Darkness. I didn’t know where I was or how I had got there,
just that this wasn’t the Combine I knew. Curiosity had gotten the best of me
and I began to shuffle down the hall, feeling invisible, and blending in with
the black filling in around me. I noticed the low hum of electricity and
machinery all around me, buzzing through the walls. I reach my arm out to find
the wall to confirm that I wasn’t in the combine, and a jolt of electricity
surged through me as soon as my fingertip made contact with the wall. This was
defiantly the Combine. The spark of white electricity had lit up the hall for a
split second and I realized that I was being watched. Dead faces, with beady,
dark eyes, lined the walls. I felt myself shrink under the pressure of their
gaze, I shrunk to the size of a snail, and I retreated into my shell in seek of
security. I slowly slid down the hall, even though, I couldn’t tell where I was
going, only that I was moving forward.
After what felt
like an eternity of creeping along at a steady pace, my shell hit the wall. The
hallway had ended. I uncurled from my shell, opened myself up and exposed myself
to the Outside. I felt the insecurities and vulnerability started to creep back
inside of me as I grew back to my four-foot-four stature. I hesitated before
placing my hand on the wall again, fearful of the electricity pulsating below
it, but when my fingers touched nothing happened. I then placed my palm on the
wall and dragged it around the wall before finding a light switch. I flipped
the switch and the entire hall lit up.
The most noticeable
feature to the hall was that blood seeped out from the walls, as if the walls
were crying from what they saw, me. The blood oozed from cracks in the
wallpaper and dripped down the wall, and picture frames, then on to the floor,
which was also littered with deep stains. The picture frames, that were placed
periodically on the wall depicted small children, and past Big Nurses. There
were bent and disfigured meat hooks that hung from rusty tracks on the ceiling
with heads on them. The meat hooks held the disembodied heads by the neck and
the facial expression on each head was blank and expressionless. They hung
upside-down with hair that dangled below them. The eyes on every head had fake
glass eyes glued on to the eyelids, to add an extra piercing effect. There was also a control panel on the wall,
and due to its frequent use, was the one thing looked shiny and new still in
the hallway. The overall smell of this hallway was quite pleasing despite the
rotting flesh and blood everywhere, I couldn’t put my finger on the distinct
smell but had an acidic taste to it, that reminded me of orange juice.
From around the
corner, walked out the Big Nurse appeared in her usual outfit, but her breasts
didn’t seem to fit correctly in it, they seemed larger than normal. “Mr.
Bromden, what are you doing out of bed at such an hour?” The fog began to roll
in from behind her and the blood and meat hooks dissolved in it. “Well, I will
have you know it is against ward policy to be out roaming around. Let’s just
get you back in bed, Mr. Bromden.” The Big Nurse, then, reached out into the
fog and grabbed me by the shoulder to lead me back to my room and into bed.
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