I wanted to try something different for this month's story, so if you're w fan of most of my other short stories, this may not be to your liking, however, it is still familiar enough that it falls in line, but walks a bit out-of-step as the other stories. In-truth, few stories I've written see ever actual,y similar. Still, I found this one to be a bit of a pain to write. I have started next month's story as well, and that one is also looking to be slightly unique to the majority of the other story. Still, this one is far from my favorite, and I doubt I have many that ever will be as low-tier as this story, but this is personal criticism, and if anything I've lowered the bar to ground level, but if I can reach rock bottom with other posts...5)3! It's a goal to strive whether to go up, or down. Still, this story is short, far shorter than I expected when first writing it, but it's little a story I just started writing without much prior thought, and I'm still surprised it's as coherent as it sounds.
So enjoy this month's short story:
The Asylum
In the kingdom of insanity, the jester rules the court. Gertrude was fiddling away with this notion, as her brain slowly decayed inside her skull, sloshing about like a jelly bowl at some jazz party in the dawn of the twentieth century. The occasional drool forced itself out of her mouth, and hung as low as the ichor from the cut of titanium skin; coagulating into a fine puddle of memories she was gradually fighting internally to keep from just flittering off into nowhere.
The nurses stopped by once an hour, but never timely, in-fact once she was into same sort of deep recounting most people receive from staring majestically into a brown stain on the wall as it becomes more paint than parasite, she was delivered back, although partially; to the land of the living where pills would fog her up more than clarify her circumstances. Invested in her own life as much as one with a decaying brain disorder of some third-world micro virus could allow, she barely relied on the reptilian brain of fuck and eat. The former stopped years before her inoculation from the world she loved with primrose and prairie dogs, and the latter had become nothing more but a yellowing intravenous tube that has been in so long, skin had grown to surround the blood-rusted needle. The white walls, purloined with patterns of stenciled pastel to give off some lavish Victorian feel, all a way of perusing out mor capital for the unresponsive vegetables that gather to the sanctuary, a will-o-the-wisp of proper medical treatment. A lie built from a brochure to make Ashoka blush.
"Ah Gertrude, and how are you reacting to the new dosage? Hmm....all cognitive function seems to be at a minimum, heart rate is elevated, blood pressure is nominal however, Chock it off to that little heart murmur." The doctor, a faceless, nameless presence that tortured the white-haired greasy old woman, shaking from the jitters in her chair, came up to her and patt d her sweat-soaked forehead.
Gertrude couldn't asset, she could barely fidget I to place when the latex glove worked its way down the front of her smock, as he felt both her breasts for lumps, then removed the glove, and replaced it with another, feeling around her groin as a glistening drop of spittle dropped to the floor, making the tiniest of dew drop splashes.
"Looks like everything's in place...oh, you got something on your lip there, dear Gertrude." He swiped across her mouth with the very glove that was moments ago inside her, leaving a pungent, dirty stench just below her nostrils, as she slightly squirmed, and moaned in frustration. The doctor, masked smirked behind the barrier, an evil smile full of teeth right behind the membrane.
Use tried to cough, she tried to struggle out of the catatonic state she had found herself in just days before whence she awoke to the paining numbness.
"I'll be back to check on you come tomorrow."
The doctor: nameless, faceless, and hidden by the glossing over of her eyes, locked her back in the room, dimming the lights to a shade, like a dying family trapped in glass, she sat in a strain. The world was unusually cruel to her today. She wasn't without some comfort....a centipede was nice enough to scurry across her lap, stopping for just enough time to pronounce itself, and then slowly crawl down her side.
The world scrawled by like sluggish words traipsing by a glossy screen. Then a sleep, one that comes not easily for the old gal, but one that comes thoroughly, and with the force of the madness. She couldn't move, but that was the pint of the place, wasn't it? She had a tendency of running off, leaving behind a snail trail of drool. The good doctor had kept her catatonic for weeks now...months even? No, it couldn't have been that long...but it was terribly accurate with the marks in the walls that historically the room was housed until the resident living in it had gone mad with isolation. Poor Gertude knew she was barely holding onto her own sanity, but even if she had done everything the doctor had asked, then she believed she'd still be stuck in the circumstances she was in...he had not cared about what her mental state had been.
Hours went by, piling on like flapjacks on a heart attack. She moved her finger, but it barely grazed the arm of the seat she had been forced in for days. The IV was dripping in that casading, almost tranquil-sounding way that comes with the brain looking for an escape from anything but what's happening inside the body at that precise moment. The sound to escape the pain.
Days, weeks, I the, years, they flowed by as the disease ate her brain. It was a nasty little monster, chewing away at her grey matter like Abu try oyster looking to shit out the pedal of wisdom. She didn't mind that her brain was turned to mush, she didn't even mind that life was becoming more and more apathetic. What mattered to her most was that Gertude was not sure whether she was alive, or dead.
