Through thick red and white flashes, you break into the giant glass doors. Your whole body pulsates from cold ebbs and warm flows that leave cracks on your porcelain nerve system. As you enter dead blue space, a massive nurse jumps on you like a hungry-for-victory-quarterback and knocks down. The sound of a cracked ripe pomegranate fills the hall as your crucified spine finds itself under her heavy breasts.

“Do you have a corona?” A muted voice escapes through a nurse’s white helmet.

“No” you wheeze, avoiding touching somebody's black hair on the floor. “An injury…”

“That's what you all say” she yells and presses a white plastic gun to your wet temple. “Stay still!”

Centuries have passed. The plastic squeaks of the thermometer sing in unison with the erratic heartbeat of the nurse.Under your broken body new lakes and oceans have been formed from your sweat drops.

“All clear!” the quarterback screams, lifts your damaged body up to the ceiling-sky and throws it through the gates of the emergency room.

You land in a narrow corridor full of bloody bodies circling like water in a clogged toilet. You try to find Charon who could carry your damaged soul across this Styx but he or she is off tonight. One of the mummies turns its toothless face to you, points at itself and nods. You obediently nod back: she will be next, not you. 

There is neither wall-clock nor windows, like in a casino, although instead of colorful chips your reward is a gray life. You are getting dizzy. A cold breeze coming to your spine. You look around. The dusty seats along the corridor are occupied with shadows of crying women and elders. The men and children are glued to the greasy walls. With clumsy gestures you wriggle through the crowd into a tiny passage where two men sit on the floor. They make some space for your swaying body that plops between them just in the moment when a glacial executioner knocks at your bones, catches your spine in the ice nets and tightens it stronger with every breath you make.

Please, stop you beg yourself, digging nails into your skin. I promise when it is over, I take better care of you. No moreheavy things, I will not carry even a bottle of water, deal?

“Young miss?” a hoarse voice from your right reaches you through the remote cries and screams of the shadows.

“Hmm?” you moo, avoiding any movements.

“Would you be so kind as to help me out?”

You carefully shift your gaze from the colorless legs of the herd of people in front of you to the talking black cloud that holds a dark stick. When your pupils constrict, the brain floods your eyes with colours. The gray cloud takes the form of a sitting man covered with velvet blood, holding a handle of a yellow screwdriver that is stuck in his bleeding knee.

“H-how” a dry tumbleweed flows in your throat, pushing the inner executioner away “long do you sit… like that?”

“The tenth century. The legend claims my grandchildren have been born already” the blurry

spot pets his bloody beard. “So what do you say, young miss? You just have to…” he moves closer to you “pull this Excalibur out my stony knee.”

“Have you tried it yourself?” 

“Nope. You see, I’m afraid of blood.”

“All right then,” you look underneath, flop your shoe in his blood and weakly smile. “I'll try.”

Through the bloody fog you reach a rough handle of the screwdriver. Adventure music starts playing in your brain, while your invisible coat flies in the wind. You lean forward. The pain from slight movements starts gently touching your spine like a professional guitarist checking the strings before they scream.

“Mmm” you leave the handle and lean backward, preparing yourself for a delayed wave of pain. “I am sorry. I'm in pain.”

“That's ok, that's ok” the spot murmur, scratching his elbow.

“Are you not?” you whisper. “In pain?” 

“Na ja” he coughs. “I am here for too long. Do you see those cables on the ceiling?”

You blink without movements of your head, carefully observing the brown pimply surface covered with half glitching lamps and untidy cables.

“I think” he giggles “its hair.”

“Ha?” you open your eyes wider, examining black and brown wires stretched along the ceiling, descending to the green walls.

“I believe it's hair of ex patients. Hair has grown through the floors. They still sit on the upper floors and wait for their turn”

“Here. Take this.” you carefully pull a chocolate bar from your jacket pocket “I think you are hallucinating. From the loss of blood or something.”

“Thank you, young miss.” He takes it and breaks the chocolate bar in halves. “The best food is the food in the company, right?”

You are slowly chewing gooey caramel, scoring goals with hazelnuts inside your throat. Your eyes are fixed above patients’ heads. Now you see not only the cables as hair but the ceiling itself as a sick body covered with pimples and wet slime. The sick pulsating mass of this body presses you down.

“Do you…?” you turn to the man with the screwdriver but he has been asleep for some years.

You hug yourself and put the nose into your knees. Time after time people press you to the wall, to the floor, some women step over you, revealing their not-white-underpants. In the distance children cry, mothers fight. You swing to the heartrending beat of the crowd.

“Turmooooock” the high pitch scream wakes you up. A giant blue creature slowly moves itself with a help of long thick tentacles to your direction. Her odour and slimy sounds make people jump from their seats.

“Turmooooock!” the creature roars and pulls out from behind a brush with shiny dirt on it. This screaming octopus breaks the legs of women, men, and children who do not jump in time. The screams flood the corridor.

