Writing in the Dark: The Face of Pain: Chapter One

Check out the first chapter of my new dark fantasy/horror novel The Face of Pain below!

THE FACE OF PAIN

CHAPTER ONE

Tricia Everhart, wearing only a thin white hospital gown, wandered through a world of endless red corridors.

She didn’t know how long she had walked in this strange place, but it must have been some time, for her legs ached and her bare feet felt numb. She wanted to sit down and rest, but there were no chairs or couches in this place. Just red walls, red light panels in the ceiling, red tiled floors... The red was a deep, dark crimson, the color of old, dried blood, and for some strange reason, it disturbed and comforted her in equal measure. The light made it seem as if her own blood had seeped from her veins and now lay just beneath the surface of her skin.

There were large, framed pictures on the walls, but instead of peaceful scenes of a lush, green forest, ocean waves breaking on a shore, or a field of colorful flowers, they were grisly photographs of automobile and industrial accident victims, their bodies mutilated and mangled, many damaged so severely that it was impossible to tell they had been human. Seeing these images made Tricia’s stomach roil with nausea, and she kept her eyes averted as she passed them. Speakers were set into the ceiling at regular intervals, but instead of playing soothing music, what came out were the sounds of people moaning in pain, sobbing in despair, begging to be released from their misery. She’d been hearing these terrible sounds for what felt like hours, maybe even days, and she still hadn’t become used to them. It didn’t help that she hadn’t seen another person during the entire time she’d been here. The isolation made this place feel even more sinister, especially because she had the sense that she was being watched, although she’d seen no security cameras anywhere.

This place felt deeply and profoundly wrong in a way she sensed but didn’t fully comprehend. She had been searching for an exit the entire time she’d been here – although she couldn’t remember coming to this place – but so far, she hadn’t found one. There were numerous doors on either side of the corridors, painted red, of course, each with a rectangular metal plate (also red) on the surface with engraved letters. The names on these plates made no sense to her: The Blinding Room, Organ Exchange, Traumacide Center, and neither did those names that indicated offices: Dr. Vomitus, Dr. Fleshcoat, Dr. Devilhand… This was a twisted, nightmarish version of a medical facility, the kind of place where the physician’s oath might begin with First do great harm.

“This has to be a dream,” she thought. It couldn’t be anything else.

And yet, everything felt so real. The floor was solid beneath her bare feet, and the air in the corridors was cool, so much so that she hugged herself for what little warmth it provided. She’d hoped that she’d come across a door labeled Laundry where she could sneak in and hopefully “borrow” some warmer clothes, like maybe scrubs or a lab coat. But so far, she hadn’t found such a door. The odor in this place was awful, a combination of gasoline and rotting meat, and she breathed through her mouth so she wouldn’t have to smell it. But that made her throat feel raw and her lungs ache. She feared she was inhaling some toxic gas, but there was nothing more she could do but keep walking and hope she finally found a way out of here.

Tricia was a short, petite woman with straight brown hair, cute rather than beautiful. People often patronized her because of her height, whether consciously or not, and so she’d developed a take-no-shit attitude. But here, in this place, she did feel small and helpless, and she had to keep reminding herself she was a grown-ass woman who could handle anything that came at her…she hoped.

She felt as if she’d been in a hospital – a normal one – not long ago, but the fumes in the air had made her lightheaded, and she found it hard to remember specific details. She could recall emotions, though, and the two strongest that she associated with hospitals were grief and terror. These emotions were so raw and blistering that she was grateful that the events that caused them eluded her.

She heard a voice in her mind then, soft, kind, understanding.

“You know the old saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step? What that hoary bit of wisdom left out is that the entire journey is comprised of many single steps, and each one can feel like a monumental undertaking. But finding the strength – or the sheer stubbornness – to keep taking those steps, one after the other, is what allows us to continue moving forward.”

She’d taken a lot of single steps since finding herself in this awful place, and while she was definitely moving forward, she had no idea if she was moving toward anything. But a few moments later, she turned a corner and had her answer.

This hallway was short, only ten feet long, and it ended in a set of double doors. Above it were black letters that appeared to have been burned into the plaster, and they formed two words.

Maltreatment Center.

She suddenly felt a powerful urge to turn and run, and if her legs and feet hadn’t been so sore, she might’ve done so. But she hesitated, and the double doors burst open, and a smiling woman in a red nurse’s uniform rushed out, clipboard held in one hand. The woman was bald, and the right side of her head was marred by a long, bloody gash. The nametag over her left breast identified her as Nurse Skullcrack, and given the woman’s head wound, Tricia thought the name appropriate.

