December: This is Normal *

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"Oh come on! Chicken!"

I giggled, running forward toward the city. We were on the sidewalk, time of sunset, joking and playing in the dying winter light. The figure held a coffee cup, laughing along with me. Something felt so warm about them. Something I longed for, and missed so dearly.

I didn't recognize it at all, but I felt so free. I never wanted to leave.

✦-তততততততততত-✦

My eyes opened, ripping me back into reality. The one where my body burned and ripped at my lungs, the one that held my throat and wrapped me in tubes and sheets and sweat and an unforgiving poison.

I felt a small tear fall down my face.

This reality was shit.

I sat up, ignoring the heat that continued to tear at my back. The room around me was pitch black, except for the dim light of the monitors and machines surrounding me. My stomach lurched forward. I forced my feet over the end of the bed, letting them hit the ground for the first time in what felt like years. The floor was icy cold, sending shivers up my good leg.

I sucked in my breath and stood.

As soon as I stood up completely, I shifted all of my weight to one side, avoiding walking normally, because all that waited for me in that context was pain. I hobbled around the curtains, finally getting a view for the first time of the place I was in.

Immediately, I was taken off guard by how odd it looked. It was definitely a hospital, but it was dark and sort of old-looking. There was old trash and rust everywhere. Abandoned, rotting with time, expiration past due.

A person, whom I had never seen before, scrambled around the corner on the other end of the hallway. They sprinted in my direction, screaming something I didn't understand. I stepped back and closer to the wall. Even if I tried, I couldn't run like that right now. The Doctor also sprinted around the corner, holding something I couldn't make out.

"HELP ME! FUCK, PLEASE LET ME OUT!"

The cries were painful, horrified ones. The hairs stood up on my neck.

A loud crack shot through the hall, slamming the stranger down on the ground almost instantly. They writhed, sobbing in agony, blood spurting from their chest. I wanted to throw up.

The Doctor walked towards them at a slower pace now, watching them with a hawk eye. The stranger cried. "Please, just end it. Now."

I stood back, seeing now that the thing The Doctor held was a gun. He raised it at the stranger, unlocking the safety.

"Let me help you," he threatened. The person shook their head frantically. "Kill me," they begged. "Make it stop, please make it stop."

"What did you do?" I asked quietly.

He didn't look away from the stranger. "I was halfway through an operation," he growled.

In less than a second afterward, he pulled the trigger. Another crack and the person's head slammed back on the ground. There was a bullet wound in the neck, but instead of blood leaking from it, the liquid was a dark blue. It looked like sticky drainer fluid.

He put the safety back on and tossed the gun beside him on the floor. It clamored before the hallway was thrust into silence.

"What. The. Hell," I spat.

He finally looked at me, taking his mask off. He looked stressed as hell, but he forced a weak smile.

"Welcome home," he teased.

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