The Patient
By: Sean
Richard was awoken by the sound of the breakfast carts in the hall.
The first thing that he saw when he opened his eyes was the sunlight
pouring in thru the metal grate over the window. Richard blinked,
pondering the grate. So he was really here.
Richard climbed out of bed and found his clothes in the closet
cupboard. He dressed himself. His jeans were a little too loose,
because they had taken his belt away from him. Richard hadn't been
listed as a suicide risk, but others on the ward might get hold of the
belt. So his belt was elsewhere, stored in the plastic box where
Richard had had to leave most of his belongings when he had been
checked into the ward late yesterday afternoon.
A short, pudgy, middle-aged woman wearing a blue food service uniform
and a hairnet entered the room with a tray covered with a plastic lid.
"Good morning!" she said in a kind voice, putting the tray on
Richard's table.
"Okay for me to take this to the dayroom?" asked Richard.
"Sure thing," said the woman.
Richard carried his tray down the hall to the dayroom at the end of
the hall, where a number of the other patients were already seated.
As Richard entered the room, he was approached by a squint-eyed,
grey-haired, scruffy-faced man who moved and stood right in front of
Richard, glaring at him with rage even tho Richard had never met him
before.
"Were you in Korea?" demanded the man.
"No," said Richard.
"Were you in Vietnam?" asked the man more loudly.
"No," said Richard again.
"Are you going to be in the THIRD WORLD WAR?" shouted the old man into
Richard's face.
Richard did not know what answer was expected, so he lamely responded,
"I hope not." Richard made no sudden moves, but he was tense and
alert, holding his tray; the man looked as if he might attack at any
moment.
At that point, one of the white-uniformed orderlies said, "Sit down,
Spikey." Richard moved past the glaring Spikey and sat down at a
table, glad that this encounter was over. Richard could hold his own
in a fight, but god only knows what one of these crazy people might
do, he thought.
Removing the lid on the tray, he found lukewarm French toast, a
plastic cup of syrup, sausage links, a bowl of canned mixed fruit, and
a foil-lidded cup of orange juice. The only utensil was a plastic
spoon (no sharp objects permitted on the ward). Richard cut the
French toast as well as the spoon allowed. He chewed at his breakfast
without much interest, alternately watching the morning news program
on the television mounted near the ceiling, and checking out the other
patients in the room.
Richard had never really given much thought to what a truly clinically
insane person might look like. Richard was a bit surprised that some
of the patients looked entirely normal to him; he would not have given
them a second glance on the street. But others showed obvious signs
of being disturbed. There was one fellow in a hospital gown who
obviously paid as little attention to his hair and grooming as he did
to his breakfast, staring instead at a spot on the wall. Another man,
seated in the corner, argued periodically with an unseen person. The
patient Spikey took to stabbing his French toast with the handle of
his plastic spoon and muttering obscenities.
After breakfast, an orderly unlocked the balcony to allow the patients
who smoked to have a cigarette. The balcony was surrounded by chain
link on all sides to prevent anyone from trying to jump; but despite
the feeling of imprisonment, Richard welcomed the opportunity for a
smoke, having been in bad need of a cigarette since waking.
Presently came the time for Richard's appointment with his new doctor.
Two orderlies escorted Richard off the locked ward and across the
courtyard to the physicians' building, where Richard had to wait a
long time on one of the bright orange plastic chairs, flanked by the
bored orderlies. Finally, a young man neatly dressed in a shirt and
tie appeared. "Richard Halgreen?" he said.
"Yes, that's me," said Richard, standing and offering his hand to the
young man. He figured this was some young office worker coming to
take care of more paperwork.
"I'm Dr. Clay," said the young man, shaking Richard's hand.
Richard was silent for a moment as he adjusted to this new
information. This young fellow was a doctor? Geez, I am getting old,
thought Richard, who was still in his thirties. "Pleased to meet
you," said Richard.