“You’re right on time for your appointment, Tricia.”

The woman’s voice was monotone, and her face displayed no emotion. The left side of her body drooped slightly, and her arm hung motionless at her side. Tricia was no doctor, but she suspected these physical effects were due to the nurse’s head injury.

Tricia didn’t know how to respond to the woman, and Skullcrack frowned and consulted her clipboard, which, Tricia now saw, had nothing on it. The nurse looked at Tricia once more.

“You are Tricia Everhart, aren’t you?”

Tricia finally found her voice.

“Yes.”

Skullcrack’s frown eased, and the faintest hint of a smile touched her mouth.

“I recognize your voice. I’m face blind, thanks to this.” She pointed to her head wound. “But considering how much of the staff here looks, it’s a blessing most times.”

Now it was Tricia’s turn to frown.

“How can you recognize my voice? We’ve never met.”

“Of course we have. You just don’t remember. Now follow me, please.”

Skullcrack turned around and pushed through the doors. Tricia hesitated, but then she did as the nurse ordered, unable to escape the feeling that she was making a horrible mistake.

There was no reception area or waiting room inside, only a large open space the size of a football stadium. Instead of being painted red, the walls, floor, and ceiling were a startlingly bright white, and the room’s light panels glowed with normal blue-white fluorescence. She hurried to catch up to the nurse, bare feet slapping on the tiled floor.

“What kind of maltreatment goes on in here?” she asked.

Skullcrack answered without looking at her.

“All kinds, really. Physical, mental, spiritual, subatomic, aetheric, temporal, transdimensional… If you’ve got it, we can maltreat it.”

She chuckled, but Tricia didn’t find anything funny in the nurse’s words.

They weren’t the only ones in the huge room. In the middle was a stainless-steel examination table that looked uncomfortable as hell, and next to it stood a stout middle-aged man in a crimson lab coat. He wore a metal amulet on a gold chain around his neck, upon which was the figure of a snake eating its own tail. Tricia felt as if she should be familiar with the symbol, but she couldn’t place it. She couldn’t make out the man’s face at first, but as Skullcrack and she got closer, his features came into sharper focus. His white hair fell past his shoulders, and he had a thick white beard and mustache with the ends curled up. His eyes were a penetrating ice-blue, and she felt as if they could see into her very soul.

Frightened, Tricia turned around, intending to get out of there as fast as she could manage on her sore legs and feet…but before she could take a step toward the doors, she saw that they had vanished. Where they’d stood was now nothing but an unbroken white wall.

The doctor chuckled.

“No need to be afraid, Tricia,” he said in a rich baritone. “I’m Dr. Winterblood, one of the Red Tower’s Physickers.”

“The most highly regarded one aside from the Surgeon Supreme himself,” Nurse Skullcrack put in, and Winterblood acknowledged her praise with a nod before continuing.

“You’re here for a few last minor adjustments, nothing more. Have to make sure you’re ready before your big day tomorrow. The doors will reappear once we’re finished.”

Nurse Skullcrack had reached the doctor by this point, and she stood next to him, frowning at Tricia with impatience.

“Come now,” the woman said. “Dr. Winterblood hasn’t got all day.”

The doctor grinned at Tricia.

“The nurse is right, but only because – for the most part – time is meaningless in the Red Tower. I don’t have all day because I don’t have any time. No seconds, minutes, hours, or days…We live in an eternal present here.” The doctor’s grin fell away, and his tone became thoughtful. “Which, admittedly, does make it difficult for our patients to heal at times.”

Winterblood and Skullcrack laughed at this, but Tricia saw no humor in it. She did wonder if the fact that this place was timeless was the reason why the nurse’s head injury still looked fresh…and it would explain why it felt like Tricia had walked the Red Tower’s corridors forever before arriving here.

“Now if you’ll remove your gown and hop up on the table, we can get started.” Winterblood’s smile returned, but this time it was cold and mocking. “No need to be embarrassed. After all, I am a doctor.”

Talking to this man while she wore only a flimsy hospital gown was bad enough. But to get naked in front of him? No fucking way.

“I…just met you. I’m not really comfortable –”

“I’ve examined you many times over the years,” Winterblood said. “But it’s been necessary to remove your memory of those visits before allowing you to return home. That won’t happen this time, though. You’ll remember everything…including the things you wish you could forget.”

“Especially those,” Skullcrack said.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tricia said, “but no way in hell am I going to get naked just because you want me to.”

