And the absolute last thing I remember seeing was the creature's head feverishly jerking in the direction of the door so extremely aggravated that it began intensely hissing sounding like a pissed off rattler.

Then the next split-second I'm gasping as two long teeth painfully plunge into the side of my neck, piercing this rush of chilling numbness into me. The deadly sensation quickly spreads throughout and in a manner of just a few seconds its poisonous bite takes hold when light begins to fade.

Another untimely visit by the dark this time propels my unconsciousness to a place unnatural.

I have no how long before I awaken. Immediately I'm surprised to be alive after having that creature passionately on the verge of ending my life.

But my gut tells me my nightmare isn't over, I feel so cold, weak and tired.

Immediately I begin to wonder how long before I crack from the strain of what's been happening to me. I certainly can't keep going like this. And the fear of apathy grabbing hold and filtering into my thoughts and emotion devastate an already defeatism attitude that has been planted within me. Disturbingly I see no way to get out of this insanity.

Then suddenly I notice I seem to be suspended in mid-air hanging from something. A bit strange perhaps so I try to move my head to pierce into the dark to give me some clue as to my surroundings.

Surprisingly I discover I couldn't. I really don't know why I should be surprised as this perverse curse seems to have already adhered itself to me. But I then discover I can't move my arms or legs either. Even my lips feel bitterly cold and immovable as if, God I hate to even think it, rigor mortis may have set in. Can't help but wonder, Jesus, I feel so out of it.

What's happened to me? Where am I? Am I in some sort of holding place awaiting further horrors? Is death next on my agenda? I still have my mind, at least it certainly seems. This is all too creepy for me to grasp.

Thankfully my eyeballs work hurriedly thrusting them up but then to horrifyingly see the back of someone's head straight away directly in front of me say no more than four to five feet away.

A dim overhead light then comes on distracting me and momentarily blinding my vision. When my vision returns within a few seconds I incredibly see other people hanging much like myself from what looks like a chain coming up from the middle of their backs.

Not knowing what is happening I look closer to the guy in front of me and I see that chain leading to what appears is, oh my God, a meat hook jammed into him. Jesus, he's hanging there like a cow's carcass waiting in this freezing place to be cut up into smaller pieces. He must be dead. Are the others? And if so, why am I alive?

Immediately I begin to wonder if I have one in me. Weird if I do, I don't feel any pain, nothing. No one's moving but maybe they can see like me.

Shit, this place might be some hellhole as far as I know. Certainly has the aura of the creature permeating the air with these poor people hanging all about.

Feels as if God has turned his back on me. I can feel it. My mind feels broken kind of like death might be here already.

Actually a sense of a calm eeriness is rippling through me as if I WERE dead at this very moment, kind of like feeling something so powerful in your mind that it becomes real. No emotion just an acute naked reality of extreme perverseness.

Am I? I'm not even sure if I care at this point. Again my gut senses say I'm going to die if I haven't already.

With feeling to blasé about my own seemingly demise actually really feeling nothing at all, that's when I so shockingly noticed I had no heartbeat. Under normal conditions normal people would be dead.

But I react with dispassionate emotion to my apparent entrance into another illogical loophole. It only reinforces the bizarre and the unreal that I've had to necessarily accept. And accepting such diverse logic this time was surprisingly easier. Don't ask me why for I truly don't understand.

Apathy just tightened its grip.

Am I losing my mind?

Probably.

Being pummeled with these insatiable insanities has forced me to truly believe in their unnatural existence. Something more evil than the creature and its trained monkey is at work here, something that is real from Hell as if the Devil himself.

Convincing myself that I'm no longer alive was easy, with the thought never truly remaining on the fringe of logic. Subconsciously I think I want to be dead just to escape this infested reality. The very thought was torpedoing straight for the center of my mind, knocking out all other brain stimulus for common sense type reasoning. Making any sense of this nightmare no longer exists.

Suddenly abrupt loud squeaking noise like that of a motor needing oil or some other type of mechanism interrupts my eerie quiet. I jarringly begin moving forward but surprisingly move only a few feet before stopping.

The sounds of footsteps approaching then perk my attention. They stop short before reaching me becoming silent for a brief moment just before fading. The light then goes off.

Regardless of accepting my own death I still wondered what place is this? What's going on? Have the other unfortunate souls in here gone through similar things? Feels like I'm in a place where my soul is awaiting its due.

I'm looking at the guy in front of me deciding to follow upward on the chain to see where the other end leads. I see it's attached to some device secured to the ceiling seemingly operating another chain that travels along that ceiling. But it's too dark to see where that leads. But it does sort of resemble much like those rotating devices dry-cleaners use (from the world of the living) to search for your clothes when you come to pick them up but on a much grander scale.

Then the light and sound of a creaking door opening interrupts my thoughts once again.

