Chapter 1: The Surging Tide of Thanatos
1869 Words
(Corridor of St. Mary’s Hospital ER: Air thick with antiseptic and despair)
Damnation! That cacophony resurged!
Leo Yang’s skull reverberated, as if a thousand throttled flies shrieked within. Not actual sound—something far more unnerving. A gelid, viscous sensation... an energy reeking of cloying decay.
"Hummmmm... Buzzzz... Screeee—" The noise crescendoed in his mind—shrill as rusted saws grating bone!
"Christ!" Leo nearly hurled the soiled linens. Cold sweat beaded his brow as he braced against the frigid wall, gasping.
Again! These recurring episodes! Was this wretched job not torment enough without this vile affliction? b****y hell! He tugged at his threadbare orderly’s tunic, bleached skeletal by countless washes. St. Mary’s, Fog City’s venerable hospital? To him—a gargantuan meat-grinder devouring health and wealth, excreting offal and cadavers.
Down the corridor, the ER’s crimson lamp glared—a Cyclopean eye of the infernum. Black-suited men, faces etched with funereal grief, clustered near the entrance. Among them stood Brandon Grayson: oil-slicked hair, vulturine gaze—the hospital board’s heir, scion of medical aristocracy, whose nostrils perpetually scoured the ceiling.
Leo hunched, skirting the wall. Discretion reigned supreme in this purgatory.
Suddenly—
*"HUMmmmmmm—!!!!!"*
His mind detonated! Seismic! Different this time—not nebulous noise but crystalline, hopeless shrieking! Gelid currents of mortality, needle-sharp, lanced from the ER’s direction, impaling his temples!
"Urgh—!" Leo clutched his skull, vision graying. Yet... wait! Within that marrow-deep nihil... a presence! A filament—finer than gossamer—pulsing with tenacious... warmth!
Frail as a guttering candle in a maelstrom! But there! Struggling! Howling for salvation!
The man inside. Robert Locke—the billionaire patriarch supine on the slab, EKG flatlined to a merciless horizon!
Brandon’s voice sliced through the ER door, arrogance undampened by surgical gauze: "Declare it, Dr. Greene. Time of death: 15:17." Disposal instructions for refuse could not sound breezier.
"N—no! Don’t stop!" The cry tore from Leo’s throat—hoarse, jagged—shocking the silent corridor.
All eyes riveted upon him: Locke-family retainers in bespoke wool, the Head Nurse, even Brandon—mask now lowered, revealing chiseled features contorted by revulsion.
"Who wails like a banshee?" Brandon’s glacier-blue eyes impaled him.
Leo’s heart hammered. Damned. But the psychic ember within him dimmed, throttled by encroaching oblivion. To hell with caution!
"Mr. Locke!" Leo jabbed a shaking finger at the sealed doors, sweat sluicing down his temples. "He’s... not extinguished! Not yet! Do something!" He felt it—that guttering life-thread, a dying star begging for kindling!
Pfft—
Brandon exhaled derision through flared nostrils. Fastidiously polishing his hands with monogrammed silk—as if scrubbing off contagion—he advanced. Click. Click. Click. Italian leather heels struck the tiles, each step syncing with the onlookers’ trapped heartbeats.
"Pray enlighten me," Brandon halted, looming half a head taller, peering down as at roadside carrion. "Mister Yang the orderly?" He laced "orderly" with distilled venom.
"Silence, Leo!" The Head Nurse hissed, pallid as cerement. "Know your place!"
Locke’s pomaded son (Victor, Leo later learned) snapped impatiently: "Dispose of this refuse, Brandon! Let Father... rest!" A sob frayed his words.
Brandon ignored them, gaze spearing Leo. That stare—colder than a scalpel’s edge.
"Inform us, Orderly Yang." His murmur, soft yet corridor-filling, dripped malice. "Did your floor-scrubbing, excrement-wiping fingers... perceive the illustrious Mr. Locke’s vital signs?" A manicured finger tapped the air toward Leo’s temple. "Or did this... disinfectant-addled cerebellum render diagnosis?"
Snickers—muffled yet barbed—rippled through the staff. An orderly challenging Dr. Grayson’s verdict? Absurdity incarnate!
Leo’s face burned. Fists clenched, nails biting crescents into his palms. Humiliation! Fury! But the psychic plea shrieked its final alert—no time!
