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he engine gave a final asthmatic cough and the car lurched to a halt, the sudden motion forcing another whimper of pain from Matthew as the seatbelt clutched him in its violent embrace.
“For God’s sake, Jason!” he bawled at the driver beside him.
“Oh, come off it Matthew—I got you here didn't I?”
Barely, thought Matthew, remembering the number of times the engine had stalled along the way, stretching the forty-minute journey into something that seemed more like a fortnight. How could Jason drive this old heap anyway? He looked across at the driver as he sat hunched over the handbrake like an overgrown praying mantis, albeit one dressed in the incongruously bright colours of a Sunday afternoon football game. Jason blinked back at him from behind inch-thick glasses, the distorting lenses only adding to his animalistic appearance. What a ridiculous looking creature, Matthew thought, idly entertaining the fantasy of squishing the offending animal beneath his booted feet. Little chance of that now, of course. It was bad enough that Jason’s dating of his sister meant that he had to be civil to the man, but the prospect of being in debt to him over a lift in this four-wheeled death machine was enough to make Matthew wilfully obstreperous, and the journey had been punctuated by a stream of barely veiled insults designed to convey not only that was Matthew unimpressed by such a 'favour', but that such a shoddy method of conveyance was practically an offence in itself. He thought of his own beloved Jaguar, caressing the steering wheel as he eased through the bends, the fragrant smell and the creak of the leather seat as the powerful engine firmly held him into its grasp, feeling the purring throb of power beneath him as he worked the accelerator. And where was it now? Sat unloved and unused in the open elements of the Commons car park, its pedals now maddeningly out of his reach—but for how long? Oh God, please let it not be serious, thought Matthew, his mind’s eye sending him unpleasantly realistic visions of his stationary car attracting dirt, leaves, vandals and joy-riders like some indiscriminately powerful magnet in his absence.
Matthew sighed, and looked through the grimy windscreen at the bland functional brick building before him, the decades-old off-white paintwork seeming jaundiced in the dull yellow gleam of the car headlights. They had evidently brought the rain with them, the heavens unleashing a torrent that hammered off the roof of the car with a noise more like the pelting of stones than of water. Matthew wound down the window and looked up at the roiling clouds above, the heavy mass lending the afternoon a premature darkness that did little to improve his mood.
Still, even the rain will be better than sitting in this dirty tin can, he thought, and resolutely swung open the passenger side door.
He eased himself gingerly from the car, using the open door as a makeshift crutch to haul himself into a standing position. The studs of his remaining football boot clacked loudly against the tarmac as he hopped towards the building, his other leg raised in an awkward ballet.
“Break a leg, Matthew!”
“Ha bloody ha,” muttered Matthew under his breath, not trusting his balance enough to turn around and remonstrate with Jason more forcefully. Behind him he heard the slam of the car door, and a wheezing groan as the engine coughed back into life like some modern-day Lazarus, back from the dead and ready to resume a forty-a-day habit. Light momentarily blinded him as the car behind him turned around, headlights reflecting back from the double glass doors in front of him that bore the legend MINOR INJURIES UNIT.
Goodbye to bad rubbish, thought Matthew, as the sound of the departing car faded rapidly behind him.
Half-blinded by the rain he reached towards the entrance, only to be taken by surprise as unseen automatic sensors activated and the glass doors slid open of their own accord. Frantically whirling his arms in a desperate attempt to recover his balance, Matthew Groves clattered out of the premature darkness and into the bright interior of the Arnside Hospital Minor Injuries Unit like some exotic moth attracted by the light, slipped on the muddy flooring, and rushed headfirst to meet the ground.
“Are we really going to continue in this?” whines Jason.
Matthew brushes his sodden fringe out of his eyes and looks up at the louring clouds.
“Of course. Why not?”
