"Have some."
A delicate slur floated up like cigarette smoke from slattern-red lips. Her face was dirty, so dirty. The lipstick made a chesire grin beneath green eyes that glowed like absinthe lamps.
Lucian felt his stomach acid, a sick heat threatening from just beyond the back of his throat. He worked up spit and swallowed hard.
The needles were clean.
That was what perturbed him the most. They were so clean that they shined, they were lined up neatly from smallest to biggest. And Claudia? She glittered. She looked all dressed up. She looked ready to go.
He knew that the stuff in the needles was White Claudia even before he could make guesswork. He felt light flood a darkened corner of his mind, and he knew. This was it. The stuff. The fix. The medicine.
His teeth crawled and squirmed. His skin leaped and bounded.
The lamp on the wall was wrong. It emitted a faint red glow, bright enough to see by, but hard on the eyes. A wheelchair sat in one corner of the room. The nurse was sitting on an examination table, and her ankles were crossed, ladylike. Red heels. Black stockings. The stockings were ripped, torn, run. He could see dirty skin underneath. He had absolutely no idea who she was, didn't want to know. Her uniform was soiled with a myriad of stains. But those needles, those needles looked plenty inviting. They seemed to sing in a frequency meant only for him. He bit forcibly on the inside of his cheeks, tensing his body against the shivers.
Her heels made a distinctive sound on the tiles as she lowered herself from the examination table, a solid clack that wounded his eardrums. He felt his stomach acid bubble like witch's brew again.
"You are jonesing bad, huh?"
She spoke with an accent. Russian, he thought. Or some damn thing. He couldn't quite place it. She moved towards him, quick as a cat, and though her hand was dirty, the feel of it on his brow was soft, clinical.
"What's happening to me?" he groaned, helplessly, for the red lamp was starting to hurt his eyes. The sound of his own voice made him cringe, rabbitlike.
"I tell you," she said, "You jones. But I give you your fix. Is my hospitality."
She smiled radiantly at him.
A wave of nausea lapped gently. He wobbled on his feet like an unseasoned sailor, and she steadied him wordlessly, offered him her support. He let her guide him. It was slow work, but she led him to the wheelchair. Once he was sitting, the nausea passed. But his teeth.they itched.
"You're gonna...you're gonna inject me with that?" he squeaked through a clenched jaw. She was rolling up his sleeve, tying a tourniquet around his arm. He felt tremors move through his body. He watched as his arm jittered like a headless cockroach.
"Is, how do you say, really good shit," she said, expertly slapping the inside of his forearm with the backs of her fingers. His veins surfaced like sickly vines, she had his wrist in a vicehold. The syringe was in her other hand, and looking at it, he heard a phantom siren warble, somewhere way away. He had time to wonder if it was a real sound.
"Trust me. I am trained nurse."
Every fibre of his being wanted to protest against that particular statement, but oh, the needle, the needle was screaming at him, now.
"Don't be a bitch." Her eyes were on him now, green intensity. "Hold steady. You know how."
He cracked a smile. "Sure, little sister," he said.
"I'm not your sister. My family, we toast before we drink the vodka. Me, I toast before I do the drug. Is sentimental. Are you ready?"
"No."
"Davayte vipyem za zdorovye!"
Oh, the sting!
He sucked in his breath.
"Fucking exhale!" she snapped, and he obeyed immediately, wanting to jerk his arm away. The needle, oh god the needle, the needle was huge. He saw how slowly the liquid was depleting, couldn't look anymore, turned away.
"Nnnh..."
"I said don't be a bitch! We count! One! Two!"
His eyes fell closed. He saw red behind his lids, crimson circles whirling in his head.
The slap wasn't hard, but it was sudden, unexpected.
"Lucian! We count!"
"Three," he moaned. "Four."
His teeth no longer itched, but they felt heavy. His face felt heavy. The siren, he decided, on some level of coherence that he was barely aware of, was real. He could hear it more clearly now, warbling somewhere that sounded very, very close. Saliva flooded his mouth, drooled down his chin.
"Five!" she prompted. Her voice sounded farther away than the siren was.
"Six."
He didn't even recognize his own voice.
"Seven."
The nausea came back, sudden and horrible. He felt his gorge rise up in the back of his throat, swallowed it back forcefully.
"Eight. Nine. Ten."
The needle receded. He breathed harsh, ragged air that tasted like rust.
"I say two times now, don't be a bitch. Wake up."
