Doc
I am so excited. Or maybe that's not the correct word to use. What about...tumultuous? That's a more accurate description of my passionate anticipation. My wiry fingers grip the scalpel that sits my pocket, letting them slide along the exposed blade until I press hard enough to slice quite a deep wound. I look down and blood seeps through the thick fabric of my lab coat. It's operation time. I find Miles' room again and he's sitting on the bed, staring at his legs. He jumps with fright and crashes against the back wall, gaze darting back and forth with terror, desperately searching for an scape route in his field of vision. It won't work. You soured the entire room yesterday looking for an escape and didn't find anything. Doesn't he know I watched him?
You know that saying; an apple a day keeps the doctor away? He might be taking that a little too literally. His arm is stretched towards me, hand wrapped around a large apple I don't even know how he acquired. Did I leave it here when I was decorating?
"Be gone demon! I have an apple!" he shouts at me, crazed and maybe hallucinating with shock and horror. He looks so adorable and I raise a hand to my mouth to laugh in acute amusement, tired wheezing expelling through my hand, muffled laughter that frightens him even more. I stop laughing instantaneously, my face becoming stern when my the quickly drops. Miles doesn't look so scared of me now. He's more afraid of me when I'm laughing than when I'm angry. He'll learn. I reach over, grabbing the apple from his trembling hand and taking a bite that actually hurts my teeth a Hell of a lot. I watch him gulp harshly, trepidation settling in.
"Demons aren't your biggest problem right now," I reach forward and grip his ankle. I drag the experiment out the room, off the bed until its head bangs on the floor. I don't think it registers the pain; it's screaming s loud, hot tears flowing down it's cheeks. The experiment writhes on the floor and curses, its throat must be sore by now. Thankfully by the time we get to my sitting room the experiment has made itself weak from struggling, and is passively sobbing, letting me take it wherever I want.
By the ankle, I pull it down another flight to my surgery, watching its eyes roll back into its head, falling into catatonic shock. It surprisingly doesn't notice the scalpels like my other experiments did, but rather focuses on the blood-soaked curtain that hangs down by the bed. I haul my experiment to his feet, not being as gentle as I perhaps should as my experiment cries in pain. I frown, why? "Get on the bed," I instruct, but it doesn't. It just stands there staring at the wall. What is this called again? Passive resistance? I frown, lifting the experiment up onto the bed and plopping it down with little effort. In the middle of tying it up I notice crimson pool spreading across the sheets. I look back at the floor that's weird. I haven't even touched it, yet tiny puddles of blood are left behind on the floor. I look at the experiment.
"Your feet..." I crouch, adjusting my glasses and looking at small, open wounds on its soles. Ripped scabs, and some are infected. Fuck, I should have checked it yesterday. I should have checked him yesterday. Miles, Miles Hemming who is a person and not a doll. "Stay there,"
I wander to the other end of the room where the sink stands, grabbing my first aid kit and alcohol swabs. I kneel at the foot of the bed and with tweezers begin to gently pick the stones from his feet. He winces every time, tugging his feet back out of reflex. "It's alright," I soothe, grabbing an alcohol wipe. "This will sting,"
I begin to clean them, taking care to get every last bit of dirt. The yelp he makes when the alcohol stings him actually startles me. It makes me look up to see his face warped with pain. Such little pain elicits such a response? How interesting it will be to experiment him. I put gauze on the worst cuts and bandage up his feet to prevent further damage. I let go of his legs and they hang, and I begin cleaning the floor. Miles sits there quietly, watching me with a curious look.
"You're malnourished," I say that in a weird tone as I scrub the blood off the floor. I'm not actually concerned am I? No, I'm just being conversational. It' an observation and I'm reminding myself... aloud... in a conversational tone. I wipe the thought from my memory as I put away the cleaning supplies. I pull up the scalpel set on its tray to the side of the bed, taking my favourite one, still soaking in my fresh blood, from my pocket.
"D-Don't I get knocked out? My other doctor knocks me out!" Miles cries, wriggling around in the bonds I tie him in. Finally, he's snapped back to reality and realises what's happening.
"I prefer not to do that," I shrug, picking up a small scalpel with a serrated edge. "I don't know why, anaesthetic just seems unnatural," I explain, knowing it's not a proper explanation, but it's the only one I know how to give. It's the most honest explanation I have an can't really elaborate. I run the flat side of the blade across his cold flesh, slowly. Soon I put slight pressure on his stomach, using the sharply pointed tip of the blade until blood slowly trickles from the wound, and I can push down through his entrails with slipping ease. As I do, he screams. The scream is piercing, echoing louder than all the patients I've had before him, hoarser and with such an intense, honest misery. The scream invades my eardrums, it ululates through my head and makes my brain hurt.
It is severely off-putting - the scream of a child, loud and aggravating. I can't continue with the procedure, at least not with his mouth uncovered. So I leave him there bound in leather straps, his small body flowing as blood pours unabated over the sides of the bed. It clatters down torrentially like waterfalls that blind my vision. A deep scarlet river starts to expand across the floor of the operating room. I'll leave him here until he calms down, I think as I close the door, soundproofing it.
For now, a cup of tea is needed. A paracetamol would also be helpful to calm the constant ringing in my head left behind from the screams. He certainly is a screamer, loudest I've ever had. I open my kitchen cupboards and frown. Great, of course. I'm all out of tea.
YOU ARE READING
An Apple A Day (Wattys2019)
Horror"Doc?" "Yes?" "Teach me to love you," A young boy, his view of normality shredded to pieces by the bleakness of his life, is kidnapped and kept captive by an insane doctor for experimentation and pleasure. It isn't long before the doomed souls fo...