"Come into my office," said Dr. Clay. To the orderlies, Dr. Clay
said, "You can come back for him in an hour." Richard followed
Dr. Clay into his office. Dr. Clay closed the door, motioned for
Richard to take a seat, and sat down at his own desk.
"So," said Dr. Clay, looking down at the open folder on his desk, and
getting right to the point. "I understand that you set fire to a
medical research clinic."
"Yes," said Richard.
Dr. Clay leaned back in his chair. "I've read what it says here in
your file; but I wonder if you'd care to tell me yourself what led you
to do that."
"I guess I must be nuts; that's the only possible explanation," said
Richard sarcastically.
Dr. Clay smiled mildly. "Well, we'll see," he said. "Do you think
you're nuts?"
"No," said Richard. "But I can see why you'd think so."
Dr. Clay grimaced and shook his head slightly, not in disagreement,
but to show that this assessment was to be expected. "Monsters that
eat people-- surely you must realize that they don't exist." Dr. Clay
did not speak his thought that the monsters represented something in
Richard's unconscious.
"They weren't 'monsters'," scoffed Richard. How easily the story had
already gotten distorted. "It was men."
"I thought that the men were the ones getting eaten," said Dr. Clay
mildly.
"No, it was men that ate men," said Richard, knowing full well how
crazy this sounded.
"Like-- like cannibals, you mean?"
"No, not like that- I mean they opened their mouths really big and
just swallowed them alive."
Dr. Clay paused, turning that nearly incomprehensible image over in
his mind. "But surely you realize a man can't possibly open his mouth
that big," he said.
"I wouldn't believe it either, if I hadn't seen it for myself," said
Richard obstinately.
Dr. Clay paused, tapping his fingers together, as if pondering how to
proceed. "Why don't you just tell me the whole story of what you
thought you saw, right from the beginning."
Richard nodded. He took a moment to collect his thoughts, and began.
"I do HVAC work- you know, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.
I've been working at the Hayes Clinic for, oh, about three years now.
No, it's four years; I remember because I bought my pickup truck at
the same time I started, and I just paid it off last month.
"The first time I had any idea something was the matter was one day a
few months back when I was back behind the building working on the air
conditioning, because all the external units are back there. This old
white delivery truck pulled up at the loading dock, and some guys
moved this big crate off the truck and onto the dock. I didn't think
anything of it, because they get deliveries there all the time.
"But then there was something really strange: over the sound of the
air handlers, I thought I heard someone calling for help. Before I
could find out where it was coming from, the guys came back and moved
the crate into the building. I didn't hear anything else after that.
It was like someone was in the crate; but that didn't make no sense,
so I thought I just imagined it and went back to what I was doing.
Everything was normal for a couple more weeks.
"I knew who everybody was, of the folks who worked there. A couple of
the scientists were young guys; as young as you, even. I knew who
they were, but of course they never paid me the least bit of
attention-- those scientist guys can be like that. I doubt they even
noticed I was working there. They wouldn't ever have anything to say
to me unless something went wrong with the HVAC system, and then it's
nothing but complaints.
"Well, we had a lot of construction going on, and I was spending a lot
of my time in the crawl spaces between the floors-- you know, where
all the ducts and stuff are. A bunch of the ceiling tiles were out.
A lot of times, I could see what was going on in the rooms down below,
but I never paid much attention.
"One day, I saw those two young scientist guys I told you about. I
was looking down from the ceiling. Not meaning to spy, you know; but
I just happened to see them. They were standing and looking at the
screen on one of the VCR players. The screen was at an angle so that
I couldn't see it very well, but I could see enough; it was a pretty
big TV. It caught my attention because there was this naked guy on
the screen. I thought: what, are these two idiots watching porn
flicks on the job, or something? But the naked guy was just sitting
there on the floor. It didn't make a lot of sense.
