Sneers the greasy looking mechanic in rumpled red coveralls. He’s used an over ride key card on the crew quarters door. The grey green lump of human that is currently out cold on the raised bed doesn’t stir, at all. In fact the body is so still it doesn’t even appear to be breathing, let alone functional enough to answer a page and report in for his duty rotation. Stepping across the threshold of the most spacious single occupancy room the mechanic has ever seen. Large though it may be, since it is kept sparse and unadorned it comes across as positively massive. Standing in the center of the room, the bisected doors begin to close. The change in cabin pressure from the hall and the closing door wafts the rancid smell of rotten meat, body odor and foul breath right to the mechanics nostrils. It clings to the soft palette and inside of the nose like an oily scented film. The greasy lank haired mechanic gags on the stench. Looking closely at the ghost on the bed he can see clumps of dead skin gathered in ragged lumps on the man’s pale dirty feet. He looks like he hasn’t bathed in months. He smells like he’s been sleeping in his own filth and waste for a year straight. With a ear splitting peel the greasy mechanics wrist rings again to remind him he has to get the ghost named Mark, up and ready for his next rotation in the next few hours. He flicks off the notification on his wrist communicator and finds the lighting panel for the room. With hesitation he begins to poke around getting the bathing unit ready for the nearly dead ghost. Walking around the side of the raised bed he leans against the lower desk, and pulls out a couple of drawers to stand on, as no step stool can be seen inside the room. As his line of sight comes parallel to the comatose man, he can see that he appears to have been unceremoniously deposited onto the bed with little thought given to comfort or his own safety. Limbs akimbo, neck turned harshly to his left, looking in towards the padded wall and away from the door. If his wrist biometrics unit wasn’t flashing green, you’d easily assume he was dead. The beige uniform is strained, torn and falling apart at the seams. “Dude, what the fuck were you up to? You smell like shit buddy boy. If you’re here with me at all, I’m just gonna pull you down from your bed and strip you down to your skivvies. God I hope you guys wear skivvies. Then I’m going to run you through two or three wash cycles to clean you up. I have an Omega level code orange on you my man. If it were up to me I’d leave you in the sick bay, or a med pod for the next month, but those orange fucks don’t play that way, you get me? Huh? Shit… I’d swear you were dead… umph! Jesus, heavy too.” With a lot of writhing, wriggling and unflattering pulls using leverage the mechanic drops the ghost named Mark to the hard metal floor. He turns the puddle of man and clothes about looking for a safety pull cord that should be poking out from under a stitched patch. Locating it to the rear behind Mark’s left armpit, he rips off the patch to expose the yellow triangular handle. Grabbing it firmly he pulls the twelve feet of molecular fiber cord out of the uniform coveralls and it falls apart along the seam lines. The smell that erupts out of the split clothing is horrendous. The body is covered with pustules, open pressure sores and deep tissue rashes. His skin dyed black with rot from faeces build up that the suit was unable to filter or remove via catheter. “They’ve done a real number on you bud. Come on, this might sting a little, sorry to drag you around your room like this.” Pulling the dead weight of the unconscious man from a pile of his tangle of limbs to orient him for bathing in the shower cubicle. “If you’re alive in there, listen, I’m going to key in an antiseptic scrub, wash and rinse cycle as well, for after the wash. It’s gonna hurt like a Son of a bitch, but you look as though you need it. The orange mafia don’t care to smell anything less than perfumed roses when you have a debrief. You can thank me later. Maybe a shot of adrenaline when the cycles are complete will help you out eh? Why not. It’s on the house uh! Company money, well spent I’d say.” Clicking away on the control board outside the showers the mechanic types in the resource codes he was given, triple checking against his wrist communicator to be sure. He presses the initiate button and walks out of the room.
A opaque cream coloured bag expands out of a hole in the wall, the naked man is enveloped within it soundlessly. A viscous pink gel floods the bag from multiple directions. A soft glop and slurp can be heard, muffled by the membrane. The sticky goo oozes over the man pulling sixty days worth of dead skin, waste and dirt along with it, to be filtered and pushed back through again. Cleaning every surface as it goes. As the gooey mass get sucked from the ghosts nasal cavity he gulps in a deep and startled breath. He twitches and shakes as he comes to. With the pinch of a syringe to the base of his neck his eyes pop open as adrenaline floods his veins. He pushes backwards frantically as though trying to hide inside the wall. His heels crack the tile lining the floor, his finger nails push off his cuticle with the strain of his panic. He can not remember why he is so afraid, it’s like a blood memory buried deep within his bones. “I’ve seen a god, and it was not benevolent.” He whispers weakly from cracked lips into the empty room, a small trickle of blood from his ruined fingers dribbles down the drain in the center of the wash cubicle.
Part Ten: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 