"It’s true! I know it’s... unfathomable! But his heartbeat—faint! Flickering!" Leo’s voice frayed, eyes desperate, fixed on the ER. "Please! One more attempt! Defibrillation—!"
*"SILENCE!!!"* Brandon’s roar fractured his urbane veneer, unveiling n***d ferocity. "What blasphemous filth dares dictate here? This is St. Mary’s! A sanctum of science! Not a carnival stage for your gutter necromancy!"
He lunged, clawing at Leo’s breast pocket.
RIIIIP—!
Laminated plastic split. The ID card ripped free.
Leo choked, jerked forward.
Brandon thrust the card before Leo’s eyes—"Custodial Orderly—Leo Yang" glaring beneath his haggard photo—nearly scraping his cornea.
"Behold!" Brandon’s voice, arsenic-cold. "This is you! Hospital vermin! Your realm is mops and bedpans! Not playing Messiah in pauper’s rags! Not profaning Mr. Locke’s remains for theatricals!"
He slammed the card to the floor. A polished oxford crushed it, grinding heel-twist after heel-twist.
Crunch. The sound of obliterated plastic—and Leo’s final shard of dignity.
"Brandon Grayson!" Victor Locke’s roar held genuine fury. "Enough! Expel this mongrel! Father requires dignity!"
Brandon recomposed his face into sepulchral reverence: "Profoundest apologies, Mr. Victor. My oversight allowed this scum to desecrate the departed." He turned to Leo, gaze glacial.
"Leo Yang!" Pronouncement echoed. "For suspected desecration of remains, disruption of hospital sanctity, and dissemination of superstitious falsehoods—you are hereby terminated from St. Mary’s Hospital!" A dismissive wave, as swatting vermin. "Security! Eject this lunatic! Bar him for eternity!"
Two obsidian-uniformed titans seized Leo’s arms in vise-grips!
"Unhand me!" Leo thrashed, eyes locked on the ER door. He felt it—that tenuous life-spark guttering into ash! Out there! That old man—his possible salvation—murdered by hubris!
"Brandon! You God-cursed murderer!" Leo shrieked, dragged backward. "He lives! Your pronouncement is homicide! HOMICIDE!"
"Lunatic ravings!" Brandon didn’t blink, soothing Victor: "Peace, sir. I shall oversee the final rites—ensuring Mr. Locke’s transcendence is... immaculate."
Security hauled Leo toward the stairwell.
"Wait!" A nurse leaned from the ER door, urgent. "Dr. Greene asks... confirm zero life signs? Brainstem included?"
Brandon scowled. "EEG flatlined fifteen minutes prior! Affirmed! Disengage apparatus! Cease delaying the family!"
Disengage? Then truly death!
The words snapped Leo’s final tether. Incandescent fury—not pain—detonated through his skull! Primal, subterranean power shattered fear and abasement!
*"GODDAMN YOU ALL—!!! RELEASE ME!!!"*
Preternatural strength surged through Leo! Arms heaving—he hurled the two behemoths backward! They stumbled, off-balance!
Shock petrified the corridor. Even Brandon froze!
In that splinter of time, Leo—a beast unchained—bowled over the Head Nurse and stormed the sliding door marked "RESUSCITATION IN PROGRESS—NO ENTRY."
*WHAM—!*
The door crashed against the wall!
*"RESTRAIN HIM!!!"* Brandon’s scream shredded into falsetto!
Too late!
Within the ER, Dr. Greene had lowered his scalpel. Nurses moved to detach electrodes from Robert Locke’s corpse.
Leo’s entrance gusted sterile drapes aside.
Dr. Greene and nurses gaped at this berserker-orderly: eyes bloodshot, face slick with sweat-tears.
"What madness—?" Greene began.
Leo ignored him. His gaze speared the cadaver: waxy skin, skeletal frame, chest utterly still, monitors screaming silence!
But his mind shrieked! There! That spectral ember—deep within the husk! Drowning in infinite night!
Sanity, consequence, identity—annihilated! Only the old man remained in Leo’s vision. A wolf pouncing on prey, he lunged for the operating table. Before reaction was possible—
Both palms slammed onto Robert Locke’s bare, icy sternum!
Skin fused to bone-deep cold!
*"NO—!!!"* Brandon burst through, witnessing the desecration, pupils dilating in terror. "Maniac! Drag him OFF!!!"