"Then, on the screen, someone else came in; I could see this big
sonofabitch go into the room. That guy had a lot of muscle, and he
had a moustache; he reminded me of a Marine or something. He was buck
naked too, and he was a lot bigger than the guy who had been just
sitting there. The little guy was looking up, kind of scared and
confused, like. And then the big guy reached down and lifted the
little guy up by this shoulders so that they were both standing. The
big guy was a lot taller and built a lot bigger.
"And then..." Richard's voice trailed off. He had already told the
story at least five times, to the police, to the social worker, to the
court-appointed psychiatrist, and so on. But once again, he found
that he was unable to continue. He looked down at his hands, gazing
blankly at the yellow cigarette stain between his fingers.
"Go on," murmured Dr. Clay.
"The big guy leaned down over the little guy-- and I couldn't believe
what I was seeing, but the big guy opened his mouth just huge. I
never saw anyone open his mouth so big. It was like he could fucking
unhinge his jaw, or something. And he just took the little guy's head
in his mouth. You could see the little guy fighting it, but he was no
match.
"So the big guy just ate him. You could see how his mouth got bigger
when he ate the little guy's shoulders. He was leaning more and more
over the little guy, the more of him he took in. The little guy was
kicking all around, and you could see the big guy using his arms to
try to hold him still.
"The big guy got down about halfway to the little guy's waist, and
then he grabbed the little guy by his legs and swung him up into the
air. I mean, that fucker was built-- you could see the muscle in his
arms when he picked the other guy up like that. Not someone you'd
want to mess with. So the little guy was kicking his legs all around
in the air, but the big guy just kept gulping him down. You could see
how his throat was working, just like if you were chugging a beer.
"So pretty soon the big guy ate enough of the guy's legs that he
really couldn't kick any more. It didn't take very long after that
for the big guy to finish him off. I saw him take in the little guy's
feet, and then he just swallowed, and then the little guy was gone.
"The big guy just stood there for a minute, rubbing his gut. You
could see how he had this bulge there-- that's all there was to show
what happened to that poor guy. And-- if you can believe this-- the
big guy had a hard-on. That fucker was getting off on eating that
little guy! Then the big guy walked off camera, and all you could see
was the empty room."
Richard fell silent, staring at Dr. Clay's desk. Dr. Clay said
nothing for a respectful interval. Presently he asked, "Is it
possible that the two scientists were just watching a movie? You
know, things like that do happen in movies."
"Oh, no," said Richard. "It wasn't like that. I know the room where
it happened; it's right there in the building. It's got one of those
mirrors where you can see thru from the other side. Hell, I've been
in that same room, doing duct work." Richard shuddered.
"I see," said Dr. Clay. "What were the scientists doing while they
watched the tape?"
"Well, first time, they just watched it, and didn't say much. But
then they were backing up the tape and pointing at the screen and
discussing it. I mean, I couldn't believe it; there's that poor guy
fighting for his life, and those scientist guys were there just calmly
talking about all this scientific shit like it was no big deal."
"So is this why you set fire to the clinic?"
"Well, partly; but I saw a whole lot more before I set the fire."
"What else did you see?"
Richard said nothing for a moment and looked at his hands again. "I
can't talk about it any more right now," he said.
"That's fine," said Dr. Clay, changing the subject. He spent the rest
of the hour asking Richard about other subjects. He learned that
Richard had never been treated for mental illness before, and that he
had no history of drug use, other than beer and an occasional joint.
He asked Richard a few questions about his family history. When the
hour was up, the orderlies escorted Richard back to the ward.
Alone in his office, Dr. Clay wrote notes from his first meeting with
his new patient, Richard Halgreen. In his terse, clinical jargon, he
wrote of Richard's systematized paranoid delusional fantasies and
persecution complex, and the homoerotic content in his imaginations.
At the bottom of the notes, he wrote: "Prelim. diagnosis: Paranoid
Schiz."
---------------------
Richard was awoken that night by the sound of someone frantically
screaming. Alarmed, Richard stood and went out into the hall of the
ward to investigate.