The room was a red that hurt his eyes, the lamp a small sun. The nurse was thirty feet tall. He blinked, and she suddenly was a normal height. Everything swayed, and there was no suppressing the need any longer. He leaned forward in the wheelchair, moaning, and was sick all over his shoes. The vomit was unpleasantly poignant, he felt it burning out of his gullet like bad tasting lava.
"Had that been on me, I would have not just slapped you."
It sounded like there were ten or so of her, all speaking at once, but for some reason, he was not quite disturbed or bothered anymore. He smirked.
"Bitch," he said, looking at his own puke. It was brown. With little chunks. "Would a little yack have really made a difference? You don't exactly meet health regulations."
"There is the spirit!" she cried, and for a reason completely beyond his comprehension, he found it funny. He laughed, however inappropriate laughing may have been. He watched as the nurse (nurses?) approached, felt hands that were no longer clinical grip his shoulders. Her head came towards him, a large moon in the rust-red lamplight. Her red-painted smile was a gigantic, Chesire grin. He closed his eyes. Squeezed them shut, in fact.
I tell you, she said, her voice impossible, impossibly loud, is really good shit.
Yeah, he said. Yeah. His tongue felt like it was swelling up, too thick for his mouth. He closed his eyes, worked up saliva, and managed to sptt the taste of the vomit away.
The nurse, he realized, with some fragment of his brain that wasnt being caressed by Claudias white fingers, was pushing him. The wheelchair had a squeaky wheel. He could feel the chair itself wobbling unsteadily.
I am going to fall, he thought in the paranoid fashion of those who are fucked up on drugs. I am going to fall on the floor and its going to hurt. Its going to hurt a lot.
Stop it, Lucian, the aforementioned, functioning portion of his brain snapped. It sounded, he realized with a twitch that nearly sent him spilling out of the chair, a bit like Ellie.
Come now, Lucian, the nurse purred, Arent you going to enjoy? You cannot enjoy drug with your eyes closed. Look!
Slowly, very slowly, he chanced his eyes open.
The hospital corridor, as he recalled from when he walked down it barely ten minutes ago, was dingy-grey in colour, the windows on the examination room doors all busted to hell. Along with the litter of broken glass on the warped tiles were random chunks of plaster, wadded up paper, trash.
It didnt look anything like that anymore.
Lucian was in the devils wonderland.
The walls were red and flaking, now, pitchfork red, vaguely texturized, and oh yes, they were glowing, too, a faint red glow that hurt his eyeballs. If he were to touch those walls, they would feel like corroded metal. Or skin, he thought, watching, fascinated, as blood began to seep out from the cracks, or old, dead, skin.
With a trembling hand, he reached out to do just that, to touch the wall. He let it drag along its surface as the nurse pushed him down the hallway.
Its breathing, he realized, feeling it ululate gently beneath his palm. Dear God in Heaven its breathing.
There were double doors, and they swung open to admit them.
This man, the nurse said, is sick. Is very sick. He needs our care. Yes?
He heard the vicious click of her high heels as she stepped around him and approached another nurse in the room, a nurse who was dressed in grey, leaning over an examination table. He watched, with increasingly clouding eyes, as his nurse touched this others shoulder, spun her around-
The other nurse had no face.
If she did, it was hidden, hidden under the layers of blood-saturated gauze that mummified her head. He could see rapid hyperventilation under the bandages where the mouth should have been, and that was all it took.
Lucian screamed.
He closed his eyes, opened them, closed his eyes, opened them. Nothing changed. His nurse said something in Russian, smiled, and kissed the nurse with no face. Her arm twined around her waist, pulled her closer, and the faceless nurse began to whimpersoft, sensual soundsand they were wrong, they were wrong in this room that glowed and smelled of blood and piss and dead things. Coming from a dead thing.
He stood up, did it without incident. His knees quaked. He turned around and was able to do that, as well, but when he tried to run, his legs betrayed him, collapsed under. The room went upside-down as he fell, and when he hit the ground, it kept going upside-down, an endless loop of him falling to the floor. He fell fifteen times.
What did youwhat did you do to me, he moaned. What did you do to me?
Now, Lucian, the Russian nurse said, somewhere behind him that sounded like a million miles away. He felt the little daggers of her fingernails as she hoisted him up, quite effortlessly. You cannot walk, just yet. Let us care for you, yes? Enjoy.
The nurse-thing with no face was at his feet, wrapping cold hands around his ankles. He saw this, and what little control he had broke into pieces like glass in the wake of a high note.
Dont you fucking touch me! Help! Help!
But naturally, no one answered, and the two women of medicine lifted him, carried him to the examination table. He could see a fan on the ceiling with gigantic, rusting blades, noisy and dangerous.
