Bodies Are Disgusting

By S. Gates

You've woken up in the hospital with no recollection of how you got there and with a few other holes in your memory; it's not surprising, you suppose, since your ex tells you that you suffered head trauma in a collision with a drunk driver. That's not what disturbs you.

You've begun to see... things. It starts with a child who appears to you at night, whispering promises of glory and godhood. Sometimes it seems like reality shifts. Everything is a twisted parody of what it is in reality, and you know in your bones that this isn't simply a bad reaction to the painkillers. If the child who haunts you is to be believed, you're now part of a sprawling cosmic game where the prize is ultimate dominion. You are not convinced that this is a good thing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S. Gates
• Release date: Dec 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310057595

S. Gates

S. Gates was born in March, 1985, and has been fascinated with words practically ever since. Currently, they live and work in the wilds of suburban Atlanta with their spouse, a cat, and a roommate. Interests include speculative fiction, horror, and merfolk.

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Bodies Are Disgusting

Copyright 2013 S. Gates

Published by S. Gates at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Bodies Are Disgusting

About S. Gates

Connect with S. Gates

Acknowledgements

This work would not have been possible without the love and support of a lot of people. As with most labors of love, thanks go to my spouse, Lander, my bromantic life partner, Eri, and all of my friends who gave me feedback and encouragement while I tried to get this done. Special thanks goes to Damien Williams, whose feedback was invaluable.

Bodies Are Disgusting

You can't remember your first date with Amanda. You aren't sure why this is your first thought as you drift toward consciousness, but all you can do is trace your memories back to the time before Amanda decided you were terrible for each other. This brings her face swimming into focus in your mind's eye: rounded cheeks and soft lips and wide nose and dark ringlets that fall around her dusky face. It makes you feel sick.

That nausea is what provides the final push back toward cognizance. Without opening your eyes, you fumble around until you find the side of the bed you're in and pull your torso over the edge. Your body is wracked by dry heaves that do nothing but make your eyes water and pain explode in your skull, but no amount of deep breathing makes it stop. It takes a while–how long, you can't guess–but your guts eventually realize that there was never anything there for them to evacuate.

With the distraction of retching gone, you finally notice the ambient noises of your surroundings: the patter of rain on a window, white noise from an overworked heating unit, three different flavors of beeping that seem to be keeping time with your heartbeat, muffled human chatter. Combined with the vaguely antiseptic smell that permeates your sinuses, you hazard to guess that you're in a hospital for some reason. Like your first date with Amanda, you can't remember why.

Your arms tremble as you push yourself back to the center of what you now assume to be your hospital bed. For a few moments, all you do is shake and breathe and try not to think about why you can't remember your first date with the girl that you might call your best friend on a good day (or the ruiner of your life on a bad one, even though you think it might not be her fault). When the beeping that corresponds to your heartbeat has slowed, you wipe at your mouth with the corner of the blanket covering the bed.

You can't put off opening your eyes any longer, though you're not sure why you were doing it in the first place. Your eyelids feel crusted in sludge, and you have to reach up and flake some of it away before you can actually get your eyelashes to untangle. Everything is blurry and dark; the only sources of illumination are on opposite sides of you. One of them, you identify as the square of glass set in the door that you assume leads to the rest of your hospital ward. The other, you similarly assume, is the moon filtering in through open blinds. To your left is a complex nest of machinery and wires and tubes, most of them hooked into you somehow. The displays are dark save for a periodic blinking light that has nothing to do with the persistent beeping.

As you blink a few times, it becomes easier to make out some details, though things are still somewhat blurry. Outside, naked tree limbs flail in the wind, and what you had assumed was moonlight is actually a mercury-vapor lamp set somewhere near your window. There's a TV mounted above your bed–dormant–and a call button next to your head. There is a closed door across from you, set in a frame attached to what looks like it could be a closet. Your room is devoid of any other human life.

You feel the sudden need to piss.

From under the closet door, you can see a light flicker. The sounds of water dripping come from behind it, and you revise your assessment from 'maybe-closet' to 'probably-bathroom.' The water's noise does absolutely nothing to help your bladder, but you're hooked up to too many... things to feel comfortable trying to make it anywhere. You aren't even sure if your legs would work or if the probably-bathroom is unlocked.

The dripping stops, the light flickers out, and the door swings wide. Too much distance and shadow lies between you and the figure for you to make out much about the person walking out of the bathroom, but you can tell that they're shorter than anyone you can put a name to. They stand in the doorway for a moment, hands on hips, as if surveying a foreign landscape. The darkness around them looks somehow heavy, somehow alive in a way. If you didn't know any better, you might even think that it was writhing. Looking at it almost makes you feel sick again, so you turn away.

