Chapter 2 - MAMA KNOWS BEST
Content Warning
Visceral Violence / Gore
Luna ran first, pulling her sister with her.
Behind them they heard the heavy footsteps of Mama Brutus as she sprinted after them. They heard the upturned gurney get knocked to the side which compelled Alba to look back. For a split second all she could see was the horribly twisted nightmare that once was Mama Brutus running after them through the darkly lit corridor. Her rapid footsteps were awkward and clumsy and it seemed like she was constantly about to fall. But somehow, despite almost tipping over past the point where she should be able to maintain balance, Mama Brutus’ top half somehow seemed extremely rigid and stiff. Her one bloodshot eye fixed directly on the two of them.
“Don’t look at her!” Luna commanded as they rounded the corner.
In front of them the corridor continued for about a hundred more feet until it ended at some sort of security checkpoint. The reinforced door was open and the guard that was supposed to be stationed there lay dead on the floor. But his position sent chills down Luna’s spine. He was lying in the doorway! They wouldn’t be able to close the door with his body blocking it.
Luna let go of Alba’s hand as she began sprinting.
“Get ready to close the door!” she commanded.
She didn’t hear any word of affirmation from Alba but she heard her footfalls just behind her. And not far off she heard Mama Brutus’ heavy stomping getting closer and closer.
Forgoing all caution, Luna vaulted over the blood stained body, landing on the floor past him, within the security checkpoint. Then she quickly grabbed his shirt and pulled as hard as she could.
She made the mistake of looking up as she did where she saw Alba quickly approaching, reaching for the door, and behind her, half shrouded in shadow she saw the wild hair and teeth of Mama Brutus.
The fear she felt pulsed fresh adrenaline into her body, pushing her strength to new heights as she began pulling the body through the open doorway.
Alba ran in and grabbed the door, ready to slam it shut, but she momentarily slipped on the floor and almost lost her balance.
“Close it!” Luna shouted.
Alba wrapped her fingers around the edge of the heavy steel door and flung it into the doorframe as hard as she could.
There was probably only a fraction of a second between the door slamming shut and the monstrosity impacting it. But the steel door held, locked in place as it was designed to do, unless opened with a key.
They had been incredibly lucky that it had been open.
Luna let go of the body and collapsed back to the floor. Alba backed up from the door and pressed her slender body up against the wall next to it.
The gangly creature wearing the head nurse’s uniform swung its elongated arms into the door and the reinforced glass but to no avail. After only a couple of seconds of this it stopped and stood still for a moment. It was so tall that the two girls couldn’t even see its head through the window.
For an infinitely long moment of silence, broken only by the twins’ heavy breathing, the two girls simply remained still, watching the horrid shadow on the other side door.
Soon, that monster that had once been Mama Brutus, bent down to look through the window with its one red eye. It parted its split lips, smiling at the two of them, before it got back up and began slowly lumbering away. Whistling as it did.
“Are you okay?” Luna asked?
Alba was hyperventilating at this point.
“How can I be okay? What the fuck is going on?!”
Luna got up and grabbed her sister’s hand once more.
“We’re not safe yet. Come one.”
Alba didn’t question it and just followed.
Through the leadership of Luna, they navigated a small staff area where a fight had happened. Probably the one that had ended in that security guard’s death. The lights flickered, casting long and unnerving shadows all over. Luna knew they had to get off this floor. The monster would continue to track them down so they had to get out of there as fast as possible.
“Where are we going?” Alba asked.
“Shh, we have to be quiet.”
Luna led her sister out of the staff area and into another corridor with multiple rooms. They seemed to be patient rooms as well. Passing by one of them Alba saw the utterly destroyed remains of one patient. It was hard to tell what they had been before as their body looked like it had been torn asunder. Clawed or cut into pieces. There was blood everywhere.
They then stopped for a moment while Luna checked a room before then leading them further down the corridor.
“What are you looking for?” whispered Alba.
“There’s a maintenance room here somewhere.” Luna answered. “If we’re lucky we might be able to slide down some pipes to the floor below.”
“How do you know that?”
Luna stopped with a pained expression on her face. She opened her mouth as if to answer the question but then they heard it again.
Whistling.
They both swung around to look down the corridor where the whistling was coming from, knowing Mama Brutus would most likely round the corner soon.