Hard rubber footsteps approaching, this time reverberating into my eardrums louder. And they keep getting louder and louder as I then suddenly see that bitch Elizabeth with her steroid-infested face squeezing out from the darkness to ah, scare me to death?

With ease she lifts me up and with one hand removes the meat hook from my back. It's a bit baffling when I feel no pain, truly strange.

Tossing me over her shoulder like a ten-pound sack of potatoes I'm carried away towards the door from where she came.

I enter another room having more light. I'm then dropped upon a table banging my head hard but feeling nothing. Again I'm thinking weird.

The big gorilla looks down upon me smiling in her usual perverse manner like some derelict operating a whorehouse for the criminally insane.

Again I think Bitch.

My eyes remained glued to he her as she casually walks over to the wide variety of cutting tools hanging on the wall several feet away.

In quickly retrieving a chopping cleaver about ten inches long she closely inspects its sharpness running her fat thumb along its razor edge.

She returns to my side as I wonder, ‘what are you doing?' but knowing the obvious - that she's about to use it on me.

Without hesitation she raises the meat cleaver high into the air to have it quickly come down upon my left ankle making a clean cut separating my foot.

Again I felt nothing. This dead-thing doesn't seem so bad although I am now minus one foot.

I look down at the end of my leg expecting to see at least my blood splattered about. Nothing, just a clean cut of my skin and bone much like a fresh side of beef being cut into smaller portions.

You know it's very possible I might be insane too. Afterall my mind IS alive and my body IS dead. It's twisted and I think just maybe I might be able to get used to it.

I watch as she retrieves my foot from the table then tossing it into an open container where others have collected.

Without further adieu she whacks off my other foot. Then both hands go and still I feel nothing, but now I'm screwed. How am I going to eat? Hey wait a minute - maybe the dead don't have to.

Casually Elizabeth looks down at me explaining, "Hands and feet have too much cartilage much like a chicken wing. Not much meat at all."

I'm looking at her as she speaks but I'm now thinking death must have come when I was bitten in the neck. Nothing I can do about it now.

"The only portions of the body we use are the sections that have the most meat on them. The thighs are the meatiest. The buttocks the next, so on and so forth. When added with ground beef mixed together with our other special ingredient of demon-seed it gives the meat an added spicy flavor."

Then the big behemoth leans forward getting so close to me smiling and seemingly gloating.

"The public seems to love it. By the way in case you're curious about the reason for no blood, Angelina drank it a couple of hours ago!"

She annoyingly gives me that smile before I dramatically watch her swing the meat clever upward then to have it come thundering down between my eyes and into my brain stealing the last remaining remnant of a life I once knew - my mind.

Four days later...

On a bright sunny morning inside the walls of Chicago Medical Center a nurse goes about her usual business of checking on her patients. She enters one particular room to check on the welfare of one particular patient - in the Psychiatric Ward.

"And how are we today?" she asks him with a voice sounding as if she really cares. Maybe she does.

No response.

She reaches out to fluff his pillow, holding his head aloft as she does so.

"Oh by the way, a card came for you in the mail this morning. Would you like for me to read it for you?" In knowing that he would not respond she obliges her own curiosity and opens it.

It reads ‘Sorry to hear you're not feeling well. Please stop by to pick up your free two pounds of ground round as a get-well present as soon as you get out of the hospital. Best regards, Angelina.'

A nervous twitch begins in one of the patient's eyes. But he says or does nothing just sits perfectly still continuing to stare straight ahead barely breathing.

Then astonishingly...

...The patient extends trembling hand in reaching for the card. The nurse, quite pleasantly surprised to see him move at all happily gives it to him. Then without looking at it he proceeds to slowly rip it in half, then again and again allowing the pieces to fall to the floor from his bed when his hand comes to rest along its side.

At that precise moment Doctor Thompson walks into the room asking, "And how's our patient today?"

The nurse dutifully answers. "He just moved so do you think he has some hope of improving?"

"It's difficult to say. According to the EKG his brain has suffered some sort of malady. Don't know any clear reason or reasons for it yet. We're still performing tests. However there is a lesion the size of a dime on the right side of his brain that we think has something to do with his condition."

"Blood tests indicate a sort of heroine-induced toxic leukoencephalopathy, an irreversible condition that affects one's balance, speech and thinking. He may improve some but he'll never be the same say as you or I."

"Right at this moment he's in a narcosis state of suspended animation, a death-trance state of mind if you will. His respiration and heartbeat are barely perceptible. Make sure he meets with the physiologist later this morning."

They soon exit the patient's room leaving the patient alone.

When he hears no one around him and feels its safe to do so, one corner of his mouth moves very slight forming a barely noticeable smile...

Then a thought disturbing to the living enters his mind...

‘Excuse me but I AM dead. Can't you see this frigging meat cleaver sticking out of my forehead?' something very obvious to Bill Peterson.

The End.