The stranger laughs, voice high like that of a prepubescent child. Sometimes you surprise me, Douglas. I didn't expect you to be awake for another few hours yet. And here I am without my face. For some reason, this queer statement sets you on edge; you try to say something, but they hold up a hand. No, hush, don't talk, there's nothing you can say right now that I haven't already heard while you were unconscious. I still don't know why you can't remember your first date with Amanda, but I'd guess it has something to do with the head trauma. Don't worry, it will pass. Perhaps. They chuckle, and your stomach does a lazy roll. There's something about that laugh you can't quite figure out, something that might border on ineffable if you were feeling punchy. You aren't, so you let it go.

Instead of responding, you reach for what you assume is your call button. The stranger laughs again, takes two quick strides (their legs may not be impressively long, even in the dark where you can't exactly focus right, but they seem to stretch) and snatches it out of your reach. No, not just yet. I'm not ready for the nurses to look at you. They can have you once I've gone, but for this moment, you are mine alone. The words roll of the stranger's tongue like they would a lover's.

You want to say that you really have to take a piss, but your tongue won't work. It might as well be a lead slug in your mouth, and your throat feels scoured with sandpaper.

The game is about to start, says the stranger. This will be the last time I see you without my face, and I will miss that. Whatever happens once we've started playing, I have no real investment in the outcome. I play less for the winning and more for the playing, and I hope that you might survive long enough to understand that pleasure. They reach out and ruffle your hair with fingers you can't quite feel. Which reminds me, I would appreciate it if you told Amanda that I said 'hello.'

Before you can protest that you have no fucking clue who this person is, your eyes drift closed and you're back to being unconscious.

You still can't remember your first date with Amanda, and now, you realize, you can't remember the last time you saw her either.

* * *

When you wake up again, it's daylight. A squat, dumpy-looking fellow with a receding hairline, brown skin, and wire-frame spectacles stands next to your bed, marking things on what must be your chart. There's no sign that anyone else had ever been in the room with you other than the door to the bathroom being ajar. The TV is on, but you can't focus well enough to see what's playing, and the volume is too low for you to hear.

Ah, it's good to see you're awake, the short man says, though his voice sounds more disinterested than anything. That's all right, you're not that interested in being awake, other than the fact that you still have to piss.

Evidently, your tongue's working better now than it was last night, because the man just raises an eyebrow. Well, the restroom is this way. Just mind your IV.

Glancing down at yourself, you see that the only thing attached to you is the IV needle in the back of your left hand. Fuck. No one bothered to ask if you were a southpaw, or you were in no position to say. I thought I was hooked up to more shit last night, you say.

The man nods. You were, but you stabilized this morning. It was a little touch-and-go there for a bit. If you need assistance, I can call one of the nurses? He tilts the end of the word up like a question, and you shake your head. He takes a step back to allow you to swing your legs over the side and slide out of the bed.

You wince when your feet touch the floor. It's that impersonal tile they use in many buildings with large amounts of foot traffic and high probabilities of needing to clean up bodily fluids, and it feels like dry-ice on your skin. You half-expect to lose a couple of layers of your soles to it when you try to shuffle toward the bathroom, IV stand in tow, but it only feels that cold. You finally make it to the bathroom, and there's just enough room for you to park your IV near the sink before you plop down on the toilet. You have never been so glad for being naked except for a hospital gown as you are in this one moment.

In the (not inconsiderable) time it takes to relieve yourself, you notice a few things about the tiny bathroom. The light, set above the mirror and not overhead, flickers ever-so-slightly. It's almost subtle enough that you don't notice it except out of the corner of your eye. The faucet drips erratically, and when you think that you've found some pattern to it, the drip changes. A cramped shower stall takes up one corner, separated from the rest of the bathroom by a dingy old curtain. In most places, the floor has been scrubbed to within an inch of its life, to the point where the enamel on some of the tiles has started to flake away near your toes. You finish your business and go to wash your hands.

On the sink sits a ring. It's relatively plain, just a plain band of silvery metal accented with some form of engraving. You pick it up to take a closer look since your eyes still aren't ready to focus on much, but you can't quite make out what the engraving is supposed to be. For such a small ring, it feels weighty in your palm, as if it were made of some incredibly dense metal, and it is almost warm to the touch. You set it back where you found it, wash and dry your hands, then pick it back up again.

Your first impulse is to pocket the thing and show it to the dumpy man outside, but hospital gowns were not created for the purpose of pocketing anything, let alone pieces of jewelry. Instead, you slide the ring onto your right index finger. It catches briefly on your second knuckle before fitting snugly at the base with just enough wiggle room that you can spin it around if you so choose.

The trip back to your hospital bed takes considerably less effort than the trip