FICTION by Adam Buckler, 12th Grade
“Explain this to me again. I died… and came back?”
“Yes,” said the man in the chair.
“Like in the movies?”
“Well. Kind of,” the man said.
“And you’re not part of one of daddy’s elaborate pranks?”
The man paused, looking down at the hardwood floor. “There’s no prank going on here.”
“Okay, c’mon. Then this has got to be a dream? Right?”
“No, as crazy as it sounds, this is real life Bobby.”
“But if I was in a dream. That’s what the person in my dream would say. Because your dreams aren’t self aware that they’re actually dreams? Right?”
“Sure,” the man sighed, “Look Bobby. Everyone thought you were dead. I saw it with my own eyes. Twenty-one years ago. And now you’re just back.” The man looked around the room. His patient sat on the side of a bed, in front of a white wall with a painting of a cartoon alien hi-fiving a purple power-ranger. On the adjacent wall there were two windows overlooking a sign reading Clearwater Children’s Hospital.
Bobby had a golden, bushy beard and was tall with a stable width. But the man’s gaze kept returning to Bobby’s eyes. They were the milky-blue eyes of a little kid, in the body of a grown adult.
The man snapped out of his thoughts as Bobby jumped off his bed and started strolling around the small room. “If you saw me die, how did it happen?” Bobby asked.
The man dropped his head, staring at the carpeted floor. He finally said, “That’s a story for another time.”
“Okay. Listen, sir. Are you a doctor?”
“Yes. Well, at least I thought I was. But you, coming back from the dead, have me questioning things…” The Doctor’s gaze returned to the alien painting. Something about it gave him the creeps. Except, the alien was gone. He let out a sigh of relief. It looked like a T-Rex now?
“Hey Bobby, turn around. What’s that painted on the wall?”
Bobby grinned. “It’s my favorite power-ranger! The yellow one of course!”
“No, not the power ranger - by golly, you’re right. It is yellow. Well, what about the thing next to it?”
“Are you okay mister?” Bobby asked. “It’s obviously a racecar.” The Doctor exhaled. Of course it’s a racecar. Why would it have been anything else? My eyes were just playing tricks on me, he thought.
Bobby tilted his head. “When can I see my mommy again?”
It took everything in the Doctor not to burst out laughing in the moment. The absurdity of it - a grown man crying for his mother. The Doctor had to remind himself that despite Bobby’s frame, he’s still a little kid. After all, the girl was only twelv when he couldn’t save her.
The Doctor remembered that day as if it were yesterday. The hospital was buzzing with frantic energy. Two nurses slammed open the door to make way for a hospital bed being pushed in. On the bed was an 8-year old girl with IVs and oxygen tubes extruding from her body. She had bushy golden-locks and was tall for her age. But the Doctor would never forget those milky-blue eyes that stared into his soul - begging him to save her - as her breathing slowed.
“You never answered my question. When can I see my mommy?” Bobby brought the Doctor back to the present day.
“We’ll have you home in no time. Just stay tight for me buddy. I know today’s been crazy. But everything will be okay.” The Doctor looked over his shoulder, pondering if anymore needed to be said. Then, he did a double take. The white brick wall had become barren metal. Now that he looked closer, the two windows had disappeared. He shrugged it off as a trick of the light, and turned his attention back to his patient.
Bobby, still silent, stared at the floor.
“I promise. Okay?” The Doctor walked over and rested his hand on Bobby’s shoulder, who had sat back down on the edge of his bed.
Without lifting his gaze, Bobby nodded his head up and down. “It was just so hard. I could feel something crawling within my body. Scraping bones. Clogging veins. And then I began losing control. I could feel the thing taking over. It was painful and there was nothing I could do. Then everything went black, and it stayed that way. I was surrounded by darkness for so long.” The Doctor noticed Bobby turn to look at the alien painted on the wall. Bobby continued, “Now I’m back. And I’m scared. And I don’t understand. What if the thing inside me comes back? What if it happens again?”
“Hey, look at me Bobby.” The Doctor gently lifted up Bobby’s chin, so that he could look in Bobby’s blue eyes. “We’ll get you reunited with your family. And everything will be okay. Everything will be…” The Doctor tailed off, his mind returning to that night twenty-one years ago.