The hall was dimly lit at this time of night. Richard could hear
nothing but his own heartbeat. After a few moments of silence, the
screaming started again. The howls were as frantic as if someone were
being killed. Moving down the hall, Richard found the closed door
behind which the screaming was happening.
Uncertain what to do, Richard took note of the room number and made
his way up the hall to the nurses' station. A bored-looking,
white-uniformed woman was sitting behind the desk, reading a magazine.
She looked up as Richard approached. "Yes?" she said.
"There's someone screaming in room 408," said Richard.
"Oh, that's just Marvin," said the nurse, waving it away. "He screams
all the time."
Richard paused. "Don't you think someone should check to make sure
he's all right?"
"People scream in the night here all the time," said the nurse. "Go
back to bed, Mr. Halgreen."
Richard said nothing more and returned to his bed. The screams
started and stopped several more times. Richard lay on his back, wide
awake. How had he gotten himself into this? For a moment, Richard
wondered if he really were crazy. But no, no, he reassured himself
again that he had seen what he had seen.
A heavy depression came over Richard, because he realized that nobody
was ever going to believe his story. If none of this had ever
happened, Richard might be driving home in his pickup right now after
a satisfying night of pool and beer with his buddies. Richard found
himself blinking back hot tears of anger; but then he successfully
controlled them by gritting his teeth and reminding himself that a man
doesn't cry. It wouldn't be quite as hard to bear if they'd just let
him have a smoke.
---------------------
"So you said that you saw more," said Dr. Clay. He and his patient
were again seated in his office, and the morning sunlight slanted in
thru the open windowshades, making stripes of light and shadow on the
floor.
"Yeah," said Richard. "Well, I admit it; I started spying after I saw
that video."
"So what did you find?"
"Well, I poked around in one of the scientist's offices when I was
there late in the evening, when they weren't working. I found this
brown envelope, and I knew it had X-rays in it; I knew because I had
seen the same kind of envelope at the doctor's, back when I broke my
collarbone a long time ago. I pulled them out and held them up to the
light.
"I saw that it was a whole series of X-rays. It was easy to see what
the first one was: it was a guy all curled up in another man's
stomach. I mean, it was just two skeletons in the X-ray, but it was
easy to see that the big guy had just eaten the little guy. That one
was labeled 'O hr. 15 min.' The next one wasn't much different; it
said '1 hr. 0 min.'
"As I got further down the stack, the bones in the guy's stomach
stopped looking so much like a curled-up person, and more like just a
jumble of bones, because I guess all his muscle and stuff was getting
digested. And then in the later pictures, only the bigger bones were
left, and you could tell they were getting smaller. When I got to the
last X-ray, the one that said '24 hr. 0 min', there was nothing left;
there was just an ordinary X-ray of the bigger guy. That poor little
guy was totally digested."
"Very interesting," said Dr. Clay, impressed at the amount of detail
and order in his patient's delusional fantasies. So many of
Dr. Clay's patients had a wreckage of unconnected, mutually
incompatible beliefs; but Richard's delusional belief system was quite
coherent and consistent. "So what else did you see?"
"Well, another thing that I noticed around that time was that there
were an awful lot of military guys around the clinic. That was
something new. A lot of the guys were officers, but there were some
ordinary soldiers that didn't rank so high; and some of those guys
were just huge. It's like they were picking the tallest, biggest
soldiers for their god damned study.
"Anyway, I was out near the front entrance one day working on
something, and this great big guy in a Marine jacket walked by on his
way into the building. He glanced at me and kinda grinned, and I just
froze, because I knew who it was. It was that sonofabitch in the
video I saw.
"He just passed me on by and didn't say anything; he looked and walked
real cocky, like. And I'm there thinking, that fucker ATE a guy! And
then I was thinking, what the hell is he about to do in there? Where
is he going?"
"So I thought, I've got to check this out. My heart was pounding, but
I had to see what was happening. So I went and got up in the ceiling
duct area to see what I could find out.