I dont want to do this anymore. I cant. No more. No-
He couldnt see the nurses anymore. The door to the examination room had closed, and he could hear scratching on the other side.
Lucian. Why did you go? Help me. Help me.
Tears came. He couldnt stop them. They came streaming out of his eyes and ran salty rivers into his hair.
Little sister.
Close your eyes, Lucian, close your eyes and run away. Do what you do best.
He did.
He could see the lamplight behind his eyelids, orange, sickbright. He watched it fade into black and reappear, and
when he felt the fingernails rake through his hair,
he
jerked away
spasmodically.
I said dont touch me. Dont fucking touch me!
He didnt want to see. He squeezed his eyes tighter, tried to cover them with his hands, but his hands did not obey. He could hear music, vague music somewhere. Away.
You never said that.
Something cold was pressed into his hands, and startled, he opened his eyes, Someone had placed a glass of
Icewater?
Between his palms.
No examination table. No nurses, no sick orange light
(though he could see it if he squinted hard enough, right there behind the walls)
No rust
(though of course, it was there if he blinked thrice)
No filth.
A bar. A neon sign that read Heavens Night in pretty pinks and purples. Bye Bye Miss American Pie on the juke. And standing behind the bar in lacy lingerie, her fake red hair an artificial flame in the neon incandescence, looking very worried indeed, was Sam Poppy, the lady herself.
Sam! he cried, as if she were an old friend.
Indeed so, she said, peering at him as if he were a species of bug that she had yet to identify.
Jesus, little sister, he said, as a memory came rushing through his cranium on graveyard wings, the last I saw you, you were bleeding at the head! Christ! Are you all right?
Half of her mouth raised up in a wry grin, then fell back to pink-painted smoothness.
Just another night, here, partner, she said, and busied herself with drying out a beer glass. As she did this, Lucian noticed a lot of things. He noticed how cracked the skin on her hands was. He noticed the chips in her nail polish. He noticed the fake jewel in her navel; he noticed the fading bruise that wrapped around her sharp hip bone like a loving tattoo. He saw the smokers lines on either side of her mouth.
Drove my Chevy to the levee, Don Mclean sang, But the levee was dry. And them good old boys were drinkin whiskey and rye, singin thisll be the day that I die
No, he insisted, when you were driving me up to Silent Hill. You crashed. You-
In your dreams, pal, she said.
Ellie! a cigarette voice cried, jolting Lucian like a thunderbolt. He shot to his feet and the stool toppled over.
Wait a second! he cried. Wait a goddamned second!
What? the fake redhead said. Jesus, fella, if you cant calm yourself, Im gonna have to-
Now for ten years, weve been on our own, and moss grows fat on a rollin stone
You said Sam Poppy was your real name! he shouted. He could feel people staring at him, but did not care. You said your name was Sam. So why the fuck did he just call you Ellie, huh? Huh?
Be quiet, she said, her storm eyes darting.
You lied.
He seized her forearm.
Hey!
Look at me, he growled. Look at me.
She did.
Her eyes were things of terror and he saw the rims of the contact lenses. Saw the blonde eyebrows, the blonde roots just starting to come in in her fake red hair.
Saw the locket around her neck.
Why, he stammered. Why, Ellie?
The McLean was fading, he was starting to hear the now-familiar warble of the air raid siren.
No, he said. Damn it, no. Im soso close.
No youre not, said Sam, yanking her arm back, glaring thunderclouds his way. Youre just as fucked as you were before, Lucian. You arent going to remember shit. Youll be with her soon enough. Matching toe-tags.
Bright, evil laughter. The room was shrinking
Into
A
Pinpoint.
Darkness.
Closing in all on sides and the
Awful
Orange light
Pulsethrobbing
In the background, always
The
()
Siren
Singing him
To sleep.
I tell you, the Russian nurse laughed, is really good shit, beeg brother.
He woke to a fog-bright dawn pushing through a broken window, with vomit in his hair. He was laying, as he had been, on the examination table, and there was a corroded silver chain wrapped thrice around his wrist. He tried to raise it to his face, but could not lift his arm. There was a gigantic bruise where the vein was and it pained him greatly to move that limb, so he unclenched his fist and plucked the object out of his palm with his good hand.
A locket.
Somehow, he knew.
He remembered vague whispers of the trip hed had, the orange light and a nurse who spoke in Russian.
And Sam.
He fumbled the locket open between two fingers and a slip of paper fell out. He unfolded it, and immediately recognized Ellies hand.
Heavens Night, it read. In his mind, he saw a bar, saw it labeled delicately on a map hanging in the foyer.
Time to go.