JAMESCHOKE
01-18-2014, 09:07 PM
a very rough draft of a story i wrote today. excuse the structure, as i'm still learning how to navigate the cut and paste actions while posting in the forums.
Patience
“Man, I feel like I’ve been waiting for ****in’ ever,” Hector said, as he tossed the latest celebrity gossip rag onto the waiting room’s round table. “My head is ****in’ killing me. Hey, doctor! When can I take this bandage off? It’s hot as **** under here!”
The front desk attendant who admitted Hector looked up from her crossword puzzle and peered out from under her glasses in a manner that seemed to say that her only worry was the black and white grid with numbered clues that she held in her hands. She brought her finger up to her pursed lips, and gave him the universal signal for silence. Hector frowned, shook his head, and propped his left foot up on the table in front of him.
“Please remember,” began the woman, speaking in a very low voice, “That there are others waiting to be seen, too.” She nodded her head in his direction, but Hector knew who she was referring to. The young man who had been propped up in the corner when Hector arrived had gradually found his way to the floor, and in doing so, was followed by his belongings. A cell phone had fallen out of his jacket, and Hector had picked it up and immediately pocketed it. A hat, sunglasses, and lighter had also spread themselves out amongst him, but Hector let them be. The hat was covered in dirt and grime, as was the man. After a few minutes of sharing a relative space with him, Hector had also noticed his odor. It smelled vaguely of death, but Hector knew too well that that was the stench of a street-stuck heroin addict. These were the ones who were so desperate for $10 bags that they would forego bathing in an effort to make their highs last as long as possible. These people also happened to be a huge bulk of his clientele.
“Another junkie,” he muttered to himself. He wasn’t even sure why he had taken the man’s cell phone. It probably had no minutes on it, and would function as nothing more than a clock for him. It was a very old model, and worth no more than a couple of bucks at even the most generous of secondhand shops.
Hector sighed and drew a deep breath, then stole a glance at the other occupant of the room. It was a young girl, no more than 16, and she was also in a semi-comatose state. Every now and then, she would mutter something that was inaudible, and then let roll her head back and forth on her shoulders. She was delicate, he thought, and pretty in a very unflattering way. He looked her over and smiled at her goth wear. She wasn’t heavy on the makeup, but her hair was jet black, and it matched the rest of her outfit with the exception of a few silver piercings that jutted out from her ears and lips. He considered for a brief second whether she would be someone that he could pimp out, but then remembered where he was.
He glanced around the waiting room and noticed that they were the only four people there. In fact, if he included himself, these were the only four people he had seen since he’d arrived. The front desk where the woman with the crossword puzzle sat faced the semi-circle of chairs that Hector sat in, and on the opposite side of the room was a set of double doors. Besides that, he couldn’t seem to find much else. The layout of the room was very odd, because when he stopped to consider how he had come in, he couldn’t quite remember. He was almost positive that he hadn’t passed through those double doors, but how the hell had he gotten here?
And then Hector paused for a second, and began to rethink what was going on. Where exactly was he? He felt like he’d been waiting to be treated for his headache for a while, and he had yet to even catch glimpse of a doctor. Furthermore, there didn’t appear to be any nurses, and there were no signs of any machines. Didn’t you usually hear the faint beeping of some far off heart monitor? He stood up and walked over to the double doors, but there were no handles on them. He pushed against the left one, then the right, but they appeared to be locked from the other side. There was a small pane of glass on each one, and he tried to peer through. One side was so bright with fluorescent lights that he had to squint and shield his eyes to keep from backing away, but he couldn’t make anything out. The other pane seemed to stare into pitch blackness.
“What the ****?” He whispered to himself. As he walked back to the where the chairs and table were, he began to feel a sense of anxiety with the idea that those two doors were the only ones this room seemed to hold. In fact, this waiting room consisted of nothing more than four walls, three occupants, two doors, and a woman with a crossword puzzle who was of no help.
Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by the drooling murmur from the man who had been nodded out on the floor. It was an even less coherent mess of sounds than the woman’s, but it seemed to get the front desk’s attention. The woman stood up and crossed the room with her crossword puzzle still in hand. She came to the two doors and knocked on the left one.
