Chapter Four: A Deck Of Cards and a Bloody Pincushion

Awakening from a cosmic dream is always stressful. I am falling through buildings upon buildings made of asphalt and neon lights. Noodle bars, upside down verandas, tattoo parlors floating in mid-air, and a rainbow of explosive colors rush past me like a tripped out street made of strobe lights. Traffic. This is the Midnight District. Home of every piece-of-crap gangster, drug lord, and slave master on this moon. Also, it’s the home of this Augustus Bingen Von whatever who just sent me into a coma. Best day ever. Seriously, no – this is the most fun I’ve had in two months. I get a creepy premonition from my therapist, I get a new boss who seems to have some balls, and I finally get to field test my custom blasters. Sweet! My goals for this month have been totally met! I wonder, Will I wake up in a cozy bed or some creepy doctor’s operating table? Oh the excitement is just killin’ me!

Suddenly I’m spiraling into a cathedral made of liquidmetal, and my spirit breaks into my body at the speed of a two-headed uranian pilot’s barrel roll. I’m back baby!

On the table are three things: a deck of playing cards, five bloody needles protruding from a wet pincushion, and a glowing spool of medi-thread casting a blue haze on the black table. The opposite wall is a huge mirror which reflects the sophistication of the rest of the room in full. Man, this is the nicest room I’ve ever blacked out in. My own image slowly comes into focus: I am laying on a black and red king-sized bed fit with large pointy spikes on each corner. I look like space vomit. I try to fully sit up, but a terrible pain rages through my body. By the gods, I hope they didn’t stitch me.

I throw the blankets off and slump my head in a mix of pain and anguish. They did.

My body has been torn apart, ripped to shreds, and hell, I’ve even had 5th degree burns, and I’ve still recovered. In these situations which I seem to frequently find myself in, there are two paramount remedies. One is a fresh bottle of scotch. The second, and albeit more useful of the two, is my Radical–Righteous–Regeneration ability. The RRR can heal anything internally. But the problem is, it will also rip my body to shreds if anything is embedded in it. Alien material needs to get offa’ my turf. Get outta my thorax, ya damn stitches!

Now, I have to do something so disgusting, so gut-wrenching, so inhumane that I don’t really want to be awake while I do it. I have to rip the stitches out as quick as I can, or else the RRR will rip my body apart and the pain might kill me. Or I could just call for house staff, nurses, whatever and make them go through the horror of ripping things out of my skin . . . I like that plan.

“Nuuuuuurrrrrse! I got a problem for you to solve, and it’s somethin’ disgustin’. So get in here!” Oh how I love it when I can sing song my way into surgery. I yell through the door and wait for help.

A couple of seconds later, a nurse runs into the room with a robotic ball followed by her nurse friends who spy the deck of cards and start playing. Don’t mind me, just dyin’ over here. The head nurse has two black pigtails that drape over her chest, blue skin, red eyes, and pointed ears. She is wearing your typical nurse scrubs, but that’s off put by the black leather vest adorned with patches of Spawning Chaos, Fifth Plane of Hell’s Boy Choir, Ozzy Osbourne IV, Black Coffin, Crashing Riot, Slayer: The Reckoning, and many other Space-German metal bands. Across the top of her vest is the following statement: “I am the blood of the night”.

I give her a quick up and down. She’s pretty, what can I say? Her face is as young as mine. She has a warm complexion, and she’s a total metal head for Odin’s sake. That itself is pretty amazing.

After thirteen milliseconds of drooling over her, I notice something rather shocking: I can see fangs through her doctor’s mask. Holy rays of lightning and confusion! It’s a Vampian, those are rarer than a Space Donkey with an uncombed pompadour! I stay extremely still as I try to hide myself in the deep fold of blankets, but before I can sink away, she punches the robot ball, prompting it to turn on, and she heads over to me.

“Are you hurt in any way, shape, or form?” She asks as she tugs on individual parts of my body.

“Vy yves I dvo have a provlem,” I say as she pulls my lips to the right.

“Well spit it out!” She says hurriedly as the robot gets closer to my body.

“I need you to rip out my stitches – inside and out.” She pauses for a moment and tilts her head to the side.

“I must’ve drugged you with too much Peruvian Iguana Compound. I knew that would make you loopy,” the Vampian says as she punches the floating robotic orb again and begins to walk away.

“Wait, Pigtails! Lemme explain. I have a mutation that goes against the normal laws of nature. Any foreign objects under my skin make my body try to off itself. If the stitches get out I will bleed, but I’ll regenerate quicker than a space dragon can say hallelujah.” She raises her checkerboard shaved eyebrows, frowns, then after a little while shrugs and punches the orb. A large needle shoots out and into my leg.

“AHHHH! . . . AZURE COLORED HINEY OF THE  GREAT ARCTIC PIRANHA!” I roar from the depths of my weary soul.

“. . . analysing . . .”

“Analysing my perfect, bed-soared ass! You just shoved a needle the size of Space Kansas into my leg!”