"I finally found where that Marine guy was. He was in one of the
clinical rooms, and a couple of the scientists were there, examining
him. He was stripped down to his underwear and was lying down, and he
had all kinds of wires stuck to him on little pads, kinda like when
they check your heart for a heart attack-- you know? I could tell
this exam was going to go on for a while, because the scientist guys
were just sort of shooting the breeze with him, telling him how much
they appreciated his help in this important study and all that. He
just smiled and said, 'My pleasure'.
"So then I crawled on over to the observation rooms, because I had a
real bad feeling about what was about to happen. I lifted the corner
of one of the tiles, and sure enough, there was this kid, maybe 20
years old or so, all stripped naked and sitting there in the room
looking all confused.
"I called down to him in a low voice and asked him what was going on.
He jumped because he was scared when he heard me, but he stood up and
looked up to where I was. He said his name was Ryan, and he was
begging me to get him out of there, but I asked him what had happened.
He said he had just been skateboarding by himself, waiting for his
buddies to show up; and all of a sudden these three big guys just
jumped out and grabbed him and shoved him in a big van, and tied him
up and gagged him. Then they stuffed him in a big wooden crate. He
could tell that they drove for a really long ways, a few hours at
least; and finally he felt the crate being carried as they unloaded it
from the van. Then they let him out of the crate, but they had guys
all around him to guard him; and they stripped him naked, and someone
examined him, listening to his heart with a stethescope and
photographing him and weighing him and all. They wouldn't answer any
of his questions; they just ignored him and told him to shut up. Then
they took him to the room he was in now.
"I was trying to figure out how I could rescue the kid, but right then
I heard someone coming, so I told the kid to be quiet and not give me
away.
"As soon as the door opened, I knew that kid was a goner, because the
Marine guy walked into the room, stripped naked like he was before. I
could see him clearly- he had this cocky grin on his face, and he
walked right up to the kid Ryan in this real intimidating way. I was
thinking, 'What a bully!' I mean, it wasn't a fair fight at all.
Ryan was this skinny skateboard kid, decently put together, but not a
whole lot of muscle. And there was this big motherfucker, at least a
foot taller and a good bit older, built like a fucking linebacker or
something; real hairy guy.
"So Ryan, he squeaked out, 'What the hell's going on, man?' And the
marine guy put his big hands down on Ryan's shoulders and looked down
at him and said, 'You're going to do your country a great service
today, boy!'
"So then the marine guy-- it's just like he unhinged his jaws or
something. You ever see a snake eat a frog? It was like that, except
it was a man, a man swallowing another guy, you know. I could see
Ryan looking up with this totally blank expression when the marine guy
opened his mouth real big; but before Ryan could even react, the
marine guy just glommed down on his whole head. The kid started to
fight, but the marine had him in this rough bear hug. It was awful.
I could hear the kid yelling, real muffled like, inside the soldier's
mouth. He was kicking and fighting, but the soldier just kept
swallowing him.
"I mean, it was awful, but it was pretty impressive, too. I couldn't
believe how big the soldier guy opened his mouth to take in the kid's
shoulders. I couldn't exactly see his mouth because I was watching
from above; I most just saw the top of the soldier's head. But I
could see how more and more of the kid was getting taken in, no matter
how much he fought.
"When the soldier got down to the kid's waist, he tilted his head back
again like before. I was scared for a moment 'cause I thought he
might see me; but I was in the dark and in the other direction, and
the guy had his eyes closed like he was really enjoying it. So he
never saw me.
"So I just watched while he ate the kid's ass, and then gulped down
the legs. The kid was still trying to kick, but pretty soon he was so
far inside the marine's mouth that he couldn't even kick any more,
poor guy. Soon I could just see his feet. And then the marine ate
the kid's feet too. I could see that fucker swallow him; you could
see the kid slide down inside the guy and make his hairy stomach bulge
out some. The guy just belched real loud and rubbed his belly; real
cocky look on his face. And he had a hard-on again, like before. He
just stood there a little, rubbing his gut, and then he walked out of
the room.
