Intensive Scare

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Intensive Scare - book excerpt

Nurse Parsnip signed the bottom of the medical chart, hung it back onto the hook at the end of the bed, tucked her pen away into the left breast pocket of her uniform, and let out a long, but satisfied sigh.

Currently, she was about three quarters of the way through her last round of the shift, after which she would wend her weary way home for a well-earned rest, a refreshing brew, and a spot of dinner, and by that I mean a glass of freshly squeezed A Rhesus Negative, a length of intestine lightly seared in a tangy bile sauce, and a modest portion of chips, and by chips I mean fingers, and not the chocolatey kind either.

Now, for those of you out there in reader land who consider yourselves to be human (although, if you regard Love Island as quality TV, labour under the illusion that the letters 'th' are pronounced 'f', and think a sophisticated night out involves meeting Bazza, Dazza, Shazza, Tezza, Fatboy Oinks, and Ming Mong Mandy at The Dog and Doughnut for a bag of pork scratchings and a jug of Woo Woo, you've kind of ruled yourselves out by default), and therefore tend to think along more traditional lines when it comes to the ingestion of food based items, you might be wondering, and quite rightly so, why the good nurse wasn't going to indulge in a big, fat bacon sandwich loaded with enough butter and brown sauce to clog a giraffes arteries, a bowl full of strawberry Angel Delight, and a large mug of tea.

Well, in actual fact, she could have that if she wanted, but as nice as that delightful culinary spread might sound it would definitely have a minor disagreement with her ghoulish internal organs the results of which would be a bloated belly, extended visits to an increasingly distressed toilet, and the chunk by chunk appearance of a partially digested and rather fragrant mess capable of rising to the surface of the water quicker than an asthmatic free diver. And by that I mean a free diver who has asthma, not a diver who's perfectly healthy, can hold his breath for three and a half weeks, and who is, to all intents and purposes, asthma free (and as I've mentioned a diver I could have said to all intents and porpoises, but I won't because that'd be rather cheap and inordinately silly).

Anyway, I know it's only a small lexicological detail, but it's one that does need pointing out I feel. I mean, there wouldn't be any point in making a comparison to something that has no correlation to what you want to compare it to now is there? That would be like saying, 'Oh look, that red car over there is exactly the same colour as my green one'. That’s unless you're colour blind of course in which case they’ll both look identical whatever hue they’re adorned with. Not that you should be driving anyway for goodness sake. The traffic light sequence isn't greeny/red, greeny/red and amber, greeny/red, amber, greeny/red. Unless you're in France that is, where even a visually challenged moose can get a driving license, and obeying traffic signals and road directions of any description is entirely optional.

The pastries are nice though. Just don't cross the road to get one.

Nurse Parsnip glanced up at the clock on the wall (she did have one of those upside downy chest ones, but she always felt a bit odd looking at her boobs whenever she wanted to know the time). Ten past three in the morning. That was good. At least she wasn't behind, a fortuitous circumstance that meant there was every possibility that she'd actually get off on time which, if you know anything about hospitals, is usually as likely as getting into one in the first place.

The potential for a late finish, a potential that was realised every now and again, was because, as part of her duties on this particular shift, Nurse Parsnip had to see to everyone in the Accident and Emergency Department and send them on their way once they'd been treated. Luckily, that hadn't taken very long tonight as it hadn't been very busy down there. Then again it never was really. If every creature that got injured on a nightly basis in Skullenia visited the hospital when it got a scratch, a cut, or had a couple of its limbs removed, the place would be full to bursting on the very same nightly basis.

(Ironically, full to bursting was a complaint that she'd dealt with the previous evening. It was a strange ailment that usually afflicted young, inexperienced vampires out on a binge who hadn't yet worked out what their capacity for blood intake was. Consequently, not only did this lead to the waiting room being full of pasty faced whingers moaning about their upset tummies, it also gave rise to some very interesting and colourful modern art renditions on the marble floor that took several hours and a gallon of industrial strength bleach to clean up. And regarding the A&E Department, the only time it got really busy was when Count Jocular got all bloodlusty and decimated the odd village or three. Or had new carpets put in, the effect was just the same. There were always life changing injuries, copious amounts of body fluids, wailing and screaming, missing appendages, and at least a couple of swatch booklets that needed removing after they'd been roughly inserted into places where the patterns would be quite hard to discern and all the same shade of muddy brown).