“Dr. White? Julian’s ready for you,” she called, and stepped back from the door. Within seconds, it swung open. The light that Hector had caught a glimpse of earlier filled the room, and an eerie glow seemed to be cast over everything it touched. It wasn’t until this moment that he realized they had been sitting in a very dim area. A tall, heavyset man emerged from it and entered the room followed by two shorter, but equally squat partners. They walked over to the man that Hector now knew as Julian and stood over him. For the first time since he’d been there, Hector saw the man open his eyes.
Hector was fearful for Julian, because these men were built more like authoritative figures than medical personnel. He tried to peer around the three, but was having a hard time trying to focus on Julian with the great light that shone out from the doors. It almost seemed to land directly on the poor kid.
“What do you think, Doctor?” the tall man asked.
“I think he’s got a chance, Doctor,” one of the shorter ones answered.
‘What about you, Doctor?” the tall man asked his other partner.
“I agree. Let’s bring him back, Doctor.”
And with a single movement, the three men picked up Julian from the floor with one of them holding him by his armpits while the other two each grabbed a leg.
“Dottie,” the tall man started, “Would you grab the door, please?”
Dottie pulled the door open despite the lack of a door handle, and watched as the three men escorted the frightened, young Julian through the door and into that wash of blinding light.
“It must be that boy’s lucky day!” Dottie exclaimed. She smiled at Hector as she walked back to her post, and sat down to continue the puzzle she’d been working on. “I was almost positive he wasn’t going through that door.”
Hector turned around in his seat and looked back at where the men had just exited. He turned back to Dottie.
“What exactly is through that door, Dottie?” Hector asked. Dottie looked up from under her glasses, and gave Hector the same finger-to-lips gesture that she had earlier. He scratched the back of his neck, and looked over at the young girl he now shared the room with. “What about you, honey? What are you in for?” Panic was starting to rise in him, and any semblance of conversation from anyone would help.
“I wouldn’t bother with her,” Dottie interrupted, showing the first hint of interest in anything that was going on outside of her puzzle. “She’s fading fast. Dr. Black will probably be coming back for her any minute. Actually, you don’t look too good either.”
“Dr. Black?” Hector asked. “Wait, what’s wrong with her?”
“She’s a suicide,” Dottie explained. “And not a cry for help suicide, either. She really put some thought into it.”
Hector now turned to look at the girl with a terrified look on his face. Something was very wrong, and he didn’t want to be here anymore. He got up to start examining the set of doors again, when the one on the right popped open and a tall, thin man came out. In stark contrast to the doctors before him, he was dressed in black. In a weird twist, his outfit seemed to match what the girl was wearing.
“Dr. Black? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize she had passed on,” Dottie said, startled.
“It’s quite fine, Dottie,” Dr. Black replied. “We’re actually bringing her back a little early. She’s beyond saving at this point. You don’t remember her from two weeks ago? It’s Sally! She pulled this same stunt, except she swallowed half the amount of pills that she did this time around. She wants to go, so who am I to stop her?”
Hector watched as the man stood over the girl and examined her. He moved in a curious way, as if she were something he was studying. He turned around abruptly, and called out to the room he had come from. Hector spun around and glanced toward the door, but could still only see a heavy pitch of darkness. He felt fear take hold of him as two more men in black appeared. He watched as they walked, no, floated, over to where Dr. Black stood. When they reached out to pick the girl up, Hector saw a rush of air escape from between her lips and her head fell limply to the side. She was dead.
Hector let out a slight gasp as he tried to wrap his mind around what he had just seen. Something was terribly wrong here, and he wanted to leave.
“I think I’ll show myself out,” he said, and jumped up from his seat. He tried to advance past Dr. Black, who was now following the girl with his eyes as she was carried away into the black room, but the man reached a very cold hand out and grabbed Hector by the arm.
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” Dr. Black said. “At least, not with that wound.”
“What wound?” Hector said. “I got a headache. I’ll be fine. It’s just…”
Hector’s voice trailed off as Dr. Black waved fro Dottie’s assistance. The woman approached the two and produced a hand held mirror from her back pocket. Dr. Black held the mirror up to him. For the first time, Hector caught a glimpse of what had seemingly got him into this situation. There was a large hole in the front left half of his head, and a piece of brain seemed to be poking through a large crack in his skull. His hair was matted down in knots of blood and flesh, and the pain that had seized him earlier came rushing back.