The Sunday afternoon kick-about is of no real importance but, damn it, it’s all Matthew has. After a week consumed by work today was his first real chance to forget the workaday worries of figures and finance, get out of the stuffy office and feel some fresh air on his face. Granted, it looked as though nature would now provide the additional dubious bonus of an impromptu shower, but frankly that was a small price to pay for this temporary feeling of freedom. A pity his fellow players didn’t feel the same way. Jason, Angus, Mario and Chris hovered dejectedly around the playing field, each a portrait of studied disinterest, their shoulders hunched against the inclement weather like turtles cowering into their shells. Several players had already given up and made their way home as the light drizzle steadily increased into a torrential downpour, causing what had started as a five-a-side match to lurch through various iterations of unevenly matched sides until both allegiance and score had become meaningless. Matthew had heard of fair-weather friends, but had never expected to find such a literal depiction.
“Matthew—it’s pissing it down. If we stay out in this much longer we’ll all die of pneumonia.”
“For Christ’s sake Jason, don’t exaggerate. It’s only a bit of water—how much harm can it do?”
Matthew grabs the ball out of Jason’s limp grasp and throws it down at his opponent’s feet, causing yet more mud to splatter up over his already grimy kit.
“It’s only a game Matthew,” Jason pouts, “don’t take it so personally.”
Matthew ignores him, angrily kicking the ball back onto the pitch before pushing past him with such violence that Jason is forced to stagger backwards to keep his footing on the treacherous ground.
Only a game. How can Jason not understand that even the most frivolous of games has to be taken seriously? What sort of man would you be if you gave up at the first sign of hardship?
Annoyed at their lethargic attitude Matthew runs at the remaining players, goading them into tackling him, forcing them to shut up and play the game. The mud squelches around his feet as he dribbles the ball, the dirty water splashing against him as puddles erupt in his wake like detonating landmines.
Matthew revels in the feeling of freedom, forgetting himself in the heat of the action, enjoying the sensation of liberating body from mind. No more thinking, no more planning, just instinctive action and reaction. He pushes past the last of his opponents and heads towards the now open goal, the rush of his pumping blood competing in his ears with the pounding of his boots upon the sodden ground.
Momentarily taking his eyes off the ball at his feet, Matthew glances up to size up his shot, only to be startled by the unexpected appearance of a figure in front of him. Who the hell is this, and where have they come from? The figure is buffered against the rain in a thick dark coat and scarf, his uncovered face oddly scarred with lines of diagonal cross-hatchings scored across his pasty flesh, while his eyes lie curiously flat and lifeless, like those of a deep-sea fish that has been dragged out of its natural habitat and up into the light. The figure smiles, and as his face ripples Matthew realises with a start that he had been mistaken—there are no scars on his face, those lines are merely the strings of the net dissecting the stranger’s face as he stands behind the goal, and he is in all probability no more sinister a presence than a random passer-by pausing to watch the game.
The unexpected damage has already been done however, with the sight of the figure causing Matthew to lose his balance, and as he pulls back his right leg to shoot he feels the muddy turf give way beneath him. With his forward momentum bowling him over Matthew crashes to the ground, his left leg buckling under him with a sickening crack. A searing fire of pain shoots up through his body as he slides to a halt in the goalmouth, the ball rolling past him in an ironic score, and his stillborn cry of victory is transformed into an idiot animal howl of pain.
Matthew hears the pounding feet of his fellow players as they rush towards him, then the pounding of his blood pumps louder, drowning out everything except his own cries. As consciousness fades Matthew barely registers the fact that the figure behind the goal has vanished into thin air.
“Can you hear me?”
Matthew groped his way back to consciousness like a blind man, to find the woman’s concerned face looming out of the mental fog, her hands warm against his skin as she cradled his head.
“Come on, let’s get you sat down shall we?”
Leaning on the woman for support, Matthew allowed himself to be manoeuvred into a plastic chair, recognising the nurse’s uniform as she pulled away from him. The nurse looked critically at him for a moment, then poked a finger at his forehead, causing him to pull backwards in surprised pain as her digit connected with a newly raised bruise.
“I don’t think you’ve done any permanent damage there—at least, nothing compared to the damage you’ve already done.”
“Yes,” Matthew said, gesturing down at his bruised and swollen limb, “it’s my leg—I think I may have broken it. Playing football.”
“Well, I did rather work that last bit out for myself. I think it was the football kit that gave it away. I don’t know, you men and your games...”
The nurse smiled sympathetically and began to take Matthew’s details, first writing on a clip-boarded sheet of paper before retreating behind a reception desk to transfer the information onto a computer with a series of staccato raps.