The lasting affect that was there on her listless mind, slowly decaying away from the foundation of her skull was whether or not she was going to survive the week, the month...the hour? She hadn't any inclination if the hour...oh but what a pretty blue light that gave her the most rewarding headache, that proved she was still feeling something in that nagging noggin of hers!gertude decided that in her nice little blue blouse, with her sagging ass eke flapping out of the back end of the gown, she was determined to move, even if it were an inch an hour, out of that room, but first, out of her chair. She may be delayed by a century to reach her old house, which was about sixty miles away, but anything best just dying slowly in that chair, injected by the scum of that Doctor, who was watching a monster decay her brain, and wind her down to nothing but a shell. A lonely, lost she'll of a woman that was dying fast, and yet, not dying fast enough.
The next day, week, or whatever amount of time was suspects lie for her to question, the doctor came back into the room, and isn't Atlanta injected her with a serum that was thicker than petroleum jelly. She uttered a whine of pain, as her veins were stretched. She remembered the doctor promised to come back on the morrow, but was it thet soon? Felt like only a shot while ago she had mentally fought off the man, with her inability to move, she had to only settle for a mental victory, what little she could. The doctor licked his ravenous chops, and delved deeply into the vein, creating a bore hole in her arm, where w tiny bit of red plasma dust where her blood once flowed sputtered out, her arm bruised instantly, and the purple took no time to form around the giant maw, creating a third eye on her arm, blackened by the punch of medical ingenuity.
"Ah! What a beautiful mark I've left on you, dear Gertude! I must say that you've not bled so much in years. Or was it weeks? You don't quite know designer, do you, little puppet? Just standing still in the sands of time, watching everything go by in absolute isolation. Nothing else but the world we live in, right? Nothing but a world full of nothing, something sad, almost blackened out by nowhere loss of your own mind. Soon the disease will take your eyes, then your speech, and finally, it'll take your soul. Still, my injections seem to be holding back the end, but it appears to me that the world is going to fly right by you, and yet, your life is not doing anything but holding still. It's kind of beautiful that your mind cannot comprehend just how long you've been here...or did you just arrive yesterday?! Oh! How fun it must be for you not to know just what the big surprise will be....the intensity of being forever trapped in anticipation....it must be murder! Sheer murder! Well I shall return tomorrow to check up on you, yet again, and as gain, and again until I too grow old and gray!"
Gertude used all her strength to look up to the doctor, who was still smiling over his twisted work. She didn't know what had been happening to her. The urges daily, the doctor what could've been weekly or month,y, she just couldn't recall. All she kne was that she had to abandon the ship, she had to get back her sanity, and leave, but in an impossible circumstance, one either lays down, or fights until defeat. Gertude was a fighter her whole life, and slthough never the optimist, always the realist,s he had recalled her lie as something greater than herself...it belong to her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to follow. It was not the property of a deranged Doctor, it wasn't the property of anyone but her, and her alone.
The next day when the nurse came to her, Gertudeused all her strength, so, the body could spare to move her arm. The nurse didn't notice the twitch. Good....good. Each day for the next several weeks, she resisted everything she was given: drugs, torture, and the occasional rat scurry about her feet. She moved her arm, her leg, slowly, until she could feel strong, back to normal. Back to what she was before she was castrated from her power, and shot up with drugs.
Months went by, and her animosity grew, her viciousness for revenge was ever-powerful. Her spidery fingers tentatively scrambled about like a monstrous typist looking to click keys made of bones into the underworld. For generations, she had mentally prepared for everything that had been thrown at her at this end game of her life. Gertrude knew the pandemonium to follow was all she had to look forward to potentially escaping this institution.
The day came: the nurse came in as she did had daily. The doctor was supposed to be out of the office that day. Gertude knew it was the best chance she had, so she grabbed her arm. She wrangled the shot from out the nurse's hand, and prmptly stuck the syringe deep into the woman's neck. She shoved the plunger down, and released it, the two falling to the floor. Gertrude the. Removed the plunger fri. The syringe, and filled it with air. She wobbled slowly out the dorm and met an endless hallway of shade. Darkness with dank blue lights flickering above kit a trail towards her key point destination. There she saw the wriggling of other pateint's in the shadowing off the walls from their encased rooms. They re freaks, loons, and she of nothing in the comparison. She had been brought to a insane asylum u def false pretense, and her fragile. Withered body would escape whatever the cost. She was old, but sturdy, despite the shots keeping her civil, despite the drugs keeping her complacent, she was prepared for the worse.
She withered and jittered towards the front desk, a sleeping nurse with a magazine kabout yachts and other misplaced dreams was off sailing with Orince a charming. She skidded by without her noticing, and Gertude was out the door, or so she thought. The door led to another series of doors, and long hallways, as if personally set up to try and dissuade any escapee from thinking they were going in the right direction. Yet Gertude knew, she knew this had to be then proper path, for where else was the entrance, but the doors leading out of insanity, and into the clarity of a blanketed world?
"I must say, you've given the orderlies quite a stir, but my dear sweet old tuffet, with that whimsically grey mop of hsir, you're not ever close to the end."