“What the…” Hector started, but couldn’t finish his sentence.
Dr. Black finished it for him. “What the hell happened to you? You were robbed during a drug deal, Hector. You never saw the other man coming. He crushed your skull with a baseball bat, and unfortunately for you, nobody’s found your body yet. It’s lying in the bushes three feet from the sidewalk where you met your buyer. And this waiting room that you’re in? This is a place for those who are in limbo. You just saw us take Sally back, because nobody’s going to find her while she’s still alive. Right now, she’s listening to a sad loop of music and letting the pills that she took take effect. She’s sitting in the corner of her attic. Julian, on the other hand, was found in his public library’s bathroom by the janitor. He’s going to survive. Some people make it back from here, and some don’t. Meanwhile, you’re on the brink of death, Hector.”
Hector went white as a sheet as he tried to process this new found information. It was absurd. Wasn’t it?
“I don’t understand. How can I be on the brink of death? I felt find until you showed me what I looked like. I thought it was just a headache. I thought it was…”
“As the human body slips into a state of non-existence, the brain releases endorphins. It’s a fantastic phenomenon. Once it determines that death is imminent, it seeks to alleviate the stress of dying by providing a feeling of ecstasy for the individual. You trauma slowly becoming a nagging headache was just the brain’s way of allowing you to die in comfort.”
“Is that why I feel high?” Hector asked, and then he collapsed to the floor in a lifeless heap. Dr. Black peered up and saw two more of his men exiting the black room to pick up their next charge.
“Thank you, men,” Dr. Black smiled. They rolled Hector onto his back, and floated off with him past the doors. “Is that it for now, Dottie?”
“I believe it is, Doctor,” she replied. “The other rooms appear to be pretty full, so I expect we’ll see some of their overflow. Oh, and a little boy in Trenton is thinking about jumping into his pool’s deep end. The babysitter fell asleep.”
“Very well,” Dr. Black answered. “They’re just dying to get in, aren’t they?”
They both smiled and laughed, and as Dr. Black disappeared into the darkness, Dottie went back to her crossword puzzle.
Patience
“Man, I feel like I’ve been waiting for ****in’ ever,” Hector said, as he tossed the latest celebrity gossip rag onto the waiting room’s round table. “My head is ****in’ killing me. Hey, doctor! When can I take this bandage off? It’s hot as **** under here!”
The front desk attendant who admitted Hector looked up from her crossword puzzle and peered out from under her glasses in a manner that seemed to say that her only worry was the black and white grid with numbered clues that she held in her hands. She brought her finger up to her pursed lips, and gave him the universal signal for silence. Hector frowned, shook his head, and propped his left foot up on the table in front of him.
“Please remember,” began the woman, speaking in a very low voice, “That there are others waiting to be seen, too.” She nodded her head in his direction, but Hector knew who she was referring to. The young man who had been propped up in the corner when Hector arrived had gradually found his way to the floor, and in doing so, was followed by his belongings. A cell phone had fallen out of his jacket, and Hector had picked it up and immediately pocketed it. A hat, sunglasses, and lighter had also spread themselves out amongst him, but Hector let them be. The hat was covered in dirt and grime, as was the man. After a few minutes of sharing a relative space with him, Hector had also noticed his odor. It smelled vaguely of death, but Hector knew too well that that was the stench of a street-stuck heroin addict. These were the ones who were so desperate for $10 bags that they would forego bathing in an effort to make their highs last as long as possible. These people also happened to be a huge bulk of his clientele.
“Another junkie,” he muttered to himself. He wasn’t even sure why he had taken the man’s cell phone. It probably had no minutes on it, and would function as nothing more than a clock for him. It was a very old model, and worth no more than a couple of bucks at even the most generous of secondhand shops.
Hector sighed and drew a deep breath, then stole a glance at the other occupant of the room. It was a young girl, no more than 16, and she was also in a semi-comatose state. Every now and then, she would mutter something that was inaudible, and then let roll her head back and forth on her shoulders. She was delicate, he thought, and pretty in a very unflattering way. He looked her over and smiled at her goth wear. She wasn’t heavy on the makeup, but her hair was jet black, and it matched the rest of her outfit with the exception of a few silver piercings that jutted out from her ears and lips. He considered for a brief second whether she would be someone that he could pimp out, but then remembered where he was.
