As I was moved onwards, prodded by the scientists that ran the “treatments”, I soon began to realise I might never leave this place the same. The ward’s floor that I walked over was littered with an emptying, sagging skeleton of flesh, covered in boils and bloodied sores. An outline was etched into the stone around him, but the physician that stooped over this examination seemed more interested in the disease that grew on the flaking skin that had separated from this body and rested on the cement. I stared down at the corpse, utterly horrified at this infection that killed him, but as I stared into those sullen sockets that held his eyes, the blank stare looked at me, and I at once knew that this skeleton was still alive biologically, but mentally he was defeated. I turned and glanced at the doctor that was directing me to my bed, searching for clarification. But he pointed forward instead, thinking I was just lost. The dying skeleton continued to stare, but it wasn’t searching for help, it wasn’t wanting to be saved and it wasn’t waiting to die, it just existed while the physician around him outlined the death zone as the infection was left untreated.
We turned a corner, and the sight and smell ripped into my core. The floor was covered by various bodies, lying on the ground by choice or force. Some were skeletons, others struggled from the straps that bound them, some slept and the last lot were boils and blood seeping onto the cold stone floor, filling up the etches with whatever blood had escaped from the empty sacks of flesh.
In the beds that rested around the walls were the skeletons that also bucked about; withering, fiddling, shaking. Some men shared these beds, a puss-filled meat sack with an otherwise grit and coughing “healthy” patient. Other skeletons slept or died alone, staring out at the doctors injecting them. Eyes followed me, a couple of pupils seemed to be full of pity, but most were empty like the meat on their bones. There was no hope in this ward. My ignorant eyes were being filled with the same stark knowledge that every other patient had witnessed here, and I felt the glaze grow stronger as that distinct void poured into the depths of my sight, creating an emptiness that could never be washed out.
It was at this point that I realised why some beds were being shared. The infection was being spread from one patient to the other. There were also skeletons strapped to their coffin sized beds, and the ones merely dying of malnutrition were being injected by a physician, or boils being rubbed into their bedsores, the last having scraps of bloodied skin fed into their limp jaws.
Silence in this ward is what struck me the most, the utter silence as the doctors methodically moved between their corpses making sure each one was sick, while they noted the effects, looking for any changes or variations. An occasional muttering to the patients could be heard, that the “syphilis” would soon clear if they were superior enough, and if not it was the skeleton’s own fault. There was no crying, there was no pleading, I heard nothing of protest, nor the sound of the denial that the reaper was in the walls waiting for them.
My doctor continued to prod me forward, as I was still in the wrong ward. I knew this because my skin was of a different colour. I was not dark enough for this section. I was male, like all of the patients, but I knew what the real difference was from them to me, and it wasn’t skin deep.
The door to the next section opened. There were cages. Cages of women. If my eyes weren’t empty, they were now. Nothing more can be said, but I was ready to lie down like the skeletons before me.
The gloves covering the doctors hands gripped my shoulders and pushed me onwards. A man with a clipboard stood at my ward. He tapped down the list of suspected homosexuals. I was one of the defected males, broken on the inside with a perverse soul, utterly devoid of humanity. I stared at the other monsters like me on this ward, they to had been injected with something for their bodies had convoluted and revolted against their original state. My doctor said that I was to be injected with a chemical that burned and turned my insides, twisting the muscles, punishing me for my sins, correcting the mistakes. I was a monster, I saw that now, like the other monsters in the room before me. I was learning my role in society, I had fled from the pure path, and fell down to the pathetic types that fluttered throughout history.
I realised just how inferior I was in life, I was just like every other monster here, from those locked up in this ward, to the humans running this hospital, to the ones outside these walls that lead to this moment, where ignorance and intolerance bred this infection that now spreads across this country. What monsters we all are.
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