As his head began to clear Matthew looked around him, taking stock of the room and its inhabitants. The MIU waiting room was a large rectangular area, with floor-bolted plastic chairs providing spaces for about thirty patients when full, though at present besides himself there were only two other inhabitants: a balding middle-aged man gingerly holding a gauze pad over one eye, and an elderly woman clutching at her belly in obvious discomfort. A cluster of plastic tables provided space for the usual smattering of bland magazines, their corners dog-eared from the restless thumbing of patients more interested in passing the time than in filling it. An out-of-order vending machine stood silent sentry by the automatic glass door entrance, the muddy prints on the floor picking out the ungainly steps of Matthew’s earlier dance, whilst on the opposite side of the room an unmarked door led further into the hospital complex. Running the length of the room was the reception desk, an alcove of paper records, files and folders bisected by a chest-high partition, behind which the nurse sat typing away on her computer. Nurse Richards (as her name-badge declared her to be) was a statuesque red-head, attractive enough thought Matthew, though her make-up looked so overdone as to appear oddly clownish, with Matthew suspecting that behind the built up layers of beautification lurked a face older than its wearer would readily wish to admit to the world.
No sooner had Matthew begun to wonder just how long he was expected to wait for treatment than the entrance doors slid open and out of the pouring rain stepped a trio of figures. The three men strode across the room towards the inner door, the long white coats that flapped around them immediately identifying them as doctors. The group was in mid-conversation, laughing amongst themselves at some private joke.
“A good game last night wasn’t it?”
“I can’t believe you won again!”
“Well tonight I’m going for a hat-trick.”
“Sorry boys, but tonight I’ll outscore you both!”
More amateur players, though Matthew, though surely they couldn’t be thinking of playing football later tonight, now that the light had gone and the weather had deteriorated so badly? Mind you, at least he might get some sympathy for his own sporting injury.
“Good morning Nurse Richards! Send the first one in when you are ready, please do!” one of the doctors called over his shoulder.
As the trio left by the inner door this figure cast a brief look over the waiting room, and as their eyes met Matthew was struck by the strange sensation that he had seen this man somewhere before. The doctor gave a brief smile and left, leaving Matthew casting back through his memories in vain—something about that cold flat stare nagged at him, but remained tantalisingly out of reach.
“Mr Hope,” called out Nurse Richards, “if you’d like to go through?”
The balding man with the eye injury got up and followed the doctors through the door, the group’s footsteps clattering away down an unseen corridor as they headed deeper into the bowels of the hospital.
Matthew prepared to wait, picked up a magazine, desultorily scanned through it and threw it back on the table. Bored, bored, bored. This was so tedious that if it wasn’t for the throbbing pain in his leg he might well fall asleep. Matthew closed his eyes and drifted somewhere between memory and dream. . . .
When Matthew is ten years old his father is diagnosed with cancer. Peter Groves is a bear of a man, whose burly figure is matched by an equally indomitable spirit, and initially he approaches his illness as little more than a minor irritation to be dominated, defeated and swiftly passed over. As such it comes as something of a surprise to both Peter and his family as to just how implacable an opponent the cancer is, and as a minor irritation changes into a life or death struggle it becomes apparent to all concerned that this was one fight he was not going to win. Peter tries his best to shield his children from the full horror of his illness, doing his best to affect his usual bonhomie around them, but his haunted eyes betray the fact that he has glimpsed his own fast-approaching mortality. Even when Peter is able to maintain a mask of normality for his children’s sake, they could hardly be unaware of the diminishing aspect of his once solid frame. Having been so used to the formidable figure of his father, Matthew finds watching him gradually succumb to the illness a harrowing experience. Whether due to the radiation treatments, the attention of various doctors, or the wasting brought about by the cancer itself, the constant feeling is one of erosion. It is almost as though the solid presence of his father is being constantly whittled away by repeated surgical excisions.
Within six months of the initial diagnosis Peter’s regular visits to the hospital have turned into a permanent residence, and the empty void he leaves in the Groves’s household begins to feel like a rehearsal of the coming years his family will face without him. Wife and children dutifully visit Peter at regular intervals, and it is to these bedside visits that Matthew’s thoughts now turn.