Anyway, as we've already established, it hadn't been too busy, and the only creature that the good nurse had seen in there tonight had been Fordwyche the troll, who'd presented himself at the medical establishment with a nasty cut to the hand. It wasn't his hand. It was one he'd found in the bin at the back of Mrs. Strudel's cafe (no doubt a remnant from one of her ghastly recipes. In fact, such was the diverse and eclectic nature of her rubbish, if Dr Frankenstein ever decided to come out of retirement, he wouldn't have too far to go to find everything he needed to get back into the reanimation business. There wasn't a night that went past that her bin wasn't overflowing with neatly lopped off extremities of one sort or another. Essentially, Doris Strudel's waste was like a Lego set for the ever so slightly deranged so if you ever find yourself at a loose end and needing to construct something fleshy, you can always pop round the back and have a go at cobbling something together. And let's face it, whatever you come up with is bound to be better than anything created using the foot destroying, multi-coloured plastic alternative, be it Tower Bridge, the Taj Mahal, or a vague, pointy tube that's supposed to be a plane. Not that I'm decrying the use of Lego of course. I'm sure it has its place, but then so do straightjackets, padded cells, rubber helmets, soft crayons, and extremely heavy doses of prescribed medication. So, what can we conclude from all this? On balance, I think it's that you have to be a particular type of person to partake of the little Swedish building blocks and everything that miniature world has to offer. There is a technical term for it. What is it now? Oh yes. Dull).

Fordwyche wanted the hand sewn up because he was going to hang it above his front door (cave entrance) for good luck (it brought flies). He also liked how it smelled (although how he was able to detect any odours was a mystery to one and all seeing as how he stank like, well, like one of Mrs. Strudel's bins). As it turned out it wasn't a technically difficult procedure to fix the damage, so she'd happily obliged with a couple of stitches and sent him on his way.

Stifling a yawn, Nurse Parsnip gazed at the sleeping figure in the bed before her. Soft snores emanated from it that rippled the sheets and ruffled his moustache, which made him rub his nose because it tickled.

Great Flat-Top the mountain ogre, for 'twas he that lay recumbent under the covers, was a rather special case. He was one of a very select number of patients that had been admitted to the hospital over the centuries, one suffering from a malaise so rare that the staff had had to look it up in the medical texts and have a meeting to decide on the best course of action. So, what was the exact nature of the debilitating condition that'd stumped Skullenia’s esteemed medical community? I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you shall I (which would make sense seeing as how I'm the author and everything).

Much to the amazement of Dr Zoltan (he's the esteemed medical community I mentioned), Great Flat-Top the mountain ogre actually had something wrong with him, a state of affairs that was virtually unheard of in the wards and side-rooms of Aesculapian establishments all over the world.

(And if you don't believe me, ask a nurse, who will readily confirm that most hospital beds are occupied by either whinging malingerers with ingrowing toenails, barely functioning adults who've got a bit of a cold, or overweight lollygaggers who've got suspected food poisoning in their massive bellies because they've had their seventeenth take out of the week and it's only Tuesday).

So, our ogre. In his spare time, Great Flat-Top, a community minded sort of a chap, did a bit of showing visitors around the local area whilst they took in the chequered history, questionable architecture, and eerie landscape of the surrounding villages and countryside (I could have said he was a tour guide, but I do have a word count to reach you know), and it was doing this that had landed him in the hospital.

So, how did showing tourists round, answering a few questions, and generally being a stout and knowledgeable fellow make him so ill? Well, he would gather foreign looking people together, offer to show them about for a very reasonable price, pretend that he knew what he was talking about, and then escort them all to a cabin in the woods where they could have a nice sit down and something to eat. Or, to put it another way, he would eat every last one of them in a gluttonous, blood drenched frenzy, and then have a nice sit down.

Now, whilst you may think that his methods of guiding aren't strictly traditional, (but let's be honest here, they've got to be better than sitting on a coach with a bunch of sun burnt holiday makers and being shouted at a by an orange woman called Tracey who thinks local history is restricted to how many men she's slept with and how long The Tequila Mockingbird has been open), he did manage to secure (well, kidnap really, but that's just splitting bones) a fair bit of trade and was busy most days of the week. And it was all going rather nicely thank you very much. Up until a week ago that is. After finishing with a group of Glandian boy scouts, Great Flat-Top had felt a bit of discomfort that had refused to go away. Eventually, unable to find relief and with the pain steadily increasing, he'd been admitted to hospital and diagnosed with the worst case of constipation that Nurse Parsnip and Dr Zoltan had seen since Flug had pounded down one hundred and sixty seven Sticky Nutty Nut Bums.