It was only two weeks after his wife’s unexpected heart attack. He couldn’t save her. But he could save the girl. “Alright, she’s under.” Everything was going well. The environment was sterile, and he had accessed the heart without any additional damage. He felt sweat pooling within his hairnet. And his always steady hands had a slight wobble to them. He looked down upon the girl’s bloody heart, and jumped back. A forestry green, starfish-esque blob was latched atop her heart. It was foreign to anything the Doctor had seen on Earth. Tentacles that extended from the thing's core wrapped around the girl’s beating heart.
“Why did it have to be me? What did I do!” Bobby interrupted.
But the Doctor was not listening anymore. The Doctor’s mind was in the past. In that moment, in the midst of a life-saving surgery, everything became clear to the Doctor. His wife died from this alien parasite, and so would this girl. If not killed now, it would continue spreading across the globe until humanity was no more. During that surgery, the Doctor made the hardest choice of his life. He slid his fingers into a pair of scissors and closed the blades into a single point. He gave one final look at those innocent blue eyes as tears formed in his own.
“How! How am I here! Why did this happen to me! Why me! WHY!” Bobby’s screams echoed through the room.
The Doctor lifted his arms into the air. With one swift motion, he swung down, driving and twisting the blade into the center of the parasite. The tentacles recoiled as they detached from its host. He looked over, tears streaming down his face. The line on the cardiac monitor was flat.
“Damn it! Why did I deserve this!”
A body tackled the Doctor into a table. Bloody tools falling onto the two men as they tussled on the cold floor. Soon, the Doctor was pinned to the ground as he yelled, “Can’t you see! I had no choice. Or else it would have spread to us all!”
“Damn it! Why me?! Why can I not live with my loss?” Bobby paused, hopelessness bleeding into his anger. Until his anger crescendoed again. “Why! Damn it! Why?”
The Doctor saw a fist being raised above him. And then everything went black.
Bobby was gone. So were the white walls with the aliens and Power Rangers. Instead, the room was in darkness. Green arms were slithering up the wall. The Doctor was huddled in the middle, shivering in fear. The tentacles of his losses enclosing him.
ᐧ ᐧ ᐧ
A man in a gray suit drove a 1950s Cadillac convertible under an archway reading Clearwater Institute for the Mentally Insane. He parked in a square lot and shut off the engine. Shortly thereafter, he walked towards a metal door, typed in a code, and entered the building. He found his security guard in the lobby, and they walked down a hallway. They soon reached the room they were looking for. The man slid in a key and entered a plain, brick room. The room had a single window, a wooden chair and desk, and a twin bed with worn sheets. A man, screaming in agony, was hunched over on the floor.
“Shall I put him under, Professor Clearwater?” The security guard asked.
“Please do. It appears that Dr. Smith has had a rough day,” the Professor said.
The guard sedated the Doctor, and an eerie silence replaced his echoing screams.
Professor Clearwater placed his cool palm against Dr. Smith’s face. “I like this one. A famous surgeon, driven insane by his own imagination. Fascinating.”
The Professor hesitated, peering at the wrinkles lining the Doctor’s face. “This one sees the world differently. I would love to see who he thinks he’s talking with. I would revel in the cruelty of it. But alas, it does not matter what I think. It only matters what he thinks, because whatever he thinks is the only, ultimate truth to him.” The Professor turned away from Dr. Smith, leaving the poor, shriveled man lying still on the tile floor.
As the Professor was leaving the room, he noticed a fallen picture. In the frame, Dr. Smith stood next to his wife and daughter. The latter of whom was a tall, 8-year old girl with bushy golden locks and milky-blue eyes.
The Professor picked up the fallen picture.
“A photo of a now insane Doctor with his deceased wife and the daughter he killed.” The Professor smiled. “What a beautiful world.”
The Professor dropped the picture, letting it shatter besides the broken man.
Adam Buckler is a senior at Heritage Hall. The idea for this story stemmed from a creative writing assignment. However, it evolved into something that he worked on outside of class and past the submission deadline. He included elements of horror, mystery, and action to create a compelling story with multiple twists and turns along the way. Ultimately, the story serves as a character study around a single man.
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