It would be a convenient fiction for him to bring to mind a poignant scene of a dying father’s farewell speech to his son, but the truth was a series of awkward conversations, of clumsy and meaningless pleasantries passed between parties either to scared or too embarrassed to confront the finality of the situation before them. The real unspoken message was not lost on Matthew however, as he gazed upon the hollow cheeks of his dying father, his head propped up on a plump pillow while his wasted body lay artfully hidden beneath concealing bedding: the game of life was short and precious, and if you didn’t play to win then you were bound to lose. His father may lose in the end, but he had tried his very best in the face of adversity, and Matthew intended to face life with a similar determination. If others were weak then so be it: he would beat them in life, and they had no-one but themselves to blame. Even his mother and sister were weak, their shrill cries echoing through his memory as they had echoed around his father’s bedside at the last, a wailing counterpoint to the high-pitch tone of the medical equipment that had signalled the failing of Peter Groves’s vital life signs.
Matthew jolted awake, a shrill scream still ringing in his ears. Had he dreamt that or heard it for real? He glanced over at Nurse Richards, still sat behind the reception desk, still tapping away on her computer, but she gave no sign of having heard anything untoward, while the woman opposite him seemed too concerned with her own woes to pay much attention to anything else.
Matthew opened his mouth to speak, only to be cut off by the insectile buzzing of the intercom on the reception desk.
“OK Nurse, send the next one in if you please.”
Nurse Richards tore herself away from her desk and ushered the female patient through. As she moved aside Matthew caught a glimpse of her monitor and realised that the nurse had been occupying her time playing computer games, the paused screen displaying the garish coloured graphics of an alien invasion fleet in the process of being blown to smithereens.
It’s alright for her, thought Matthew, but how about providing something for the patients to play with?
A rumble of thunder caused Matthew to look out of the hospital window to the storm beyond. Lightning bursts fitfully illuminated a rain-soaked vista where wind whipped the splayed fingers of the nearby trees into a ligneous tug-of-war. Perhaps it had been the thunder that had awoken him, thunder that he had confused in his half-sleeping mind with a human scream? If he wasn’t careful this place would upset his nerves, and things were quite bad enough without his imagination making them worse. What he really needed to do while he waited was relax. Matthew closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and listened to the steady applause of rain against glass.
A cold wind whips through the stands, the wooden slats are painful against his behind, and he has to frequently crane his neck to catch a glimpse over the heads of the adults in front of him, but inside Matthew feels as warm as toast. It is a blustery Sunday afternoon in 1975, and Peter Groves has taken his seven year old son to see him play for Westgate Reserves FC in the final of the Amateur League Championship. Years later Matthew will revisit this venue in adulthood and be surprised at the paucity of the grounds, but today to his eyes it appears to be a glittering palace of marvels, awash with the colours and cries of rival supporters, the air greasy with the smell of burgers and the foul language of the crowd. These joyful vulgarians are stoically ignored by his mother (who would never tolerate such coarseness at home), but silently cheered on by Matthew, who at this point in his life feels that there must be no finer boon to adulthood than the ability to swear as fluently and as frequently as one could wish.
The match itself—against arch rivals Featherstone Athletic—is a passionate but fairly uneventful game, with Westgate Reserves stealing the only goal in the closing moments, Peter Groves punting in a hopeful lob from midfield that seemingly beats the keeper more by luck than design. Now with the match over Matthew watches the battle-weary team trudge out to the middle of the pitch for the presentation of the winning trophy—and a smaller man-of-the-match award for his father—and he is filled with a simple and boundless love.
