Genre: Mystery
Element: the title must be Influenza.
Influenza
A soft click was the only sound in the deathly silent, stone-gray room as the tape began to record. A man sat on one end of a metal table in the center of the dimly lit room, shuffling through hundreds of papers describing the documentation of the experiment. He held a thick, brown cigar with a bright yellow band around it, the only uplifting spot of color in the entire area. His hands shook nervously as he flipped through the papers. He flicked the vibrant orange embers into an ashtray before finally beginning to speak.
“Day one during the documentation of the disease which, unbeknownst to us, would soon be one of the great epidemics of the 21st century. . .”
Day One
The pale-bodied patient laid strapped to a small bed, a simple precaution of course, despite his behavior, or lack thereof, being very serene. Tubes shot out from several veins in his body to determine the health level of his blood cells. A monitor with a wire leading to his body sat next to the bed, beeping every other second to portray the rhythm at which his heart was beating.
He was a very fit man in his early twenties, but he looked as if he’d been beaten many times over. Black bruises covered his entire body. When he had been taken into the hospital, he was bloody and had what looked like scratch marks along his back and face. A deep gash was set into his cheek, but the most distinct and unusual wound on him was a long red line stretching from his temple to his chest. It was risen against his skin and seemed to pulsate faster than the monitor beeped. Tiny bubbles with pus protruding from them scaled the length of the line, looking almost like they were boiling. The cause of the problem was unclear to the doctor and nurse standing to the side of him.
A doctor equipped with a scalpel raised his hand. Disgust was purely visible on his face, even behind the surgical mask. His chest heaved with a huge breath before he lowered his hand and cut into a couple of the circular bubbles of infected skin. The split second the blade touched the wound, yellow liquid and blood shot up and covered the doctor’s face. He jumped back, screaming profanities. He reached up and ripped the mask from his face- throwing it to the floor.
“Thirty days in comatose and no response or explanation for. . .this.” he gestured to the boy on the table with a scowl.
A nurse standing by him placed a reassuring hand on his arm.
“Dr. Kwiatowski, this boy is a hopeless case. Symptoms are not matching to anything we have ever encountered, it’s not anymore your fault than it is any of ours.” she told him. He scoffed and waved her hand off of him.
“That’s all very well Nancy, but we can’t just leave him in comatose forever. I swear to find a reasonable explanation for this, goddamnit!” he exclaimed, then stomped out of the operating room. No other sounds were made after the slamming of the doors besides the sharp beeping of the heart monitor. Beep, beep, beep. . .
Day Fifteen
Kwiatowski, first name David, sat at his office desk in the pitch black. He scratched at his neck frequently, and sighed in annoyance every time he did so. A hardly visible rash was spreading from his neck up to his face, a red color that contrasted badly against his pasty skin. He lit a cigar and took a long drag before he flipped on a desk lamp and wrote on the tablet in front of him.
Patient background is unspecified. We do know, however, that he was found laying naked and bloody near the hospital doors, looking as if he had crawled out of his own grave. . .
He flicked ashes into an ashtray near the lamp.
An interesting phenomenon unlike anything I have encountered in my fifteen years as a doctor. Itrained for over a decade learning how to heal the sick- and this is to be my downfall? A man of only forty-four, and already my career is seemingly failing.Today we took him off of all medication.
David put out his cigar.
Day Twenty
“Doctor! He’s moving!”
Kwiatowski immediately ran to the patient’s side in time to see him begin to convulse. His eyes flew open and darted around wildly before they rolled up into his head and he began foaming at the mouth. Only instead of white, his eyes were a fierce scarlet- it looked as if a hundred blood vessels had popped in his eye at once. The heart monitor leapt to the sky in one second and became eerily silent the next. David took hold of the defibrillator and pushed the paddles against the patients chest.
The patient’s body jumped as the electricity shot through his body. The heart monitor returned to its normal pace.
David sighed in relief and placed the paddles back on a tool table. The patient remained normal, his eyes were closed again. David breathed slowly for a moment before speaking.
“Did… did you see his eyes?”
Day Thirty-One
The day began as usual, the patient still unresponsive. David scratched at the rash along his face before picking up the scalpel, about to cut into the patient once again. But abruptly, the heart monitor went wild- the patient thrashed uncontrollably before sitting up. David jumped back. A subhuman sound erupted from the patient’s cracked and bleeding lips, much like a growl, and he jumped out off the table. His blood-red eyes searched around inhumanly and they landed on Nancy, David’s nurse.
He sprinted for her, tackling her to the ground. His hands gripped the side of her head and he growled again and by now, saliva ran down his chin, dripping onto Nancy’s face. David stared in awe and horror, his feet glued to the ground as the patient dug his nails into Nancy’s eyes and blood surrounded his fingers. She screamed like a crow and scratched at the patient’s face- to no prevail. With a final blood-curdling cry, he threw his head down and bit into Nancy’s neck. She quit moving and lay very still. He bit into her twice more before looking up. Blood, both his and Nancy’s, covered his face from his hairline to his chin. He stared at David as if he hadn’t noticed him before.
The patient ran at him, snarling ferociously. He vaulted onto David, and knocked him into the ground, but before he was able to go any further, David thrusted the scalpel he’d picked up into the patients neck, his jugular, and immediately his blood sprayed the wall.
David yelped as the body slumped onto him.
Day Forty
The man with the cigar took a long drag before setting it down. Across from him, his face hidden by shadows, sat David.
“It’s now been forty days since that boy came to us, David.” he said. “Well?”
David laughed bitterly.
“There is no cure. Only death.” The cigar man leaned forward.
“Don’t be ridiculous, David. There is always a solution. Even cancer has chemotherapy! What is going on?” he reached for David’s arm, and after he touched him David leaped up, making a sound at him that sounded like a hiss.
“Don’t. Touch me, Mr. Flenory.” he snarled. Flenory pulled his hand back, but glanced at it first. There were bloody flakes of what looked like skin. . .yes! Skin!
“David!” he shouted. “What on Earth…” David stepped into the light, revealing his misshapen face. It looked as if he’d been severely burned, there were full pieces of flesh hanging off of him, along with the familiar boiling bubbles of pus and blood. It almost looked like bone along his jaw.
Flenory stood up suddenly in alarm.
“What in God’s name!” he started running for the door but David was quicker than he was. He stood at the door, in the full light, and Mr. Flenory saw just how gruesome he was. . .
“He looked like he’d crawled out of the pits of Hell itself. A dead man walking. It was unnatural, horrific. Like something out of a movie. . . And even to this day there has been no explanation for what has happened here.” Mr. Flenory brought the cigar up to his lips only to discover there wasn’t any cigar left. “Maybe that boy really did walk right out of his own grave.”
Flenory started when a sudden shouting came from the hall outside the door. He shook in fear of what could be outside his door. He stood up out of his seat and pressed stop on the tape recorder.
In spite of himself, he walked to the door and opened it.
“Nancy? Wha-” his next words were cut off and replaced by his own hysterical yelling as his life was stripped from him.
Nancy stared up, licking her lips.
He was found laying naked and bloody near the hospital doors, looking as if he'd crawled out of his own grave. . .
Hope you don't think I just forgot about this. I was a little stoked to read it. So here I go with my review! I hope it's adequate enough.