the bejesus out of me. I lay in the bed; flipping through channels on the tiny off-color TV they had kindly placed in the opposite corner of the room. Suddenly, all the lights shut off. It’s bad that I’m afraid of hospitals; it’s bad that I’m afraid of the dark, but both of those were insubstantial. I immediately looked to my right, at all the machines that were supposed to keep me medicated. I mean, the lights in hospitals weren’t supposed to shut off.

The emergency lights doused the entire hospital in a surreal red. My heartbeats went from 78 per minute, to around 300. I sat up, and jerked the IV out of my arm. Since the electricity had stopped, and the emergency breakers only supplied power to the ICU machines, it was pointless.

“Nurse? NURSE? What’s going on?” No one answered.

That’s about the time I heard the first scream. It started out as a normal conversation at first.

“Doctor? Are you sure we should be continuing this surgery? That storm knocked out all power.”

A sick laugh, then: “Nurse. Have faith. I’m suturing up now... Wait. What’s that?”

“What’s what, Doctor?” The nurse’s voice was strained, frightened.

“That. On her lungs. No... It is her lungs! They’re... Ugly. So ugly! I’ve got to operate. More suction!”

The nurse’s voice shook more, I could almost see the poor woman shivering. “Doctor! Nothing’s wrong with the lungs. Drop the scalpel, doctor. Jesus! Someone get the chief of medicine in here!”

The sick bastard whistled. Wet, squishy noises echoed through the ruddy red halls. The nurse screamed.

“Nurse. Your throat is a little lop-sided... Let me make you beautiful.”
She screamed. I heard a crash. The screaming was wet now, strangled with blood. Then nothing. I saw a male nurse rushing out of the room, clutching a deep wound in his right arm. I climbed out of bed and tried to open my door. All the electronically locked doors were stuck in place, on lockdown. Outside, the black maelstrom raged. The shatter-resistant glass of my room shook as a face struck it. It was the nurse I had heard. Beneath her surgical mask, blood poured from deep scratches. Her throat, or what was left of it, convulsed, exposing strained muscle. My gag reflex triggered, and I could barely stumble away before I threw up the sticky yellow bile left in my stomach.

“This... This shit is crazy.” I was in shock. In a locked-down hospital with an apparently Mengele-esque doctor who wanted to make everyone “beautiful”. No way... No possible way. But in front of me was a dead nurse, butchered with surgical skill. I curled up into a ball in the darkest corner of the room. I covered my head with blankets and hoped to god that Dr. Kevorkian over there wouldn’t sense me. My cell phone beeped. The old piece of technology was practically useless, it couldn’t hold a charge, and could only receive text messages. That’s what I get for dropping it in a toilet, I suppose. I looked at its scratched, chipped surface. It read 9:23. I stared at its plain blue background, hiding it and my head under the blankets

At 11:21, I realized no one would be coming. The screams had never stopped. Not once. They always came from different directions, and from differing voices. But as soon as one bloodied voice dropped, another would rise to take its place.

I stood up, and walked to the door. Still locked. I looked around for the keycard they had given me and found it lying on my bed. I slid it, and the little light flashed green. Silently as I could manage, I opened the door. From the screams, it sounded like the Doctor was on a floor below me. In an amazing fit of luck, it appeared he had forgotten to shut the doors he had opened with his master key. That was, until I realized that by following them, I’d be walking through his crazed path, and towards him at the same time. The floor was cold, and sticky. I looked down, and saw I was standing on curdled blood. Five panicked steps later, I was on the even colder floor, sans blood.

The hospital looked like Satan had swallowed it and dumped it in the lowest pit of hell. Doors were flung open, and sirens of different pitches wailed. Bloody footsteps covered the floor in places. I felt sick. I knew if I fell to my knees, the Doctor would probably find me before I could muster the will to live. I was in hell. Small, quiet whimpering noises drew me back to awareness. I looked to my left, nothing. To my right, about twelve steps ahead, a door was ominously ajar. The red light above the door had shattered, leaving the room totally blacked. I stepped in silently, and the whimpers became panicked. My silhouette was scaring whoever was hiding in here.
“Hello? I’m a patient. I’m getting out of here. We’re on the third floor. We can get out if we try.” Nothing but whimpers and pained breathing. I flicked my cell phone out and hit a button. The pale blue light illuminated about one-eighth of the room. I stepped carefully, looking at the floor for any sign of who was crying.
To say the least, I found her. She was lying, propped up against the wall. Her gown was ripped, and a yellow stain surrounded her on the floor. She thrashed weakly, trying to move away, but apparently unable. One arm moved sporadically, the other lied limply at her side. Her legs were curled uselessly under her. I stepped close, to inspect the damage.

“Jesus Christ almighty!” I stepped backwards, screaming. “Your... Your face. What did he do?!”

Whimpers, and choked tears. Her breathing was labored, but then again, the Doctor had cut open her cheeks, an sewn her mouth shut in a sick smile. Her left eye was sutured sporadically, and her nose was half-crushed, half missing. Tendons hung from her left arm, as well as her legs. A pen and pad of paper was clutched in her right arm. She flung it at me, whimpering quietly. I read it.