Luna placed her index finger over her mouth, motioning for silence towards her sister, before grabbing her hand once more and leading her towards the sound!
Alba’s heart began pounding in her chest. What was Luna thinking?! Was she trying to get them killed? She wanted to resist, to slip away from her grip and run in the opposite direction. But the only thing that quelled those fears and prevented her from panicking was the fact the Luna was always, always, looking out for her best interest. She just needed to trust in her sister.
As the whistling got louder and louder, Luna frantically searched each room they passed by. Room after room she only found patient’s quarters and therapy rooms, and with each disappointment she began to fear she might be leading her sister into further danger.
There was a loud metallic crash emanating from around the corner in front of them and they then saw a wheelchair come into view, sliding across the floor. The whistling continued. Louder and louder.
But Luna pressed on, looking into one room, and then another and finally…
She audibly gasped when she, at long last, peeked into a room and found nothing but pipes, wires and maintenance equipment. This was it!
Wasting no time she quickly pulled Alba into the room with her mere seconds before Mama Brutus calmly rounded the corner.
They didn’t touch the door, instead they quietly stepped over various tools and components until they stood over a small opening where a few pipes led down to the next floor below. Another maintenance room awaited them there but although the pipes continued further down, the next opening was clearly blocked by the body of someone who had tried to push themselves through in fear but had gotten stuck. Their feet had been pulled off some time later.
Luna pointed down and Alba nodded. She then grabbed onto one of the pipes and began slowly descending down. The opening was just barely large enough for her to fit through and once she was safely on the floor, the sticky, bloody floor, she signaled up to Luna.
Outside of the maintenance room, Luna could hear the approaching footsteps of Mama Brutus and her constant whistling.
Wasting no time she grabbed onto the pipe and began slowly descending the pipe. But then she stopped. Something was off. It took her a moment to realize it but what had set her off was the fact that the whistling had suddenly stopped.
While still clinging onto the pipe, torso still sticking out of the hole, she whipped around in a panic to look at the door and felt her blood freeze.
Standing, halfway in the doorway, was Mama Brutus’ twisted body, bending to fit in through the door frame. It stood there, completely motionless, staring at her, with a sickening smile on its face.
Time seemed to stretch into infinity as the two locked eyes. Sweat trickling down Luna’s forehead, her legs trembling from the exertion.
The smile on Mama Brutus’ face suddenly widened and Luna knew she had to act right then and there. There was no way to descend safely without being snatched by the monster. So she had only one option.
As the twisted horror threw open the door and scurried into the room, reaching for Luna with its gangly hand, she simply let go and fell through the floor.
“Oh shit!” she heard Alba say as she stepped away.
Luna felt her foot hit something hard which sent her tumbling backwards. She then landed on the floor and felt a piercing pain in her leg as a screwdriver plunged deep into her thigh. But she knew she wasn’t out of harm’s way yet. As she screamed in pain she forced herself to crawl back away from the pipes just as Mama Brutus’ clawed arm reached down through the hole.
The swing around, grasping at thin air as Alba came to drag her sister away from it. Above they heard the monster’s frustrated grunts and growls before it gave up and pulled its arm back up through the hole.
Alba dragged her sister out of the maintenance room, into another identical corridor and into a patient’s room across the way. Luckily it was empty and once she had released her grip on Luna she quickly reached on over and closed the door.
“Fuck!” Luna exclaimed as she pulled the screwdriver out of her thigh.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure…I’m alive at least.”
Alba tried putting pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding but she wasn’t sure she was doing it right. Luna winced at the pain but soon laid back and focused on slowing her breathing.
“What’s happening here? I barely remember anything from our first days here and then I just woke up in a room, I look like this and Mama Brutus is a monster? What the fuck?!”
Luna smiled and chuckled.
“Is this funny to you?” asked Alba.
“No. I just never hear you swear. It’s funny.”
Luna sat up and placed a hand on Alba’s cheek. The two shared a moment of relief now knowing they were at least together.
“I tried so hard to find you, Alba. I fought for so long.”
“How long? How long have we been here?”
Luna lied back down and took a deep breath.
“I’m not sure.” she said. “But we’ve been here for quite a while. My memory is very spotty as well. I remember when we got here and how we had to watch out for some of the orderlies. But then it gets all hazy.
