Every seat in the Urgent Treatment Centre is occupied by slumped patients with dour expressions. Nurses chatter and murmur as they glide between rooms. The doctor calls out names. Somewhere, something is beeping. Some patients mumble to each other. Most just sit and stare at the obscure, late-night soap unfolding on the big screen in the waiting room. At the main doors, two Paladins stand guard, armed and armoured with assault rifles and flak jackets over their uniforms.
The shift is a quiet one for the most part. Most people don’t pay Roy Henderson much mind as his sits murmuring to himself as he leans on a pillar with his head bowed. He’s got badly cropped hair and is wearing a stained jacket and some old joggers. His trainers have fallen to pieces, their soles lolling like tongues. Just another homeless guy, probably here to sponge off the NHS and get whatever prescription he can get his hands on. The other patients do their best to quietly distance themselves.
When he starts fitting, the triage team rush over. Only then do they see the scarring on his skin. The bulging eyes. Only then do they hear the abominable whispers in antediluvian tongues breaking through his throat. They scramble back. Patients scream, tripping over one another in their rush to get through the doors. An old man in a wheelchair is knocked over, his drip sent clattering to the floor and the IV bag bursting across the tiles.
The Paladins advance, weapons raised, calling down their radios. A siren begins to blare, howling down the hospital corridors. The emergency red lights flicker on. UV flashbulbs begin to strobe. The sound of cracking bone. Of tearing flesh. An abyssal scream. In the middle of the UTC, the shadows of Roy Henderson bounce across the walls in red and ultra violet. It bears a cohort of squirming appendages and a great maw opens up with ribcages for teeth.
Paddy Dosbon
9th November 2021