(The introduction of so much refined sugar had caused the poor reanimates bowels to go into a cataclysmic spasm, and they'd remained in that immobile state for nigh on a week and a half causing Flug to suffer some nasty bloating, a few burst sutures, and a certain amount of fragrant leakage more suited to the bottom of an industrial pig bin. Anyway, thanks to copious amounts of water and not a few tummy rubs, his innards had finally begun to relent which was when Ollie and Ronnie had quickly ushered him outdoors where, to this day, there's an area in the forest that's strictly off limits, except to those with the stoutest of souls, the strongest of stomachs, and the sturdiest of shoes).

So, to ease his congestion, Great Flat-Top was on thrice daily doses of Skullenian Prune juice, a liquid so adept at shifting all things stubborn that it had once been used to clear up a lava spill. As good as it is though, the exact time that it's curative properties begin to take effect can be somewhat difficult to predict which is why, in expectation of the inevitable result, next to the ogre's bed was a mop, a bucket, a bag of sturdy pegs, and a quarter of a ton of sand. When he eventually went it was going to be a veritable jamboree with cloth caps, camping badges, and partially digested woggles all over the place.

Of the other patients currently languishing in their beds there was Enid Bottletop, an elderly witch who was becoming rather forgetful, and who was in hospital more for the benefit of the townsfolk than anything else. She'd been brought in by Constable Gullett after he found her perched on a windowsill, purring, and asking for a saucer of milk. The seriousness of her condition was clearly evident. The poor thing was at the wrong house. She usually got her lactose at Mr. and Mrs. Doom's.

Then there was Ascension White, a newly turned golem who'd contracted a nasty dose of stone fungus, although seeing as how he was still on probation it wasn't strictly speaking his fault. The warlock who'd placed the enchantment in his mouth was to blame for that. He hadn't taken the necessary precautions re handwashing and the like, and so had passed the infection onto poor Ascension. He should've known better really. There’re leaflets everywhere about safe hex.

And lastly there was Obidiah Dickens, a poor unfortunate soul of a poltergeist who'd gotten caught up in a drinking game at The Bolt and Jugular, and then gotten caught up in the ceiling fan of the same establishment when he sneezed and catapulted himself upwards at quite an impressive speed. He was currently resting in half a dozen plastic bags that were tied to the bed with string, whilst Dr Zoltan tried to figure out how to stitch mist together.

So, all in all, on balance, when all's said and done, and whatever the hell else people say when things aren't going too bad, it wasn't going too bad. They had their busy times of course, but that was usually around the holidays, or when Mrs. Ladle decided to try out a new cake recipe.

Nurse Parsnip was just about to tuck in an errant corner of freshly laundered bed sheet when a noise from the pharmacy at the end of the ward attracted her attention. It sounded like bottles clinking together, but it couldn't be that because she'd finished her medicine round over an hour ago and locked it up.

Forgetting the untidy bed cover for the moment, she walked quietly towards the dispensary, because it took her past the other resting patients.

The little room had windows, but they were frosted, but that didn't make a whole lot of difference because it was dark anyway. As she approached, she squinted in the way that all people do when trying to see something more clearly (which is just silly. I mean you wouldn't talk more quietly to make yourself heard, or slow down if you were in a hurry, would you?), but it didn't help.

Strangely, despite the continuing noise coming from within, she couldn't see any actual movement, but as already noted, the glass and the darkness would be a major hindrance to that.

She momentarily wondered if it was Dr Zoltan in there, engaged in some night-time experimentation or research. He sometimes liked to fiddle about with all the various potions and tinctures in an effort to come up with more effective treatments for the particular type of maladies that could befall the residents of Skullenia. Well, that's what he told Nurse Parsnip anyway. If the truth be known, the good doctor could barely remember how to make a pot of tea, so the chances of him inventing a cure for say, Ghoul Rash or Warty Troll Syndrome, were about as likely as UKIP employing a Polish MP with special responsibility for bringing in as many of his countrymen into Britain as was feasibly possible.

No, the reason that Dr Zoltan often pottered about the medicines was that he had a bit of a crush on the lovely Nurse Parsnip you see, and he would sometimes hide in the dispensary and peek through the keyhole at the female ghoul as she went about her nursely duties. And whilst I know that sounds a tad creepy, it was only because he was a little bit shy when it came to matters of the heart. In other words, when he tried to speak to a lady, he turned into a gibbering wreck who couldn't have got a coherent sentence out if his life depended on it. Not that anyone would've noticed. He was scatty at the best of times, a state of being that saw him once prescribe an aggressive course of hormone replacement therapy for Hector Lozenge to help him with his alcohol problem. It hadn't helped the old boy of course, but then how could it have done? What was he going to do with a pair of boobs and a worrying craving for chocolate? On the other hand, Mrs. Throb, the lady who'd received his addiction counteraction remedy got on brilliantly. She's a professional wrestler now and can roll up a frying pan with her bare hands.