Five hours later Matthew feels the delicious cool weight of the small silver man-of-the-match award in his hands and a guilty frisson of delight runs through him, only to be replaced by a bolt of terror as he hears the door handle behind him begin to turn. Panicking, Matthew tries to clamber down from the edifice of the trophy cabinet where he hangs suspended like a miniature mountaineer, his arms and legs pinioned against the shelving that had previously aided his ascent. The trophy cabinet door, which had proved so willing an accomplice when he had gently eased its hinges silently open scant minutes earlier, now turns traitor, and Matthew finds his jumper caught on the jamb, leaving him trussed and suspended like a chicken in a butcher’s window. As the door to the living room swings open Matthew bucks in a last frantic attempt to free himself, succeeding only at the expense of overbalancing the cabinet with him. Now lying prone at the base of the toppling edifice, unbalanced ornaments raining down about his shoulders like a metallic hail, Matthew covers his eyes in terror, and only the sound of his father’s struggles bear witness to the furniture’s arrested fall. Any relief at this delay of execution is only temporary however, and when he opens his eyes Matthew realises his punishment is still to come. Awoken by a noise, his father has ventured downstairs only to find a rat rummaging amongst his precious effects. Sat amongst the debris of discarded shelves and miniature tin cups, Matthew starts to cry even before the first of the blows has landed.
A high pitch wail cut through the stillness of the hospital waiting room, jerking Matthew instantly awake, before being suddenly snuffed out in mid-scream. Mathew had awoken to darkness, the familiar outlines of the hospital waiting room softened by pooling shadows, with only the light seeping in from the streetlamps outside providing any illumination. Having been rudely dragged from sleep Matthew cast a disorientated gaze around him, unsure at first if he had truly emerged from his slumber, a task made all the more difficult by the darkened room. Had there been a power-cut? Or perhaps the staff had closed up and gone home for the night, though surely they couldn’t have failed to notice his sleeping form?
The waiting room appeared to be deserted, with no sign of either patients or staff. Matthew winced as he hauled himself to his feet, trying his best not to put too much pressure on his still untreated leg, and moved deeper into the gloom. From somewhere beyond the reception desk a curious sound was issuing, but his eyes were unable make out anything beyond vague indistinct shapes in the blackness behind the partition. The sound was a ratcheting, clacking noise, eerily reminiscent of someone repeatedly clicking upon the bones in their fingers, but who would be sat in the dark doing that?
“Nurse?” called Matthew, casting his voice out into the blackness like a fisherman angling for a bite, but his words were swallowed whole by the murky depths. Still the regular clicking went on, and Matthew did his best to soothe his nerves by justifying the sound: a clock; a bird’s beak rapping upon a window; the uneasy digestion of a heating unit turning over in its sleep.
Suddenly the shrill cry that had awoken him earlier cut through the air again, only to be immediately followed by the incongruous sound of several people laughing. Turning his head to place the sound, Matthew realised that it was coming through the door that led further into the hospital, a door which his dark acclimatised eyes could now make out had been left slightly ajar.
Matthew hobbled painfully towards this inner door, determined to uncover the source of this mystery and, damn it all, get some treatment for his leg, which seemed to have bloated in his sleep until it now felt as though he were carrying around some monstrous dead appendage entirely divorced from him.
The door swung open upon a carpeted corridor, at the end of which lay another door, which was marked as TREATMENT ROOM A. The door was closed, but the room beyond it was lit, and the pale light cast through an indented glass panel illuminated the corridor beyond. Peering closer, Matthew could make out the outlines of what appeared to be a group of figures surrounding a bed, though the frosting on the glass rendered their shapes gross and distorted.
“Easy does it Gerald—careful—careful!”
“I’m OK—I’ve got it—I’m going to win this time—unless—whoops—that’s hit a nerve!”
Another piercing cry rang out, and Matthew took a fearful step back.
“Well Gerald—I rather think you’ve lost this one!”
A fresh burst of laughter followed Matthew as he turned tail and fled back down the corridor, unsure as to whether or not he was the victim of a practical joke, but unwilling to stay and find out. Whatever was going on here he wanted no part of it, and Matthew decided that he would rather suffer the additional discomfort of a trip to the Accident and Emergency department at the main Brichester hospital than trust to his chances anymore in this madhouse.
Matthew stumbled back across the waiting room, using the empty chairs as temporary crutches to aid his progress, only to find that the external doors had been locked. Deliberately rousing his anger to overcome the growing fear, he made his way back over to the reception desk, determined to find some means of escape—perhaps the switch that controlled the automatic entrance was located back there?
