Incredible Journey of Thomas 2

  Thomas leans out the door into the hall of flickering ethereal lights. Darkness and light dance as though in battle, his mind plays through a panic as he just stands there staring at the wall. He is back, back in the hospital, he escaped there once. Creeping along the walls, he knows the layout well enough to know which way avoids all the most likely to be too horrendous rooms, namely surgery which should be a few turns ahead, and make his way to the back lot entrance; away from the direction he went before. The hall is filled with moaning, the moaning of patients not in their beds, emanating from every direction, and then...it stops. He stops as well, the sound didn't *end*, it is hard to place the exact reason he can tell, but its not like a moan that ends because the source stopped moaning, or was choked out, or gagged, more like a recording that is just cut off.

  Thomas narrows his eyes and glares ahead, he hears something...foot steps. In a room up ahead. Not stomping about, just clicking against a tile floor. There is an open door, a light, and the shadow of a person. He slowly creeps up, this person is *humming*, something that sounds a bit like a christmas tune, but several notes are off. Peering around the corner what he sees is no human. It does appear to be human at first glance, like a woman waring red latex body paint perhaps, her skin is an unnatural shade of red and smooth, however her back is adorned by a pair of pterasaur like wings that are un-naturally bending. Her head sports a pair of slightly wavy horns that come off an armored brow, a plume of cotton candy colored red hair, different from her body goes down about neck length. The creature's feet are elongated, so much so it is clear this could not be a person in a costume, three talon like toes click over the tile surface, sounding much like boots on the same. He can't make out much of its face from behind other than it has deep red lips. This thing is shades of red actually contrasting each other. He can't see its eyes, fairly certain if he could he'd already be dead. But something else catches his eye, the demon like creature is holding something, like a physical hologram of a tablet. He can barely manage to make out that it has a layout on it, a layout of the hospital.

  The creature walks about the room, clearly in contemplation, it waves its free claw at a cabinet of preserved animals. The fetuses, skeletons, and mummified remains all start to move and *yowl*, and *howl*, and *shriek*, and *scream*. It is all Thomas can do not to run, curiosity over-writing base instincts one would call common sense. It waves its claw again and everything returns to its natural dead state.

   "What the fuck?" thinks Thomas.

  The creature stands before a stool, moving its head back and forth in contemplation. With some gestures a blue ghostly form of a skeleton appears, it solidifies into reality. With another wave its rib cage bursts open like a bear trap, she taps her calw on the vertebrae within the confine of the ribs a metal plate appears with three harpoon tips on it. She backs up a few steps, and stands there, leaning and hand on chin in contemplation. She makes a *clicking* sound and creates a red fiery portal in the air, pulling a priest in full vestments from it.

  "Please God," moans the priest, "I...I am a man of the cloth! You can't do this! I am absolved of my sins! You can't!"

   His pleading falls on deaf uncaring ears as the creature positions the man in front of the now still and ribs closed skeleton. It shoves the priest towards it, at which point the skeleton *SCREAMS!*, the ribs fly open and three harpoons tips on moring cable like wires shoot out impossibly long, one stabbing the man in the right inner thigh, one just above his genitals, and the third into his rib cage.

  He *screams* as the harpoon tips retract violently, the one in the leg and crotch ripping out chunks of flesh, while the one in his ribs drags him, throwing him into the skeleton. Despite sitting on a stool, and just being a skeleton, it stays anchored as the priest is impaled on the ribs. He moans and tries to pull off, stuck, *screaming*, and then crying and pleading with a prayer to God to save him from perdition, "It is wrong...I...I am good...I am a servant of God...They...it was a lie! I did nothing wrong!"

   The creature just stands there watching the man, it walks around him, and seems to actually examine his wounds, the hooks that pulled out of him, and gently yanks on him making him whimper like a smacked puppy through his sobs.

   The creature scowls and yanks the man clear off the skeleton, flesh ripping and a hideous screams as the curved ribs and harboon take out chunks of his torso. Before the priest can say anything else the creature tosses him face down at the floor where he smacks with a liquid sound into a red burning abyss. The creature puts it clawed foot on the man's back, slowly sinking him into the searing and sizzling, and bacon smelling liquid fire portal. It takes Thomans a second to realize the smell is the man's flesh being cooked, and it smells delicious. When the priest is gone the floor returns to normal.