“I can’t scream. I must scream. He took my mouth. He took my mouth. The demon. That Satan took my mouth and I must scream. I can’t scream. I can’t talk. He said he’d make me beautiful. Am I beautiful? He took my mouth. The demon...”
It repeated endlessly. I flipped through the pages. Every page was filled with the scrapped, scrawled writing. Tears welled up in her good eye, dripping down into her ghastly, sickening smile of a mouth. I fell out of the room, choking on tears and bile. She tried to scream but couldn’t. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t even look at her.

I took deep, gulping breaths of air in the hall. If that was the beginning of the Doctor’s descent into madness, I feared the treks into the lower wards. My hands shook, my eyes instantaneously closed. I felt for the door I knew would lead to the stairs.

“Help, Oh my god, HELP!” I froze in place, tears of pure fear welling out of my eyes. I wanted out. I was ready to quit life. I looked up and saw the male nurse I’d seen before. Thirteen different IV’s were plugged into his arms. It looked sickly painful. I leaned in close and read the label off of one.

“HCl. Hydrochloric Acid. High concentration, be careful.”
His arms were bruised-colored, possibly from where the acid had eaten through the veins, and the blood couldn’t get oxygen. He tried to pull out the IV’s himself, but the Doctor had cut off his fingertips, leaving bloody, knobbed knuckles that could only dig the needle around more.

“Jesus! Get them out! Please?!"
I grabbed a needle and pulled. His hysterics went from a three to about a twelve on a scale of ten. The needle came out with ease, but his arm was bleeding profusely. First it was bright red blood, but it slowly wore down to the blackish-purple deoxygenated blood. I looked at the IV. The needle had been bent into a hook. I had just pulled the needle through his vein, probably severing it entirely. His cries pierced my mind. There was nothing I could do. I had no way to alleviate his pain, and I had nothing to put him out of his misery. He was stuck until he could die from the poisons flowing into him.

“I’m sorry...”

“WAIT! It’s cold! Please! At least tell me, am I beautiful? He said I’d be beautiful!”
I walked down the stairs, the male nurse, no more than three years my elder, died crying behind me. I walked down the stairs, skipping the second floor entirely. If I wanted to know what sadistic pleasures the Doctor had had there, I’d see them on the news - well, granted that I lived, of course. The bottom floor had a feeling of pain emanating from it. A place of healing now so filled with death, the dramatic irony damn near suffocated me. I pushed open the slightly ajar door and stopped. In front of me were two bodies. I looked at them, curiosity overweighinh judgment. It was two teens, kissing. Their lips were fused at the base, and the male’s hand was stitched to a spot on her leg. I touched his face. Cold. I looked over at hers, and an eyelid flickered.

“Oh god no.”
She couldn’t be alive. Her lips were burnt onto his, and his hand was sewn to her leg. She was in an eternal embrace with a cadaver. Her other hand flew to my chest, pulling me close. She tried to pull away from the man’s lips but could get no further than her own lips would allow. I slapped her hand away and ran. I had had enough of this nightmare. This sick carnival was getting to me. Two hands stopped me and wrenched me around. I closed my eyes and waited for the scalpel to fall into my vulnerable flesh... It never came. I looked and saw a girl holding my shoulders.

“Shhh. He’s fifteen feet to our three o’clock. Left hallway, working on a victim.” Her whisper was authoritarian, though she was younger than I.

“Why are you still alive?”

“I’m the daughter of a man who survived brain cancer, and a woman who survived a spinal-cord injury. It’d take more than him to kill me.” Her brow hair fell in front of her face, covering momentarily her green eyes. Her skin was white, whether from lack of sun or from fear, I didn’t know.

“What’s the plan, and your name?” I asked, suddenly reassured by her speech.

“Knock him down, take the key, and run. If he’s got his car keys, even better. The storm’s already caused some structural damage. We need out. And it’s Erica.”
I nodded. She sneaked on bare feet to over behind him, watching as he skillfully flayed a live man. She reached up to grab him when he started yelling.

“UGLY! You’re all so ugly! Quit bleeding! You’ll be pretty, soon! Wouldn’t daddy be proud? Dad! I’m making people pretty!”
She let out a scared squeak, and the Doctor wheeled around. The look of fear in her green eyes, the look of insanity in his... It should have been bloody. But before I knew what I was doing, I had slammed into him, knocking the scalpel out of his hands. He lurched back, flailing and screaming. I looked around us. The defibrillator! I grabbed both prongs, pushing random buttons. Finally, I heard the electricity buzz in them. Hiding them behind my back, I screamed. He got close and picked up the knife just as I hit him in the chest with over 50,000 volts. He twitched. Smoke poured from the surgical scrubs. He fell over, dead.

“You saved me! Come on, let’s go!” She tugged at my arm, urging me on. The scalpel was lying facing me. I could see my eyes in the reflection off of its icy, sharp blade. I picked it up, brought it close. I could see my eyes in that blade. Wait, my eyes weren’t blue. What was wrong with me? What was happening? Everything felt... Different. I looked up, seeing Erica in a whole new light. She was disgusting. Her face, so unsymmetrical. Her throat moved horrifically when she swallowed, which she did a lot. Nerves, probably. I’d have to fix that. Sever them, maybe? Can nerves like that be cut? I’d find out soon. I moved closer her to the disgusting, horrible thing that had taken over Erica.

“Hold on. Tell me, Erica. Do you want to be pretty?”