S.C.H.O.O.L. -28-

Souls Capturing Hospitality Over Objective Liberty
Day ?????

Oh. Oh Hello. Hello. Hello there. Hi. I didn’t think of saying all these out-loud but somehow I accidentally did. I was saying hello to the long red tube protruding from my arm. Oh, hello. It wasn’t supposed to be red. I mean it probably was, but initially it was clear. That’s my blood.

I watched as it streamed up into a machine slowly, a bubble here and there whizzing past. Hello. The needle in my arm felt so weird. I followed the tube down to where the medicine tape was stuck on the inner side of my elbow. I had half a mind to pull it out, but I’ve heard awful stories of how the machine still goes but the tube isn’t hooked and so blood gets everywhere… I may as well just kill someone instead.

The clipboard beside my bed read ‘Franklin’. A series of boxes were checked off, indicating that I had ‘high levels of cholesterol’ and ‘normal blood pressure’ and a number of other long words I don’t know how to pronounce. I was surprised that ‘Attention Deficit’ was not checked off. I find myself increasingly unable to keep my attention concentrated to one thing. I’m constantly distracted, which might explain why I’m here in the first place. I was just walking along when someone came and snatched me and threw me in here. Maybe they want my brain because hell who wouldn’t want my brain? My brain is awesome. No one gets my brain but me. At this thought, my hands were instinctively on my head as if to check to make sure theres no zipper or scar or bald spot that could indicate that they did, in fact, take my brain. Fortunately there was none.

Phew.

Still, they could be coming back for it, so I should get going as soon as I can. First things first… This blood bag. It’s slowly going from my arm to the bag. In another vein is a clear tube with what I think is insulin but I’m not a doctor so that’s a really pathetic guess. Lucky for me I still happen to have my jeans and shirt on. Why they didn’t bother to put me in a gown… I don’t know. Maybe my subconscious state is a fighter, and I kicked and punched my way through them until they tranquilized me and figured it really isn’t worth stripping a rigid body of its clothes and trying to stuff it into a gross hospital gown. Who knows.

So really the only thing I can do is take the machines with me.

I pad out into a darkly lit hallway, the wheels of both the blood and clear liquid squeaking behind me. Lights flicker and hang from the ceiling, sparks raining on the tiles like snow falling on hot pavement, sizzling and falling silent. Except you would think that the snow, or sparks in this case, would be smart enough not to leave where it came from, but it is not. Maybe this is because sparks, and snowflakes, aren’t real and don’t actually have any real train of thought… REGARDLESS. It was overly eerie and it was the perfect place for me to get attacked by some sort of alien creatures or zombies-

PAIN. Pain. Ow. Crap. Lots of pain all in my head, white and blinding and ow so much pain. I feel my knees give out on me and my eyes were shut so tight they could have caved in on my head. This hurts too much. A splitting headache. Hah. Find others. I formulated – find others, get safe, get out. One foot in front of another, dragging forward. Headache subsiding, just don’t think about- AH. Ah – ah- ah. Nope! Not thinking about the thing which, consequently, requires a large amount of energy towards thinking about something that isn’t the thing like …. Kittens! Or spoons! Or the way Autumn is only beautiful because everything is dying slowly! Or curtains, and now books about tacky Christmas sweaters being worn at the beach on the coast of Antarctica…

My train of thought was thrown off course when I heard footsteps down the dim hallway. I slowed my pace to the point where the wheels stopped squeaking and listened intently. They seemed to scuttle back and forth, like pacing at high speeds of anticipation. I heard them muttering under their breath, reassuring me that they were most definitely alive and not z- KITTENS.

I pulled the machine forward slowly, dim hopes that perhaps that was one of my friends. But pull as I did, the machine would only slouch forward and fall back. Looking down, the darned thing was caught on a mess of papers which, until now, I had honestly not noticed had been strewn down the hallway. What produced these papers were massive filing cabinets toppled over, blocking half of the hallway at certain points and occasionally barricading the doors to offices and rooms and washrooms and whathaveyounots. I tugged on my machine again, but the papers had acted like a cucumber pumpkin patch and tugged back, creating a tug-of-war between me and the cabinets.

I cursed. Though I was well aware that the papers were not animate, I felt as though they were aggressive. Like a red-aura-like energy emanated around  these… awful, white thinly-cut pieces of tree. How dare they?! In a fit of half-decent rage (my head still felt like the plot of a Stephen King novel) I started ripping the papers apart, making confetti and snowflakes rain around me and my machine. Each paper screamed as I tore it apart, and as it watched its friends, family, coworkers, pets, siblings, relatives, acquaintances, classmates, teachers, and enemies apart. There was no mercy. There was no pity. It was a war against me and the trees and I will win-

“Franklin?”

The fragments of paper cleared and I saw a figure haloed by the light fixture hanging from it’s wires at the end of the hall. She had short hair, a black sweater and a green shirt. I vaguely recognized her and for some reason when I thought of her I thought of the zom-

ARGH. Head. Splitting. Giant axe imbedded. Blood. Everywhere.

“FRANKLIN!”

I heard frantic running, something slipping and papers flying. Damn tree-offspring. I felt a hand under my arm and it was only then I was aware that I was on the ground surrounded by my creation. Yes. This was my design. Confetti… slowly leaving my fists as I was pulled to my feet. I felt a head slip under my arm and the head grunted.

“Can’t you, I don’t know, support yourself or… Something… Please.”

I nodded, putting weight into my feet and grabbing my cart with my free hand.

“What a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into…” she sighed, leading me through the remnants of papers and documents. In hindsight, those may have been important, but at the moment I could care less because if they were important for this hell hole of a building then good riddance.

“You know what I’ve been through? First I wake up in this awful hospital gown on the floor of the hospital, which is probably the most gross area of a hospital because it’s the freaking floor. Like so many people have walked and … spilt stuff there and… it’s so gross and… Anyways… So my clothes are hanging on the door and I put those on as soon as possible because hospital gowns are so uncomfortable and gross and then I left and heard noises and ran and got lost and just when I thought there was no one else in this hospital except for me and those noises I heard you and…. What happened?”

I remembered who this was. Her name was Artist, because she draws well but… she seemed different. Her hair was so long back then and now it is shorter than my Uncle Henry’s. Who’s hair is, I must admit, quite long but he’s also in a band and it seems like to be in a rock band your hair has to be long otherwise you’re mistaken as a boy band and let me tell you – my Uncle Henry does not want to be the next Justin Bieber hit sensation.

Artist was still staring at me and that’s when I realized she had asked me a question.

“I just woke up,” I said, my gaze fixating on the precariously swinging light fixture at the end of the hall.

“On the floor?”

“No in a bed. The floor attacked me.”

“Uh huh…” she said slowly, looking at me with a raised eyebrow. Her eyes followed my arm to the tube protruding from my arm towards the bag on the rack. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be doing that.”

“Doing what?” I followed her gaze to the bag.

“The blood shouldn’t be going into the bag there, and the clear shouldn’t be going into your arm. If that’s an IV bag, which it ought to be because I really don’t know what else it could be, whoever hooked you up did it incorrectly. And quite recently too, otherwise you might be dead. How much blood is that?”

I squinted at the bag, which wanted to swim in front of my eyes like a dolphin. Why it was doing tricks, I don’t know. Maybe I was hallucinating. I looked back towards Artist who suddenly became very very thing and dark and there were little fuzzy catapillars clouding my vision now and…

“Franklin!?”

… the hallway started spinning. I think the ceiling was under my feet. I could feel the papers cushion the back of my head and there was a searing pain from my arm as I felt something leave my presence and then it just went black.