   The creatures looks at its tablet, taps on it, and waves its claw at the skeleton making it vanish as it had appeared. Thomans ducks down low as the creature looks about the room, circles and comes back just staring at that stool. It curls a lip, waves its claw and a skeleton re-appears. It bobs its head and leans down to the skeleton propping the mouth open. It points it index and ring finger-claws together inside the mouth producing a light and then breathes into the mouth, Thomans despite himself finds he has an erection from this display. An erection that is quickly lost as the light expands turning into a tongue danling between mandibles, hanging from an esophagus anchored to the vertebrae, form a stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys, and assorted abdominal organs. Next a trachea forms, to bronchial tubes, into lungs, and then a heart grows, although the arteries and veins only connect to the lungs.

   Thomas nearly runs as the heart starts to beat, the various organs writhe as though trying to escape. With another wave of its claws the creature manifest shackles, that bind to the skeleton's wrists and ankles. These morph into hospital restraints that are screwed to the floor on metal plates. He can tell the creature is smiling as it puts two fingers into the eye sockets and via a light a pair of eyes form. Unblinking, human eyes anchored with just a few muscles and veins to the skull. The eyes turn right at him, looking him right in the eyes, the tongue waggles as it impossible moans out, "Heeelp Meeee!"

   "No," whispers Thomas has his gave is fixed on the undead thing. He tries to scurry backwackward but finds a clawed foot on his back, like being pinned beneath a heavy statue.

   The creature casually leans down and grabs his arm, but not in a firm grip, just holding it with its thumb against the side of is palm, fingers straight out like daggers. Here he can finnaly see its eyes, they are vibrantly green, but they have the pupils of a snake, and the iris looks to be carved, the lines are too straight, no imperfections, the eyes of a doll. With no effort it drags him into the room, his attempt to grab the door frame only results in shatterd and some torn half off bloody fingernails.

  It lets him go into the room and steps back blocking the door, spreading its wings slightly and arms crossed, still as a stone pillar.

  He tries to give the skeleton a wide birth and jumps as the jars behind him wiggle, the dead pig fetus and a snake violently bite at the edge of the jars towards him, trying to get at him.

   "Heeelp Meeee." moans the skeleton.

   "Wait..." says Thomas thinking of the priest, "Are...are you a...person too?"

  "Heeelp Meeeee," moans the skeleton.

  Its eyes turn and look up at Thomas as he comes closer.

 "Incredible," says Thomas with a smile looking closer at it, examining it, "are you actually a person it just...turned inside out here?"

  As he looks closer at the eyes, the mouth shoots open and vomits pure bile into Thomas' eyes.

  Thomas claws at his face as the stomach acid burns his flesh and eyes, worse than normal bile, like pepper spray mixed with bile, he can even smell it. He can hear the same voice, the voice of the skeleton laughing as Thomas smashing about the room, he know he saw it, a sink was in this lab. His hand smashes onto some scalples and other instruments slicing up his hand. There is another sound, a feminine soft laugh. He finds the sink and turns it off, throwing his hands under the stream and into his face too fast to realize the water is scolding hot.

   "Holy fuck!" screams Thomas as he falls to the floor in sudden horrific pain ontop of horrific pain. He smashes his face into the cabinet under the sink, in his panic, in his torturous pain he is actually trying to knock himself out. He slams into the wall as hard as he can, he hears many jars falling and breaking, following by many tiny sharp things tugging at his clothes, little rows of needles chomping into his flesh.

  His screams turn inhuman as he thrashes about, knowing even in this much impossible pain what happened, the things in the jars, he can feel them, hear them, even with burned out eyes trying to get at him, get in his sleeves and pant legs and he shakes them off. He climbs up onto something, the sink...but he had left it on...he can't hear it now. The sloshing sounds of the things from the jars across the floor stop. As he stays there panting his vision starts to return and the pain eases down.

  "What the fuck..." mutters Thomas as his vision fully returns, he looks at his hands, the wounds are healing.

   He looks around the room, the jars are still broken, there is glass everywhere. The things from the jars however are dissolving, piles of melted flesh and bones congealing into a vomitous pile on the floor. He feels a sting on his leg, and examines a large chemical burn that is slowly fading. Not everything on the floor is from the masses, in fact it looks like not all were headed for him, some had gone towards the skeleton.

   Thomas looks right at it, "Did...did you vomit on them in self defense,"

  He winces at the pain on his leg, it had hit him when aiming at the crawling things. As he prepares to get down however it dawns on him how far it was able to hit.