"That poor kid," concluded Richard. "He's gone now; that marine guy
digested him. I couldn't do nothing to help him." Then Richard fell
silent.
After a respectful pause, Dr. Clay said, "It's a remarkable story."
Richard had been looking down with a sad, meditative expression, but
he looked up now with a snarl. "And you don't believe a word of it,
do you. What do you care if there are other young guys over there
getting swallowed right now? That kid got digested alive, and what
the fuck do you care?"
Dr. Clay held up both hands. "Please," he said. "I know it seems
very real to you." He considered. "So what did you do after that?"
Richard composed himself, gritting his teeth. "I kept spying for a
while longer, and from overhearing parts of conversations and looking
in files and stuff, I was starting to figure out that the military was
paying to have this developed," said Richard. "They kept talking
about the 'Play-Dough'. I guess that was kind of a joke. I think
that was what they called the gray stuff that they had the solders eat
so that they could do this.
"I realized that this was just the beginning; that a lot more guys
were going to get eaten if the military started using this in a big
way. But who could I go to? If I went to the cops, they'd think I
was nuts; and anyway, if they asked the clinic staff about it, I'd
just get locked up, or maybe rubbed out by the Feds so that I couldn't
squeal. So I knew it was up to me to stop it, because nobody else
would ever believe it.
"So what else could I do? I got some plastic jugs full of gasoline
and brought them in; and I was going to pour it all over the building
and light it on fire. I poured out just the first jug before I got
caught, and the security guys tackled me. I never had a chance to
start the fire. And you know the rest, how I ended up here."
Dr. Clay looked at his patient, pondering. At this point, it would be
of no use to argue with him or try to convince him that his delusional
fantasies could not possibly be true. But this was an impressive case
in some ways; it was unusual for a delusional fantasy to be so
coherent and consistent. That might make the mental illness all the
harder to treat. This would almost be a case worth writing up for an
article.
-------------------
Late that night, Richard stood awake in his darkened room on the ward,
looking out the window thru the metal grate, thinking about his
situation, and thinking of the even more awful situation that some
young men might be in over at the Hayes clinic right now. Perhaps
some poor young guy was getting swallowed alive over there right now;
and here was Richard, unable to do anything about it. Richard
exhaled, wishing again for a cigarette; but it would be morning before
they'd let him have another.
Richard had been staring at the same view outside the window for some
time now. There was a dumpster and a lamp post, a few parked cars,
and then some trees. The lights of the town were half visible between
the trees, full of the promise of bars with pool tables, of freedom,
of all the things Richard had had taken away from him. A dog wandered
into the pool of light beneath the lamp post, sniffed at the dumpster,
and continued on his way. Richard felt a strange spasm of anger at
the dog's freedom; here he was, a grown man, locked up. What right
did a plain old mutt have to be free when Richard was in such a fix?
Just as Richard was thinking this, the light from the hall was
abruptly darkened. In the reflection in the window, Richard saw the
silhouette of a very large man in the doorway. Richard turned, and
recognized the man; he was a new orderly on the ward, a large muscular
man, bearded and dark-haired. Richard had not previously paid him
much attention, other than to notice what a big guy he was. To
Richard's surprise, the orderly closed the door, shutting himself and
Richard inside the room together.
"What's going on?" said Richard, puzzled, and feeling a strange sense
of dread.
The orderly walked slowly over to Richard. He was taller than
Richard, and Richard looked up into his face. In the light from the
lamp-post outside, Richard could see the huge man smile. Even tho the
light was filtered thru the metal grate, Richard could see the man's
face quite clearly. "Remember me, Mr. Halgreen?" said the man in his
deep voice.
That voice sounded familiar. A moment later, all of the blood drained
from Richard's face; his hair felt as if it were standing on end, and
and his guts seems to have changed to water. He knew who the orderly
was. Despite the new beard, it was unmistakeably the marine who
Richard had seen swallow two young men. "You!" said Richard in a
hoarse whisper. Richard was no coward, but he backed away against the
metal grate.
