The rotten hallway spanned for miles. The paint on the walls peeled off, and the colour faded to a disgusting yellow while wire and foam dangled from the roof. To Neshoba’s left, he kept walking past the same small tray with medical supplies on it every few minutes of walking. On it, a rusty scalpel and a pair of tweezers. The building was forcing Neshoba to keep walking in an infinite loop just to have an ounce of understanding of the reputation the people went through during a time when the hospital was alive.

  Going into any room without being prompted to would be unwise and immensely dangerous. Doing so would cause the spirit to become hostile as the individual had gone against its desired path. Though being in an undesirable situation could be easily escapable, unfortunately for Neshoba, he lacked the equipment for that to be possible. He was at its mercy, and he had to follow its path until it could finally decide to show him what happened.

  It wasn’t talked about in the Order about the psychology of horrors. The topic of trauma and pain. Horrfica’s are the representation of humanity’s fears and worries, a true manifestation of the darkest parts of any soul. Not all Horrifica’s were born into the world to cause harm to humanity; instead, some of them carried its pain. The hospital, in Neshoba’s opinion, wasn’t creating a loop out of malice or to cause distress to the hunter. In its own way, it was upset. Scared to share something so intimate, it had to deal with it alone for almost a century.

  The spirit was alone for so long; it forgot, or at least was struggling to show Neshoba what it needed to show, the pain it witnessed. Even if it could only choke on its own words. Where could it even start? At what point could it start to depict the horror perpetrated within its walls?

  ‘Before it began.’ Neshoba whispered.

  In the blink of an eye, Neshoba stood inside a regular hallway. Before the rot, before the incident. The walls were clean and white, the metal bars a shiny silver, while the air smelled clean and sterile. It was perfect.

  Neshoba’s ears perked up when he heard laughter coming from the break room. Curious, he walked inside to see two nurses casually chatting with one another over a cup of tea. One of them was a skinny, dark-skinned woman with long black hair, while the other was a plump woman with fair skin and short brown hair. Which made Neshoba realise something immensely odd about the town of Appleseed, which he didn’t pick up on before entering. There was nothing about segregation during a time when it was the norm. Perhaps there was more to the town he didn’t recognise, like maybe most of the residents were made up of the Order and thus didn’t care about the race politics of the time. However, the file didn’t mention anything about the residents coming from elsewhere. They were all American.

  Another nurse walks into the break room and right past Neshoba like he was an invisible ghost. She had red hair and freckles that covered her entire face. ‘Evening,’ she said to them in a thick Irish accent as she lazily went to the kettle to brew her tea. ‘Anything new going on?’

  The plump woman giggled. ‘The Anderson boys just checked in. All of them got into a brawl at the bar. The poor boys are too embarrassed and wouldn’t tell me or Jill anything.’

  ‘Ah, so what is the latest gossip with them?’ The Irish woman replied before sitting down. ‘I noticed the pub was thrashed, didn’t expect to see your husbands walking out afterwards. And Jill, your man was the meanest of the lot. Scared the heck out of me with his big bloody hands.’

  ‘Robert’s was involved?’ Jill gasped.

  ‘Forget about Robert, what about my husband?’ The plump woman cut her off.

  ‘He was alright, Hannah.’ The Irish woman said before chugging down her tea. ‘Harmless as always, he just walked Robert home with a beer in hand. Not a single scratch on him. Well… not a new one at least.’

  Hannah sighed in relief. ‘Good grief, I was worried he'd thrown himself into trouble.’

  ‘That man wouldn’t hurt a fly, even if it ate half of his sandwich.’ Jill joked. ‘It is strange why this entire town is made to keep him in and why we were all selected to populate it with someone who is just that harmless. What! Does he know what God looked like or something? But I digress, I am just surprised that the Anderson boys haven’t been killed yet. I heard they were newly recruited from the army and joined MODOC under probation. Pretty sure they came from New England too.’

  ‘Well, the bastards got hit, and now we have to look after the little shits.’

  ‘Charell!’ Hannah shook her head. ‘It isn’t polite to say that. Yes, they are…’

  ‘Dickheads?’ Jill said with a smirk.