  "okay," says Thomas, wincing as the chemical burn on his leg isn't healing as fast as his eyes did for some reason, "You don't hit me again, and I will just leave this room okay? Maybe I could cut your restrains huh? I know...that...has to hurt..but..."

   "Heeelp Meeee," moans the skeleton.

   Thomas narrows his eyes, "you arn't a person...you...you're a machine!"

  "Heeelp Meee....asssss...hoooolllle."

   "Fuck you!" yells Thomas making a break for the door, stopping short as he runs right into and his grabbed like meat hooks into his shoulder by the red feminine creature. It stood so still, and in his blindless had backed out of the doorway just into the hall watching, he had actually forgotten it was there.

   He screams and thrashes about as he is carried through the halls of the hospital like a fish on a hook on its outstretched arm. His pleas to let him go on deaf ears, his pain filled mind flashing to the priest, being used like a rodent in a twisted experiment...

   "No, no...no, no, no, noooo!" screams Thomas, "I'm a doctor! I'm not a lab rat, let me...go...let me go!"

  He shuts up, despite the pain in his shoulder from being carried on meat hook claws as they enter the lobby. He remembers it, the parking lot. The sunlight strikes his eyes without mercy as the creature carries him out the front door. He remembers the little things under the cars that had torn at his legs before.

  "No...please," begs Thomas, "Not that...not again..."

  The creature actually drops him, releasing his torn flesh from its claws. The things under the cars don't try to attack, he is hesitant to run, but in barely three seconds is given no choice as the creature's claws from just one hand wrap around his throat and lift him up. Not so tight as to make him black, but tight enough that he can barely breathe. He is carried into the street where he first saw the...snake creature; which emerges from river and rushes across the street, *growling* and *hissing*. He is certain the two things are about to fight over him, however it stops short as the winged red devil woman raises him in the air and shakes his body, wiggling him in the air. He is wide eyed, both from being choked and from what he sees, the snake creature is coiled up and has its arms up like a dog begging for a treat.

   "Oh...shit," thinks Thomas as he is tossed into the air.

  The snake monster lunges into the air and snaps its wide jaws onto his torso, his head and shoulders already down its throat before it even hits the pavement. Its rows of sharp teeth dragging him down into a crushing throat. In the darkness his bones are crushed, the air forced from his lungs, he would scream in pain, so much pain he doesn't even notice that as his legs pass the monster's mouth that it snaps down, biting his feet off which it tosses under the cars to ripped into by the small black imp like creatures. The shoes shreaded and pieces carried off, flesh eaten, bones broken and played with. Inside the monster however the blood drips down the throat over his torso as his head falls into the stomach acid. Burning his scalp and eyes off almost instantly, his mouth opens to scream only to swallow and inhale the acid, his throat, lungs, and everything else burning off as he is engulfed by darkness and nothingness.

  ******

  Ontop of the Bank a man in urban camo watched the parking lot scene through binoculars, he picks up a walkie, "This is Peter, Bob...looks like your new arrival just got eaten by River Alpha..."

   "Shit," says Bob on the line, "Keep an eye out if he comes back and...wait...was it the same exit where it got him last time? He told us..."

   "Bob," says Peter, "he was fed to River Alpha by Red Alpha,"

   "What?" asks Bob.

  "She carried him out of the hospital, wiggled him like a fucking treat...and River Alpha was actually begging like a dog, she tossed him, and River Alpha grabbed him out of the air...we may need to rethink the relationship between these things..."

  The line is silent, "Return to base Peter, whatever that is, you still have two Alphas a block from your location, both of which are well known for torturing people, we already lost three people to Red Alpha."

   ******

   Sunlight cascades over Thomas's eyes waking him up, this happened before, horrible pain, followed by darkness, followed by waking up someplace random. He shoots up, sitting in the dirt of an empty field. It is an unkempt farmer's field, dead chopped corn stalks, but nothing else, no grass or weeds trying to grow in the tilled soil. Last time he woke up like this he was grabbed by a fucking train and dragged through the street only to go crazy and get locked up...back in that fucking hospital by some militia psychos.

   "Fuck that noise," says Thomas standing up, he can see the hospital far off in the distance, the river is hidden but the trees reveal where it is. A large cemetary, some farm house. Behind him there is not far off a factory and something else.

   "What is that," says Thomas walking up a mound, outside of the city, nestled between some fields and forests is a suburban neighborhood. Rather nice one story houses with red tile roofs, green cut grass yards, and he swears he can hear lawnmowers. He walks through the field towards the neighborhood.