People Are Ugly Everywhere

My mother is upset. She has the wet handkerchief to prove it.

She grabs the handsome doctor by his lapels-whatever lapels are-and looking up into his weak coffee-brown eyes, demands an answer.

“What about my son, handsome doctor, what about my son?”

“Your son is fine”, the handsome doctor replies.

She studies him. He is attractive, and he seems sincere.

“So I can go in and see him?”

“No, no you can’t” he replies, his voice as a reflex.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because he’s not fine.

I meant to say he wasn’t -

This is the hardest part of the job.”

He shakes his head.
My mother takes a step back.
Now her head is shaking.

Free of the woman’s grasp, the doctor stands motionless. In fact, he’s looking straight ahead, down the corridor at something occurring out of the story.

“Is he... alive?” she summons weakly.

I didn’t realise ‘till a full seven days after these events that the doctor had been looking at the re-animated corpse of local celebrity and part-time golfer, Jack Wilshire, in the second stage of his re-awakening treatment.

His second life was a creation of Herman Corbally; a physician from France, the handsome doctor didn’t much care for.

It had been his new experiment’s first trip out of the basement.

Mr. Wilshire had been heading to a vending machine when the handsome doctor had seen him. It was a test-run measuring his capabilities. He had fingered some coins into a slot and drained a can of cola without breaking sweat. Inspite of his limited mobility all had gone well.

On his way back to the basement from where he’d come, he waved at sick children in a nursery and, as rumour had it, projected something approaching a smile at several pretty young things.

One male nurse had wept tears of joy.

It was later on when things took a turn for the worst. First, he cried corrosive yellow tears into an elderly fan's napkin and then, following his second can of cola, outright refused to sign autographs.

They found him in one of the waiting rooms, banging his head against the floor, screaming and giggling into the linoleum.

They had wheeled him back down to the basement thereafter.

It was probably hot down there too; all those bodies, all those flies.