Mr. Trager

Illegal Substances

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19th

The heels of my shoes clicked against the cold porcelain tile beneath my feet. I walked with purpose, the echoing clack of my foot steps striking fear into the bedridden men around me. With my thumb and forefinger, both shielded in a thin layer of white latex, I peeled back one of the dreary blue curtains. The air within that closed off area was stale and rancid, heavy with the stench of iron and biohazardous rot. I lifted the fresh surgical mask that hung limply around my neck, adjusting it to cover my nose and mouth. Before me, arms and legs bound to the metal bed frame with thick leather straps, laid a man. A thin red line, the incision, streaked down this patient's bare torso. A termination in progress.

"You're late." Richard Trager spoke softly, turning his attention from our patient, to me.

I stared down at the bleeding man, his shallow breaths causing the open wound to expand and contract in a grotesque manner. It didn't disturb me, rather I found it to be interesting.

"My apologies, Doctor." My lips seemed to form words on their own.

Trager's hand reached out and touched my cheek with a gentle caress, leaving a smear of fresh warm blood in it's wake.

"Just in time." He whispered, placing a sterile stainless steel scalpel in the palm of my left hand.

I swallowed, positioning the instrument in my right hand, like one would hold a pen. The patient was heavily sedated, that was common knowledge, yet his somehow conscious eyes never left mine. It was an eerie stare, the look of a man who knew these were his last moments.
I pressed the blade into his abdomen, sliding through the delicate skin like a knife through butter. My cut ran perpendicular to the original, creating a cross shaped opening, that would make it easy to access what was inside. Coming close at my side, Trager slipped a gloved hand into the patients lower belly. This was a termination, accuracy and precision were not necessary. Our unfortunate subject gave every effort to escape Rick's merciless inflictions, but the sedatives allowed little more than a weak writhe, and a lower choking groan. My Doctor's hand sunk deeper, the gushing blood reaching the rim of his glove. With a twist of the wrist and a few sickening tugs, he pulled something free from his little living science experiment. He held up the dripping fleshy mass at eye level, some unidentifiable organ, pulsing and slick with gore. I took the vile thing into my own hands, feeling wet heat through the thinness of my gloves, and placed it on the silvery metal cart behind me.

"Easy," Trager removed his mask just as he had before, the sight of what lied beneath it leaving my mouth agape. "Isn't it?"

His lips were torn and bloody on the left side of his mouth, the exposed teeth glistening in a coat of deep red. I held my breath needlessly, feeling the sting of tears prick the corners of my eyes.
My Rick, my lover, what had happened to him?
The screaming ring of his alarm clock ripped me from the prison of my dreams, my body jerking as I opened my eyes to the real world again.

"Mir?" Trager's voice, much softer than the one I'd just heard in my dreams.

I couldn't answer his caring inquiry, I was frozen. No nightmare had ever been quite so vivid, so real. My fists clung to the silken sheets, a blank stare on my face. Two nights in a row I'd dreamt of that horror.

Rick sat up, lifting my cheek from the downy pillows. "Why have you been crying?"

"A-am I?" My words shook in time with the chattering of my lower jaw.

His thumb wiped a tear from under my eye. "You're not having nightmares too, are you?"

"N-no." I lied. "Just one bad dream."

It didn't sound quite as monstrous when I put it like that. What would spur him to assume that this was a reoccurring event?

"If that happens, you need to tell me, alright?" His eyes were intense, stern and serious.