Gertude knew the voice of the Doctor that had pillaged her very being with drugs and confusion. She knew he was out to get her, and could easily bring her back to the room. She readied the syringe,more ping it from peering eyes, and the doctor's gaze.
"Now, now, it was w valiant effort, one that I'd never seen in all my years, but you must know it's time for bed, and don't forget! Tomorrow we have an appointment with ine-another, so you must get go,entry of rest. Oh, dear girl, you didn't think it would be permitted that you leave our humble hospital? You shan't be leaving, but you'll be coming with me. You always try to leave, the lot of you. But don't you realize you cannot go? You belong here! Your loved one had abandoned you here, and here you shall stay."
The do of gripped tightly on Gertrude's arm, and a little whimper came shooting out, but she still yet to release the legal dosage of the air into the man. No, she waited m ever still, allowing him to first become still, secure in knowing that he had apprehended the prey. Then she'd strike out a predator, and pump him with the poison of the air itself, stopping the heart with just the seconds without blood.
He began to pull, but the doctor felt s slight resistance, and he slightly tensed up.
"Gertrude? Getrude! Come now! This foolishness won't win you any points with me! You're best to just come along, or else I'll have to sick the ord-"
The sound of pop of the air entering the doctor's blood vessels was like s comet colliding with the sun, and a bit of blood shot out the end of the needle as pressurized air went flowing in to graciously replace it on an astounding journey to the doctor's heart,Mohican Eileen burst with joy, and nitrogen from Gertude's plan. She watched hi fall back, and twitch momentarily in the floor, trying to grab for his Wilkie-talkie, but to no avail.
She was free, she was finally free from the mess she was left in all those years ago...although she wasn't quite sure what day it truly was, she was th akful to escape the wrath of the home she had been misplaced in, and the fresh air would feel lovely in her agitated lungs. She got through the lest set of doors, and gradually pulled open the front latch, which had a certain heft to it that she had not strained to open in what had felt like a thousand years. She stood looking out, breathing in deep lunfuls of air, but after the second huff,Moshe coughed and exhaled as if she we're being choked to death.
The sulfuric smell dampened the air, and the look about the purplish sky that was obsidian and shale stalactite, and thorny iron stalagmites that were inches from her nose. She felt a cold fire burning and sweltering her from all angles, a time of dark stringed instruments played from loudspeakers of ice, and chilling banshees shrieked by her with no pause to their maniacal cackling. Something was wrong,msomething was very wrong.
She turned back to see the doctor, standing tall, taller than the impish beast she had stuck but moments b, and he smiled at her, pulling the needle out of his pulsating neck. He flung the needle at her, and it formed into a scorpion, piercing her, and she fell to the ground. She held the stinger, and yanked it hard out from her chest, tossing it to the earth. As it wriggled and waggled away back to the owner of the syringe, she looked up at him, horrified.
"Now why did you have to go and try to escape, Gertude? You had it fairly easier than most here, but surely you're just coming to the realization of what's going on. You thought you've killed me, granted, that wa I just having a bit of fun with you, but you cannot kill that which has had no life to begin...I've not ever stepped upon your earth. I'm a demon, and you are in Hell my dear. I'm su you've realized that, and you're likely thinking how good s person you were, and that its. A mistake that sweet old ladies don't go to hell but you do! You see, you're not so innocent: a whore that mrudreed johns, retired, and had a nice family with the richest trick you've turned. Sure, you've done good things, and relented,mbut what did you forget to do? You ver kept holy the sabbath! Now, you will suffer enteral dammnation!"
And so, because she got her Saturday's mixed up with Sundays, Gertrude was forced to stare at whitewashed walls, and occasional get tormented by a demon for all eternity. The moral of the story is simple: always make sure not to confuse Saturday with Sunday, because you'll wind up in the hell fires for all eternity. Also don't eat shellfish, poor Gertude gets a conch shell stuck up her ass every other week because she ate shellfish.
I know, you're thinking: "what the hell did I just read?" I get that notion, but this was a satire, a silly little nonsensical story. It's not my greatest I know, I know, but certain,y not the worst I've done. It's deferment, and I will have longer, albeit, more average short stories coming up in the next four months. This was a silly little dumb tale, so if you feel it was stupid,mi right,y respect your opinion. I wanted to do something silky and satirical for some time, and this was close, although not the success I'd rather have with satire.
I have s very special short story of the month coming up in July or August, and I'm truly excited to see how people react to it. I'm very excited to be doing that story, and it's not going to be short, a rather long post, but a good one, well-thought out, and written to s higher caliber than say...this, but if you check the schedule, I've moved around the AMC post due to the unforeseen loss of Robert Osbourne. I'm looking to guest blog, so if you're s blogger, and need content, just shoot me s line on twitter: @mcasteditorial.
Thank you so very much for reading the Malacast Editorial, and I will be doing a full-review of Wrestlmania on that following Wednesday. It'll likely be s longer out, but it'll be worth the wait. Have s get day!
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