Winterblood looked at Skullcrack, and the nurse dropped her empty clipboard to the floor and started toward Tricia. Skullcrack’s brow was slightly furrowed, but otherwise, the woman displayed no emotion. Tricia raised her hands in front of her, palms outward, as if she hoped this gesture would ward off Skullcrack, but the nurse didn’t slow. When she reached Tricia, she grabbed a handful of the gown’s fabric, yanked with surprising strength, and tore it from Tricia’s body with a single pull. Tricia crossed her arms over her breasts to preserve what little modesty she could. She knew the effort was ineffective, but it made her feel like she had a modicum of control in the situation. They were her tits, and by Christ, she’d decide who got to see them.

She didn’t wait for Winterblood to tell her to get on the table again. She walked over to it, realized she couldn’t get on without lowering her arms, and thought, Fuck it. This was a dream, and what was the point of modesty in a dream? She removed her arms from her breasts, used both hands to mount the table, sat, and gasped at how cold the steel felt against her bare ass and the backs of her legs.

“Lie down, please,” Winterblood said.

Tricia didn’t want to. Couldn’t they at least have put down some paper or something, like in a regular doctor’s examination room? Hoping she’d get used to the feel of the metal on her skin sooner rather than later, she did as Winterblood told her – and it was even colder than she’d expected. She gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering. Nurse Skullcrack retrieved her empty clipboard from the floor and stepped near Tricia’s head.

“I need to ask you a few questions before the doctor begins,” the woman said.

Tricia saw that not only didn’t Skullcrack have any paper on her clipboard, she didn’t have a pen, either.

“Okay.”

She heard a soft hum then, and she turned her head to see a rectangular panel in the floor slide open. A second later, what looked like a block of polished obsidian rose upward, upon its flat surface a dozen or so metal instruments that appeared as if they belonged more in an auto shop than a hospital. When the table or altar or whatever it was finished rising, Winterblood stepped over to it and perused the instruments.

“We have quite a selection today, Nurse. I’m going to have a terrible time choosing.”

He muttered to himself as he picked up a tool that looked like a speculum made from rusty barbed wire. Tricia’s vagina clenched tight at the thought of that thing going inside her. Winterblood examined the bizarre thing for a moment, then put it back down with a shake of his head and selected another instrument to examine. Tricia sighed in relief.

Skullcrack looked down at her empty clipboard, as if she were reading questions instead of merely speaking them.

“First question: Have you ever wanted to kill someone, and if so, who was it?”

“You’ve got to snap out of this, Aaron! The doctor says you’re perfectly healthy!”

“But I don’t feel healthy…”

“No one,” Tricia said.

The nurse eyed her skeptically, but she moved on to the next question.

“What’s the greatest loss you’ve experienced?”

Tricia remembered a great, crushing emptiness inside her, as if her entire body had been scooped out, leaving her a hollow shell.

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Skullcrack hrumpfed but asked the third question.

“What would you do to reverse that loss if you could?”

Tricia didn’t hesitate to answer this time.

“Anything.”

Skullcrack nodded, as if pleased.

“That’s all. Thank you.”

The nurse stepped back, and Dr. Winterblood approached the table. He reached into one of his jacket pockets, removed a pair of eyeglasses, and slipped them on. He then leaned over the table and positioned his head six inches above her abdomen. She could feel his cool breath on her skin, and she found the sensation revolting. She squirmed, and suddenly Skullcrack was at the side of the table again. She smacked the clipboard against Tricia’s forehead hard enough to make motes of light dance before her eyes.

“Please remain still,” Winterblood said.

Tricia glared at the nurse, but she did as the doctor asked.

He straightened and pushed the glasses onto the top of his head.

“Everything looks good in there, Magna Mater be praised. We just need to make a few minor adjustments.”

He returned to the obsidian block, selected one of the strange devices on top, and came back to the table.

“Did you just use X-ray glasses?” she asked. “Like the kind you could order from old comic books?”

“Of course,” Winterblood said. “They’re standard equipment around here. But don’t worry. The amount of radiation they emit is negligible.”

Tricia didn’t like the sound of that. Just how negligible was negligible? But before she could ask, the doctor held up the device he’d selected. It was a scorpion, or something very much like one, formed out of silver. There were no visible seams or joints. It was as if the thing had been made by coating an actual insect in liquid metal. The sight of the thing sent a chill through her, and she had the feeling that she’d seen it before, although she had no idea when.

She remembered Winterblood’s earlier words.

