0020 — The First Patient
1980 Words
Victor woke up to the taste of copper.
His face was stuck to the kitchen table. When he peeled his cheek off the laminate surface, a layer of dried blood came with it. He groaned, the sound vibrating through the stiff muscles of his neck, and forced his eyes open.
The morning light filtering through the greenhouse windows was a sickly, verdant green, filtered through the mutated leaves of the carnivorous hydrangeas.
He was alive. That was the first diagnostic data point.
He was in pain. That was the second.
The mana exhaustion—Grade 4—was a hollow ache in the marrow of his bones. It felt like he had been scooped out with a melon baller. His pulse was a sluggish, erratic drumbeat in his ears.
Victor pushed himself upright. On the floor, the Slime—currently mimicking a very ugly doormat—rippled affectionately. It had absorbed the blood from his nose, turning a vibrant crimson. It pulsed with a bioluminescent glow.
"Don't eat that," Victor croaked. "That's bio-waste. Bad mat."
The Slime burped—a wet, bubbling sound—and flattened itself, looking chastised.
Victor ignored it and shuffled to the window. He expected to see a crater. Or a police cordon. Or perhaps just a smoking pile of ash where his front porch used to be.
Instead, he saw industry.
Iron-Jaw was sitting on the bottom step of the porch. The man looked terrible. His skin was the color of wet ash. But he was upright. Around him, his three surviving subordinates were working with terrified efficiency. They were fixing the front door they had kicked in the night before.
One of them was sanding a plank. Another was sweeping up debris. They moved like ghosts, afraid to wake the monster inside.
Victor leaned his forehead against the cool glass. "He's still alive," he muttered. "Impressive."
Most people would have succumbed to the septic shock by now. The "Ghoul Bone" grafted into Iron-Jaw's shoulder wasn't just a physical implant; it was a curse made of calcium and malice. Resisting it for twelve hours took a level of willpower that bordered on the suicidal.
Victor turned away. He had a patient. And more importantly, he had a bill to pay.
The kitchen was not an operating theater. It was barely a kitchen.
The counter was cluttered with unpaid bills—pink "Final Notice" slips and yellow "Utility Disconnection" warnings. Next to the paper mountain was a half-eaten sandwich that had started to grow its own ecosystem; blue mold fuzzy as velvet had colonized the crust.
Victor cleared it all with a sweep of his arm, sending the junk clattering into a cardboard box. The soldering iron rolled across the table, its tip stained with questionable flux.
"Sterilization," he mumbled, grabbing a bottle of cheap vodka and a rag. He wiped down the table. It smeared the grease rather than removing it, creating a rainbow sheen on the laminate, but it would have to do.
He filled a kettle with tap water and set it on the stove. While it boiled, he went to the pantry. He took a jar.
Sedative Mint. Harvested from the greenhouse last week.
It wasn't magical in the fireball-throwing sense. It was just a plant that had grown in soil contaminated by a dormant lich's tomb. The tea brewed from it chemically lobotomized the higher brain functions for about an hour.
Perfect for surgery without anesthesia.
Victor unlocked the back door. The bolt sliding back was like a gunshot in the morning silence.
On the porch, the work stopped. Iron-Jaw looked up, his eyes glassy.
"Enter," Victor said.
Iron-Jaw stood up. He swayed. His left arm—the cybernetic one—hung uselessly, the metal casing twisted. But it was the flesh around the connection port that drew the eye. It was black, veined with angry purple streaks.
He walked into the kitchen. His men stayed outside.
"Sit," Victor said, pointing to the wooden chair.
Iron-Jaw sat. He looked at the kitchen table, at the soldering iron, the steak knife, and the roll of duct tape.
"Is this..." Iron-Jaw's voice was a wet rattle. "Is this the ritual chamber?"
Victor paused. He looked at the dirty linoleum. Then he looked at Iron-Jaw's terrified face.
"Yes," Victor lied. "Filth is the enemy of sterility, but entropy is the enemy of order. To fight the dead, we must embrace the decay."
Iron-Jaw nodded slowly. "It is a test."
"Drink this." Victor shoved a mug of greenish liquid into the man's good hand.
"The Elixir of...?"
"The Elixir of Shut Up and Drink," Victor said. "It aligns your chakras."
Iron-Jaw drank. He grimaced, but he drained the cup.
Three seconds later, his eyes rolled back. The mug shattered on the floor. He didn't slump; the paralytic agent stiffened his muscles, locking him in the chair. He was conscious, but he was locked in a chemical cage where pain was just distant information.
"Right," Victor said. "Let's see what we're dealing with."
He didn't wash his hands. He just poured vodka over them and shook them dry.
He picked up the steak knife. It was a good knife. Serrated. Stainless steel.
"Fenrir," Victor called.
The shadow in the corner detached itself. The massive wolf materialized, its fur darker than the deepest corner of a closet. Its yellow eyes bored into Iron-Jaw.
"Hold him," Victor said. "If the bone tries to run, bite it."
Fenrir placed a heavy paw on Iron-Jaw's good shoulder. The claws extended, just enough to prick the skin.
Victor turned to the bad shoulder.
Diagnostic Vision: Active.
The world lost its color. The kitchen vanished. In its place, Victor saw lines of force and biology. Iron-Jaw was a mess of red arteries and blue veins, but the shoulder was a void. A black hole of necrotic energy.
