The creature’s claws grip the rail of the hospital bed, as if hanging on for dear life. Smokers yellow nails, ancient blood a dark blue beneath the paper thin skin.
Primordial, ancient, he’s been living on this earth for way too many years to suit her taste. The plastic band around his wrist names him, the plastic tag on her scrubs names her. They match.
But this is not her hospital, and he is not her patient. She is the hunter, he is the hunted and the snakes that wrap around the caduceus are the DNA that binds them.
White sheets, white lights, she remembers her pretty white dress that was fouled on that birthday when she saw the creature for the first time.
The oxygen tank hisses, he exhales breath filled with smoke, with gin, with lies, with threats that made her keep the secret for all these years.
She looks at the container of hand sanitizer and wants to bathe in it, wash off the years of dirt and shame and violence and neglect; fill her nostrils with the scent of alcohol, with aloe, shake off the scales, the protective coating she’s grown.
A croak comes from the place where he lies. He’s pissed himself, he’s shit himself, he’s drank himself into this dark, black place where she does not want to be.
His filmed rheumy eyes look up – does he recognize her? Yes, no, she doesn’t care.
The steady, incessant beep of his hateful heart brings here back to the here and the now, and she stares at the up and the down rhythm of it. She can feel him pressing down on her, suffocating her, feeling the in and out of him.
The snakes tighten around the scepter, and he gasps for air like a fish out of water, and when her fingers are too tight to strangle him any further, she listens to the last beep before the shrill scream fills the room.