He was late and wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. Corey would think of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland later. He was focused on getting to Moira to make sure that she was all right. His appointment with her had been for an hour ago. Shit, Corey hoped she wasn’t pissed off.
For a Wal Mart greeter, she sure had one heck of a temper. She talked all the time of her job and how important it was, how she hated to be away from the store. Moira was nice when not kept waiting and everyone was polite to each other. She saw lateness as the height of rudeness.
Clutching his medical bag to his chest, he picked up his pace and ran. He approached 69B and didn’t stop. So focused was he on the front door that he almost tripped on the girls body.
His food slipped in what he thought was oil but he managed to catch himself before falling. When he looked down, he saw that he had not slipped in oil. It was blood, a large black pool of it that had cooled slightly. He wondered how long the body had been outside for.
Corey was surprised he wasn’t more upset. If he had to diagnose himself, he would say he was in shock. His mothers voice rang through his head: “You won’t make a living doing house calls. You became a doctor so you could work for free?”
He didn’t work for free, but he might as well. He did work for a corporation that took care of the elderly and those who needed home visits. Corey knew that his work didn’t pay a lot, but despite the occasional cranky or upset client, it was very rewarding.
What did make him scream was the fact that the dead girl whose blood he had slipped in began to move. Corey jumped away from the body and stood, shaking, as the woman’s body began to move some more and then stand, regarding him with a black eyed stare. Even though there was blood dripping down her front to join the dried blood already there, he could see that she was breathing.
“You don’t live here.” The woman said. Her voice sounded as if it was a hundred snakes hissing all at once, but he understood her perfectly.
“No, I don’t.”
“Are you not afraid? I would hate for you to get your pretty blond hair covered in refuse.”
He shook his head to flick his beyond shoulder length blond hair back from his face, a tad self consciously. “Who are you?”
“I used to live here. With me gone, the game can use a few more players. Do you like games? What do they call you?”
“Corey.”
“You’re taking the fact that a dead girl is talking to you awfully well.”
“Nothing phases me, I’ve seen a lot.” He kept his voice calm, his doctor training taking over. It was all he knew how to do. He wished he had been paying attention instead of just rushing to get to where he was going. That would teach him to not be observant, a poor quality in a doctor.
“Well Corey. You have a choice. I see you’re carrying a doctors bag with lots of shiny little tools. Many of my guests need help in some way or another. You’re going to be the man go give it to them.”
“And what if I refuse?”
“Oh, you won’t have time to do that.”
The woman’s body split apart into a thousand pieces. Each piece of her became a large black crow or raven with black eyes. He rushed through the cloud of birds and didn’t even notice the front door to the apartment building opening on its own.
Instead of running along the first floor hallway to Moira’s apartment, he went up the stairs, wanting to get away from the flock of birds with the red eyes. He could hear them flapping and cawing behind him and increased his speed just in time to see a dead woman enter another apartment. The door didn’t close all the way and he heard a woman scream so he did the only thing he could think of doing: ran right into the apartment.
A woman in a white suit was lunging at another woman who was screaming. The woman had dark hair and was the size of a linebacker. She yelled out “No Samantha! You can’t do this!”
The woman named Samantha lunge again and Corey acted without thinking: he reached into his doctors bag and grabbed a small mallet. It wasn’t much but he swung it though the air and heard a solid WHACK! as it connected with the woman’s head. The woman, Samantha, turned and snarled at him, snapping her teeth. He saw that the woman had red eyes, horrible red eyes. Corey really hated the colour red.
“No Samantha, no!” The other woman screamed. He heard another solid WHACK! and this time it was followed by a popping and squelching sound as something was pulled from Samantha’s skull.
The body fell and there stood the other woman holding a silver knife. It was covered in blood. “You always have a large knife near by?” Corey asked her.
“It’s my athame.” She said. “Thanks for saving me. My names Petunia.” She held out a hand to him.
He took it, the whole ordeal as if from a dream. “My names Corey.”
At that moment, Petunias apartment door slammed shut and the outline glowed a brilliant white. Petunia went over to try the door and pulled at it. It wouldn’t budge. She turned to him.
“Well Corey, it’s nice to meet you. It looks like we might be here a while.”
69B 