DilDozer 2

  DilDozer 2

  THE SON OF DILDOZER

  By

  Zachariah Dracoulis

  For Gaige,

  Never trust people who’ve got one fucking book.

  —Billy Connolly —

  Night One

  Emily Schmidt’s cries of pain tore through her padded room’s walls and a dozen more screamed back from all corners of the mental institution she now called home. The doctors had all ignored her when she’d said she felt something kicking inside her, ‘A sign of her deepening psychosis’ they’d said, ‘she’d get better if she’d only take her medication.’

  They were wrong though, and they were all about to learn just how much.

  Emily’s fingers dug deep into her hard mattress as with one final, involuntary push the dark green beast inside her was released unto the world. It slithered across the bed, leaving a faint glowing trail in its wake, before rising up on its tail-end, revealing that it sat at just ten inches, unlike its father, and looking at what it could only assume was its mother.

  The two stayed there, staring at each other as a storm began to rage outside, until Emily realized the true nature of what was about to happen.

  She leapt at the creature and closed her fingers around the empty air that it had occupied only a second prior. For a moment she thought she’d simply hallucinated the whole thing, but then she saw it, slithering up the wall toward an air-conditioning vent that it had no hope of fitting through.

  The creature did not adhere to her understanding though, and like a single-tentacled octopus, squeezed and slipped into the vent.

  In a panic, Emily ran to her door, more stepped really, as the room wasn’t much bigger than a king-sized bed, and began slamming her fists against the metal door.

  “Open the door! It’s in the vents!” she screamed into the darkened corridor, “He’s free! The son of DilDozer is free!”

  Day One

  The Blaustein-Rodenberg Psychiatric Hospital cafeteria was a bland and lifeless place, much like the rest of the hospital. There were six stainless-steel tables that went from one white wall to the other with benches that fit four people on either side to match. Orderlies patrolled the tables looking for any sign of potential hazard, while a twenty year-old television in a metal cage sat on the far-right wall.

  ‘At least it’s clean.’ Emily had first thought when she arrived.

  Emily looked around woozily at the rest of her ward as they ate their feed of slop for the day; a sea of white t-shirts and cream elastic waistband pants, and she was somehow convinced she was still the only sane one. Some lolled from side-to-side, some spontaneously broke into fits of uncontrollable laughter, but most simply hovered over their food and shakily shoveled it into their mouths with the little motor-function their medication left behind.

  She shifted to make sure she still could, and wiped away some drool that had accumulated in the corner of her slightly opened mouth. The events of the night before seemed to be a distant nightmare, while her presence felt more like a never ending limbo.

  What’d she care if some creature of the night had managed to escape? Wasn’t her problem.

  But then she heard some wub-wubbed whisperings of something getting into the nymphomaniac ward that snapped her back to the reality at hand.

  “You all have to get out of here!” she screamed from her standing position on the table, a place that she had no recollection of reaching, “The son of DilDozer is free! He’s going to get you!”

  Then, she was sitting in front of Doctor Blaustein, who was the spitting image of his brother, “Emily? Emily? Can you hear me?”

  The doctor’s voice echoed in Emily’s head as it slumped forward. She hated the man’s office, it was about the same size as her room, but with better furniture.

  Emily licked some drool off her chin and nodded, an act that made her nearly fall face-first out of her chair. If it weren’t for a certain swift and firm hand that caught her across the chest and sat her back, she was sure that she would’ve needed a facial reconstruction surgeon. And a really good dentist.

  Emily often found herself thinking about going to the dentist.

  Emily was unwell.

  “Don’t worry Emily, you’ve just been sedated, you’re not going to feel like this forever.” Blaustein said with a smile.

  The patient successfully managed to roll her head around in such a way that it landed on her shoulder so that she could look at the doctor. “Why sedate?” she asked, her numb mouth unable to create complete sentences.

  Blaustein got up and walked over to his bookshelf, where he opened a wooden jewelry box, “You can head out Linfield, I’ve got it from here.” he said while staring into the jewelry box.

  There was a few moments of pause before the orderly left the room and Blaustein felt comfortable to do what everyone knew he did. Slowly, and tenderly, as if he were grabbing the world’s smallest baby, the doctor lifted a powerful smelling joint from the box and returned to his seat.

  “You see, Emily,” he said as he lit up, “you see, we’re in a difficult position here. With you…” he took a long drag and continued in a choked voice, “Jumping up on tables and causing a kerfuffle with this whole DilDozer thing.” It wasn’t until the very last word left his lips that he finally let the lungful of smoke out.

  Emily stared at him blankly, mostly because she’d lost the ability to blink, “Son of DilDozer.” she clarified for the doctor. It may have seemed irrelevant to him, but to her it was a very key detail.

  Blaustein nodded, “Yep, yep, that’s right. Hey, you want any?”

  Emily shook her head as best as she could, “Makes me paranoid.”

  The doctor chuckled at his patients little joke, “Heh, that’s a good one. I wouldn’t do it either, but I’ve got glaucoma.” he lied lyingly, “Not like my brother at all…”

  Blaustein kept forgetting that his brother had gone missing just a short week ago, and that the woman sitting in front of him may well have had something to do with it.