“I’ve examined you many times over the last year. But it’s been necessary to remove your memory of those visits before allowing you to return home.”

“You and Argent are old friends, although of course you don’t remember,” Winterborn said. “I’m afraid this is going to hurt – a lot. But this procedure must be conducted without anesthesia. Besides, pain relief isn’t really something we do here, is it, Nurse?”

Skullcrack laughed. “No. We specialize in pain enhancement.”

Winterblood gently placed the silver creature on Tricia’s stomach. Its touch was so cold it burned, and she drew in a hissing breath. She reflexively reached out to knock the thing off of her, but Skullcrack smacked her with the clipboard again to stop her. Tricia shot the nurse a venomous glare, but Skullcrack didn’t appear to notice. Her gaze was focused on the scorpion, her eyes gleaming with anticipation.

The creature began to stir, as if it were alive. Tricia felt the feather-light touch of its legs as it moved around on her abdomen, as if searching for just the right spot. It stopped an inch below her belly button and then plunged its large front claws into her flesh. Blood sprayed as the insect began digging furiously, and Tricia screamed.

Skullcrack hit her with the clipboard again, but this time Tricia barely felt it.

“No need to make such a fuss,” the nurse said. “You’d told me you’d do anything, remember?”

The scorpion – Argent – burrowed into Tricia’s body, continuing to tear at skin and muscle as it went. Within seconds, it had penetrated so far that only its barbed tail remained visible, and then that slid down into her, and the silver creature was gone. And as it went to work inside her, the pain increased a hundredfold, and her screams intensified.

“Anything,” she reminded herself. “You’d said you’d do anything.”

She had, and she’d meant it. So she stopped screaming, gritted her teeth, and endured, tears streaming down the sides of her face the entire time.

“Anything,” she whispered, and then repeated it under her breath like a mantra. “Anything, anything, anything, anything, anything…”

* * * * *

Despite Tricia’s determination not to surrender to the pain, she passed out. There was a period of blessed, pain-free darkness for a time, but despite her wishes, awareness slowly returned to her, and she opened her eyes. She still hurt like a motherfucker, but the pain had receded to a point where it was bearable. She raised her head to look down at her abdomen, fully expecting to see her flesh mangled as severely as one of the accident victims in the photos that lined the corridors of the Red Tower. But while there was blood – and plenty of it – the skin was smooth and unmarked, with no sign that it had been touched, let alone ripped into by a scorpion-like creature made of silver.

Dr. Winterblood and Nurse Skullcrack stood at the side of her table. Argent, still slick with her blood, perched on the doctor’s shoulder, as if it were a pet.

“My little friend repaired your flesh when he was finished,” Winterblood said. “The wound would’ve made an exquisite scar, but we can’t have the so-called physicians in your world seeing any signs of our work.” He lowered his voice, as if imparting a secret. “To be honest, it’s mostly a professional pride thing.”

Some blood remained on his hands, and as he wiped them on his lab coat, Tricia understood the reason why there was so much red everywhere in this place. It was to hide the blood.

Nurse Skullcrack spoke then. “You’ll be happy to know that after all this time, you’re finally ready.”

Tricia pushed herself into a sitting position, then frowned.

“Ready for what?”

Winterblood grinned at her and spread his arms wide, reminding her of a circus ringmaster preparing to start the show.

“This!”

Every surface in the room – walls, floor, ceiling – displayed the same image. At first, Tricia didn’t understand what she was looking at. It was a mass of discolored flesh and tarry blood, but when an eye opened in the middle of it, she realized what the horrible thing was, and she screamed until her throat was raw and bleeding.

LINKS

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Amazon Paperback: https://tinyurl.com/44wt2tdw
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SCHEDULED APPEARANCES

Superstars Writing Seminar. Feb. 4-5. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

A Tasting with Friends. Feb. 26, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Benham’s Grove Event Center. Centerville, Ohio.

Akron Book Fest. March 7. Akron, Ohio.

Book Release Event for C.J. Dotson’s Novel These Familiar Walls. April 15, 7 p.m. Barnes & Noble, Fairlawn, Ohio.

“The Art of Suspense” workshop. May 4, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Dayton Metro Library, Wilmington Stroop Branch.

StokerCon. June 4-7. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Shore Leave 46. July 10-12. Lancaster Wyndham Resort and Convention Center, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Gen Con Writers Symposium. July 29-August 2. Indianapolis, Indiana.

Into the Springs Writers Workshop. August 7-9. Yellow Springs, Ohio.