As he awkwardly lifted the partition flap he noticed that in his haste to flee the corridor he had left the internal door open, and the light cast from the treatment room beyond was enough for him to make out that the darkened alcove was not entirely deserted after all. Sat down with her back to him, facing the wall like a naughty schoolgirl, was the motionless figure of the reception nurse, head bowed over something in her lap. As he slowly approached her Matthew realised that the woman was the source of the clicking sound, almost as though she was ticking like a bomb.
“Nurse?” Matthew whispered, his voice catching in his throat. He swallowed, reached an arm towards her shoulder and tried again more forcefully. “Nurse—I need your help. Something very strange is happening here.”
His arm came to rest upon her shoulder, and the motion caused the office chair she was sat upon to swivel around. Although the movement meant she was now facing him, the nurse made no attempt to meet his gaze, her concentration fixed firmly on the object held in her lap. Her fingers worked busily at a small cube of interlocking brightly coloured squares—Matthew dimly recognised the puzzle from a fad in his youth—and the plastic rub of the pieces as they slid around a central pivot was the source of the bone-like clicking sound he had heard earlier.
“Nurse!” he called louder, receiving no response when he gently shook her shoulder, her glazed eyes seeming to look through him when he waved a hand in front of her face. Matthew gently reached out a hand and prodded her cheek, looking to provoke a reaction, anything to wake the woman from her seemingly catatonic state, only to encounter a curiously pasty substance, cold to the touch. The woman’s flesh was soft and yielding, and Matthew felt a surge of revulsion as his fingers slid unresistingly up to their joints in the soft dough of her face, before a deeper layer of pulsing warm matter finally blocked their progress. With a yell of revulsion he pulled his hand back in an involuntary jerk, in the process tearing away the lower half of the nurse’s face, the lips and chin coming away with a sound like ripping Velcro. Where the nurse’s jaw had been was now revealed a collection of glistening green tubes, a pulsating mass of frond-like tentacles that drooped over a wet red hole of a mouth. At last the nurse’s eyes looked up from her puzzle, and as the creature’s gaze met his own Matthew took a stumbling step backwards in fear.
“Hello Mr Groves,” familiar feminine tones issued incongruously from the creature. “Wanna play?”
So focused was he on the monstrosity before him that he completely failed to hear the tread of heavy footsteps approaching him from behind, yet when he felt the enfolding embrace of strong arms about his chest and the wad of noxious smelling cotton pressed over his mouth Matthew embraced the oblivion willingly.
“It’s just not fair!” pouts Jane. “How come you get to have all the fun?”
“You know why—Dad thinks you’re too—delicate.”
“Delicate?”
Matthew had to admit that at this moment his sister looked anything but delicate. Pulling herself up to her full height she was nearly as tall as himself, despite being ten months younger than his own nine years, and as she stood with clenched hands on hips in a pose of angry defiance he felt a wave of embarrassment at his father’s attitude. When confronted over such matters Peter Groves would wax lugubriously about her young age, her family history of brittle bones, or her delicate nature, but the unspoken heart of the matter was the simple fact that Jane was a girl, and as such she was to be denied the physical pursuits that so frequently occupied her brother and father. Naturally this exclusion made Jane furious, as she was expected to stay at home with her mother while Peter and Matthew would roam the countryside, but though Matthew was sympathetic to his sister’s plight he found it difficult to be truly sorry on her account, suspecting that it was the forbidden nature of these trips that most accounted for their allure. Besides which, it wasn’t as though Peter Groves was actually showering Matthew with affection on these outings so much as reliving a second childhood vicariously through his son. In Matthew’s opinion his father could be a little too enthusiastic for physical pursuits, constantly pushing his son through endurance-sapping countryside walks and improvised sporting events, and many was the time when struggling through extremes of weather Matthew would think of his sister securely ensconced in the dry and warmth of their home and feel something like envy.
“Well, when we get back I’ll play with you,” offers Matthew, already anticipating the weary limbs that will doubtless be the legacy of his father’s latest outing, but just as wary of his sister’s fragile temper at this moment in time.
“Would you do that Matthew, really?”
“Sure. If we have time. What do you want to play?”
“How about ‘Doctors and Nurses’?”
