Can't Say No to the Beauty and the Beast

Friday, 11th October 1996

Cold, alone and scared to the end of his wits, Bryan McGovan shivered in one corner under the thin blanket. He was finding it harder by the day not to retreat into madness and shut out the suddenly cruel world. The walls around him were untiled jagged cement which he couldn't rest against, the floor cobbled and uncomfortable to stand upon. Through the tiny window in the steel door came the antiseptic flickered glare of cheap phosphourescent lighting.

Days (weeks? how long was it?) ago, while he still had the courage to stand head height, he had looked out through the thick glass into what could pass for a hospital corridor, lined with regular doors, leading out of site, and not a soul to be seen. Then something moved into sight from the left of his field of vision, filling it in a second, and it took Bryan a moment to realise it was a face. Bryan jumped. It was the face of a woman, but it was all wrong. Her eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks even; every part in itself fair enough, yet in some places too far apart, too close together. Bryan remembered a book Danny had once lent him which explained continental drift; now as he watched this face, it moved, eyes and nose as continents and mouth a gaping abyss adrift on a sea of skin. He doubled over, retched and threw up, the face on him all the time; even when his back was to it, he could feel the eyes staring through him.

He had recovered himself, stood up and looked out again. A nurse in a clean white uniform stood two feet away, writing on a clipboard. She looked up at him; it was the same face as before, only settled and normal, quite pretty really. And a little tick shape to the ends of her eyebrows, which made her look very futuristic in a 1950s kind of way. Normal, but before ...

Drugs, he thought. They must've gave me drugs. Did she do it? Why?

The nurse gave a quick, nervous smile, turned on her heels and walked away down the corridor.
But that was only the first strange thing he saw, and it happened a time ago, an age, when he was still a man. Now he was a wreck.

Who were they? And why were they doing this to him?

A noise: steel on stone. The door opened. Bryan pulled the sheet over his face.

A child's voice said, "The Surgeon will see you now, Mr McGovan."

Bryan pulled the sheet down from his face and looked in horror at his visitor. He opened his mouth, and began screaming.