Clump , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Scott Tierney

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19 pages

English

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At the end of the 19th century a strange and unexplained medical phenomenon starts to occur - people being to 'clump' together. What starts out as two individuals conjoined at the skin soon snowballs into groups of three, four, and upwards. How large can these clumps grow? And when, if at all, will the clumping stop?

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Science fiction

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	18 août 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781789822533
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Clump
Scott Tierney

Clump
First published in 2020 by
Acorn Books
www.acornbooks.co.uk
Acorn Books is an imprint of
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2020 Scott Tierney
The right of Scott Tierney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Note for the Reader
The following narrative is comprised of excerpts woven together from the medical reports, personal correspondences, interviews, surveillance, and the private journals of the former Dr. P. W. Atkins, along with internal documentation and additional material relating to their experience.
All names have either been modified or removed for the protection of those involved. Dates, locations and times are presented to the best of the authors’ knowledge. The most sensitive material has been redacted.
The composition of our story is a joint effort.

Clump
26/3/1898 – 2:24 a.m.
I was napping contently through the final third of the graveyard shift when I received a call that two patients, a male and a female, were inbound and urgently requiring of my expertise. For reasons which I could neither fathom nor discern, there was some confusion as to what should be done with the patients upon their arrival at the hospital – something along the lines of keeping them isolated. The nurse on the telephone sounded distressed, and hung-up before I could press her as to the reasons behind the incertitude.
Sensing this was just going to be the beginning of a long and tiresome night, I rubbed my eyes awake, unrolled my white coat from its pillow form, and proceeded downstairs.
I arrived to find the attending ambulance crew, along with a crowd of staff and porters, huddled in the hallway, whispering between themselves in a timorous fever of pipe smoke. When I requested that they bring me up to speed on the condition of the newly arrived patients, the staff only proceeded to nod me towards a single curtained-off cubical at the far end of the ward.
“Only the one bed? Are we so overcrowded with bodies that we are finding ourselves having to stack?” I enquired with jest, attempting to lighten the mood while pouring a coffee. “But seriously, why are the patients not being treated separately?”
“We…couldn’t.” one of the ambulance crew stammered, his elderly and bearded face pale, his partner’s as equally as ashen.
“Don’t tell me. Another Captivus?” I chuckled, referring to the condition whereby a couple can become locked together during intercourse. It is a very rare occurrence, but we had encountered a case of it earlier in the month, much to everyone’s amusement. “Like buses it would seem, huh?”
Nothing. The staff only nodded again in the direction of the end cubical. As I finished my coffee and headed down the softly candle-lit corridor, the staff followed at my heels – albeit at a curious, agog, and apprehensive distance.
When I drew open the curtains of the cubical I indeed found two patients lying beside one another on the same wooden trolley. Neither seemed aroused or even aware of my presence. I initially assumed they were heavily intoxicated from either alcohol or opium, as was common for an admission at this time of the night; but from reading their notes I discovered that both patients had been heavily sedated upon arrival. Again, when I pressed the staff as to why they had taken it upon themselves to do this, like startled deer they seemed incapable of providing me with any coherent reasoning. As they had proven themselves to be of no further use, I snapped the curtains at their prying noses, and began my diagnoses.
From what I could tell from an initial inspection, both patients were in reasonable health, for there was no sign of any major injury nor symptoms of an underlying illness. In fact, much to my annoyance, neither patient appeared to be suffering any duress whatsoever.
I was about to pass the case off to one of the juniors and return upstairs to my nap, when my attention was drawn towards a small medical blanket which had been laid between the two patients, concealing their left and right arms respectively.
With the staff watching on from between a crack in the curtains, I lifted the blanket – to my confoundment I discovered that the skin of each patient’s forearm, from wrist to elbow, had somehow bonded with the other, creating a seamless connection as though two taper candles melted together at the stems.
I stared in disbelief for the longest time, both dumbfounded, unnerved, yet awed by such an immaculate mutation. During this interval the patients must have come around, for when they noticed me, each hand on their adjoined arms clenched into a fist at exactly the same instant.
26/3/1898 – 7:47 a.m.
Patients Zero share little in common – beside being stuck together like poorly strung sausages, of course. Neither are of the same race, age, build, heritage, class, gender, or birthplace. Both are in acceptable shape, reasonably attractive, and their records indicate no history of any underlying illnesses in the past ten years. The only similarity they share is one of coincidence, for they were both visiting our city for the purposes of recreation when, for whatever reason, they became conjoined.
At both patients’ desperate behest, the first attempt to separate them took place this morning. It was a failure. During the four-hour operation we almost lost both patients.
And a nurse.
***
In spite of the pressure of finding ourselves being the first practitioners to discover and thereafter treat this strange and remarkable new disorder, my colleagues and I all assumed that the operation would be a relatively straightforward procedure: make an incision along the forearms where both anesthetized patients had become attached, separate them, then simply stitch the damaged skin back together. It should have been no more taxing then snipping webbed fingers, as pleasurable as dicing mushrooms.

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