So it is that five hours later Matthew finds himself garbed in his sister’s make-do medical outfit, a back-to-front white shirt digging painfully into his armpits, while luminous yellow washing-up rubbers double for surgeon’s gloves. Jane herself sports a far more convincing outfit, but then this is a regular game for her, her parents having bought her a nurse’s dressing-up outfit complete with plastic stethoscope for her seventh birthday. They are in Jane’s room, an explosion of colourful clothes, ornaments, games and knickknacks vying for attention. Pop artists and movie stars—mostly male, mostly topless—surround them on every side, pinned to the wall in a silent tableau, mute witnesses assembled for the upcoming operation. Tell-tale Blu-tack bulges mar these idols’ flawless flesh like tumours lurking beneath the skin, the tiny raised hillocks adorned with thumbprint whorls resembling obscure tribal markings.
In the centre of the room—a bed; in the bed—the usual patient. The operation is about to begin.
“Are you ready doctor?”
“Ready nurse.”
The patient struggles half-heartedly against the loosely knotted school ties serving as restraints.
“Is he OK?”
“Yes, he’ll be fine. He’s been here before. But—I think we need to operate now.”
“Yes doctor.”
The patient lets out something between a moan and a yawn, and Jane leans over and pets the family cat on the head.
“Come on now Gadget, we really need to operate so you can be well again.”
The cat opens its mouth in a disinterested yawn, the meaty stench of its moist breath causing Jane to moue under her flimsy plastic mouth mask.
“Scalpel,” demands Doctor Mathew.
“Scalpel,” confirms Nurse Jane, pressing the knife Matthew normally reserves for his model-making projects into his outstretched hand with an enthusiasticly meaty slap.
Matthew looks down at Gadget as he lies prone beneath him. The fat tabby cat is normally a willing—or at least oblivious—actor in this play, but today he seems unusually frisky, the normally lethargic creature struggling against its bonds as if sensing some impending danger. Matthew reaches out a gloved hand to steady the animal, the rubber glove causing static electricity to momentarily ruffle the cat’s mottled fur in an invisible breeze, and moves the knife a little closer. Of course, he wasn’t really going to cut Gadget, but he needed to make it look good for the spirit of the game. An inch from its body Matthew traces the curves of the cat, cutting the air with a grim concentration. Gadget blinks up at him with his hypnotic green and black diamond-irised eyes, and Matthew idly entertains the notion of bringing the scalpel lower. How would it feel if he were to puncture one of those eyes, he wonders, would the surface break apart like a pricked egg-yolk as the unyielding knife slid through soft matter?
Gadget suddenly bucks violently beneath him, and Matthew struggles to hold the creature still, dropping the knife onto the bed and calling for his sister’s help. Displaying an agility at odds with its usual indolent manner, the cat twists in its bonds, one of the ties coming free as it makes a mad dash for freedom. Matthew grabs hold of the creature’s back legs in an attempt to arrest its progress, only for the cat to turn around and sink its claws into his face.
Silver stabs of pain cut through Matthew’s flesh, stinging him awake.
”Gadget?”
Where was he? His surroundings were hidden in darkness, but Matthew could feel the soft contours of a bed beneath him. He tried to sit up and found that he could not move, straps across his body binding him tight. His mind reeled as he struggled to comprehend what had happened to him. Matthew groaned as his memory slowly returned and he remembered the nightmare of the last few hours: the hospital waiting room; the mysterious activity in the room beyond; the puzzle playing nurse with the false face.
A bright light suddenly erupted over his head, momentarily blinding him with its glare. As his vision slowly cleared Matthew began to take in his surroundings—a hospital theatre room, harsh light glinting off of tiled walls, metal troughs and sinks running at waist height around the room’s circumference. Matthew lay in the centre of the web, a cocooned spider hemmed in by drips and humming machinery, whilst an overhead light burned with such intensity it forced tears from his eyes. He was not alone.
Matthew recognised the oddly jocular doctors from earlier in the evening as they stood at the end of his bed, their previously pristine white coats now splattered with streaks of blood. Off to one side stood Nurse Richards, or at least the thing that pretended to be Nurse Richards, the tattered remnants of her lower jaw hanging limply while the exposed tubular mass beneath writhed like excited sea anemones tasting the air.
