Free An Infinite Sorrow by R.J. Harker

he was asked if he wanted anything to help him sleep.  The last thing he wanted to do was stay or sleep in this place, but it didn't look like he had much of a choice.  At some point, he drifted off to sleep. 
      There was a light.  Not an overly bright light to force him back to the waking world.  It was just enough to disrupt the darkness hanging behind his eyes, disturbing his dreams.  His dreams were disturbing enough.  At the moment, he was lost in a vast, swirling twilight filled with otherworldly shapes.  His friends and family were in pain, and he was powerless to prevent it. 
      Something was moving in his guts. 
      Rich's eyes popped open.  He felt that something had moved past the door.  Then something else odd occurred to him.  All the lights were gone, as if the power was off.  "Hello?"
      He could hear things moving...moving out in the darkness.  But no voices…  The smell...
      "Um...nurse?  Is something wrong?" 
      "nNNNNnOooOLItTlebOyYyy."
      A familiar feeling rushed into him, a feeling that forced him from the bed.  He neatly plucked the IV from his arm and slid out the door.  He felt awkward in the simple hospital gown, but some instinct was guiding him through the darkness. 
      He caught sight of his nurse.  She was busy crawling toward him on all fours, with bloody eyes and graying skin.  "HAAAAAAA!!!"
      The inhuman screams of some baby-thing echoed through the twisted halls.  The hospital didn't seem like a hospital anymore.  It was transformed into some hellish trap Rich would have to escape from. 
      Rich could barely see outside.  A thick, supernatural fog blocked out almost everything.  A small feeling of relief surged through him as he reached the exit door, and panic flooded back just as quickly when he realized it was locked.
      "No, no, no, no..."
      He tried the next door.  Locked.  He wildly looked around for some way to escape as one of the dead nurses came charging into the hall.  "HEAAAA!!"
      The half-rotted thing was holding up two scalpels, and charged him.  He screamed and threw a chair at it.  The chair leg connected with the creature’s face.  Its head snapped back with a sharp crack, and it collapsed.        
      Now he ran.  Part of him was scared that he would slip, run into a wall, or that those things would catch up.  The other part of him pushed himself until his legs burned.  His instincts guided him through the unfamiliar twists and turns, out one of the emergency exit doors into the chilly night air. 
      "A phone, I need to find a phone."  Seemed like an easy enough task, now that he was out in the open.  "Probably should have tried to grab my things before taking off, but that nurse...what the heck is going on?" 
      Rich tried to head for Main Street, but he just couldn't get his bearings.  The fog kept thickening around him, and he kept ending up back at the hospital.  He was growing increasingly panicked as the inhuman screams from the hospital echoed out into the town.  He could hear them coming, coming to drag him back to the white room where all his nightmares would come true. 
      "Hey Rich, this way, buddy.  It's me, Stan the clone!"
      It was Stan, motioning for Rich to follow him down one of the alleys around the hospital.  He just didn't look quite right, though.  "Stan?  How are you out this late man?" 
      "No, I'm not your Stan.  I'm Stan from the second iteration, the really cool one.  Follow me!!"  He ran into the darkness.   
    This was all impossible.  He'd left Stan at the movie theater.  Stan's folks were even stricter than Rich's mom.  He knew for a fact that Stan would be a prisoner of his Xbox by now.  Now there were two Stan's?  "No way I'm following that freak." 
      On the other side of the dark, fog-covered road, Rich could just barely make out the outline of a small car.  A bloodied doctor stumbled out of the hospital, "Time for your cheeeeck uuuuup