The cybernetics were just metal. The problem was the bone graft underneath. It wasn't fused to the humerus; it was eating it. It had hooked little calcium teeth into the marrow and was sucking out the life force to grow its own structure.
"Nasty," Victor whispered. "Invasive."
He brought the knife down.
He didn't cut the skin; he sawed through the necrotic tissue surrounding the implant. The flesh parted with a sound like tearing wet canvas. There was no blood—the tissue was dead—but there was a smell. A smell like old meat and copper wiring.
Iron-Jaw didn't move. He couldn't. But his eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling.
Clack.
The knife hit the bone.
And the bone screamed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a psychic pressure wave that rattled the silverware. Victor winced.
"Quiet," he snapped, hitting the shoulder with the handle of the knife.
The bone writhed. It wasn't a metaphor. The white, calcified spur actually twisted, trying to burrow deeper into Iron-Jaw's chest cavity to escape the blade. It moved with the jerky, spasmodic motion of a crushed insect, its surface rippling as if the calcium were liquid.
"It knows," Victor muttered, sweat dripping into his eyes. "It knows I'm evicting it."
He grabbed the salad tongs.
"This is going to hurt," he told the paralyzed man. "Well, it would hurt if you could feel it."
He clamped the tongs around the protruding end of the Ghoul Bone.
"Pull, Fenrir!"
The wolf growled, a low rumble that shook the floor. Fenrir pressed down, pinning Iron-Jaw. Victor braced his foot against the man's hip and pulled.
The resistance was incredible. It felt like trying to pull a tree stump out of frozen ground. The bone fought back. Tendrils of black energy lashed out, whipping at Victor's hands.
"Let... go... you... squatter!" Victor gritted his teeth.
He channeled a pulse of his own mana—tainted, chaotic, corrosive—into the tongs.
The Ghoul Bone shrieked again, a high keen that cracked the window glass. It hated Victor's mana. Victor's mana tasted like cancer and entropy. It was poison to a parasite that craved clean life force.
The bone released its grip.
With a wet shluck, the implant tore free.
Victor stumbled back, holding the tongs aloft. Clamped in the metal jaws was a piece of bone about six inches long. It was grey, covered in tiny, moving barbs.
"Got you," Victor panted. He dropped the bone into a Tupperware container and slammed the lid shut. He wrapped duct tape around the container. Then foil.
"Burn it," he told Fenrir. "Later."
The rest was just repair work.
Victor cleaned the wound with more vodka. He packed the cavity with gauze. Then, because he was out of surgical thread, he grabbed the tube of Epox-A-Fix.
"Industrial strength," he muttered, squeezing the clear gel into the wound. "Bonds in seconds. Waterproof."
He pressed the flaps of skin together. He held them for thirty seconds.
"Done."
He wiped his hands on his pants. He felt lightheaded. The mana expenditure had been minimal, but his reserves were running on fumes. He needed sugar. He needed sleep.
He picked up a glass of water and threw it in Iron-Jaw's face.
The gangster gasped. He slumped forward, coughing, clutching his shoulder.
"My arm..." he wheezed. "I can't feel my arm."
"You don't have an arm," Victor said, sitting down. "I took the metal off. You're an amputee now. Congratulations. It's better than being a corpse."
Iron-Jaw looked at his shoulder. It was bandaged, taped, and smelled of glue. But the black veins were fading. The cold, crushing weight in his chest was gone.
He looked at Victor. He didn't see a tired man in a dirty t-shirt. He saw a warlock who had reached into the jaws of death and pulled him out. He saw the wolf standing guard.
Iron-Jaw stood up. He was shaky, but he stood.
He reached into his jacket pocket with his good hand. He pulled out a heavy, canvas bag.
He placed it on the table. It hit the wood with a solid, metallic thunk.
"The collection," Iron-Jaw rasped. "From the market."
"I'm not a fence," Victor said.
"It's payment," Iron-Jaw said. He bowed deeply. "For the exorcism."
He turned and walked to the door, his legs still unsteady. Halfway there, a loud thump stopped him.
On the counter, the foil-wrapped Tupperware container jumped. It slammed against the table surface, once, twice, as if something inside was trying to batter its way out. The sheer force of the impact rattled the silverware.
Iron-Jaw flinched violently, his knees buckling. He grabbed the doorframe to stay upright, his eyes wide with renewed terror as he stared at the vibrating plastic prison.
"What was it?" he whispered, his voice trembling. "A demon?"
"A calcium deposit," Victor said, not looking up from his coffee preparation. "Drink plenty of milk. Get out."
Iron-Jaw left. The thugs helped him down the stairs. They glanced back at the house, at the green light in the window, and crossed themselves.
Victor waited until they were gone.
He reached out and opened the bag.
Gold. Hell Gold. Coins stamped with the faces of screaming souls. When the light hit them, the expressions seemed to shift. Beside the coins were stacks of bills—dark, heavy paper that felt warm to the touch.
He counted it.
Six thousand, four hundred.
It wasn't a fortune. But it was enough. Enough to keep the lights on for another week. Enough to buy groceries. Enough to buy thread.
Victor laughed. It was a dry, rusty sound.
He walked to the front door. The glass was cracked. The wood was sanded smooth.
He flipped the sign hanging in the window.
CLOSED became OPEN.
He looked out at the street. The sun was fully up. The city was waking up. Monsters, humans, and things in between were starting their day.
"Next," Victor whispered.
He closed the door. And then, finally, he went to make coffee.
- Writer