He glanced around the waiting room and noticed that they were the only four people there. In fact, if he included himself, these were the only four people he had seen since he’d arrived. The front desk where the woman with the crossword puzzle sat faced the semi-circle of chairs that Hector sat in, and on the opposite side of the room was a set of double doors. Besides that, he couldn’t seem to find much else. The layout of the room was very odd, because when he stopped to consider how he had come in, he couldn’t quite remember. He was almost positive that he hadn’t passed through those double doors, but how the hell had he gotten here?
And then Hector paused for a second, and began to rethink what was going on. Where exactly was he? He felt like he’d been waiting to be treated for his headache for a while, and he had yet to even catch glimpse of a doctor. Furthermore, there didn’t appear to be any nurses, and there were no signs of any machines. Didn’t you usually hear the faint beeping of some far off heart monitor? He stood up and walked over to the double doors, but there were no handles on them. He pushed against the left one, then the right, but they appeared to be locked from the other side. There was a small pane of glass on each one, and he tried to peer through. One side was so bright with fluorescent lights that he had to squint and shield his eyes to keep from backing away, but he couldn’t make anything out. The other pane seemed to stare into pitch blackness.
“What the ****?” He whispered to himself. As he walked back to the where the chairs and table were, he began to feel a sense of anxiety with the idea that those two doors were the only ones this room seemed to hold. In fact, this waiting room consisted of nothing more than four walls, three occupants, two doors, and a woman with a crossword puzzle who was of no help.
Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by the drooling murmur from the man who had been nodded out on the floor. It was an even less coherent mess of sounds than the woman’s, but it seemed to get the front desk’s attention. The woman stood up and crossed the room with her crossword puzzle still in hand. She came to the two doors and knocked on the left one.
“Dr. White? Julian’s ready for you,” she called, and stepped back from the door. Within seconds, it swung open. The light that Hector had caught a glimpse of earlier filled the room, and an eerie glow seemed to be cast over everything it touched. It wasn’t until this moment that he realized they had been sitting in a very dim area. A tall, heavyset man emerged from it and entered the room followed by two shorter, but equally squat partners. They walked over to the man that Hector now knew as Julian and stood over him. For the first time since he’d been there, Hector saw the man open his eyes.
Hector was fearful for Julian, because these men were built more like authoritative figures than medical personnel. He tried to peer around the three, but was having a hard time trying to focus on Julian with the great light that shone out from the doors. It almost seemed to land directly on the poor kid.
“What do you think, Doctor?” the tall man asked.
“I think he’s got a chance, Doctor,” one of the shorter ones answered.
‘What about you, Doctor?” the tall man asked his other partner.
“I agree. Let’s bring him back, Doctor.”
And with a single movement, the three men picked up Julian from the floor with one of them holding him by his armpits while the other two each grabbed a leg.
“Dottie,” the tall man started, “Would you grab the door, please?”
Dottie pulled the door open despite the lack of a door handle, and watched as the three men escorted the frightened, young Julian through the door and into that wash of blinding light.
“It must be that boy’s lucky day!” Dottie exclaimed. She smiled at Hector as she walked back to her post, and sat down to continue the puzzle she’d been working on. “I was almost positive he wasn’t going through that door.”
Hector turned around in his seat and looked back at where the men had just exited. He turned back to Dottie.
“What exactly is through that door, Dottie?” Hector asked. Dottie looked up from under her glasses, and gave Hector the same finger-to-lips gesture that she had earlier. He scratched the back of his neck, and looked over at the young girl he now shared the room with. “What about you, honey? What are you in for?” Panic was starting to rise in him, and any semblance of conversation from anyone would help.
“I wouldn’t bother with her,” Dottie interrupted, showing the first hint of interest in anything that was going on outside of her puzzle. “She’s fading fast. Dr. Black will probably be coming back for her any minute. Actually, you don’t look too good either.”
“Dr. Black?” Hector asked. “Wait, what’s wrong with her?”
