The Devil’s Playthings
Part Two of The Succubus
It was quiet in the hospital. Too quiet.
Doctors walked along the cool, florescent-lit hallways on silent feet, speaking to each other in low voices. Nurses at their stations leaned close, their conversations all but unheard. Janitors and support staff swept and mopped, cooked and cleaned, moving noiselessly from one room to the next. Even visitors spoke in hushed whispers, as if sickness and disease were malignant demons who would cast their unwelcome attention on them if they talked too loudly.
In one room in the Intensive Care Unit, a woman lay in a sleep so deep and dreamless it was all but indistinguishable from death. An eternity seemed to last between each slow rise and fall of her chest. The monitor which registered her heartbeats
