10:41 pm
May 30, 1999

Kira scowled up at the nurse as she finished swallowing the last of the big pills. The woman gave her that fake smile and sickly-sweet voice that all of them used with her.

"There's a good girl! You know you have to take all of your medicine if you want to get better!"

She gave the nurse a dirty look.

"If the medicine was going to make me better, shouldn't I be better? It's been a long time now, and I've been taking all the pills you give me, but I'm still sick."

That made the smile falter, but a moment later it was back.

"Now, don't you worry about that. We're going to keep taking care of you for as long as it takes."

The little girl sat there on the edge of the bed with her legs dangling, and thought about that as the woman picked up her tray of pills and moved towards the door.

"As long as it takes for what?" She asked. The nurse paused for a moment and looked back. There was a strange expression on her face, a sort of weary sadness, but then she forced the smile and answered.

"Well, as long as it takes for you to get well, silly girl!" She nodded towards the pillow lying on the bed. "You go to sleep now. And no wandering around, either!" She was stern now, a genuine look of disapproval replacing the stiff smile. "There are other people here who are sick, and you could catch something from them. That would be very bad."

Kira nodded agreement, but didn't say anything. The nurse turned off the light and pulled the door shut behind her, leaving the room in darkness. She sat there, waiting. She had been in the hospital for a long time now, and whenever she asked her father when she would be able to come home he just shook his head and told her that it would be soon, very soon. He smiled when he said that, and his smiled looked a lot like the fake one the nurses used. That made her think that maybe she wasn't getting better at all. The funny thing was, she really didn't feel that bad. Well, most of the time. She did get sick a lot, now. She had a lot of colds, and there were a lot of times when her head hurt, and she woke up sweating and stuff. Mainly though, it was the pills that made her sick. Almost every time she took them (and they made her take them like, five times a day or something) she got sick to her stomach afterwards, sometimes real bad.

Like now. She put both her hands on her belly and pushed real hard, trying to breath slow and steady through her mouth. If she threw up she would only have to take them again, and they were even worse after she'd barfed up everything else down there. She waited out the worst of it, though it left her feeling all weak and wobbley. By that time, she was pretty sure that the nurses would have changed over to the very late shift, when only one of them was at the desk down the hall. That meant that is was time for her to go out.

She got out of bed and quickly put her feet into her slippers. The floors here were very cold, and besides; sometimes there was icky stuff on the floors that she didn't want to step in. Opening the door just a crack, she peeked outside. It was quiet, and the lights were turned down low. Trying not to make any noise, she snuck down the hallway.

It was pretty easy to keep from being seen when you were so small, and the night nurses were so lazy that they were usually not even at their big desk at the bend in the hallway. Instead, they spent most of the night sitting in the place with the carpeted floors and comfortable chairs and the television. During the day, parents and people would sit there, waiting their turns in the rooms with the sick people. At night, the nurse sat in there and smoked and watched late movies.

Kira walked down the far hallway, which was the one with mostly older people in it. She looked in on all of the rooms she passed, checking to see if anyone new had been brought in since last night. There were not any new faces, and all of the old ones were still there, which made her feel a little better. It was bad when somebody was gone; they almost never came back again, afterwards. Some of them had probably gone to be operated on, or something, but she thought that most of them had died.

This hallway was for people who slept all the time and never woke up, so they couldn't talk to her or anything. That didn't bother her; she liked to just sit and look at them. She would stare at their faces, and look at whatever their family had brought, and then she would try and imagine what they were like when they were awake. What did they sound like when they talked, what color were their eyes? In her made-up version of them, they were always very nice people, who treated everybody good, and never yelled at anyone or made other people cry. Sometimes there were flowers and things in the rooms, and she would smell them and think about when she had still been able to go outside and play with the other kids at her school. If there were a lot of flowers, she would take one, a little one that nobody would miss, and hide it in her room where she could look at it later.