  ‘Cunts?’ Charell calmly chimed in while playing with her empty mug.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Hannah bit her lip, stopping herself from saying something that would have her two friends tease her with foul language. ‘They are young men. Foolish and silly. They don’t know what they are doing. Yes, I believe it is perhaps well deserved that they deal with some sort of consequence for their actions. But I doubt violence would solve all of it. We can be better than that.’

  Jill glared at Cherell before responding to Hannah. ‘Maybe so, but in the meantime.’ She got up from her chair and fixed her apron. ‘I’ll just lower their morphine dosage. Just like you said, consequences for their actions.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like what you said. But I think that is a fair compromise given their reputation.’

  Cherell laughed, ‘giving up already?’

  ‘I find it better than her killing the boys! Even if they would complain about the pain for hours on end.’

  After Hannah said that, the light above them flickered, and he returned to standing in a decayed hospital. So that was their wife, Neshoba thought to himself. But before he could piece together the conversation and how it could relate to the slaughter of an entire town. A commotion was heard at the other end of the hallway.

  He went over there, curious as to what the hospital wanted to show him. Inside, he was back in the break room, but the room was expanded as they collapsed one of the walls to extend it. There were Christmas decorations on the wall, hospital staff and their immediate partners huddled around food while the megaphone played some jazz. Everyone was truly alive, happy, dancing, sharing the joys of the world with one another. With the date 1940 plastered around the room to celebrate. It wasn’t the year the massacre took place. Perhaps, to Neshoba at least, it was their last happy Christmas together.

  Then, walking into the room with a few cheers, was the reptile himself. Jackson was fatter than he expected, his bill round and curved. Besides being fit and muscular like he expected, Jackson was just large. Most importantly, he was happy. Smiling and chatting up a storm with anyone nearby, while his beloved Hannah, wearing a sparkling red dress, stood beside him, their hands and fingers interlocked. Even being covered in scars and his scales were a different shade, being a healthy, bright green.

  ‘Hello mate,’ Jackson said in a deep voice. His tone was lively as he shook someone’s hand before putting down a chocolate platter to share with everyone at the party. It seems someone has a sweet tooth, Neshoba thought to himself as he watched over the reptile. Confused as to why someone of his reputation was truly happy. How someone with that much blood on their hands could smile and celebrate.

  The party showed something that Jackson wasn’t in the eyes of the Order. A cold killer with thousands of deaths credited to his name, a walking horror with no concept of mercy or care for the life of an average person to be living an ordinary life. Yet here he was in the break room. Happy, smiling away like he didn’t commit some of the most horrific atrocities for the defence of humanity. Neshoba expected the town to shun him, even if he had a wife and a child. Instead, he was standing among them as if he were among them despite his monstrous appearance.

  It shouldn’t make sense; it should be wrong to watch the entire party play out like it did. Jackson deserved to die, and he expected a more justified reason to execute him. Deep down, he wanted to think that Jackson was nothing but hated by everyone in that town. That would be a comfortable reality if the reptile were despised by all; it would make the massacre more palatable.

  But the question remained. Why did the town die? Why kill everyone in that room but leave Jackson untouched? Was Jackson involved in the murder of its residents, and was the kill order declared after the fact? It might make sense, as the reptile didn’t have a reputation for being mentally stable. Maybe the kill order was inevitable, and they needed to remove Jackson because of his troubled past. However, Neshoba couldn’t understand why MODOC needed to kill everyone else in the town.

  To prevent a secret from spreading, it wouldn’t be far out of the realm of possibility for the Order to kill the witness. It was cheap, easy, and got the job done. But the people of Appleseed were isolated from the rest of the world and were under the watchful eye of MODOC. In practical terms, they were members of that organisation even though they were not aware of the existence of the Order. Slaughtering them wasn’t necessary. Memory alterations and just a quiet assassination could achieve the goals of the kill order, and no one would be the wiser. There was another goal to the massacre. But he wasn’t sure what it was.

  Not wanting to waste any more time, Neshoba left the break room and continued walking down the hallway. The hospital rumbled and croaked like it reawakened its confidence to finally tell the story. A tale of when it all happened, how the people of Appleseed died.