The Escape

I stumbled back as my eyes stayed glued to the license plate sticking out of that kid’s abdomen.

Nagatsuki.

Of course it was mine. I had it ordered custom. Why was it in that boy?

A gurgling noise echoed from the pipe in the girl’s belly, a river of blood and oil pouring out. Both the children reached their hands towards me. I could barely look them in the eyes – or what was left of them.

I kept stepping back away from these child-sized monsters, only to bump into something when I wasn’t looking. Resting against the small of my back was a gurney.

In a panic I whirled the gurney around and pushed it towards the boy and girl. The two were knocked over. For how long, I didn’t bother to stay to find out.

I ran as far as my legs would take me. Why were all of these things here? What had I done to deserve their company?

----

I made my way back to the pharmacy and hunkered down. Trying to make sense of all this was madness. At least here the stench of death was muted.

Those… things… that had chased me around the building should have been what troubled me most. But seeing my own body be wheeled out of that morgue? It drives a man to drink.

I smacked my lips. Damn, I was thirsty. I started going through the shelves again, looking for more booze. Weird. Someone left a six-pack of beer there. Must’ve missed it last time.

Even as I cracked it open with my good hand I puzzled over it. Was I dead? The corpse with my face upstairs suggested it. But if I was dead, how was I guzzling down this beer?

Or the next one?

Even that familiar buzz couldn’t shake my thinking. I put my hand inside my hospital gown to double-check.

My hand was ice cold. I felt no familiar beat beneath my chest. Come to think of it, I hadn’t been short of breath running from the morgue. Not for a moment.

I was dead. The empty can was quickly crushed in my hand and dropped to the floor. It was a sobering truth.

I was dead. But how?

My hand shook. What would help me think right now was a drink –

I blinked and the shelves rearranged. Before there’d at least been a bunch of bottles with long names I didn’t recognize. Now? Every brand of beer and wine I could think of. The smell was intoxicating, overpowering the lingering decay of flesh elsewhere.

I’d have thought I was in heaven if I didn’t know better. But I was going to take one for the road anyway. I needed to think.

How? The question kept ringing like I’d already gotten a hangover.

I stumbled to the door, can in hand. I didn’t bother pushing it open with my hand; I walked through.

How?

I kept sipping at the can. The license plate was sticking out of that boy. There’s only one way it could’ve gotten there. My car. It had to come off my car.

Eventually I made my way to the hospital lobby. Seats were overturned, the kiosks long abandoned. A lone fluorescent light flickered in the ceiling. And there before me was the exit. I need to escape this hell. I didn’t deserve this.

The doors slid open, revealing a dusk of a new night. The smell of death was behind me. But then, I saw what lie before me.

My car. My car was a crumpled mess. Wheels were gone. Glass was shattered. The bloodstained hood was open with the entire engine missing. And the license plate was nowhere to be found.

I felt myself start to retch as I remembered. It had been a night just like this when I made my way out of that bar. Calling a taxi was pointless. After all, I lived just ten minutes away.

My guts emptied out of the booze I’d drunk on the walk before me. Then the wailing started again. Footsteps sounded on the pavement all around me.

They were here.

To my left, the man with my engine block for a head and the woman with the headlight in her throat. It kept flickering on and off, almost blinding me. I could smell the engine oil on the man’s breath again.

To the right, the girl with no head and the boy with my license plate.

And stepping out from behind the car, the old woman in the hospital gown with my engine’s pistons for eyes. The one I’d seen at the start.

They were wearing my car. No. The car had killed them. But I had driven the car.

“What?” The older woman hissed at me, drawing close. Each step I could hear the clanking of metal. Her hand gestured to the other abominations around me. “What?!”

And it clicked. Even in my drunken state, I could see the man and the woman holding hands. The ring on what was left of hers.

A family of five, and their matriarch stood before me. Five people dead, covered in bits and pieces of my car.

And one driver who couldn’t hold his beer.

I couldn’t move. I wanted to throw up but there was nothing left to give. All I could do was watch the elderly woman shuffle towards me.

She got in arm’s reach of me, and it was only then I saw she had the tire iron I kept in the back clutched in her hands. The pistons in her eyes were slowly pushing and pulling out of her skull, her veins filled with nothing but gasoline.

