Topside

Author's Note: This item was written for the "Daily Flash Fiction" Contest on 8/7/2009, using this prompt: "They won't leave me alone."
(Word count: 300)
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Topside

The doors to the emergency room slammed open.  A gurney, pushed by two EMTs, rolled to a stop in the hallway.

John stood back, well out of the way.  Then, his desire to see the gore grew too strong to resist.  He edged forward to scrutinize the splendor of the gaping wounds.  Liquid life seeped out of ragged rents and pooled on the floor.  John smiled as he reminisced.

Abruptly, John glanced around.  Was that them?  Had the childish figures with hell sparkling in their eyes found him?  He darted away, down the hall, deftly avoiding nurses and doctors. 

As he passed the stairs, a voice hissed from under the darkened stairwell.  "Quick!  In here."  John slipped into the shadows.  His eternal compatriot, Lester, was doing something filthy.  John averted his gaze. 

"Did they see you?" Lester asked.

"They won't leave me alone," John cried.

"No rest for the weary," Lester commiserated.

John felt fear slither up beside him.  He couldn't stay here.  He shook with terror and plunged away.  He took the stairs two at a time.  He heard scraping feet behind him.  Were they chasing him?  He was too afraid to look.

When he reached his own floor, he skidded to a stop before the door of his latest charge.  He shot glances right and left, looking for his pursuers.  His name used to be John Townsend.  But the demons that stalked him took it away, like everything else.

John watched as Lester crept up the stairs and scurried back to his wing where they kept the criminals, the child molesters. 

John entered the room and contaminated the patient on the bed.  Known topside as Paranoid Delusions, John was damned for eternity to infect others with the same phobia that had caused him to take his own life.