"Yes, Richard," said the marine, pulling the white orderly shirt off
over his head, exposing his muscular, hairy chest and arms. "And you
know why I'm here, don't you."
"For God's sake, don't do it to me too," said Richard, trembling. He
remembered only too well what this hulking man had done to the two
young men. Richard felt his heart hammering. "You know it's wrong."
"It's not wrong, no," said the marine in his deep, gravelly voice.
"It's for the good of the country. You should understand that." The
huge man scratched his hairy abdomen. "And if you had just minded
your own business, I wouldn't have to do this to you. Not that you've
given us away, because I don't think anybody you've talked to so far
is going believe you. But we can't have you making any more trouble.
So they sent me to take care of you; and it will be my pleasure."
"No fucking way," said Richard. At that moment, the marine took hold
of Richard's white t-shirt and started pulling it off of him. "Help!"
screamed Richard, struggling in the marine's grasp as the larger man
stripped him. Richard shouted himself hoarse as the marine forcibly
removed Richard's t-shirt and then his slip-on ward shoes (no laces
allowed, since they could be used as a noose), jeans, and underwear.
Richard was soon stripped naked, still yelling and struggling in the
half-naked marine's grasp. Richard was a tough man, but not nearly as
large or tough as this marine.
Richard could not understand at first why nobody was responding to his
yelling and screaming; but then he remembered his experience when he
had told the nurse about his neighbor's screaming. Richard realized
he was on his own. He tried to fight. He jabbed an elbow into the
marine's side and bit the larger man's arm; but the marine responded
by punching Richard in the gut. Richard collapsed on the floor,
doubled-up and momentarily unable to breathe.
The huge marine stood over Richard. He hooked his large hands under
Richard's armpits and lifted him up. Richard looked up to see the
same eager, cocky look on the marine's face that he had seen before.
There was a hungry gleam in the marine's eyes. As he lifted Richard
closer to his face, his bearded mouth started to open. Richard
trembled and kicked, but the mouth just opened wider and wider,
totally dark inside. Richard was lifted by the marine's muscular
arms, higher and closer, until the mouth filled his whole view. The
next thing Richard knew, the marine had taken his whole head in his
mouth.
Richard felt the bearded man take a deep breath and hold it. He felt
the mouth swallowing around his head, pulling him into the marine's
throat. The marine slid his hands down from Richard's armpits to his
waist, lifting him further into his mouth. Richard was swinging his
arms and legs and managed to get a few punches in on the marine's
hairy chest; but the marine was tough and did not lose his composure,
and just kept swallowing Richard until the hospital patient was too
far inside to use his arms any more.
The marine grunted as he slowly gulped his way down to Richard's
waist. At this point, Richard felt the gravity shift as the marine
tilted his head back, hoisting Richard's legs up into the air.
Gravity could now help some, and it was more of a straight shot down
the marine's throat to his stomach. The marine reached his strong
arms up and lightly held Richard's legs to keep them from kicking too
much, but most of the work was being done now by his throat, which
visibly worked as he gulped Richard down.
The huge man ate Richard down to his knees, and then to his feet.
Richard's kicking was gradually stopped by the marine's mouth, but the
marine could still feel him struggling in his throat. Richard felt
his feet being drawn inside as well, but he could not see the marine's
grim smile as the bearded mouth closed, his white teeth closing like a
gate.
The marine swallowed Richard the rest of the way down in one gulp.
Richard felt himself being pushed thru the tight opening into the
marine's stomach; and he felt himself being curled up as the powerful
throat muscles forced him into the tight space. Richard squirmed and
struggled, but he was trapped. A few minutes ago, the hospital ward
had seemed like an intolerable imprisonment; but the ward seemed like
a world of freedom compared to the confinement Richard was in now.
The stomach walls were smooth and strong, and the whole stomach was
dark and humid. It was getting more and more moist as the marine's
digestive process started to kick in, and the enzymes entered the
marine's stomach to take care of Richard.