Aware that he was awake, one of the three doctors coughed politely as though preparing to launch a conversation opening gambit at a dinner party. “Oh, hello—welcome back to the land of the living Mr Groves, at least temporarily. Yes, you were right to be suspicious, but not quite fast enough on that broken leg of yours to make a run for it, were you?”
The thing that had been Nurse Richards emitted a gurgling laugh. “Still, you men—you humen—you appreciate your games—and so do we.”
Matthew struggled vainly against his bonds, the thick bands across his upper chest and midriff cutting into his flesh, whilst his arms and legs were similarly disabled.
“Yes, that’s right Mr Groves, we are indeed alien beings.” The lead doctor essayed a brief wave. “Galactic greetings and all that—no, no, please don’t get up. We were sent here on an undercover mission to learn more about you Earthlings, and the thing that we love about you most of all are the games that you play.”
The doctor opened his mouth in a feral grin, grabbed hold of his upper lip with his right hand, his lower lip with his left, and opened up his face like a purse. The skin on either side of his lips split as he pulled, an ever widening Cheshire grin that slowly exposed his real features as they slid into view like a baby’s head during childbirth, until finally the ruined mask of discarded human skin hung around his neck like some fleshy cravat. The revealed face of the alien beneath was a lumpish irregularly shaped mass of viridian hue, a half-congealed stew lacking in any recognisable symmetry. Fleshy nubs and extrusions protruded randomly from the mass, giving the impression that the head was in the process of being forced violently through a sieve, whilst nictitating orifices that could possibly have been eyes or nostrils hid amongst folds of leathery skin and tufts of hair. The only aspect of the head recognisable in any form was the mouth, a yawning red tooth-studded maw ringed by tentacle fronds, fronds that now waved in the air as the creature spoke.
“There is one of your Earth games we love more than any other—we’re going to play it right now in fact—with you. It may hurt a bit—well, quite a lot in fact—but you’ve already broken your foot playing one game, so why not get into the spirit of things and play another? After all—we’ve already prepped you for Operation . . .”
The alien being reached up with one hand, grabbed hold of the circular light above Matthew and swung it around on a central pivot. At first Matthew couldn’t understand what he was seeing, until it came to him in a flash that the reverse of the light held a large circular mirror, and he was looking down at a reflection of himself.
Strapped securely onto the operating table Matthew was more than naked, segments of his flesh having been gouged out whilst he slept, the cuts now yawning open like the mouths of dead fish. The wounds that had been inflicted upon him were being teased apart by numerous surgical clamps, their stainless steel solidity shockingly bright against the dark crimson flesh of his inner self, the surrounding skin stretched taut and white by cold mechanical tension. The open wounds, which ranged over his entire body, were kept clean by gurgling suction tubes, the humming machinery at his side draining the constantly flowing blood, whilst drips hooked to his veins replenished the supply. Inner organs and bones were now on display like exhibits in a museum, his body a human display case offering a glimpse of its most treasured possessions to the curious public.
It was only as his eyes ranged over the nightmare vision laid out above him that Matthew began to realise the full import of the creature’s words. Matthew thought back to another hospital bed, that of his father’s as he lay dying from cancer. Even robbed of physical strength Peter Groves had never entirely lost his competitive spirit, and many an awkward visiting time conversation with his family would be artfully avoided by reaching for the stack of games that he kept in his bedside locker: playing cards, chess, Scrabble—and then there was the game that Jane so enjoyed, the one where the players took turns using tweezers to remove awkwardly shaped body parts from a patient without touching the metal contacts and activating the electronic buzzer. Matthew remembered the gaudily coloured cartoon game box cover art, the supine patient with the loaf-shaped hole for the ‘bread-basket’, the corresponding humorously shaped opening for the exposed Adam’s Apple, then looked up at the reflection of his own partially flayed body in the mirror above and felt an awful moment of recognition.
A moan of desperation escaped him as he saw the alien doctor reach into a tray of instruments and select a large pair of gleaming silver tongs. The creatures huddled closer as the doctor leaned forward, surveying the playing area before him.
“Now then—let’s start with the Funny Bone shall we?” |
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