Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

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CORRIDORS
knees. He catches his balance and runs out of the room,
runs to the door, finds it impossible to open. He pounds
the door with his fists, kicks it, pulls on the knob with
both hands. “Someone!” he shouts. “Hey! Someone
open this door! Hey!”
Ed’s strength is evaporating. “Somebody do something,”
he hears himself say. And then he wonders,
What if she’s still alive?
Hadn’t he seen her lips move?
Towels, Ed thinks. Wrap them around her wrists. Stop
the bleeding. He runs, hoping quick movement will keep
his fear controlled. “Hold on,” he shouts to her. “Hold
on, there’s someone coming!” He feels his feet slip, the
mat slide out from under him and he’s falling. Falling
right toward the blood-slicked bathtub. He closes his
eyes and reaches out blindly.
Ed grips the side of the tub and stops his fall. He
opens his eyes. And the bathtub is empty.
It’s empty of water, of blood, of anything but some
lime stains around the drain and a ring around its
inside. He touches the floor of the tub and finds it bone
dry. Ed stands. He turns in a slow circle, regarding the
whole room, and sees nothing unusual. He’s sweating.
His head hurts like he’d just swallowed his tenth cup of
coffee. So this is what it’s like when you’re about to faint,
he thinks. This is what its like when your brain decides to
just shut down.
Then there is the sound of a key in a lock.
Ed doesn’t know what to do.
A young woman enters, holding her coat over one
arm, carrying some sort of bag or large purse in the
other. She’s dressed in white, her straw-blond hair
pinned up. Some sort of identification tag is pinned to
her blouse.
“A nurse. Oh, thank God,” Ed says with a sigh.
“Thank God. I don’t know where you’ve been, but I’ve
been awake for, like, a half-hour now, and I have no
idea what the hell’s going on. So please, fill me in, give
me a…”
HAUNTING THE DEAD
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