Hysteric

She didn’t stay asleep though. When she awoke she was in a pile of bodies all stacked up on one on top of another. Some of them were whole, most of them were in pieces, and none of them were moving. She wanted to scream, but a scream was not what she did. Laughter ruptured from her lungs, the blood and body parts of her fellow villagers covered her and laughter was the only sound she could make.

A man in the distance turned to look at her. “I thought we had all the living ones taken out… what the hell is she doing in that pile?”

A skinny little creature shook its head as though it didn’t understand the question.
“Go get her!” the man hissed.

The creature’s body seemed to contort as joints dislodged from it’s sockets and it moved towards Arisa. It had two discolored eyes that had been shaped and carved to look like different things. It wore a surgical mask that had lips painted on the outside of it. It turned its head a full 180 degrees on its neck to stare briefly at Arisa before grabbing her and tossing her off the body pile. The skinny creature was strong despite its looks. It crawled back after Arisa ready to retrieve the new found human.

Arisa began to puke. Not much food inside her, just blood, possibility from being kicked by the priest.
“Internal bleeding, check!” The man said giddily. Then he hopped enthusiastically towards her.

Arisa thought this man to be another zombie as he moved toward her. He was rotting away, and his skin was disfigured and disgusting, but his eyes were like the others. Bright red glowing eyes stared at her hungrily.

“But something about you repulses me… I’m not as hungry as I had hoped. Nurse, we shall keep her for now. Make her a snack, or a new mouse.” The nurse nodded as if it were the only response she was capable of.

“No… we’ll make her a mouse. Do you still have any of the solution my dear?”

The creature nodded again waiting to hear the talking zombie’s orders, “wipe her then, we’ll keep her for later.”

The nurse pulled out a large syringe and injected into the back of Arisa’s neck knocking her unconscious once more.

Arisa woke again, somehow. She didn’t like waking up anymore. Each time her eyes opened she was presented with a new hell. She looked at her bite; it had been healing, though she felt like she was dying.

It was amazing she had stayed alive this long without changing… changing… Why would I be changing? She thought to herself. When she thought about the bite though… she couldn’t remember where she had gotten it from. Perhaps it was healing because it was not a zombie bite. She had amnesia.

Screams rang around her and she came to realize that she was locked in her own cell ready to have her voice join the others. The ‘nurses’ would be sent in for what the masked man called ‘treatment’. Treatment was a series of torture steps and collection of skin, cells, organs, or whatever made the surgeon giggle with delight. The creatures that were called nurses would strategically mutilate a person until that human either gave them the location of another colony or the nurses bloodlust was satisfied.

Arisa was consumed with pain and terror, but this new life of hell did not last long for her, as it was for most of the patients. She could feel her body dying, almost like it was rotting away from the inside. The pain the nurses dealt to her began to dull, and she seemed to stop feeling. She would stare out silently with glazed eyes while her thoughts allowed her to enter a world all her own. She would dream about a small tree house at night, a peaceful escape she could take herself to when she was alone. Her time was short; she laid her head down and waited. Arisa died in the night, and what woke up the next night was a husk of what she used to be.

A greasy brown haired girl covered in blood and grim re-awoke with all her memories intact the next morning. She felt all the presence of a humanity run through her, but something was different about her this morning. She checked her injuries, all of them. The whip marks, the needle pokes, and even the zombie bite from the priest, they had all healed. Every one of them. Her body was without a single mark on her, just a small scar on her ankle.

She was surprised, how could I have healed over night?

Something felt wrong, very wrong in this hospital of madness, and it didn’t take long for her to figure out why. In times of stress her heart always beat faster, it would pound in her chest. It was a completely human reaction. She felt for her pulse… nothing. Perhaps she was just panicked a little. She felt along the walls of her cell until she was able to find a decayed shard of stone. She used it to slit her wrist along the artery in hopes to finally end her existence. The blood should spurt with the heartbeat and she could finally die, but that was not what happened. The blood spilled directly out onto the floor and the wound closed itself back up.

Arisa screamed loud with terror. She couldn’t die… she wouldn’t die. Her voice was louder than all the other patients, but she could not maintain her scream. At first it was a little giggle that broke, then a chuckle, and soon laughter. Arisa could not stop laughing. She had finally died, she wasn’t a zombie but she was dead. She laughed and laughed, as the nurses took turns trying to stop her from laughing they only made her laugh more. Her wounds healed up and she could barely feel a thing.
The doctor that had greeted her on the pile of bodies came in furious. She couldn’t understand what he was saying; she just knew he was mad. He wanted her to stop laughing which only made the situation more entertaining. He tried to kill her, it didn’t work. She wanted to tell him she died in the night, that he couldn’t hurt her anymore, but all she could do was laugh. He punched her along the jaw, the bone broke but moved back into place and she laughed harder. She couldn’t be killed and the pain didn’t hurt as much as it used to.

A strange woman arrived interrupting the masked doctor. She was very pretty but also looked dangerous. The masked doctor was intimidated by her. The woman said something to the doctor and a nurse slapped a needle into Arisa. Slowly, Arisa fell unconscious once again to the drug that took her memory from her the first time. Slipping away into crazed dreams as everything was erased from her again.