A shipwreck

Helmut frowned - it was a bad night.

As if Helmut’s night couldn’t get any more stressful, a transport vessel managed to beach itself on the reef, right as he was about to clock out for the night. According to the document, it was some kind of military boat carrying unspecified cargo. Illuminated by the flickering oil lamp perched on the corner of his small desk, he tiredly put down the hastily written disaster report. He coughed, spattering small bits of phlegm into his handkerchief. Adjusting his rounded spectacles, Helmut sighed.

Getting up from the desk and stifling another cough, he shuffled to the waiting paperwork. Eyeing the darkness of the high looming ceiling while silently envying the birds that infested the rafters, Helmut grabbed a new stack of papers while stalking back to the desk. While leafing through documents, his finger touched something sticky. Immediately cursing the birds above, he pulled away from a piece of...something.

Peering over his glasses on his short nose, he saw a red and purple splotch on the corner of a report. It was rounded and resembled a pustule, steadily spreading thin tendrils across the slightly yellowed parchment. He pushed the sheaf of papers away while jumping to his feet. Another clerk came over, coughing into his hand, only to be immediately taken aback by the bizarre sight. This had to be their worst prank to date, Helmut thought, thinking of the physicians operating on the floors below.

“I’m going to go have a word downstairs,” he declared to his fellow bureaucrats.

A chorus of agreement mixed with every ounce of enthusiasm they had left.

“You get ’em, boss!” came from the youngest worker.

Full of righteous indignation and cheered on by bullied paper pushers, Helmut stormed out into the dim stairwell. Pounding down the flight of stairs, he let himself into the administration office. Anyone can tell the biggest authority by the fancy door to an office at the very end of a hallway. Swallowing the growing lump in his throat, Helmut stopped right before the intimidating oak. Instead of knocking, the brave middle manager turned the knob and pushed through the doorway.

“Sir, we really put up with a lot…” he began his mentally rehearsed speech, but stopped short when he saw blood.

A viscous crimson halo was forming around the administrator’s head. The man was still seated, but with his body at an awkward angle, face down on his final piece of correspondence. An open window to the back of the late administrator’s high leather chair blew familiar odors of salt mingled with notes of whatever creatures were caught beached in low tide. The coppery scent of gore combining with the smell of old parchment and briny ocean was too much. A shift in the shadows to his right forced Helmut out of his stupor. Holding back a racking cough, he sprinted back up to his floor.

Bits and pieces of rooms not registered during his indignation were and clear during the retreat. Slightly opened doors both left and right leading to rest quarters had bodies of staff. One was laid on a cot, he could’ve been sleeping except for his unblinking, fearful eyes. Another was simply pinned to a wall with an arrow by the throat, both hands around the shaft. More shadowy figures materialized from the dark corners and shifting spaces.    A man in dark robes waited on the stairwell going up. Crunches, yelps, and screams reverberated down the corridor. His workers were gone. Determined to avoid the same fate, he went left into the stairway. Taking stairs two at a time, ignoring the oppressive darkness surrounding him, Helmut slammed himself into the flimsy door to his escape. It didn’t budge. Overtaken by a coughing fit he racked up substance from his chest as the door finally gave with a sickening crunch.

Soft phosphorescence suddenly replaced inky blackness of the stairwell. A soothing voice washed over him. Still overcome with increasingly severe hacking from some substance within his lungs, Helmut had no choice but to put his back to an oddly soft wall and slide downwards. A strange warm feeling overtook him; there wasn’t just one voice, it sounded like a choir.

After his eyes adjusted, the scene was worse than he could have imagined. Every gurney supposed to flank the massive intake ward was empty. Dull green light permeated the room, revealing walls covered in sticky flesh. Not stitched together, but melded, with lines of dark black mold leading to valleys of crimson infection, growing as it ate away at dripping pick mass. Still racking his lungs, three patients from the shipwreck were arrayed, twitching but unable to move, their scalps fused with the ceiling. Cries for help were stifled by glowing sickly green fungus forcing its way from their throat, under their nails, and growing from thin stalks out of their eyes.

The fate of the nurses stood, or rather grew, from the infested floor. Three pale outgrowths from the floor held a bloated human head. Forming a pyramid and meeting at the bottom of the head, three faces were visible. Whatever the thing was sang in a multitude of voices.

A beautiful naked woman stepped out from behind the singing sculpture. Nonchalantly advancing towards a hacking and shuddering Helmut while idly spinning a collection of thin tubes ending in syringes. Her bare feet sprouted fleshy lattice on the hard floor with every step. Attempting to shield himself from the woman he tried to raise his arm, only to find it fused with the wall.

Crouching in front of him, she asked politely, “do you know what these are?” gesturing at the syringes.

He heard something shift behind him. Ignoring whatever was creeping down the stairwell, he shook his head at the woman creature.

She produced a forearm covered in small round wounds, “This is where they took my gift!” pacing back toward the center of the room, she shouted as the singing thing began to scream in a cacophony of voices.

“They took my blood to heal you sad, small individuals,” she began to pace faster, “But I can see what you death worshiping beings can’t!”

Helmut struggled to remember his name as the wall behind him took their-his worries away. Fear washed over him, he felt the room as himself, he loved his-their creator. Only the front of his skull and torso felt anything besides warmth.

She walked back over to him, the singing thing letting out a low hum. Serene, she crouched in front of the closed door that seemed so far in the past for any of them, portals and boundaries were a human creation. Face to face with their-his creator, she opened her mouth, about to lull the wall with a song of creation when the door slammed open on the woman. Attempting to scramble away, the wall tried to come to the defense of its creator, lashing out with hands and claws. But the new creature was only beginning life, infantile, clumsy, and awkward..

Clad in dark robes and brandishing a one handed axe, the man delivered a solid stomp to the woman creature’s back. The woman began pulling the biological mass to her, quickly armoring her torso in a calloused mass. The attacker ended the fight with a downward swing, splitting her skull. The room roiled and the singer squealed with many voices as it melted to a puddle. With a few more insurance swings, he quickly opened the entrance door and stepped into the cool night air.

Inquisitor Josiah finished cleaning the axe with a rag after stepping out of the hospital, admiring rows of cramped and colorful storefronts that defined this region past the long, ornate hospital garden. Residual adrenaline brightened small lamps that lit the way to the entrance. His men began to clean the butchery Josiah left behind; he could hear buckets of water being splashed across the floors. This hospital could probably be running within days, there were always more doctors and functionaries.

Running to meet the inquisitor, a red faced teenager looked up at Josiah. The teens completely non-descript appearance was carefully crafted to allow him to move unhindered and unnoticed. Anyone who saw through the facade would quickly learn the results of thirteen years of combat training.

“Vivi has gone wrong within the hospital,” Josiah spoke in a hushed voice, “Staff liquidated in case of an inciter in their midst, done as silently as possible.” He rolled up a document and gave it to the teen before he rushed off into the night to alert the inquisition and lady who owned the town of the situation. Medical help may slow for a bit in Stonebrook, but this city always had more eager to fill the shoes of others. The new staff would not care who wore those shoes before.

Josiah grinned - it was a good night.