  “You, ah… You were the last person to see him, right? I know we haven’t spoken much since you got here, seemed inappropriate, you know? But your… delusions, seem to have resurfaced. I’m not asking for me, no, that would be unprofessional, I just think that now you’re back in that head-space, it would be a good time to start looking into it.”

  From the moment Emily had entered the institution, she’d had the distinct feeling that this half of the hospital’s name was less than professional. “I know you think I’m crazy, I would too, but I’m telling the truth. Normally I’m not this… strange. Ever since I… ‘made contact’ with DilDozer I’ve been acting a bit crazy.”

  Blaustein rubbed his quickly reddening eyes with his free hand, “I’ve noticed this pattern with you, Miss Schmidt. You go from these wild extremes to complete lucidity. You want to know what I think? I think that after witnessing whatever it is that happened-”

  Emily started shaking head, “No, Mister Blaustein, that’s where you’re wrong, I started being this way hours before DilDozer killed my friend and your brother. You can even ask the waiter from the café I went to that day.”

  He looked confusedly at Emily, “You never mentioned your symptoms appearing before Aaron die- went missing.”

  “That’s because you’ve all kept me on sedatives since I got here.” Emily said bitterly.

  Blaustein continued to look at her with confusion, but pulled his phone from his pocket and opened his browser, “What’s the name of this place?”

  “Café le Fromage.”

  The doctor punched the name into his search bar, found a number, and dialed it, “Hello, this is Doctor Blaustein from the Blaustein-Rodenberg Psychiatric Hospital and I-”

  “Yeah yeah, we’
re in the middle of a rush, whaddya want?” a busy sounding woman snapped.

  “Oh… Ah… Sorry, I just… I’m looking for an employee of yours, a waiter that may have served a patient of mine.”

  “He’ll be back next Monday, is that all?” she asked without really caring.

  Blaustein checked his calendar and seethed, “That’s three days away, is there any way you could give me his contact informa-”

  “No, I am not giving out my employee’s information. Goodbye.” the woman hissed and slammed the phone, leaving a high pitch dial tone to ring in the doctor’s ear.

  “Well, good news is that the place definitely exists. Bad news is it’s gonna be at least three days until we’re able to get in touch with the waiter.”

  The walls began to close in around Emily. In three days the world could be over as everyone knew it. She needed to get the word out before the son of DilDozer had a chance to continue its father’s work.

  “Emily!” the doctor shouted, snapping her back to reality, “Get off my desk.”

  She rubbed her eyes and looked around, she had somehow ended up on the doctor’s desk, but unlike in the cafeteria she now had the opportunity of not being knocked out and could sense why she was climbing on tables.

  “They’re in the plumbing…” she whispered.

  “What?” Blaustein asked as he scooped up papers from the carpet.

  “The sons of DilDozer… Their under our feet.” Emily said, dropping to a crouched position but not leaving the table.

  Blaustein paused, “Wait… did you say ‘sons’? Wasn’t it just the one?”

  Emily nodded solemnly, “It was. He’s been breeding. Tell me, doctor, what do you know about the disturbance in the nymphomaniac ward?”

  The doctor shot bolt-upright, a shiver running up his spine as he turned to face the gargoyle-esque Emily, “How did yo-… Never mind. Apparently there was an increase in their ‘nocturnal activities’.”

  “And have you been in to see them?”

  Blaustein shook his head, “I was gonna interview them after this.”

  Emily climbed off the table, testing the ground with her toe as if it would burn her, “Then we should get to it, there’s no telling when they’ll strike next.”

  “No.” the doctor said with a smile, realizing just how crazy this all was, “I’m sorry, but I simply can’t continue to fuel this delusion of yours. I think it’d be best if you went back to your room.”

  His words were professional and logical, but Emily knew she’d gotten through to him. He knew now, and that was all she needed for the time being.

  With a polite nod, Emily left the doctor’s office and started planning her next move. She let this thing go free. It was her job to get it back.

  Night Two

  Emily sat alone in her room watching the small vent and waiting for the disgusting little creature to appear again.

  She couldn’t sleep.

  She wouldn’t.

  At least, not while it was free. For all she knew it could be watching her right then, waiting for her flickering eyes to finally close so it could strike and stop her from revealing it to the world.

  She was strong though, it didn’t matter what the drugs did to her, she refused to let her body succumb to the weakness of sleep.

  Then she heard a scream, high-pitched and male, followed by gurgling. Without wasting a second, she ran over the door and peered out the small window. It took her a few seconds to spot the distinct trail of the son of DilDozer leading off down the hall.

  At first Emily wanted to do as she had done the night before, and senselessly smash her fists on the door, but she knew that all that would result in was a cacophony of slams and screeches from the other patients.

  It was hard, so hard, but eventually Emily decided that the best thing to do would be to return to her bed and resume watching the vent for the rest of the night. That was the sane thing to do in her mind.

  However, the night had other plans, plans of investigation and shenanigans. The moment the defeated patient turned to leave her door began to slowly swing open, to which Emily turned to see an orderly-free space and an empty hall.