With the patient no longer in his throat, the marine resumed his
breathing. He belched, scratched his hairy gut, and kicked back on
Richard's bed. It felt fucking great to be this full, he thought, and
it also felt great to show his prowess and strength over another man
by swallowing him. The marine was still wearing the white orderly
pants; the elastic was somewhat stretched from his now bulging gut,
and the crotch was tented out by the marine's erection. The huge man
stroked the black, coarse beard which he had grown as a disguise. It
would be at least five hours until sunrise, so the marine could just
relax and enjoy digesting Richard for a while.
Richard struggled some more and gave a few yells inside the tight,
cramped space he was in, but as he ran out of air, he started losing
his concentration and getting sleepy. He knew he was done for. "You
bastard," he growled; but there was nothing he could do to save
himself.
The marine felt his meal's struggles gradually die down. For once,
there were no X-rays or tests; he could just relax and enjoy the nice
full feeling of having a whole man in his stomach. The marine licked
his chops. Richard had had a somewhat different taste from the
others. The "test subjects" the marine had eaten before had all been
young men in their late teens or early twenties; but Richard was in
his thirties, and had a somewhat deeper, tougher taste than the young
men had.
The marine slowly digested Richard. As the sky started to show a pale
light thru the metal grating, the marine pulled his orderly's shirt
back on over his still somewhat distended belly. He gathered up
Richard's clothes and took them with him as he clocked out and left
the still sleeping ward, discarding the clothes at a different
dumpster several blocks away.
------------------
It was the woman who brought the breakfast cart around who first
noticed that Richard was not in his room. She told the head nurse,
and the whole ward was searched. Soon the grounds were being
searched, and the police were notified that an insane, dangerous man
was at large, and that he might attempt arson again.
An officer at the city police department phoned the security
department at the Hayes Clinic to give notification of Richard's
escape. Strangely, the head of security at the clinic seemed
unconcerned, almost as if he had been expecting this. The city
policeman was puzzled, but then shrugged as he hung up the phone; it
wasn't his fault if the clinic didn't take his warning seriously.
The large, bearded new orderly on the ward gave notice a few days
later that this kind of work didn't appeal to him after all. It was
enough days after Mr. Halgreen's escape that nobody connected the two
events. The head of the staff on the ward had mixed feeling about
seeing that new orderly leave. A strong fellow like that was useful
for keeping the sometimes violent patients in order. But there was
something vaguely disturbing about him; he had an odd way of looking
at the head of staff with an almost hungry gaze. The orderly seemed
to always scratch his belly when he looked that way at the head of
staff; but the head of staff had the good fortune of never finding out
anything else about this odd mannerism of the former orderly.
The patient who was reported as escaped, Richard Halgreen, was never
found. Nobody thought to look inside the muscular, hairy marine,
where Richard's matter took a slow and circuitous trip thru the
marine's labyrinthine intestines, slowly to be absorbed into the
marine's hulking, manly body. The marine's muscular arms, legs, and
chest all got a little stronger from this most recent man he had
eaten, and his hairy balls hung just a little heavier and prouder than
before.
As for the marine, he returned to the Hayes Clinic, welcoming the
opportunity to help continue their research for as long as there
continued to be tasty men for him to swallow alive. The first couple
of guys they had given him to eat had been young new navy recruits;
but since it was a hassle to keep on coming up with plausible
explainations for their disappearances, the clinic had soon switched
to kidnapping young civilian guys from other towns to feed to him.
The civilians seemed to taste even better, the marine thought. He
loved the feeling of power over the young men he ate; they were all
his to consume for his own masculine satisfaction, as well as for the
good of the country. Damn, was he ever glad he had been given this
assignment. And if the research ever ended, he'd just find his meals
on his own. He wouldn't mind at all, because he was a born predator,
and the hunt and capture of another man would just make the meal that
much more satisfying.
--END--