“I came too a few days ago, in my own cell. I kept asking for you, demanding they tell me what had happened to you and they only ever told me they were doing some tests on you and that you were okay. Then yesterday everything went wrong. At first I just thought it was other patients rioting and trying to escape but then it became clear they had gone insane…or something. Some of them had even started to change, like Mama Brutus.”
Alba got more comfortable now that they had time to breathe. She maintained pressure on the wound but leaned over her sister to get a better look at her.
“That orderly, Mr Anders. He didn’t seem right in the head. He was talking about monsters but he wasn’t making much sense. And then, then you came and killed him. And almost killed me.”
Luna opened her eyes at that. There was clear remorse in her expression. Remorse and fear.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. When I was trying to look for you I got in a fight and then…things got a little hazy. I don’t know how long it was but the next thing I knew I was on top of you, about to…”
But she faltered. The idea of having almost killed her sister was too painful to put into words.
“It’s alright.” said Alba, pulling one hand from the wound to hold Luna’s hand.
“It’s not alright. I’m supposed to protect you, but I’m the one who pushed for us to come here. I’m the reason that happened to you.” Luna replied, gently stroking her fingers across Alba’s cheek.
Alba furrowed her brow. “Wait, you mean you don’t know? You haven’t seen it?”
“Seen what?” Luna asked.
Alba took both of Luna’s hands and placed them over the thigh wound. “Hold on. Keep pressure on this.”
She then moved towards the door, opened it ever so slightly and peeked through. She saw no one outside but she heard some distant screams. She scanned the floor and found one bedpan. Luckily it looked unused, but more importantly it was made out of highly reflective steel.
She picked it up and retreated back into the room, closing the door behind her.
She then handed it to Luna.
“Ew, gross. Get that shit away from me!”
“It’s clean.” proclaimed Alba.
“Alright, fantastic. I don’t need it though.”
“Look into it!” Alba commanded.
It was then that Luna at last looked at her own reflection in the bedpan. She pushed herself up to get closer to it and her eyes widened. Although her mirrored image was slightly skewed, it was enough to give her the general details.
“Oh…I guess…they did it to me too…”
Alba put one hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Did what? What were they trying to do here?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that they performed some sort of tests on the patients.”
Alba thought back to what the orderly said. “He said that I was Dr Brimwall’s favorite.”
“Who?”
“The guy that you…” and then Alba clenched her fist and made a stabbing motion for her own head.
“Oh. What sort of sick experiments were they doing here? And why can’t we remember anything?”
Alba shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s not important. What’s most important is that we get the fuck out of here.”
Luna furrowed her brow and nodded. “We’ll have to patch up this leg first or else I’ll leave a trail behind us.”
She removed her hand from the wound and expected a gout of blood to squirt out and prove her point. But it didn’t. In fact there was no blood oozing from the wound. The two sisters leaned in closer to inspect it and were surprised to find that the wound had already scabbed over. As if it had gone through the process of healing which should have taken days.
“What the fuck?” asked Luna.
“How is that possible?” asked Alba.
The twins looked at one another and ultimately looked down at the surgical scars that covered their bodies. What had happened to them? What had these doctors done to them?
After a while, Alba opened the door and peeked out. The corridor was quiet and deserted.
“Let go.” she whispered as she emerged out of the room, leading her limping sister.
They moved down the hallway towards the security checkpoint and the staff area of this floor, hoping to find something that could aid them in their escape. Weapons, food, anything. The security door was closed but there were no guards either. The door to the staff area was wide open and a faint light flickered inside.
The two sisters nodded in affirmation and then snuck in.
The rec room was a mess. The dining table was broken, splintered to pieces and the chairs had been thrown around. Four corpses lay strewn about. One had been killed in the kitchen and their guts pulled out. Another lay in the doorway to the reading room with a knife in their back. A third was slumped down in front of the sofa, a hand torn off and shoved down their throat. The final body still sat in the sofa, head hung low, their entire body covered in blood and cuts of various sizes.
“See if you can find any weapons, I’ll look for food and stuff.” suggested Alba.
Luna nodded and began skulking towards a backroom, keeping an eye out for any discarded weapons or hidden attackers. Alba opened the fridge and found a handful of prepared meals, most likely prepared by the hospital kitchen staff she imagined. After that she gingerly stepped into the reading room, making sure not to disturb the body in the doorway. She could feel her heartbeat picking up when she looked at the corpses so she tried her best to avert her gaze.
