Polyps

[Bob Pacey]

Stephen Darkside more like it.

I knew Stephen resigned from the C J Dennis association for personal reasons just was not sure, Mongrel.

Never trusted Bloody Doctors anyway.

Bob

[Leonie]

I know what you mean Heather, it's a sort of 'what were we thinking' kind of thing. I read it a couple of times and thought it probably was made up, but when I went to reply I thought - but what if it isn't . I just wasn't sure enough to not offer condolences. He's a very naughty boy.

Bob, darkside indeed. Have you noticed there is a definite resemblance to another Stephen and not just in the writing either judging by his avatar.

[Heather]

And to think I felt SO sorry for him. Just you wait Stephen....

[Neville Briggs]

The mind boggles what sort of funny stories do these doctors regale each other with after a heavy day at the theatre

[Stephen Whiteside]

After dad died, the nurses kindly offered to leave me alone with him for a while. After the horror of his death, I promptly fell asleep, only to be waken by a scream. The scream of a nurse who had entered the room.

I opened my eyes, and felt like screaming too. I guess I'm just not the screaming type.

I thought the polyps had stopped growing. I was wrong. Yes, they were silent now, but not inert. In fact, I wondered if they were now growing faster than ever. Some alternative metabolic pathway, perhaps? But why? Why grow faster now? The urgency prompted by a dead host, perhaps? But they weren't a parasite, they were part of the host - a genetic aberration, to be sure, but still...?

Enough of theory. The polyps had risen in a slowly writhing pink mound above dad's abdomen, spilled onto the bed on either side, and down to the floor. But it didn't stop there. From wall to wall lay a four inch carpet of pink polyps. All moving slowly.

They had started to climb the walls in ones and twos. A few were on the ceiling. They formed a thick layer on my legs below my knees, and several were in my lap.

How to escape? I had no wish to squelch them underfoot, yet there seemed no alternative. And so it was. What was that strange little noise? Did I hear screaming?

Another nurse arrived on the scene and helped me and the first nurse out of the room. We locked the door behind us. I tore off my trousers, and threw them out the window.

What to do next? Was this really happening? The textbooks were no help at all, and Google and Wikipedia were no better.

Somehow these polyps had developed locomotive ability. What were their limitations? Could they drill or burrow? Could we assume they were safely contained in the room, or might they pierce the walls and ceiling? Or drop through into the level below.

Immediately my mind turned to 'Alien'. The air con ducts! I'd lived this like nobody else. Nobody believed Ripley till it was too late.

Perhaps they would drop silently from the ceiling above us, land inside our eye-lids like leeches, and infect our DNA. Find a new host. A live host to replace the dead.

A few SES lads turned up with a broom and a fire extinguisher. Don't know what they expected to do with that. Drown them in foam, maybe. Or give them a good clean! I immediately thought of a flame-thrower. Nothing less would do.

I'd finish them off right here and now, along with the remains of dad, his pyjamas, his slippers and dressing gown, his shaving gear and toothbrush, condolence cards, vase, flowers and water, bed and bedding, bedside table, chair, carpet the log. Incinerate it all, and be done with it. And if a few other hospital rooms were taken out in the process, so be it.

Better to do it now than wait for the inevitable scientist to turn up and demand that a few be spared for scientific study. You can't contain these mongrels, can you Ripley? You can't give them an inch, even though most of them are only an inch long. But some were six inches long, and I suspected they were seeding somehow - throwing off microscopic polyps that were the most dangerous of all, because you couldn't see them...until it was too late.

If we couldn't have a decent burial, at least we could have a cremation.

But where to find a flame thrower in a suburban Melbourne hospital on a Thursday afternoon?

(to be continued...)

[Heather]

They're coming to take him away ha ha!

Stephen you missed your calling! You're a fruit loop (I say that in the nicest possible way you understand)

Heather

[Stephen Whiteside]

Ta.

[Stephen Whiteside]

They say there's never a right time for time travel. If you'd asked me that back then, I'm sure I would have agreed with you.

Looking back on those events now, though, I'd say the timing was just about perfect.

One moment, I'm standing in the ward of a suburban public hospital, wondering how the hell I'm going to get my hands on a flame-thrower. The next I'm in No Man's Land on the Western Front. 1916. France. Transported not just in time, but in space.

How the hell that German flame-thrower didn't sizzle me to a crisp I will never know. It singed the hair on my legs, that much I do know. My trouser-less legs.

I just bolted. I didn't know east from west. Could just have likely ended up in a German trench as an Allied one, except that I was running away from the flame-thrower, not towards it!

And I didn't so much as jump into the trench as stumble into it, headlong. The ground just dropped away in front of me, and I landed in a huge muddy puddle. Damned lucky there was no barbed wire.

I didn't have much chance to rest, though. I was transfixed with horror. Polyps! More bloody polyps! Pale yellow ones, this time, not pink, but they were polyps for sure. What had I done? I'd transported my father's polyps through time and space! Would history ever forgive me?

Then I noticed a rat the size of a cat chewing away at one end of shapeless mound. What was going on here? What was this vaguely obscene bundle before me? And then, of course, I realised. It was a corpse. The corpse of a dead soldier.

And then a wave of euphoria washed through me. They weren't pale yellow polyps. They were maggots! Beautiful maggots! Oh, I could have kissed them. In fact, I did. I scooped my hands into them, just to make sure they were real. I'd never felt relief like this before. I lifted a handful into the air, and let them tumble down over my head. Never before had I been so pleased to stumble upon a pile of maggots!

Flicking the maggots out of my hair, I bent forward to have a closer look at my new friend, the dead soldier. He was wearing a pair of lovely trousers...

(to be continued...)

[keats]

Nothing like a good old fashioned Bowel Polyp/Maggot attack story to get me revved up for the day, Stephen!! Well done! And if ever in need of a flame thrower in a Melbourne Suburbian street again, never under estimate a nod in the direction of a Footscray Fruitier's shop!

Neil