Haunted MTL Original – Frail – Ryan Sullivan
“Frail” by Ryan Sullivan
The full-time care wing of Dayspring General Hospital was darkened to a dim light throughout the main hall when Clara’s night shift started. She worked as a part-time nurse at Dayspring overnight as she took graduate courses for medical school during the days. She was often exhausted during her nursing shifts, but coffee helped. That, and Dayspring was usually quiet at night, so all Clara had to do was make hourly checks on the patients and she was good to go.
The night crew usually consisted of anywhere to three to five nurses at night, but Dayspring was understaffed, so only Clara and one other nurse, Janet, were working. Clara sat at the main desk filing paperwork into the computer when Janet came back from checking on some of the patients.
“How is everyone doing tonight?” Clara asked as Janet took a seat at the desk beside her.
“All of the rooms seem good; no alarms going off, thank the lord,” she answered as she shifted through files in the cabinet. “Damn, the day crew don’t know what they’re doing anymore.”
“Is everything okay?” Clara asked.
“Yeah, just a rash of spotty work from our lovely dayshift coworkers,” she said. “We have a new patient in Room #7 but I can’t seem to find any paperwork on her. It looks like she isn’t checked into any of our records.”
“Do you think she doesn’t belong in this wing?”
“Woman, I doubt it,” Janet said. “She looks older than most of our other elderly guests and as frail as fine china. My chips are on the dayshift misfiling it with another wing in the hospital. I’m gonna have to go down to archives on Level 1 to see if I can find any duplicate copies of her record so we don’t have any nasty, medical surprises with her if she starts stroking out. You good to watch things up here?”
Clara hesitated for a moment. “Yeah, I’ll be good for a little bit. You can go down.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said. “I’ll try to be quick. I know you get anxious on your own up here.”
Janet went out the door leading to the stairs as Clara tried to refocus on inputting data into the computer before her hands trembled. She took a deep breath to calm herself of her anxiety when the monitor on the wall started beeping, which signaled that there was something wrong with a heart monitor in one of the rooms. The flashing red light beeped underneath the marking for Room #7, the room of the patient with no record.
Clara shot up from the desk and made her way down the dimly lit main hall. With each step, she became more anxious until she reached the room. She took a deep breath and opened the door.
She entered the darkened Room #7 as the heartbeat monitor beeped relentlessly. Not knowing what could be ailing the elderly patient laying still on the hospital bed, Clara inched closer and closer to the woman, her gut turning over nervously.
She turned back nervously to look at the door. “J-Janet!” Clara yelled, but there was no response. She slowly put her fingers on the elderly woman’s neck to check for a pulse and was surprised to feel a steady beat. Clara, puzzled, checked the heartbeat monitor to discover that the sensor had fallen off the patient’s finger and landed on the floor, setting the alarm off. She felt a sigh of relief and knelt to the floor as she grabbed the sensor. As she rose back up, Clara was greeted by the elderly patient staring at her.
Clara jumped and dropped the heartbeat sensor. “Are… are you okay, ma’am?” she asked, frightened.
“Oh, deary,” the woman said. “I was perfectly fine until someone yelled out for a ‘Janet’ while I was asleep.”
“I am so sorry, ma’am,” Clara said sheepishly. “The heartbeat monitor went off, and I-I got nervous, so I…”
“No need to explain yourself, deary,” the woman said. “All is well. Just trying to get some humor in tonight. My name is Isabella, and you are…?”
“Sorry,” she said. “My name is Clara. I’m one of the overnight nurses.”
“Clara,” Isabella said. “What a wonderful name for such a young, pretty thing like you.”
“Awe, thank you,” she said. “I’ll let you get back to sleep, Isabella. It was nice meeting you.” She took a few steps toward the door.
“Wait,” Isabella said. “Please don’t leave me yet. It’s rather lonely here. Would you mind sticking around for just a few minutes more?”
Clara learned long ago not to upset some of the more elderly patients lest yelling would occur, so she went back to Isabella’s side. “Sure,” she said. “But only for a tiny bit.”
“Thank you, deary,” she said. “I’ll only take a moment of your time. I used to be quite the catch back in my day. All the boys would fight each other to try and gain my attention, much less my affection, but that can only happen for so long before age catches up. I miss having those boys near me. Does that happen to you too, Clara?”
