The
shit-stained grins of Ennui and Malaise chewed on my neck until I
collapsed. I must have hit my head because the next thing I knew,
I was lying in a hospital bed with all sorts of tubes sticking
out of me. They weren't connected up to any of my veins or their
machines, they were just sticking out of holes they had dug in my
chest, legs and arms, with the other ends just floating in the
air like an orange in an anti-gravity chamber. There was however
a saline drip going. Again not connected up to me, just saline
solution dripping through the ceiling in the corner. There was
only one logical confusion: we were beneath the sea and a crack
was just developing in the sea-bed. Without any thought for my
own personal safety, I jumped out of bed and ran round to
everyone else in the ward shaking them awake to warn them of the
danger, and pronouncing two of them dead. As if only to embarrass
me, one of them made a complete recovery moments later, but a 50%
diagnosis rate for someone who is not a doctor, is not bad.
Perhaps that's the best way to ease the pressure, both in
economic terms, and in terms of the lack of doctors, on the
health services of all our countries. Forget spending vast
quantities of time and money on training doctors, and instead go
with the 50% diagnosis rates of the good ol' common man on the
street. A few costly lawsuits aside - which can be budgeted for,
no worries - we can have the kind of health service that so many
people are striving for. (Arf arf).
Anyway,
time to stop looking out for everybody, and instead to be selfish
again. I must have looked quite a sight, running around a
hospital ward, naked except for with meaningless tubes sticking
out of me, screaming that the sea was caving in and that we would
all drown if we didn't get out of there. To calm me down I was
taken and shown some pictures. They weren't the most relaxing of
pictures, but the brushwork was fantastic. Pictures of brutal axe
murders and people having sex with animals aren't the most
soothing thing to look at if you think the sea is about to fall
on you and kill you. Credit where credit is due, however: that
Rorschach is one hell of an artist. (An easy, old joke, I know,
but I've had a trying weekend, and provided this doesn't all turn
out to be a dream, I think you can forgive me one moment of
weakness). Upon returning to the ward, the saline drip had
stopped, and a new set of people were in the beds. I know I would
be too scared to stay in a room if I had almost drowned there
less than an hour ago. ...In fact I was too scared to stay there.
I tried telling them I didn't want to stay there, but they
wouldn't listen to me, or they couldn't hear me. I struggled to
get out but they just tightened their grips on me and put me in a
different bed. It was the bed where the dead man had been; I
suppose no-one else had wanted it, and as they couldn't hear me,
I couldn't complain. Oh well, what's wrong with lying in a dead
man's bed? It's not as if I hadn't done it before, both for
pleasure and profit.
As
in all the best films, I needed a way out of there. When everyone
was asleep I began to dig a tunnel under my bed. I dug all night
and slept all day, hiding the dirt by eating it. It's lucky for
me that security was so lax that they didn't even check my shit:
I was still excreting lino weeks after I'd gone past it. (Even to
this day, I'll shit a plastic turd at least once a month). After
six weeks of digging I had reached a depth of about two metres;
not enough to escape through, but enough to hide in. They
searched all over for me once I went to ground, never to be seen
again. After a couple of hours they let me be, and gave my bed to
another anonymous person. I had forgotten to factor food into my
equation; I could go in eating dirt, but it wouldn't be quite
nutritious enough without a couple of worms for protein. Luckily
another lapse in security proved to be the answer: I had never
noticed before, but they seemed to leave a plate of food on the
floor every meal time, right by my hole. I don't know who must
have gone without when I stole it, but I can only hope that
either a different person went without each day, or when one
person wasn't being fed day after day, that they provided an
extra meal for him or her. I would hate to feel that another
person died just because I needed food.
Three
weeks after taking to my hole, I needed a more permanent way out
of there. I killed a nurse, and wore her uniform as I hid in a
laundry basket. Freedom was mine. (Actually, the truth of the
matter is that after three weeks of living in my hole, a doctor
popped his head under the bed, splattering me with his brains.
This brought me to the attention of the other doctors who said I
was free to go any time I wanted. Another eight weeks later I
left for my previous attempt at life).