"Paging doctor -̡̀͢͜͞-̕-҉͟҉̀͠-͞͝͡͏-̛̛͢͢͜.... Paging doctor -̵̴́͞-̷̨҉̛-̨̢͟͞͠-̸̷̡̛҉-̸̨͠"Every five minutes, like clockwork, the distorted voice tried to quietly shriek out a name over the busted speakers hanging along the green-titned, vine-covered walls. A dim, ethereal light pulsed rhythmically from outside the dirty windows, casting the dirty hallways in an eerie glow despite there being seemingly nothing but dense fog outside. Doors were ajar, leading to other hallways, or dark patient rooms with TVs blasting static. Discarded medical equipment, almost all of it overgrown in black vines, littered these narrow passageways, making it difficult to move around in some places or flat out blocking paths. Everything seemed to be almost... alive. There were constant creaks and groans, occasional clangs and bumps as rusted equipment failed and caved in on itself, and the soft, ever-constant pulse of low light from the windows.
Carmen was unaware of all of this. He shuffled forward slowly, plucking away at the strings of his guitar, softly humming his mother's favorite tune to himself over and over and over again. His eyes were glazed over and unfocused, barely taking in enough information to keep him from tripping and breaking the very instrument he held so dearly. His body just shambled on, but his mind was a sea of chaos.
He was gone. Sofu was gone, gone forever, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could have done about it. Just like his mother and his father, all succumbing to different diseases, all without cures. All without hope. No hope. What hope did he have of helping anyone if he couldn't even help the people he loved? Why bother at all? What was the point if Sofu was gone? Gone... He was gone...
Just like the notes of the song, these thoughts played through Carmen's head, again and again, as he aimlessly wandered the crumbling halls of the hospital. He shambled forward, unaware of if he was alive or dead, if this was all just some sort of dream. He didn't care, either. The only thing he knew was that his grandfather, like the rest of his family, was gone. Gone... Gone...
Carmen's wandering, after what could have been an eternity or only a few minutes, brought him to a dead end. A large set of doors lay closed before him, the broken sign above it reading 'CHEMOTHERAPY'.
Something in Carmen's mind clicked.
A memory.
_________
"It's alright, Carmen." Yumi, his mother, assured her son. The small boy sat in his father's lap, wiping tears from his eyes as he watched nurses stab needles into her arms, set up a noisy machine, and leave her to be 'treated' by it. The hum of the machine intimidated him, and he shrank away from it, further into his father's strong arms. His mother just gave him a tired smile, closing he eyes the way she did when she was trying to help Carmen feel better.
"It's not bad, I promise. Here, come sit with me, I'll show you." She suggested, patting her lap. Carmen looked first to her, then the machine, and then back at his father, who gave him a warm smile and an assuring nod. The small boy sheepishly crept from his perch and approached, eyeing the machine warily, and climbed up to sit with his mother on the opposite side of it. He wrapped his arms tight around her, wiping the last of the moisture from his eyes. His mother leaned down to give him a kiss on the forehead, and he smiled, hugging her tighter.
"Mommy, what is this place? Why do they have this noisy machine poking into your arm?" He asked, glancing back at the imposing metal.
"This is a chemotherapy room, and this machine is going to make me all better..."_________
"No... She was wrong..." Carmen whispered, his grip on the neck of his guitar tightening until his knuckles were almost white. He placed his hand on the handle for the door, intent on opening it--
He froze as his hand touched the cool metal. There was a loud, shuttering noise from the other side, and the door began to vibrate. The hum, the very same he'd had to listen to over and over again as he kept his mother company in the hospital, the machine that had slowly turned her from a beautiful, energetic young woman into a withered husk, was on the other side of the door. There was a scraping noise, and Carmen looked down with a cry of terror, needles and tubes starting to force their way under the door, oozing an ocher liquid that reeked of decaying flesh. Carmen stumbled back, and with his stumble, the door started to open on its own. There was a low groan from the darkness within, and Carmen continued to scramble back until a stray vine caught his leg, sending him toppling.
He looked up in time to see the source of the groaning stumble into the light.
The thing was grotesque; A distinctly humanoid shape, but bent and twisted, with brown, wrinkled skin stretched too far over thin bones, its rib-cage clearly exposed, and its stomach sunken in almost to the point there was only a spine. A filthy rag was wrapped around the upper portion of its head, but its large mouth was agape, letting out another raspy groan of agony. As it stumbled into the light, Carmen could see the small hole that was punctured clean through its chest, and the IV stand it was dragging... No, it wasn't dragging it. The things arm was melded with the metal, all sorts of tubes spearing into the flesh, pumping it full of black liquid.
Carmen's heart hammered in his chest, and he could only stare in horror at the thing before him. It was almost literally something from his nightmares, images of his mother's emaciated body flashing before his eyes, bringing tears to them. He tried to quietly push himself away from the shambling... thing, but his guitar bumped against a medical stand, sending trays and rusted medical instruments clattering to the floor. The distorted figure stopped, its head twisting and bending towards him. Its groans grew louder, and it started to struggle forward, the over-sized IV stand screeching along behind it on rusted wheels.
A fresh wave of terror gripped Carmen's heart, and he scrambled to his feet. He started to run - no, sprint - down the halls of this hellish place, of the place he'd called purgatory, this nightmarescape. There had to be a way out, a way to escape-- The gate! He had to find the gate! He couldn't have gone far, he-
He screamed as a mangled hand squeezed his wrist with deceptive strength, nearly toppling him once again. He looked at the corpse-like thing crawling out from under a discarded hospital bed, wailing its suffering at him. He struggled and tried to pull away, but all he accomplished was dragging the thing out further. He screamed and struggled, before finally he kicked the thing in the elbow, forcing it inward with a sickening snap and crunch of brittle bones. The thing wailed louder and finally released him, and Carmen ran all the all the faster, all the harder. Thoughts of the gate were gone now, and as more and more of these grotesque things appeared, he started to lose track of where he was going. He just needed to escape, to get away from these things, find the way o--
Carmen collided with something, something not smelling of putrid flesh and cold and clamy like a corpse. He barreled into something soft and supple. Real flesh.
Someone else.
