Chapter 27: S#5. The Lloyd (4)
by fnovelpia
The next day.
The sun, resembling an orange, announced the morning.
I never thought I’d be celebrating my birthday in 1980s America.
It felt new.
I sat down for breakfast.
Thanks to the massage from the night before, Ellen seemed rejuvenated.
Her skin was flushed with a healthy glow.
But Nancy, sitting across from me, seemed down.
Dark circles had formed under her beautiful eyes, as if she hadn’t slept a wink.
Concerned, I spoke up.
“Are you feeling okay, Nancy? You look a bit pale…”
“Oh, don’t act like Dad…!!”
Nancy’s response was sharp.
She sounded like someone who had had their lover stolen.
When Ellen and I gave her a puzzled look, Nancy bowed her head and blushed.
“Sorry, Summer. Sorry, Mom…”
She apologized in a shrinking voice.
Without eating, Nancy left the table as if fleeing.
What happened?
“Ellen. Is something going on with Nancy?”
“Hmm, it seems like she might have been dumped.”
‘A strong body houses a strong soul.’
The motto written on the hospital’s outer wall sparkled more than usual today.
Hive Hospital was bustling.
Doctors checked on patients here and there, while nurses busily wheeled around carts full of syringes.
Despite the busy work, everyone seemed in a good mood.
A strangely excited warmth filled the hospital.
“Brace yourselves. Today is a special day, after all!”
The director said.
Today was the “anniversary” of Hive Hospital.
Why would a hospital, of all places, celebrate an anniversary?
Curious, I asked Stallone, my mentor.
He responded with a lackluster expression.
“Rookie, are you really asking because you don’t know?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“……”
Stallone clammed up.
Contrary to the festive hospital atmosphere, Stallone was notably downcast.
Even the physical therapy he usually performed with gusto seemed half-hearted today.
He didn’t even administer the pink steroids.
Syringes that should have been injected into patients went into Stallone’s pocket instead.
“Are you stealing patients’ medication?”
“What stealing? It’s too late for that, rookie. Just like it’s too late for me to go back home.”
He spoke cryptically.
After pocketing the syringes, Stallone left.
I had no choice but to continue the physical therapy.
Let’s see, the next patient is… a bricklayer.
The first patient I met in this hospital.
When I opened the door to the room, he pulled out a brick as if he had been waiting.
But now, I noticed small letters written on the brick.
If you weren’t paying attention, you’d miss the tiny, grain-sized writing.
“Help me.”
That’s what was written on the surface of the brick.
I furrowed my brow.
“Are you okay, sir?”
“Yes. I feel great today. Like I could fly!” the bricklayer said with a smile.
It was an unnatural smile.
The moment I touched his body, I felt an immense sense of wrongness.
His condition was abnormal.
This wasn’t the muscle I was used to squeezing daily.
I’m not well-versed in anatomy.
But I know that the biceps shouldn’t be where the elbow is, nor should the forearm muscles be on the chest.
The bricklayer’s body was clearly abnormal.
Swollen veins writhed over the twisted muscles like eels.
Not just the bricklayer, the other patients were the same.
Their muscle structure was bizarrely deformed.
Parts that should have been in were out, and parts that should have been out were in, far from any human muscle structure.
When I asked if they were okay, they all replied they felt like they could “fly.”
It was chilling.
“What the hell is this…?”
I backed away.
Exiting the room, I crossed the corridor.
I had to call a doctor.
The doctors were injecting themselves with pink steroids.
The nurses were doing the same. Even the director.
They had expressions of unbearable happiness as they stuck needles into their arms.
It was like a drug party in Harlem.
Their muscles became firmer and more twisted.
Muscles deformed like clumped up rubber clay were distinctly visible over their white coats.
“Oh my God.”
I pressed my forehead. My head was spinning.
Am I having a nightmare?
Suddenly, I saw room 404.
The door was wide open.
The patient who should have been in the bed was gone.
The machete and rope were gone too.
I grabbed a doctor by the collar and shouted.
“The patient from room 404 is gone!”
“Heh, calm down. Must’ve been discharged.”
“Discharged?”
“I don’t know. Why does it matter? Today’s the opening anniversary. We’re all going back home.”
I let go of the doctor’s collar.
My survival instincts were screaming.
I needed to get out of this hospital immediately.
As I turned toward the stairs, I realized it was noisy outside.
Looking out the window, I saw a crowd and vehicles in front of the hospital building.
From laborers to sports stars, all sorts of muscular men had gathered in front of the hospital.
They were all discharged patients.
I didn’t know why they were here, but they were all in a good mood, laughing grotesquely.
They looked like bees swarming a hive.
Patients and medical personnel with bizarrely twisted muscles…
Muscular men gathered in front of the hospital…
Something was seriously wrong.
A fear beyond an ominous premonition crept over me.
It was the perfect timing for eerie, chilling background music.
“F*ck.”
I tore at my hair.
I had trusted the narrator.
Even if we couldn’t communicate, I thought their warning alarm system was reliable.
But there were no warnings, not even a hint, until it came to this.
How cruel.
Anyway, I needed to escape before it was too late.
I couldn’t leave through the main entrance, crowded with people.
It seemed like a bad idea to make contact with the muscular men gathered outside.
There was only one option left: jumping out the window.
I was on the third floor, but it didn’t matter.
I squeezed myself through the window frame.
Just as I was about to jump down, I saw the director standing at the bottom of the stairs.
Someone was silently approaching him from behind.
It was the patient from room 404, the machete killer.
