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senob dehsurc

Crushed Bones

He expected to hear doctors at work and the steady, high-pitched beeping of a heart monitor when he woke up...and he heard it.

He expected to smell the numbing scent of a room scrubbed so clean and filled so intensely with medication that it might have led to shock...and he smelled it.

He expected to feel an unnaturally built bed that made him feel stale but relaxed the way hospital beds always did...and he didn't.

No.

He felt blood, and it was running down his forearm.

Beta's eyes opened eventually, having taken their time for a full minute of being conscious. There was a pounding inside that skull of his, and it only got more intense as he tried to focus on the images blurring around him. The room wasn't as clean cut and white as he would have pictured, it wasn't even stained red with his blood.

It was just...dirty.

His head was being elevated by what felt like a brick block, one that he believed was the root cause of the headache. Faintly, a giant metal door could be seen with the latch down, locking them in. Looking up, a light fixture—more green than white in color—shined brightly onto his lower body...and Beta could only wonder why. And it was that wonder that caused his body to go rogue.

His mouth let out an unnatural gargle before his eyes rolled back into his skull, signaling his body to wrack with vibrations.

"He's waking up!"

"I can see that!"

"We need more anesthesia."

"No shit you whore."

"...What did you just call me?"

The sound of a table quite literally turning led to a sharp pain in Beta's arm, this time accompanied by a voice.
"Night night freak," it sneered before Beta could feel no more.

This time, when he woke up, it was in a hospital bed.

Beta pushed the wool blanket off of his body and struggled to sit up, feeling a faint physical memory of intense pain that had subsided over time. But it didn't feel like the natural healing process. This felt like he had been ripped apart...and put back together again.

Looking around, he saw what was definitely not his bedroom. It was a doctor's check-up room, which he could only assume by the plastic bars on the side of the bed. Instinctively reaching for his arm, ready to rip out the IV like any cliché lead character would, he understood when there was nothing there. Yet he still felt an ache where it should have been...

The T.V. sitting to the right of his bed—the only sore thumb in the room—buzzed before turning on. His armpits began to sweat involuntarily.

On the screen was a man with golden eyes and large horns sticking out of his skull, smiling away in his blue button up shirt and slacks. He stood against a green screen of a flower field full of lilies. The man clasped his hands in front of him and smiled, the invincible dimples now showing. "Hi there! You—" He pointed at Beta through the screen. "—are dead!"

Beta shook his head. "No," He shifted his position, feeling the urge to stand out all of a sudden as if it would get him out of there. "That's not possible. I'm not supposed to be here."

"Now now! Don't be alarmed!" the T.V. man said. "Even though you're dead, you're still living!"

"That's an oxymoron," Beta stated matter-of-factly to the man in the screen.