Security grappled Leo.
But Leo’s body locked into granite! Legs rooted! His consciousness funneled—rage, defiance, despair—incandescing into one searing imperative:
*"LIVE, YOU OLD BASTARD! LIVE—!!!"*
*HMMMMMMMM—!!!*
This time—not Leo’s skull. The entire ER vibrated!
Invisible current arced from Leo’s palms! Dr. Greene and nearby nurses felt skin-crawl static, hairs rising!
"Fiend! What witchery afflicts Mr. Locke?!" Brandon roared—fear, raw and undisguised, beneath the rage. This tableau defied reason: a menial clutching a dead plutocrat’s chest—resembling... soul-transfusion?!
"WRENCH! HIM! FREE!" Brandon thundered at security.
They hauled at Leo’s wrists!
Just as grubby fingers clawed Leo’s flesh—
Beep... Beep... Beep...
A frail, rhythmic chime pierced the mortuary silence.
All motion ceased. All sound strangled.
Time petrified.
Brandon’s fury ossified on his face.
Security froze mid-wrench.
Dr. Greene and nurses became statuary, eyes wide as saucers.
Only that sound persisted.
Beep... Beep... Beep...
Slowly, mechanically, gazes steeped in existential dread swiveled toward the monitor—that harbinger of silence.
The screen—
Where a dead green bar had reigned...
Flickered.
A tremor. Minuscule. Undeniable.
It pulsed. Again.
A faltering drum against entropy’s tide!
"Imp... possible..." Brandon whispered, alabaster-pale. "Dr. Greene! Malfunction! It MUST be—!" His voice curdled with hysteria.
Greene jolted awake, scrambling to the machine, fingers trembling over leads, blinking disbelievingly.
Beep... Beep... Beep...
The cadence strengthened—percussive nails hammering cognition.
"Leads... intact... Sinus rhythm... Faint, but confirmed... Merciful God!" Greene’s voice fractured, faith shattering. This violated death’s triune confirmation!
Then—
On the slab—beneath Leo’s splayed hands—Robert Locke’s blue-tinged index finger...
Twitched.
Minutely. Deliberately.
In the ER’s silence, a thunderclap!
"AAAAAAAAAGH—!" A nurse shrilled.
"Heaven shield us!" Greene’s knees buckled.
Security recoiled as if branded!
Victor Locke barged in—confronting this sacrilegious resurrection—grief evaporating into shock-fear. Father’s finger—convulsed?!
Brandon stood thunderstruck, rigor-mortis still. Eyes darting between the moving digit and Leo—the architect of this abomination!
Leo verged on collapse. Sweat saturated his tunic. The psychic shriek was gone, replaced by voiding exhaustion. Yet his palms remained fused to the old man’s sternum.
Only the monitor’s undulating green serpent and its accelerating Beep... Beep... Beep... echoed—heralding miracle? Or... anathema?
Gulp—
Brandon swallowed bile. The air thickened to viscous ice. Comprehension dawned, twisting his patrician features into rictus of terror-envy-shaming. He scanned Greene’s ashen disbelief, the nurses’ panic, the Lockes’ dawning hope—finally, his viperine eyes fixing on the interloper: Leo Yang.
Those aristocratic lips—once curled in disdain—now stretched into a Stygian rictus, exhaling an indictment that shattered the reverent silence:
"Unh... unholy... sorcery..."
Tremors seized his frame; not fear for the patient, but terror of this usurper—this monstrous singularity shattering his dominion.
"What... unspeakable abomination have you wrought?!"
His shriek scaled octaves, flensing the air, finger thrusting like a necromancer’s curse:
"He is no physician! He is infernal incarnate! Defiler of the dead! Summoner of nether-spawn! SEIZE HIM—!!!"
The command detonated, a paroxysm of madness! A desperate roar seeking to obliterate the relentlessly accelerating—
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Beneath Leo’s palms, Robert Locke’s frigid thorax...
Hitched.
Subtly. Undeniably.
A butterfly’s sigh in a tomb, deafening the assembled.
All eyes magnetized to the patriarch’s face.
Plink—
A single rheumy tear leaked from the shuttered, sunken orbit.
Trailing parchment skin.
It fell.
Tap.
Striking steel.
A funereal bell pealing through the silence.
- Writer