“I've found King Arthur for you. In a skirt” you smile, gently punching the sleepy man on his shoulder.

“She rather pulls the heart out of me” the man drowsily coughs, rubbing his eyes.

“Did you sleep well?” you wonder, observing the creature violently brushes the floor, removing the layers of blood together with parquet and moves in your direction.

“Oh yes, thank you very much, young miss. I slept like a person without any sharp objects in his leg. I saw in my dream a large black wall-clock with golden arrows. Do you mind interpreting it?”

“Black and gold colors.” you sigh, watching children run and disappear into the blue space of the hall. In a second, theyare thrown back to the arms of the creature that knocks them down with its brush. “Seems like something Arabic. Maybe our one thousand and one nights are over. Shall we fight… or run away?”

“Na ja. I do not mind hear the last story from this giant Scheherazade.”

In two meters, the creature lifts the seats under ninety degrees. People fall down like the passengers of the sinking Titanic.

“Turmoook!” The scream hits you in the face with dirt and dust. One tentacle wraps your body and tightens it. Another one lifts your fellow upside down.

 The wave of lava burns the right side of your body. It fills your right ear, knocks your eye out, sharply goes down to your arm, scorches your leg. You catch the air with your mouth and burn your lungs with each breath. The creature shouts something in its orc’s language and throws your heavy round fire-ball-body to the cracked doors. People on your way are falling down like bowling pins. Her reward is the strike, yours is

Lumbago.

“Patient, don’t waste my time. What is the purpose of your visit?” a smoky voice filters through ashes in your ears and a sharp smell of chlorophyll mixed with the aroma of quick noodles and fish enter your nostrils.

“My back is in pain.” you whisper with closed eyes, sensing with your shoulder blades a rough surface of a hospital bed.

“It happens” you hear a noodle drops on his clothes and sounds of wiping it with his finger that goes back to his mouth “which vertebra?”

“Pardon me?”

“The spine consists of vertebras. Which one is troubling you?”

You try to imagine a spine in two, three, four dimensions, clumsily rotating it like furniture in an Ikea app. An anatomy lesson comes to your mind with the DNA riddle, where you were supposed to use red and blue M&M's to determine genetic traits for the imaginary kids of M&M. The answer was always fifty-fifty. What is the percentage of your memory that holds the information on vertebras? 

“I have no idea.” You answer and put cold hands on your warm belly.

The champing stops and the sound of a ticking clock makes its way into your brain. The harmonic repetitive music ofthe vibrations jumps from one wall to another. The room sounds spacious and full of numerous unheard voices that are circling around the deaf doctor.

“If you don’t help me, I can’t help you” he hisses after some seconds of silence for him and quite loud hours for you.

“I feel like a giant lilliputian sits on my shoulders and kicks me with its tiny cowboy spurs. If I move, he pours hot lava on me or hits me with icy whips.”

“What?” 

“What?” you echo innocently. The ticking clock becomes more arrogant with its big arrows that pierce your closed eyes.

“I’m sending you for an X-ray”

“All right.”

“Patient. I repeat it again. Don’t waste my time.”

“Hm?” with an effort you open your left eye and glance at the surroundings. On the opposite side of the globe, a giantbear-like doctor in a red uniform, floats on an ice floe with dead fish in his jaw.

“Patient, go to have an X-ray” he roars.

“Go where?” your hands moved in frustration like scary birds.

“The fifth floor!”

“Are you blind? I’m in pain.”

“Like everyone else. There is an elevator. Please, vacate the premises.” The arrows of the ticking clock tickle your nose and bite your fever cheeks. You close your eyes and lie still.

“I will call a nurse. She will show you the way.” He picks up the phone with his paws and deals the number.

Somebody opens the door and the screams and cries from the corridor enter the room. Familiar strong arms lift you and throw you to the direction of the sound.

You want to sit on the floor but the quarterback keeps kicking you to the wall. She waits when the elevator devours you, presses the button and leaves you inside. The elevator spits out your body on another floor.

No signs, no people. You make three uncertain steps to a sole large metallic door and hear a shy meow. On the right from the door a ginger kitten sunbathes. It purrs and rolls on the tile.

“Are you coming or not?” a sharp irritated voice from a loudspeaker scares both of you.

With some jealousy, you watch the kitten hiding under a seat.

With some pity the kitten watches you disappearing behind the gray walls.

You go inside a spacious green room with shuttered windows. In the middle you spot a shabby chair and a large X-rayplatform.

“Undress yourself, remove jewelry and stand in front of the shield. When I say, don’t breathe and don’t move. Understand?” the invisible metallic voice makes itself clear.

You sit in the chair to take a breath and slowly begin to take off your T-shirt, avoiding quick movements to prevent waves of pain.

“Hurry up. There is nothing I haven’t seen.”

You shudder from the voice’s remarks and from the cold.

You limp toward the X-ray platform and stand close to the shield. The cold surface balsams your back, shoulders, shoulder blades.