“She’s a suicide,” Dottie explained. “And not a cry for help suicide, either. She really put some thought into it.”
Hector now turned to look at the girl with a terrified look on his face. Something was very wrong, and he didn’t want to be here anymore. He got up to start examining the set of doors again, when the one on the right popped open and a tall, thin man came out. In stark contrast to the doctors before him, he was dressed in black. In a weird twist, his outfit seemed to match what the girl was wearing.
“Dr. Black? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize she had passed on,” Dottie said, startled.
“It’s quite fine, Dottie,” Dr. Black replied. “We’re actually bringing her back a little early. She’s beyond saving at this point. You don’t remember her from two weeks ago? It’s Sally! She pulled this same stunt, except she swallowed half the amount of pills that she did this time around. She wants to go, so who am I to stop her?”
Hector watched as the man stood over the girl and examined her. He moved in a curious way, as if she were something he was studying. He turned around abruptly, and called out to the room he had come from. Hector spun around and glanced toward the door, but could still only see a heavy pitch of darkness. He felt fear take hold of him as two more men in black appeared. He watched as they walked, no, floated, over to where Dr. Black stood. When they reached out to pick the girl up, Hector saw a rush of air escape from between her lips and her head fell limply to the side. She was dead.
Hector let out a slight gasp as he tried to wrap his mind around what he had just seen. Something was terribly wrong here, and he wanted to leave.
“I think I’ll show myself out,” he said, and jumped up from his seat. He tried to advance past Dr. Black, who was now following the girl with his eyes as she was carried away into the black room, but the man reached a very cold hand out and grabbed Hector by the arm.
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” Dr. Black said. “At least, not with that wound.”
“What wound?” Hector said. “I got a headache. I’ll be fine. It’s just…”
Hector’s voice trailed off as Dr. Black waved fro Dottie’s assistance. The woman approached the two and produced a hand held mirror from her back pocket. Dr. Black held the mirror up to him. For the first time, Hector caught a glimpse of what had seemingly got him into this situation. There was a large hole in the front left half of his head, and a piece of brain seemed to be poking through a large crack in his skull. His hair was matted down in knots of blood and flesh, and the pain that had seized him earlier came rushing back.
“What the…” Hector started, but couldn’t finish his sentence.
Dr. Black finished it for him. “What the hell happened to you? You were robbed during a drug deal, Hector. You never saw the other man coming. He crushed your skull with a baseball bat, and unfortunately for you, nobody’s found your body yet. It’s lying in the bushes three feet from the sidewalk where you met your buyer. And this waiting room that you’re in? This is a place for those who are in limbo. You just saw us take Sally back, because nobody’s going to find her while she’s still alive. Right now, she’s listening to a sad loop of music and letting the pills that she took take effect. She’s sitting in the corner of her attic. Julian, on the other hand, was found in his public library’s bathroom by the janitor. He’s going to survive. Some people make it back from here, and some don’t. Meanwhile, you’re on the brink of death, Hector.”
Hector went white as a sheet as he tried to process this new found information. It was absurd. Wasn’t it?
“I don’t understand. How can I be on the brink of death? I felt find until you showed me what I looked like. I thought it was just a headache. I thought it was…”
“As the human body slips into a state of non-existence, the brain releases endorphins. It’s a fantastic phenomenon. Once it determines that death is imminent, it seeks to alleviate the stress of dying by providing a feeling of ecstasy for the individual. You trauma slowly becoming a nagging headache was just the brain’s way of allowing you to die in comfort.”
“Is that why I feel high?” Hector asked, and then he collapsed to the floor in a lifeless heap. Dr. Black peered up and saw two more of his men exiting the black room to pick up their next charge.
“Thank you, men,” Dr. Black smiled. They rolled Hector onto his back, and floated off with him past the doors. “Is that it for now, Dottie?”
“I believe it is, Doctor,” she replied. “The other rooms appear to be pretty full, so I expect we’ll see some of their overflow. Oh, and a little boy in Trenton is thinking about jumping into his pool’s deep end. The babysitter fell asleep.”
“Very well,” Dr. Black answered. “They’re just dying to get in, aren’t they?”
They both smiled and laughed, and as Dr. Black disappeared into the darkness, Dottie went back to her crossword puzzle.