When someone she had sat with went missing, she would go and write their names down in a notebook she had. The rooms always looked so empty, after they had been taken away, with the bed all clean and empty and all the flowers and stuff gone like they had never been there. It was sad, and scary how there was no way to tell that someone had been there. She would look at their names later (though most times the names looked wrong; she could read, but her spelling was not always very good) and she would try and keep a good memory of what they had looked like. It seemed important to her that somebody remember the sleeping people.

At the end of the hall she came to her favorite room. Inside it was dim, but there was a nightlight that gave off a nice glow. The girl laying on the bed was named Melinda (it said so on the get well cards that were on the shelf next to the flowers), and Kira knew for sure that she was a very nice person. She must be, because she had so many people who came to see her. It was a lot harder to sneak down to this room during the day, but Kira tried to do it as much as she could, just to see all of the people who would come visit the nice girl. One of her parents came in almost every day, and she had brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and everybody would sit and talk to her like she was awake and listening. They had brought her things from her room, to make her feel better, too. There were pictures of the girl with her parents and family and things. Mostly, there were pictures of her riding horses. She was smiling in those pictures, and the horses were so big and beautiful that Kira could sit and look at them for hours. Melinda had won things riding horses too. In some of the pictures she was holding a big and shiny trophy, or proudly displaying ribbons with bright gold writing on them.

She stood beside the bed and looked into the girl's face. She looked like she was just resting, but Kira knew better. The older girl had been here almost as long as herself, and she hadn't moved or woken up once. Still, it didn't hurt to be nice.

"Hi Melinda. I hope you're dreaming something good tonight. I wanted to come and play with your horse, if that's okay."

As usual, there was no answer, so she carefully took down one of the toy horses that sat on the table beside the girl's bed. It looked very old, but all of the legs still worked. You could bend each one in three places, and make him look like he was running and everything. She sat down on the far side of the bed from the door, where nobody walking past was likely to see her, and played with the horse. She imagined herself riding him, going somewhere far, far away from cold hospitals and people who lied to you with a stupid smile on their faces. Her horse wouldn't care if she got sick a lot; it would love her no matter what. If her legs were wobbly, it wouldn't matter; the horse would carry her, and its legs would be so strong that it could run forever.

She sat there, holding the horse and wishing very hard that it was real, and it would come for her. She didn't wish to be well; she had done that for a long time and it had never happened. She was pretty sure now that it was never going to happen. If she got the horse though, that would be good enough.

* * * * *

He climbed the stairs slowly, trying not to look at his hand on the railing. It wasn't that he was weak; he wasn't. If anything, he was stronger when he was like this. It wasn't worth the rest of it, though. Not even close. He was ugly, and the vile thing inside of him twisted his body until he was barely recognizable as a man. His gnarled limbs didn't work quite right, and climbing stairs created the very real possibility that he would lose his balance and go tumbling back down. It would only get worse, too, unless he could find someone to help him. And since no one would do what he needed willingly, he would just have to find someone who was not in a position to say no.

* * * * *

Kira froze when she heard the big metal door to the stairs. It had been a quiet sound, not the loud slam it made when someone just shoved it open. Someone was sneaking onto the floor. She stood up and looked across Melinda's bed to the hall. This was the next-to-last room in the hall, and the stairway door was just one room past this one. She couldn't get out of here without whoever it was seeing her, and if they did they might keep her from ever coming back. She looked for a place to hide. Under the bed was no good, they would see her as soon as they came in. The only good place was in the bathroom, so she hurried inside, careful to keep her slippers from making a scuffing sound on the floor. Inside, she hid behind the door. It was really dark in there, and she didn't think anyone could see her if she peeked through the crack where the hinges were.

A person edged into view, standing in the doorway to the room and looking inside. At least, Kira thought they were looking in; it was hard to see the person, even with her eyes used to the dark and the nightlight to help. It was like she was looking at a black cut-out of a person, and there was no face or anything there to see. The person moved into the room, and a chill ran up her spine, making her shiver. They didn't walk right. They lurched like one leg was longer than the other one and neither one worked right. It (she decided that it was an it, not a him or a her) went to the bed, standing over Melinda and looking down at her with that blank shadow face.