  Clearly this was a trick, she thought, her testimony was starting to make sense and that pot-head doctor wanted to make sure that Emily got put away.

  ‘She broke out of her room,’ he’d say, ‘and then attacked some poor soul before we could stop her.’

  It was that fragment of thought that reminded her of the scream. She was obviously far too tired to go skulking about in the night, but there was someone in trouble, and Emily felt responsible.

  With a great deal of apprehension, Emily peeked around the outside of her room and, when she saw no-one with a nightstick waiting for her, slunk around the corner and down the hall like a tissue caught in the wind. She ducked under door windows, and paused at every flickering light as she made her way toward the source of the scream.

  She could feel something in the walls around her though, dozens of little bits of radiating energy that she recognized instantly. It was too late for the institution, of that much Emily was sure, but they so far seemed to be trapped in there with her.

  Emily stopped in her tracks as a feeling of dread washed over her. Maybe they weren’t trapped. Maybe they were waiting.

  Emily resumed her silent walk, ‘Waiting for what, though?’ she thought, ‘Just one of these monsters was enough to cause an entire building to move out.’

  Her thoughts were interrupted as she finally found the source of the scream. It was Linfield, his body seated with his back to the wall and his wide open eyes staring upward at nothing. He’d been strangled, by who was obvious based on the veiny marks around his throat and the green residue that was all down his body.

  This was it, the son of DilDozer had gotten a taste for murder, and it was only a matter of time before it struck again. She was stuck though, ‘Why him? What made him worth the effort?’

  An ecstatic moan drew Emily’s attention away from the strangled man to down the hall, then another, and another, and another, until nothing could be heard but heavy and deep moans mixed in with the occasional “Oh God yes!”

  That’s when Emily realized where she was. The nymphomaniac wing, in her sleepy and paranoid wandering she must’ve gotten to the other side of the hospital. That’s why Linfield got killed, he saw something he wasn’t meant to and, unlike the rest of us, would be believed.

  Emily went to follow the moans, but stopped when she heard footsteps and voices. More orderlies.

  ‘Finally,’ she thought as she started walking toward them, ‘now they’ll have to believe me.’ Then she stopped again, looked at the body, looked at her uniform, did some mental mathematics, and realized just how bad it looked.

  She ducked down and made a run for her room, worrying with every flicker of the lights that an orderly would appear in front of her. No such acts of creepy magic occurred though, and Emily Schmidt was back in her corner, watching the vent like nothing had happened.

  For a brief moment she thought that maybe she should actually be in the institution. The fact that she’d just seen a man who’d been killed by a magic dildo and come out of the situation almost completely fine made her question herself.

  Her head began to hurt and suddenly it was morning. Something was in her head, and it definitely wasn’t insanity.

  Day Two

  Doctor Blaustein rubbed his temples as he sat at his desk across from Emily. Dark circles had begun to form around her eyes, but she still hadn’t lost any of her fire, sitting there with her arms crossed across her chest defiantly. He appreciated her stoicism in the face of deteriorating mental state, but this behavior was starting to get on his nerves.

  “Look, Emily, I know you left your room last night. We have security cameras for a reason. Just tell me what you saw.”

  Emily refused to look at the doctor, “I’m not denying I left my room, I’m just telling you that I didn’t see what happened. I know that you kn
ow that I know what happened, you’re just not willing to admit it.”

  Blaustein slammed his hands on the desk, “A man’s dead! So cut the bullshit and tell me what the fuck happened!”

  Emily had never seen the doctor like this before, and, unbeknownst to her, neither had anyone else. “It was the son of DilDozer.”

  “There we go! Was that so hard?” he asked as he got up and went over to his doobie box.

  “Now,” he said with the joint in his mouth, not bothering to light it when he returned to his chair, “wanna know what I think happened? You discovered your door was unlocked, decided to go on a little adventure and then, whoops, someone’s patrolling the hall. Before you know it you’ve strangled him with a sex toy that one of the girls in the West Wing smuggled in, and created this delusion. Tell me if I’m wrong.”

  “You’re wrong.” Emily said flatly, “For one thing, if that were the case, why would I have left my room? I only left when I heard the scream, something your cameras should be able to prove for me. And for another, when would I have gotten this sex toy? My room gets checked daily, and last night is the closest I’ve ever got to the nymphomaniac ward.”

  Blaustein’s head felt like it was about to explode. He didn’t know what was worse, the fact that this woman was clinging so desperately to her delusion, or the fact that he was starting to buy into it. Either way, he wanted to go home.

  “Ok, ok… Let’s say that, for one second, I believe you, what would your next course of action be for defeating this… this ‘son of DilDozer’? What’d you do last time?”

  Emily sighed, she knew he wasn’t going to like the answer. “I ran. I ran as fast as I could, and only got away because your brother sacrificed himself for me. Then I locked it in the building. I’d have burned the place to the ground, but I was brought here faster than you could say ‘delusional schizophrenic’.”

  Blaustein laughed at Emily’s little joke and finally lit the joint, “That’s a good one.” he said before taking a drag. “So, run? That’s your plan.”