The large blade in his hand aimed for the director’s back.
The director was moments away from being murdered.
I threw myself down reflexively.
My landing target was above the killer.
Crack-
With the sound of a shoulder bone smashing, the killer collapsed.
The machete rolled away.
-The machete killer has fallen.
Said the narrator in my head.
It was as announcing the killer’s defeat and maybe the end of the event.
I felt immensely relieved.
The dazed director turned around.
Seeing the fallen killer and the machete, he roughly understood what had happened.
The director grinned disgustingly.
“Did you save me? Thanks, Mr. Summer!”
“What did I tell you? This man was a killer.”
Now I saw a syringe stuck in the middle of the director’s bald head.
The muscles protruding over his clothes were bizarrely shaped.
Disgusted, I turned back towards the window to escape.
“Then, I’m clocking out, Director. Let’s never meet again.”
“Whoa, wait! Why the rush?”
The director laughed as he lifted one leg.
Then he crushed the fallen killer’s skull underfoot.
Pop.
It sounded like a watermelon bursting.
Bone and brain fragments scattered everywhere.
A confirmation kill.
I was dumbfounded.
“What the hell is this?”
“This patient was obviously a killer! Did you really think I didn’t know?”
The director wiped the blood off his face as he spoke.
“It was a lie that this patient wasn’t from Tromaville. And he wasn’t a gardener either!”
“……”
“When this patient was admitted to our hospital, he was covered in blood. Of course, it wasn’t his blood. I knew. I knew all along that this guy was a killer.”
I clenched my fist.
The director calmly turned his eyes to the window.
“It’s time. Look outside.”
The muscular men outside suddenly started stripping off their clothes.
Even the few women among them undressed coolly.
A group nude show.
But it wasn’t a pleasant sight.
Their muscles were grotesquely hypertrophied.
The shapes were twisted, making it horrifying to look at.
It was shocking in and of itself.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
The director was smiling.
In that moment, the killer with his head smashed in slowly got up.
Hadn’t he died less than a minute ago?
Muscles supported the body that should have been devoid of consciousness.
Having seen enough zombies to last a lifetime, this wasn’t particularly shocking.
“…What are you?”
I asked.
The director pulled the syringe from his scalp.
“Listen well, Mr. Summer. This drug isn’t just some steroid. It’s a liquid form of life.”
“……”
“It seeps into damaged muscle fibers, replacing them. Ultimately, it takes over the entire body’s muscles.”
Was Hive Hospital… a group of mad scientists?
“Mad scientists? You’re mistaken.”
The director shook his head.
The twisted muscles writhed.
“We just want to go back home.”
Body Snatcher.
In other words, ‘body thieves.’
It’s a staple of the sci-fi horror genre, dealing with extraterrestrial entities that take humans as hosts.
The real thrill of body snatcher narratives isn’t the fear of having one’s body taken.
It’s the unsettling thought that loved ones might be extraterrestrials – that’s the true essence of body snatcher stories.
“We come from outer space. To survive, we had no choice but to hijack human bodies,”
The director said.
From the beginning, he was an alien lifeform that had taken over a human body.
I sighed internally.
How did I not realize this?
The hospital’s name was Hive, after all.
The foreshadowing of this bizarre hospital being a hive for body snatchers was everywhere.
Yet, I was oblivious.
After facing zombies, clowns, demons, and dolls, I hadn’t anticipated the arrival of extraterrestrial beings.
“Why control muscles instead of the brain?”
“We can’t take over the brain. We only replace human muscles.”
To think the host’s mind remains intact while only the musculature is controlled…
The very thought is horrifying.
The brain remains intact while the entire body’s muscles are controlled…
That meant the host’s mind was still alive.
All the patients who received the pink injections had become hosts.
Now, they stood in front of the hospital, completely hijacked.
There was no time to relax.
I charged at the director, intending to beat him up and pull out his muscles.
But before my fist could reach him, I felt a blow to the back of my head.
Stars sparkled before my eyes.
I realized too late I had been hit by a brick.
Then, a folding ladder struck my back.
Pain flashed through me.
The attackers were the bricklayer and a professional wrestler.
They, too, had been taken over by extraterrestrial lifeforms.
They held me down and forced me to my knees.
The director wore a leisurely smile.
“To fully hijack the body’s control, we need to absorb the muscle memory.”
“Argh… Let go, you bastards!!”
“Today’s achievement is partly thanks to you. I’m truly grateful. Now we will return to our home planet. Ending this tedious undercover existence, we’ll take flight. Like bees, we have an instinct to return to our home planet.”
The director’s back swelled.
His clothes ripped apart, revealing wings sprouting from the scapula area.
The wings were made of bright red muscles.
“Fly like a butterfly, return like a bee. Towards our home planet!”
I imagined the doctors, nurses, and patients of Hive Hospital flapping their wings and ascending into space.
An utterly bizarre scene.
The director brought a 1.5-liter syringe, filled with pink liquid.
Not a steroid, but a liquid extraterrestrial entity. A monstrosity that would enter my body and replace my musculature.
The professional wrestler and bricklayer took the syringe.
“Normally, we’d administer it in small doses, but, Mr. Summer, your body can handle it! See you at home!”
The director cheerfully departed.
Muscle wings flapped on his back.
He grew distant, eventually disappearing down the corridor.
“Let’s go home…!”
The bricklayer and wrestler were ecstatic.
The giant syringe approached me.
I struggled desperately, but they pinned me down with their alien-enhanced muscles.
Thump─────────
The long needle was inserted into my neck.
0 Comments