Kira hugged the plastic horse to her chest as hard as she could, staring out into the room. She wanted to yell at the thing to leave the sleeping girl alone, but she was really scared, and her mouth didn't want to open. When it reached out an arm, she saw that its hand was as twisted and messed-up as the rest of it, but it didn't hit Melinda like she had been afraid it would. It just put its hand on her chest, and stood there.

"Damn.... She's too weak, but I can't wait any longer."

The voice that came from the thing was all whispery and raspy, and it sounded like she thought a big bug might sound, if it could talk. She was wondering what it had meant, when she saw it start. Shadowy... things, started running down the monster's arm. It looked almost like black water moving, but there were shapes there too, like mice, or rats, or lots and lots of bugs. She watched as the nasty stuff reached the place where it's hand was on Melinda's chest, and she almost whimpered out loud when she saw them pass through the sheet like it wasn't there, and vanish inside the sleeping girl.

For the first time, she saw Melinda move. Her body started to shudder, like she was fighting against what was happening to her, even though she wasn't awake to see what it was. Her mouth opened and she gave a sort of gasping sob that brought tears to Kira's eyes.

She wanted to help Melinda, she really did! But... she was only a little girl; she couldn't stop a monster. She backed away from the crack beside the door and climbed into the bathtub, hunching down low to hide. She didn't want the monster to get her, she didn't want it to put the shadowy things inside of her. She closed her eyes and clutched the horse tight, wishing for it to come right now, and carry her away from this awful place where there were monsters.

* * * * *

He drew himself up taller as the corruption flowed out of him and into the girl in the bed. His limbs straightened, his skin smoothed. Even in her coma, the girl opened her mouth, letting out first a whimper, then a louder cry. He clamped his other hand over her mouth, and held it there until the flow of darkness slowed, and then came to a stop. Releasing her, he stepped back. She was paler than she had been a few moments before, and she was sweating profusely. He shook his head and sighed. This one had been too far gone; what he had just done would likely kill her. Not that he minded that, especially, it was just that he hated leaving a trail of bodies behind. Too many, and he would have to leave here and find yet another hospital. Patients like these were the best prey he had been able to find, but he preferred the stronger ones, they could survive what he did, though they usually suffered some permanent damage. The ones that died, they were messy. Especially the one in ten or so that rose afterwards, to become like him; carriers for the dark infection that was even now slowly growing inside him yet again. A week, at most two, and he would have to cleanse himself yet again.

For now, though, he felt fine. Better than fine, actually.

He felt positively... human.

* * * * *

Kira heard the stairway door open, then close, and only then did she open her eyes and look up. The bathroom was dark, and very quiet. It hadn't found her. It still took a long time before she felt brave enough to stand up and climb out of the bathtub, then look out into the room.

The monster was gone. She walked slowly to the bed, afraid to look at the girl laying there, but finally she had to. Melinda looked okay, just a little sweaty and stuff. She smiled in relief and reached out to touch her on the hand. The older girl's skin was hot, really hot, and it felt kind of funny. It was almost like the flesh under the skin was... squishier than it should be. Kira took her hand back and looked at the still face. She looked okay, really. She would be okay.

"Melinda, I'm sorry I didn't do anything." She looked down at the horse she still held. "It was scary, though. And it didn't do anything bad to you, I think. You're just getting a bad cold. I get those all the time." She cleared her throat and looked up again. Was there a bad smell? She sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. People who slept for a long time usually didn't smell real good, because other people had to clean them, but this was the worst thing she had ever smelled. She backed away from the bed. "I have to go, now. They'll clean you up in the morning, when the real nurses come to work. If it's okay, I'm gonna borrow the horse, okay?" She hated to do that, but she was afraid the monster might come back for her. If she had the horse to hold onto, it might be easier to get to sleep. She hoped.

"Goodnight. I'll see you tomorrow night.

Kira slipped quietly into the hall and back to her room. The horse really did help, though she felt like a baby for having to have a toy to sleep with. The dreams of the black thing were bad, but she didn't cry. The last year had shown her that crying didn't help.

The next night she went to take the horse back to Melinda, but the room was empty.

* * * * *