Quote:
You're visiting a friend or family member in the hospital and while walking down the hall, the fluorescent lights flicker, long enough for you to notice an eerie figure standing at the end of the empty hallway. Another flicker and the shadow grows closer - it's a deranged looking person, hair unkempt and eyes sunken into their sockets. A third flicker and the being is only yards away from you now, more grotesque in appearance than ever. A fourth flicker and…the lights return to normal, the hallway just as empty as it was when you originally turned to walk down it. Was it all an illusion? Maybe you're a little extra exhausted? Whatever the case may be, walking down the hallway you can't help but notice a putrid smell stinging your nostrils until you manage to turn the corner…
Tom had been entirely too busy this year, but he couldn’t help it. His girlfriend was in the process of moving in with him and he had just started his graduate medical program. It didn’t leave too much time to do well, anything really. Even his experiments for the Negaverse had once again been put on hold. He didn’t like it, and he could practically feel the breath of the higher-ups breathing down his neck, but he did have a civilian life that he needed to attend to, even if the world seemed to be ending at this point. Though he wasn’t sure if it was from the Negaverse or just horrible politics.
Either way, October had rolled around without him even realizing it and he only knew when Stacey had pointed it out to him. He didn’t like this month. He liked the holiday, but he did not like this month. It was too full of the Negaverse’s plots for him to be comfortable. He still worried about his brother, and even though the latter had told him not to, Tom couldn’t help but be worried. His brother wasn’t powered or anything, he couldn’t fight back. If some Negaverse agent decided to go and steal Jason’s starseed, unless Tom could be there, there would be no protecting his little brother.
He hated the thought. So he made sure to stay in contact with his brother a bit more when he knew that certain months, October and December, usually led to more Negaverse activity than usual.
But that wasn’t the reason that Tom was wandering the halls right now. Stacey needed to be in the hospital for a bit for reproductive issues, which meant that Tom was visiting her when he could. It was night out already, and she was asleep, which left him with either the ability to go back to his apartment or wander around and stay in her room. He had opted to stay with her overnight, so he had been wandering the halls a bit, just to see what everyone was up to. Though he wouldn’t pry, he knew not to incur the wrath of HIPAA.
Surprisingly though, for a wing that should have been busier, it seemed that the was the only one in the hallway. Tom had suspected something at first, that this might be another Negaverse plot, like that first fake Hospital, and then the fake urgency room, but this was the main one. He even knew that some agents worked there. They wouldn’t go to the trouble of compromising the main hospital of the city… would they?
It was then that the lights started to flicker on and off, and Tom felt as though he was in some sort of horror video game or movie. “Let me guess, there’s going to be a monster that pops out any second now, right?” He muttered to himself as he continued to walk the hall. Although he still could get caught by jump scares, he felt as though he was powerful enough to face pretty much anything, and if there was a youma in the hallway ready to pounce, Tom would just have to power up then.
So far nothing though as he continued to walk the hall. Just more flickering. And it was getting annoying too. If those don’t stop flickering I’m going to break them on purpose. He thought, trying to shield his eyes. He hadn’t been diagnosed with epilepsy, but even this type of flickering was too much for him.
Suddenly though, in the flickering, there was a shadow. Tom jumped a bit, unable to stop his natural reaction, and it looked as though there was some zombie or deranged person down the hallway. Tom stayed still, preparing himself in case the deranged person came closer. Suddenly though, the lights finally decided that they wanted to stop flickering and stay on. The person was nowhere to be seen. That didn’t mean that Tom believed the situation to be safe. That person could still be out there, ready to pounce on him. Though he was wondering if such a person could move so quickly. Since there was a connecting hallway, he decided to look down there to see if the person had moved that way since they had been standing in front of it.
As he approached though, he couldn’t help but smell something awful. And if he was right, then according to his training, that meant that there was a body around…
He finally got to the connection and turned the corner and saw it. The body. He dared not to approach it, even though he was a graduate medical student now. Though he did wonder, with that kind of stench, how long the body had been there. And if he was correct, then it was the body of the person he had just seen…
Did that mean that he had seen their ghost or spirit? Or was it just some sort of glimpse into the realm of the supernatural, something that even chaos wasn’t in control of? Either way, he didn’t know and until he could explain it, he would chalk it up to chaos.
It was about an hour later that he finally made it back to his girlfriend’s room and slumped in the easy chair that they had put in the room for him. He sighed, and that seemed to wake Stacey up, as she sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes, yawned, and then looked at him. “Mm… anything happen?” She asked as she looked around the bed, trying to figure out how to untangle herself from the various apparatuses that were on her body so that she could go to the restroom.
Tom got up to help her and just shook his head. “It’s October. That’s about it. And I’ll be happy once this month is over.”