 “Don’t breathe.” The metallic voice announces.

Your heartbeat goes faster, slower, faster, slower. You don’t remember how to breathe. You are suffocating, catching the air with your mouth. Your ribs are pressing your heart and squeezing it through your throat. You breathe loudly, heavily. 

“I said don’t breathe.”

The tears go down your cheeks when you follow the order. The four seconds of breath-holding shakes your brain.

“Breathe. Turn left.”

You obey and a fast-cold-car races up and down your arm. “Don’t breathe. Good, Now turn right.”

You turn and freeze. You do not feel neither cold nor rigid surface of the shield. You tweak your right arm with your left.

“Ma’am” your own high pitched voice rings in your left ear. “I don’t feel my right arm!”

“And what? Just don’t breathe.”

In a silent shock you don’t breathe, feeling your intermittent heartbeat and pulsating left arm. “Good. You are done. Go outside.”

You stand still, trying to clench a fist with your right arm. It does not listen to you. The heaviness pulls your right part of the body down, interfering with your walking. You make some steps to the chair and take the t-shirt with your left arm. Carefully you take your right arm as a heterogeneous object and put it in a sleeve like a sausage into the bread for a hot dog.

“Hurry up! You are not the only patient.”

You get out of the dark room into the bright deserted corridor. The kitten rolls again on the sun spot. Some centurieslater you limp closer. The kitten meows, you meow back. You slowly approach it and outstretch your left hand towards it.

 The kitten glances inquiringly at you and sits in the Sphinx pose, protecting the spot.

“Can you give me the riddle, and if I answer, you cure my right arm?” The kitten meows and looks at your sausage-arm.

“I know the answer. It's a human, right? Baby, adult, and an old man.”

You carefully take your numb right arm with your left one and bring it to the light.

The kitten yawns and playfully stretches its paws towards it. Three millimeters, two millimeters…

“What are you doing?” the metallic voice makes both of you leave the spot. You turn around and see a tiny slim woman in a yellow summer dress.  “Take it and go back to the doctor”

“Wait-wait! Where is the X-ray?” you gasp, looking at a piece paper.

“We don’t print them out. This paper is all you need. Now go!”

You are standing in the empty hall with the tiny piece of paper. The pain slightly retreats, watching you in thebinoculars. You go back to the elevator, back to the first floor.

The doors are opened and the flashing light blind you. Protecting yourself with the piece of paper you peek out at thefamiliar corridor with green greasy walls and the whining crowd. You make ten, twenty, thirty steps to the cracked doors yet they are still far away.

You freeze. People bump into your senseless right arm, they step on your feet. A Samain-from-Carrigton’s-work-woman, rolls her eyes up and points at the crowded passage. You shake your head and continue your way. The moreyou move, the farther the doors appear. In a second, it becomes the opposite: you sense the door with a tip of yournose. The doors that are a millimeter from you, elongate upward, piercing the heavenly abyss, leaving your tiny bodyon the level of threshold. You stretch your fingers towards a knob, trying to reach it on the height of the one hundredand twenty floor. The new wave of pain pulsates on your brain radar. The swamp-floor sucked your feet and your body slowly falls down. Floor by floor you see the babies, old men, circling souls that crash into the rocks, rotten soulsunder the heavy fire rain, people that move giant objects, fighting people in a greasy swamp, graves with fire in them, bodies that are chained upside down,

suffering people,

suffering people,

  suffering people,

And then

A cold, sharp tip of the iceberg has pierced your tiny body, making it waves like a white flag on the sunken ship in the bloody waters of Inferno.

Lumbago

“Patient, don’t waste my time. What is the purpose of your visit?” The familiar roar wakes your brain up with deja vu.You open your eyes in the white room, with the bear-like doctor. “Ha?” The hard surface of the hospital bed reminds you of comfort. “My back is in pain.”

“It happens. Which vertebra?” His voice melts in the music of a ticking clock. “The spine consists of vertebras.Which one troubles…?”

“I have an X-ray” you interrupt him and point at the crumpled paper on his desk. 

“I don’t understand the handwritten text. Go upstairs, make a proper one”

You keep lying in bed, listening to his receding steps. You move one finger on the right hand and smile. You do the same with another hand and it also listens to you. You move all your fingers.

He talks yet you raise your right hand up. With every tick of the clock, you wave the hand right and left, like a conductor in the orchestra, spreading the music of the sufferers all over the room.

He talks. The music goes further on the tips of your unstoppable growing hair. It goes through the ceiling, turning hair into the cables and blends with the screams and cries of the abandoned souls.

“Young miss, you made it!” The hoarse voice reaches you through the music.

“Grandfather?” you weakly smile, hearing his bleeding knee. “I think we are on the wrong path.” you whisper, withoutinterrupting the music “we are in Hell.”

“No, my dear. We are in the wrong country.”

“Can we fight… or run away?” 

“We cannot.” He breath out. 

“Why not?”

“Because       we        are       afraid  of          blood”