K. M. Tepe
[ Based on an actual dream. Don't ask. ]
My knee started to hurt around nine this morning. I don’t know what I did to it. I’m not in sports or anything, so I’m not sure where this burning pull’s coming from. I think I need to get it checked out. I throw on some shorts and a tank top and head out to my car.
On my way to the medical center, I’m having a hard time keeping my leg on the gas pedal. What did I do to it? Dear god! I want to drink a pound of aspirin and go to sleep, but I have to drive.
The short car bounces on the dirt road. This is the only road to civilization out here. I wish it was paved and flat, sure. But it’s not a perfect world.
I finally make it to Walmart. I nearly scream when I step out of the car onto the asphalt parking lot. The pain’s growing worse by the second. I just want to know what the hell I did to it.
I walk under the Walmart sign, through the automatic double doors. I head toward the pharmacy and medical center, which is right next to the Subway. The smells coming from within that cavernous space entice me and I momentarily want to stop for a sandwich, but my leg hurts far too bad. I continue on the ten or so steps to the medic’s.
I tell the receptionist about the near excruciating throbbing in my right leg. I tell her it started this morning at about nine. I tell her the pain’s moved from the kneecap up to my thigh. She just nods and scribbles something down on her clipboard. Then she tells me to sit.
I take a seat next to the glass wall overlooking the Walmart store. I remind myself I need to pick up laundry softener while I’m here. Some fat kid licking a multicolored lollipop stares at me like I’ve got leprosy or something. He just stands there, glaring at me through the glass. I’m not contagious, kid. Finally his fat mom grabs his fat arm and she whisks him away and out the double glass doors.
I look around the medical center. It’s one, nice-sized room, mostly shades of white and gray. The floor’s a nice, medicinal, scratchy berber carpet. The walls are lined with off-white cabinets, no doubt full of medical stuff. In the middle of the room there are three dentist chairs. The overhead lights sprouting from below the chairs are all turned on, casting weird shadows on the floor. A small, metal table is set up next to each dentist chair.
“Kristen?”
I look up. Some nurse lady called my name. She’s wearing a seriously tight nurse dress and a little paper hat with a red X on it. I get up and follow her to the middle of the room. I can see weird, shiny instruments of varying sizes on the metal tables as I pass them. The nurse has me sit in one of those chairs. It’s cold and hard. It makes my butt hurt.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“I dunno, I woke up at like, nine this morning and my leg was throbbing a little. I don’t really do anything physical, so I dunno what I could’ve done to it,” I tell her.
She bends down and looks at it. Looks normal to me, it just hurts like hell. She squints her eyes, I guess to examine it better.
“We’re gonna have to stretch the skin back in order to yank the bone.”
I roll my eyes. Goddammit, not again! Ugh, I hate when they have to do crap like that.
“How long will it take?” I ask.
“Oh, not too long,” she says, preparing some paperwork.
“It gonna hurt? Last time I had something like that done, the chick didn’t know what she was doing and it hurt like a mofo.”
“Nah, shouldn’t hurt. We’ll numb you first,” she assures me.
I sigh heavily. Sure, how much is that gonna cost?
She leaves, and before long some other nurse lady comes over to me holding some thick, heavy-looking pliers.
She pulls my skin back with her fingers and I can see the bone extend from my leg. It looks so out of place, hanging there among the flesh and muscle and tendons. And then I remember, dude, they didn’t numb me.
Quickly the nurse clamps the pliers to my thigh bone, just above the knee, and gives it a good, hard tug. I feel the pressure, but it doesn’t hurt as bad as it did that other time. Dunno, maybe they did numb me.
“How’s that feel?”
I stand up. “A little better, but… I dunno, it still feels weird. Not sure what’s wrong with it.”
Suddenly, I lose all feeling in my legs and I fall to the carpet. An inch to the left and I would’ve bashed my head on the metal table. Luck, luck, luck.
I turn my head and notice the small, red feather-tipped darts sticking out from my thigh and behind my knees. Tranquilizer darts. Ugh, how much is this gonna cost me?
A team of three nurses hauls me from the floor near the dentist chair to the room adjacent to this large one. It’s only separated by a small, gray partition. This room is half the size of the last one, and full of metal showers.
They look like giant, stainless steel kitchen sinks. Each shower has only two walls, parallel to each other. There’s gotta be at least fourteen of them in all, seven lined up in a row against another row of seven, each divided by a metallic wall. Between the rows is what can only be described as a small chasm. The long, narrow slit seems eons deep, and it gives me slight vertigo just thinking about it.
The nurses dump me in a shower. The moment I hit the cold shower floor, I lose all control of my bowels.
“This girl needs a good BM,” states one of the nurses, matter-of-factly. The other two nod in agreement. Wait, what? This isn’t what I came in here for! My leg hurts, bitches!
Another nurse pipes up, “The only thing we can do is wake the asparagus.” Again, more nodding.
I shut my eyes tightly. What the hell does that mean? I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. And as my brain pushes out the idea of some nurse-assisted fecal harassment, I can hear singing. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. But the voice is deep and smooth. I feel like it’s getting closer.
It is.
And I can tell where it’s coming from, too.
As I lay sprawled in a mangled heap on the shower floor, the voice becomes louder.
“Buh buh buh boohhhhhhh,” it croons, like some 1920s lounge singer.
And then I see it.
A large, snakelike creature begins slowly, tediously wriggling its way out from deep within the pit of the crevice. It’s huge. Thick. Its tough, hide-like skin is green, with fleshy plates of red jutting out at the top of its body. I can’t tell if it has eyes; if it does, I can’t see any. The very tip of it is moving like a mouth. The base of this worm thing is covered in a sticky-looking mucus. I want to scream, but I can’t make a sound.
“Buhbuhbuh booooooo!” That deep crooning is really getting to me. It’s seriously starting to freak me out.
I stare at the thing. It honest to god looks like a gigantic stalk of thick, cooked, wriggly asparagus. The stench of asparagus-filled pee is starting to fill my nostrils.
I hate asparagus.
The thing continues to wiggle skyward, toward the high, sterile ceiling. And it’s still singing.
“Mmmmbah bah bah bohh!”
It twists around and points its face (can you consider that a face?) at me, looking without eyes at the girl in the shower, covered in feces and urine. It smiles eerily.
Suddenly, without warning, it opens its wide, gaping maw and lunges at me, aiming for my crotch. Somehow, I can tell it wants to suck the excrement from my body. I clench my eyes shut.
And then I wake up.
And I can hear singing.
And I can hear singing.