The reading room had a few bookshelves and some novels resting there for staff usage. But what caught her eye were papers on the main desk. She approached and looked over them. At a quick glance they looked like staff notes and schedules. They were a little hard to make any sense of but one thing that did catch her eye was the appearance of her name.
‘Patient: Luna - Next Scheduled Treatment: Nov 27th, 1862.’
Confusion washed over her as she read those words. That couldn’t be. That was impossible…but then something else caught her attention.
On the wall over the main desk she found these strange erratic drawings. It was a strange spiral pattern that seemed to have been hastily drawn with charcoal or something. Around the jagged spiral were these tiny symbols, these miniscule runes that seemed to swirl around the spiral pattern.
Looking at it made her head feel funny. Like she had a hard time maintaining balance. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, trying to snap out of it, and the feeling did subside a little. But whenever she looked at the symbols it started to return.
And then she heard it. It was so low and distant that she thought maybe she had imagined it. But it soon became very clear.
She heard a whisper.
Luna inspected the rooms in the back, finding nothing but storage and a small bedroom. She opened a door that led to another corridor. To the left and right, on her side of the corridor were more evenly spaced patient quarters but in front of her were several barred windows that looked over a courtyard. But more importantly, strewn about the corridor were the corpses of two patients and one orderly.
Each and every one of them looked like they had been savagely stabbed to death. Luna didn’t think much of it and was about to go and inspect the view of the courtyard. But then she saw it. One of the patients, a young woman with pale skin and red hair, lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She looked familiar.
Actually, now that she took in everything, they all looked familiar to her. Had she met them before? She couldn’t remember.
A sickening suspicion began to form like a rock in her stomach. A gnawing doubt that made it strangely hard to breathe.
Did she do this?
A distant metallic sound echoed throughout the corridor. It was hard to tell where it came from but made her vary of the fact that they were not alone.
Luna made her way back into the staff area and looked into the reading room.
“Alba we need to…” she whispered but stopped.
Standing in the room was Alba but standing behind her was a bloodied humanoid figure. They had an arm around Abla’s throat and the other clutching a bloodied butcher’s knife. It took a moment but Luna quickly realized this was the ‘corpse’ that had been sitting on the sofa. They hadn’t been dead at all.
Their eyes were a vibrant yellow and she could see their fanged teeth pushing out of their chewed lips. They sniffed Alba’s hair.
“I wonder what warlings taste like…don’t you?”
They looked up at Luna with their horrid eyes. Alba’s eyes were wide with fear and as the orderly tightened their grip on her she instinctively grabbed their hand.
And that’s when it happened again. She came into contact with their blood and felt consciousness surge through their veins and up into their mind.
The orderly cried in pain, closed their eyes and scrunched up their face in reaction, making them effectively blind for a split second.
She didn’t have any idea what she was doing or how she was going to accomplish it, she just acted.
She raked her fingers across the scabbed wound on her arm and opened it up again. Without even realizing how she was doing it she had drawn out blood which congealed and crystalized into a dagger, much like the one she had carried before.
She rushed forward and jammed into the orderly’s eye and then she pulled Alba out of the room with her.
They were both so panicked they hadn’t noticed the shaded figure that stood by the doorway.
The orderly screamed and raged and ran out after them but as soon as they emerged into the rec room proper their head was separated from their torso and went tumbling across the floor.
Taken aback by this sudden unplaced sound of violence, the twins looked back to find a young boy standing there.
He was tall with long curly, black hair. His coppery skin was covered in blood and his patient’s gown was almost entirely red now. He had a small bag slung over his shoulder which he held onto with his one free hand. In his other hand he held a large and strange looking cleaver, which he had used to decapitate the orderly.
The girls both stopped, Luna standing in front of Alba, crimson dagger in hand.
“Who are you?!” she asked in a commanding tone.
The boy took in their altered appearance and furrowed his brow.
“Are you like them or are you like me?”
His question confused them but when they didn’t answer he pressed a button on the cleaver and they witnessed some of the blood on the weapon get absorbed into it. The weapon then hummed and extended into a much larger weapon with serrated hooks and edges.
“I’ll ask again. Are you monsters or are you warlings?!”
