Hospital Rooms

The hospital room in Accidental Orbs might be a peaceful scenario, but so was the one in Exploitation. Exploitation was the novel where I finally and thoroughly dealt with the now just niggling obsession of having a long lost and estranged black sister. It was about human trafficking. A rich white guy named Jax was paying for young African girls from across the border. He lived in a futuristic ivory tower in the middle of nowhere. He selected one to live with him. Just before the deal was settled, she fell victim to female circumcision from a witch doctor.

The witch doctor used to rip the heads off chickens with his teeth and spray the blood around the campfire, kind of like Ozzy Osbourne in concert; then he would drink potions made from Lion claw and Rhino horn and bang his drums to induce himself into a trance. Frolics would end with a loud chanting jungle dance in which he jumped around like a delusional man on hot coals. He performed the barbaric operation with unsterilized tools and stored the clitoris in a tobacco tin lined with olive oil to be eaten with herby leaves at a later date. There seemed to be no logical reason for the procedure to have taken place. Perhaps he valued her spirit and perceived her as a upcoming princess or warrior who would benefit from non-engagement in sex and men. Perhaps he was simply just peckish.  

When her stitches came undone and she bled on Jax’s bed, he had to rush her to the hospital through curvy country lanes in his supercar, some conceptual souped-up prototype of a Renault. He played dark melodic synthwave music the whole way and almost crashed twice. He gave himself an ulcer by biting his lip. He was on just a touch of MDMA powder. He’d swallowed half a gram or so several hours earlier in a shot glass of Ribena.

You might be wondering what he was doing with young girls on his bed, but part of the plot was tricking the reader into believing he was a sicko, when really he only had their best interests at heart. His living quarters at the top of the tower included virtual reality appliances in a children’s playroom, with tons of modern widgets and gizmos. In his mind, he was giving them a better life, plucking them from wartorn famine and poverty. His only downfall was, he often got bored of the same girl and kept swapping them. To his credit, once he’d had enough, they did all go into protective 1^st world foster care families.

A remedying intervention was performed and Jax had a long existential moment with the girl in a hospital room as she recovered. He brought her all manner of nonsense from the gift shop to put on her bedside table. He sat there smoking and drinking bourbon from a flask admiring her features, as he really was in love with the African form. He called them ‘Dark Heartland Savages’ as a private joke in his mind, apt term to describe the witch doctor guilty of the butchery, but words he would never utter in public through parted lips. The scenario was so serene, the only company he ever craved was that of a sweet little wee girl.

I visited hospital when my sister gave birth. That room wasn’t peaceful, it was rather eerie. She was lost in its spacious contours, a baby rabbit in an oversized hutch. It was just the two of us. Is this what happens after you give birth, I thought, they just plonk you in a room to yourself and leave you? She looked like a mixture of relaxation and bewilderment. I incorrectly believed she’s be holding a smiling newborn. Maybe they got it mixed up or swapped it on purpose, but that’s a different story. You hear about babies being swept away from the mother’s arms and never seen of again, to be used for the purposes of experimentation in lifelong torture programs in a different country. Maybe I’ve made that part up, but I have my own ideas. Imagine what runs through Mummy’s head.

It was only on the radio the other day…a post-natal maniac killed all three of her children. It wouldn’t surprise me if she took the bodies to Macdonalds for a set of happy meals.