“. . . mutation found . . .  taking foreign objects out . . . calibrating. . .”

“What?!” The orb shoots a arm straight out of the top. Positron laced fingers glow in the dark room. Oh no . . . That’ll cut my atoms apart . . . Wait! Not my atoms! Anything but my atoms!

“Positrons! Lasers! Ahhhh!” I scream at the pigtailed nurse.
“No need to worry Mr.Space Cowboy that ain’t positron. It’s just burning slava metal that will cleanly cut out the stitches.”

Well I suppose that’s better than me breaking down at the atomic level.

“Whooooa . . . Okay. Cut away Mr. Roborb.” Muscles contort around the stitch. Mother of god. I look at the cut. The muscles are going black with old blood, and my entire side is burning with pain. AHHHH! Why, great gods of space? WHY!?

My entire abdomen rises and bends into a U-shape on the bed. I’m on the balls of my feet digging my toes into the expensive mattress. I realize those sharp instruments of abysmal torture digging into my scalp are my own hands. Hot tears pour down my forehead.

As my eyes roll back in my head, I catch a glimpse of those damn Vampian nurses playing poker on the bloody table unaware of my current agony. My midsection contracts and elevates the blackening tissue of my side high into the air. Cries of anger and madness escape from between my gritting teeth as black, rotten, dead sludge rolls through my ribs. God?! Mamma?! Someone get me my gun! AHHHHH!

“QUICKLY Pigtails! Quickly!” Her eyes morph into a new shade of crimson, and she moves her hand faster than a normal human could ever hope to. Her claws grab the orb and force its eye to my wound. I hear a loud tsssst and smell rotting blood. The pain disappears from my body, and I feel dying, hot muck drop out of the rapidly growing wound.

“Ahhhhhhh. Sweet ecstasy filled existence.” The pain rushes out of me like overflowing popcorn from an eight-year old’s butter tub. I rest my body back onto the now bloody and black bed. I look to the nurse who’s covering her nose from the stench of sweet, disgusting regeneration. That’s a terrible waste of some good Space-Egyptian cotton right there. I roll my head towards her and smile a big toothy grin in extreme gratitude. I extend a tired shaky hand to my fanged friend.

“What’s yer name dear friend. Sorry if I seem a little groggy, I tire from these constant instances of absolute agony! Seriously don’t live my lifestyle, it’s painful.” She uncovers her nose and outstretches her hand to my tired and shaking one and gives me a firm handshake. She takes off the doctor’s mask.

“My name is Yvenna, and I am a nurse in training in the estate of the Von Gash Family. . .” I raise my eyebrows, droop my eyes and yawn. I feel muscles relax, and my hand falters a little as I pull it back to my body. What the flying hell, why do I feel so tired? I’m pretty sure I had enough nutrients in me to support a couple of regenerations –

–They wouldn’t have.

I look to Yvenna with burning eyes as lego blocks of thought begin connecting inside my head. She’s more than she seems, some part of me growls inside my ever-tiring brain.

“ . . .and I am also the head alchemist in the Von Gash security station. Meaning, I can make most anything into whatever chemical, potion, or solution I want to get a job done. In this case, I have to 1) become acquainted with my new partners – you and the big dreadlock dude, and 2) drug you both and get you two ready to speak to The Boss.”

My mind immediately switches to battle mode as the tired neurons in my brain fire up like micro-bombs on the shores of Schwarzenegger Island. My head begins to swirl. Not today you crazed endangered space racoons. If anyone’s gonna drug me it’s gotta be me. My body goes into “find the threat” mode. Anytime a substance that isn’t a solid (like poison, acid, or unsafe anesthesia) pierces my skin, I can direct my cybernetic enhancements to find the source of the problem and eradicate it.

I go into a deep, meditative scan of my body. Thousands upon thousands of nanobots run through my bloodstream – scanning nonstop. What the hell, I can’t find it! Where is the anesthesia?! I rip my eyes open and glare at the nurse sitting on the bed next to me. I fire up my neurons one more time, enough to get my mouth working at least a little bit.

“Mhwn mwmw myou mivw mm thm anmsthmsia.” I mumble incoherently through a very tired and furious tongue.

“A couple of minutes before I came in, dear. It came with your stitching. It’s made to be slow acting so don’t worry you’ll have a good rest and will be completely out during the dressing period.” Dressing period? Oh malicious Malaysian Unicorns from Saturn! These vampire psychopaths are gonna dress me up?

“I just love playing dress up! And, I won the bet.” She squeals as she raises her hands by the wrists while giving me a very cutesy look.Those Vampian broads better not touch my asteroids, those’re reserved for a special division of NASA. Suddenly, I feel a warming sensation flow through my body. The substance gives off a . . . purple feeling. My drug-addled, pain-riddled mind takes a dreamless little nap. Delicate hands, still grasping a pair of aces, prop my head on a pillow as I drift further into my own personal comatose.