“What do you have to say?” her voice rumbled.

My voice quivered. On reflex I started to sip from my can again – the can! Betrayed by my wingman for so many late evenings.

“I don’t deserve this,” I sputtered. “It’s not my fault. What about my life?!”

I had more to say but the old woman struck me across the head with my tire iron. I crumbled to the ground, barely able to speak. Blood poured down my face as I fumbled with the can of beer left in my hand. I was tempted to take one last drink. But instead, I plead with the monster.

“S’ the beer.” I held up the can I’d been drinking from. “S’ the beer’s fault, not mine!”

I looked up and saw the iron come down again.

-----

Everything ended. Everything stopped.

Two figures in identical white approached each other in front of that decrepit hospital. They stopped just short of the pool of blood standing at the entrance – and the beaten body in a hospital gown lying there.

Uriel looked down. He knelt beside the man and shook his head. “Here we are again.”

“Ugh.” The woman could barely stomach looking at the body. “Does it always end this way?”

“Only when they fail.” Uriel snapped his fingers. The pooled blood at their feet began receding back where it came. Once the last drop of blood returned, the body itself gently lifted into the air and rested at the level of the woman’s waist. “Come. We must prepare him again.”

The woman followed him into the hospital. The smell hit her first. If she had the ability to be sick, she would have immediately. As they went deeper and deeper into the halls, she could see fusions of man and machine stumble down the halls.

“Are they necessary?” she asked.

Uriel shrugged. “A reflection of his wrongdoing.” He gestured to one side, where there was a pharmacy stocking itself with various ‘medicine’. “Each hell is one of their own making. And that is how it must be. For how can one hope to ask for forgiveness if they never understand the consequences of their actions?”

She wondered if such cruelty was warranted. It was not like she did not know what this man had done. His file was clear on that.

And yet there was so much pain that led him to that point. Did he ever have a chance? Would he have one now?

“How long does it take for someone to escape?”

The man stopped – and the hovering body remained still. “It depends on the person. Some are more willing than others to seek forgiveness. Others require more time. There’s a lot of people who’ve been here for ages and done far worse. Germans, Spaniards, Mongols, Romans… and they’ve shown no sign of ever getting out.”

The woman looked back to the body that was hovering next to her. The beatings he’d suffered had almost been undone. His hand was being mended. It was like nothing had happened at all.

“But he will get out.” She was half-asking and half-hoping.

Uriel nodded. “Someday. But only he can tell us when.” He started walking again. “It’s a lot better than the old system. People were locked up and they threw away the key. At least this way there’s an end.”

The two emerged in an abandoned operating room, with surgical tools littering dusty trays and a heart rate monitor that had been silenced.

“Give me a hand.”

The woman grabbed hold of the man with Uriel, gently lowering him onto the operating table. According to Uriel, everything had to be set back to the beginning. The man had to be given the freedom to make his own choices. To seek forgiveness, to fail, to repeat his own mistakes, to overcome. To escape, it had to be his choice.

Uriel turned the heart rate monitor’s sound back on, a constant long beep echoing throughout the suite. “Come,” he told the woman. “We have others to visit.”

“What about him?” She looked at the man in the hospital gown.

“We’ve done what we have to.” Uriel moved to leave. “This place will take care of the rest.”

He left her and the man alone in the operating room. She looked around this lonely place. A life with so much potential, weighed down by his trauma, his grief, and his poor choices.

“Good luck.” She kissed the man on the cheek and went to leave after Uriel.

----

My head pulsed as if every heartbeat brought a hammer down on it. I shifted sideways, searching for relief in a new position, but the bed was hard, unyielding and uncomfortable no matter how I moved. Consciousness crept back in, and with it, pain—each part of my body stiff and strained.

A constant, unnerving beeping needled at me. I knew I wouldn't be falling back asleep. My eyelids felt glued shut, and when I finally forced them open, harsh light made my headache flare.

But the beeping was worse. Continuous. Loud.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

On and on, drilling straight into my skull.

I reached out to silence it, fumbling for a button—then froze right after. The device I'd just turned off wasn't an alarm.

And this wasn't my house.

I would have started to panic. But for a moment – a brief one – I felt something warm on my cheek.