Time passed slowly, like honey dripping from a spoon. On the cold tiled floor of the tiny rooma trembling shapeless mass lay, crouched in the fetal position .
This was a patient of a psychiatric hospital. Part of his ribs were badly bruised, his left arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, and extensive bruises were spreading all over his body.
With his good hand, the guy tried to reach the metal bed with creaking springs and a dirty mattress - it was the only furniture in the punishment cell of the psychiatric hospital. Her hand shook, trying to grab the edge of the mattress, from which it was separated by only a couple of inches, but it could not achieve what it wanted. A thin hand with long fingers flopped weakly and deafly on the floor.
A soft sob was heard.
Then another one.
Soon, a series of sobs turned into hoarse, insane laughter.
"Inn't it enough, freak?" the irritated voice of a attendant orderly was heard somewhere in the corridor.
The key turned in the lock of the metal-studded door grated. Two big guys in white coats, casually thrown over cheap civilian clothes, obviously bought at a flea market, entered the room.
"You wanna more?" one of the attendants asked in a matter-of-fact tone, while the second approached the patient and, with a worried look, bent over him, tried to feel for a pulse.
"Fuck, John, it looks like he's counting worms..." the paramedic drawled worriedly.
The one called John immediately jumped up to the patient's body. He pushed his colleague away and, grunting, got on all fours.
"You presume too much, John." the second orderly said disapprovingly, leaning his shoulder against the still open door.
"Shut up, Dick!" John barked. His fat-swollen face was flushed and sweating.
John was nicknamed "John Ampere" for a reason. He was an outright sadist. He took pleasure in connecting wires to crazies tied up with sheets and torturing them with electric current. Until it came to serious injuries or murder, the authorities and the medical commission turned a blind eye to his pranks. In a psychiatric hospital, there was a terrible turnover among the orderlies, there were few people who were ready to feed and wash slobbering idiots or raving lunatics for mere pennies, or even to take out chamber pots from under them. Now John clearly imagined what would happen to him after the news of the death of a minor patient of the clinic from beatings reached the authorities. Everything would be hung on him, John, including the frequent blunders of other orderlies.
"We needa get rid of the corpse..." John convulsively seized on an idea that seemed to him a sound one.
"I wontch help you. You shoulda fought about it when you beat up a guy cos you didn't like the way he looked at you," Dick said.
"He got into my head! I swear!" howled John. "I don't know how, but he read my foughts!"
"So when did the nut take over the nut house?" Dick grimaced and left the room.
"Damn" John thought. "He probably went to tell the chief. Old Dick wants to curry favor."
In desperation, John tried to shake the teenager who died from his fists. He bent down and, listening to the breathing of the deceased, suddenly felt a slight breeze.
"It's alive!" John exclaimed incredulously, continuing to stand, leaning almost close to the patient's face. "I knew! Fucking malingerer, I'll kick in your..."
He did not have time to finish when suddenly the "corpse" came to life and with one swift jerk clung to John's exposed neck with his teeth.
John jumped to his feet with a heart-rending scream, but managed to take only two steps towards the door and dropped like a brick.
Blood was gushing from the severed carotid artery, and John was frantically trying to cover it with his hand.
A teenager with a crazy smile on his blood-soaked face, limped to his feet and pulled out a piece of water pipe from under the mattress.
"Bye-bye, fat faggot!" the guy burst out laughing and with a flourish released his weapon on John's head, which burst like a ripe watermelon, scattering around the room with fragments of brains and flooding it with blood.
The bloody weapon rolled loudly on the tile.
The madman closed his eyes and whirled with himself in a mad dance, periodically jumping up and clapping his hands.
At the highest point of the dance, a whole crowd of orderlies ran into the room at once, who carried the dancer like a herd of rhinos and pressed him against the opposite wall.
The madman's veins burned with fire and he realized that he had been injected with the drug and, judging by the sensations, very much exceeded the permissible dosage.
The white wall in front of his eyes, darkening, slowly faded away.