“No, not really to that extent,” she said with a reserved smile. “I mean, boys always come up to me, but I’m far too busy for a relationship right now. I’m still in medical school.”
“Wasted beauty,” Isabella said. “Life is ever so fleeting. You’ve got to take advantage of your youth while you can. Do you mind if I take a look at your hand, deary? It’s been so long since I’ve seen a hand not covered in wrinkles or liver spots.”
Clara was uncomfortable, but she relented and gave her hand to Isabella.
“Ah yes,” she said as she grabbed Clara’s hand. “So young; so pretty. Thank you for being here for me. This youthfulness will do just fine for me.”
“Fine for you?”
Isabella’s grip grew tighter. “Why yes. Just the age I was waiting for. I thought I was gonna have to settle for that older coworker of yours, but thankfully you came to my room instead.”
“Excuse me?” Clara asked. She tried to pull her arm away, but Isabella was locked on tight. Her skin started to tingle, and then burn. “Please let go of me! You’re hurting me!”
Isabella’s grip grew stronger every second, as her strength weened.
“What are you doing to me?!” Clara yelled.
“You’ve been wasting your youth, deary,” Isabella said with a devilish grin taking form. “Don’t worry, I’ll put your beauty to good use.”
Clara’s hand withered away rapidly as her veins became more defined, her skin paler. She dropped to her knees.
Isabella sat up, her liver spots gone, her body leaner. She slid out of the bed and finally let go of Clara’s hand.
Clara laid frail on the ground, all of her strength sucked out of her, her body covered in wrinkles. “W-what did you… do?” she asked.
“I just came for a fill-up, old-timer,” Isabella said as she neared the door. “Make sure to get some good life insurance before you pass on. Old age can take forever to kill you, but when it does, it hits like a freakin’ train. Toodles!” She left the room as Clara shook on the ground.
“Hello, Clara?” Janet asked a few minutes later, entering Room #7. “Oh my God, ma’am! Are you okay?”
Clara was crying and shaking, unable to get to her feet.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you right back into bed, ma’am,” Janet said as she picked up her and helped her onto the bed. “I’m so sorry, my coworker Clara was supposed to be monitoring the rooms. I don’t know where she’s gone off to.”
Ryan Sullivan is a short story writer based out of Hopatcong, New Jersey. A lover of all forms of fiction, nothing quite feels right to write other than horror.
What if ours weren’t the only reality? What if the past paths converged, if those moments that led to our current circumstances got tangled together with their alternates and we found ourselves caught up in the threads?
Marla returned home after the funeral and wake. She drew the key in the lock and opened the door slowly, the looming dread of coming back to an empty house finally sinking in. Everyone else had gone home with their loved ones. They had all said, “goodbye,” and moved along.
Her daughter Misty and son-in-law Joel had caught a flight to Springfield so he could be at work the next day for the big meeting. Her brother Darcy was on his way back to Montreal. Emmett and Ruth were at home next door, probably washing dishes from the big meal they had helped to provide afterward, seeing as their kitchen light was on. Marla remembered there being food but couldn’t recall what exactly as she hadn’t felt like eating. Sandwiches probably… she’d have to thank them later.
Marla had felt supported up until she turned the key in the lock after the services, but then the realization sank deep in her throat like acid reflux, hanging heavy on her heart – everyone else had other lives to return to except for her. She sighed and stepped through the threshold onto the outdated beige linoleum tile and the braided rag rug that stretched across it. She closed the door behind herself and sighed again. She wiped her shoes reflexively on the mat before just kicking them off to land in a haphazard heap in the entryway.
The still silence of the house enveloped her, its oppressive emptiness palpable – she could feel it on her skin, taste it on her tongue. It was bitter. She sighed and walked purposefully to the living room, the large rust-orange sofa waiting to greet her. She flopped into its empty embrace, dropping her purse at her side as she did so.
A familiar, husky voice greeted her from deeper within the large, empty house. “Where have you been?”
Marla looked up and glanced around. Her husband Frank was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, drying a bowl. Marla gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth. Her clutched appendage took on a life of its own, slowly relinquishing itself of her gaping jaw and extending a first finger to point at the specter.
“Frank?” she spoke hesitantly.
“Yeah,” the man replied, holding the now-dry bowl nestled in the faded blue-and-white-checkered kitchen towel in both hands. “Who else would you expect?”
“But you’re dead,” Marla spat, the words falling limply from her mouth of their own accord.
The 66-year old man looked around confusedly and turned to face Marla, his silver hair sparkling in the light from the kitchen, illuminated from behind like a halo. “What are you talking about? I’m just here washing up after lunch. You were gone so I made myself some soup. Where have you been?”
“No, I just got home from your funeral,” Marla spoke quietly. “You are dead. After the boating accident… You drowned. I went along to the hospital – they pronounced you dead on arrival.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said. “What boating accident?”
“The sailboat… You were going to take me out,” Marla coughed, her brown eyes glossed over with tears.
“We don’t own a sailboat,” Frank said bluntly. “Sure, I’d thought about it – it seems like a cool retirement hobby – but it’s just too expensive. We’ve talked about this, we can’t afford it.”
Marla glanced out the bay window towards the driveway where the small sailboat sat on its trailer, its orange hull reminiscent of the Florida citrus industry, and also of the life jacket Frank should have been wearing when he’d been pulled under. Marla cringed and turned back toward the kitchen. She sighed and spoke again, “But the boat’s out front. The guys at the marina helped to bring it back… after you… drowned.”
Frank had retreated to the kitchen to put away the bowl. Marla followed. She stood in the doorway and studied the man intently. He was unmistakably her husband, there was no denying it even despite her having just witnessed his waxen lifeless body in the coffin at the wake before the burial, though this Frank was a slight bit more overweight than she remembered.
“Well, that’s not possible. Because I’m still here,” Frank grumbled. He turned to face her, his blue eyes edged with worry. “There now, it was probably just a dream. You knew I wanted a boat and your anxiety just formulated the worst-case scenario…”
“See for yourself,” Marla said, her voice lilting with every syllable.
Frank strode into the living room and stared out the bay window. The driveway was vacant save for some bits of Spanish moss strewn over the concrete from the neighboring live oak tree. He turned towards his wife.
“But there’s no boat,” he sighed. “You must have had a bad dream. Did you fall asleep in the car in the garage again?” Concern was written all over his face, deepening every crease and wrinkle. “Is that where you were? The garage?”
Marla glanced again at the boat, plain as day, and turned to face Frank. Her voice grew stubborn. “It’s right here. How can you miss it?” she said, pointing at the orange behemoth.
“Honey, there’s nothing there,” Frank exclaimed, exasperation creeping into his voice.
Marla huffed and strode to the entryway, gathering her shoes from where they waited in their haphazard heap alongside the braided rag run on the worn linoleum floor. She marched out the door as Frank took vigil in its open frame, still staring at her. She stomped out to the boat and slapped her hand on the fiberglass surface with a resounding smack. The boat was warm to the touch, having baked in the Florida sun. She turned back towards the front door.
“See!” she bellowed.
The door stood open, empty. No one was there, watching. Marla sighed again and walked back inside. The vacant house once again enveloped her in its oppressive emptiness. Frank was nowhere to be found.
So I guess it’s goodbye for now. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrick’s Days… though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I don’t know how you managed to find me after all this time. We haven’t been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, you’ve managed to find me every St. Patrick’s Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. It’s a little disconcerting, like I’m starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hut…
Anyway as I’d mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And I’d already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrick’s Day. Hell, he’d already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Monty’s crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didn’t want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew they’d want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livin’ the dream. We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick ‘em. It’s like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least it’s not high maintenance women who won’t toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and it doesn’t work like in the movies. I wasn’t bitten, and I generally don’t bite unless provoked. He says technically I’m a wolfwere, to which I just reply “Where?” and smile. Whatever. It’s the little things I guess. I just wish everything didn’t come out as a bark most of the time, though Monty’s gotten pretty good at interpreting… As long as he doesn’t get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livin’ the dream. There aren’t all that many rabbits out here but it’s quiet and the locals don’t seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like he’s gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantry’s stocked it’s no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that already…
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Brandon
May 14, 2020 at 9:30 pm
Omg this is like an old twilight zone episode! Love it!