Ansel-Turner Disease

February 14, Year Zero

"Okay, Mr. Ansel, you're going to feel a little prick."

Janek Ansel chuckled weakly as the phlebotomist inserted the needle into his vein. "Oh, my dear boy, I've been dealing with little pricks all my life. You learn to ignore them eventually."

The task completed, Janek was wished a good day and left to his thoughts.

Hospitals were always such scary, despondent places, he thought. The whitewashed halls, the stink of old age, disease, and death. It was overwhelming. Even during the times when a visit to the hospital was a joyous occasion, that macabre specter was still there, lingering in the shadows. In his 90 years on this planet, Janek believed he figured out this specter's intent: to consume joy, and swallow life. It made him furious.

Or maybe these thoughts were just a fever dream. There were very few moments of lucidity to be had these days; memories lately consisted of strange men and women, taking tissue, and blood, and stool and piss, testing it all to say that they don't know. The things they took don't explain why his fever is so high, why his organs are beginning to fail. But the fact remains, he lays in his bed, boiling.

February 17, Year Zero

"Yes, of course Mr. Ansel's overall health is still excellent. We just want to observe him for a little longer, due to the fact that his fever was particularly high, and the flu can be particularly dangerous for men of a certain age."

A doubtful chuckle from the audience.

"So, it's just the flu that he has?" a reporter asked.

"Yes. He came in with all the tell-tale symptoms, and as soon as his fever breaks, he'll be good to go home."

That was a bold-faced lie.

A more reassured chuckle from the audience.

"That's good to hear. I was expecting this conference headline to be something like, 'Cancer Comes Back for Medical Pioneer.'"

"Oh, no. Everything's as it should be on that front."

That was a bolder lie.

The fact that the cancer had come back was surprising, but not shocking. How much of his body was now burning with it, however, left the good doctor incredulous. The only lies he didn't tell in that press conference were that he did in fact come to them with all the tell-tale signs of the flu, and that once his fever broke, they would take the next step. But his fever has been a consistent 104.6 since he was admitted five days ago, and he's begun acting… strange. He's started getting very angry, and snapping at all those around him. He's even started hitting and pushing people.

February 19, Year Zero

"Snälla hjälp mig, jag är så hungrig."

Janek had regressed to just speaking his native Swedish. His brain was withering away. The people that came in his room gave him things to eat, but he couldn't. It had no taste; it provided no nutrients. He needed something else.

These people that came into his room… they smelled so good. They got so close to him, taking pieces and smelling delicious. If only he could get to one of them, take a bite, just one bite, that was all he needed…

"Snälla, bara en bit. Allt jag behöver är en förbannad bit…"

February 22, Year Zero

He doesn't talk anymore. He just lays there, sweating, grunting. His wrists and ankles are tied to the bed, but nurses and doctors are hesitant to get near him. He tries to bite them. Even sedation doesn't work; the attempts to rend flesh are just weaker, and make him more acquiescent to the feeding tube.

February 26, Year Zero

Death hovers around him, embracing him in its quiet finality. His pores ooze with the stink of it. His skin has turned a purplish hue, and his body is bloated. He drools, a viscous, green-black spittle dripping down his chin. A nurse is in the room with him, writing notes in his chart. He stares at her with blank eyes, save for the ravenous hunger. All he does now is stare with those dead, hungry eyes. He closes his eyes. He doesn't open them again.

February 28, Year Zero

He slipped from this realm rather peacefully, all things considered. The deep sleep of his coma seamlessly transitioned to the deep sleep of death. When his heartbeat finally slowed to nothing, everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief.

March 1, Year Zero

Abigail Turner was strangely excited about performing the autopsy on Janek Ansel. He was the one that had taken that cancer cure, and his sudden illness and death most surely had something to do with it. She was interested in proving it through this autopsy. She was also hoping to make some medical discoveries, and make a name for herself. And she wasn't worried about the stories she heard about his strange behavior before he died. It was probably brought on by the Restorex, and he was dead. Corpses don't have any strange behaviors.

She hit the record button, and began.

"Time is 6:17 p.m. on March 1, 2186. My name is Abigail Turner, and I will be performing the autopsy on Mr. Janek Ansel, age 90, to determine cause of death. The decedent passed yesterday at 11:54 p.m."

Abigail lifted the sheet, turned around, and projectile vomited. The sight was disturbing; the smell was horrendous.

After cleaning up the mess (and inserting some nose plugs), she resumed.

"Okay, time is now 6:37, and I am conducting the external examination."

She approached the body.

"Mr. Ansel's appearance is… strange. The body looks as though it has been in a completely different environment. The decedent passed away roughly 18 hours ago in the hospital, yet he looks as though he's been dead for at least two weeks, and was left in a very hot and humid environment. His body shows bloating characteristically found in victims of drownings. His skin has turned a shade of purple I haven't seen before. The skin itself appears tough and leathery. When Mr. Ansel was first admitted here, his skin was paper thin."

Abigail went to open his eyes, but they were already open. She could have sworn they were closed when the examination started.

"The decedent's eyes show heavy cataracts. If he were alive, he would be blind. When he was admitted, he had no vision problems. From what I've heard, they were actually quite a pretty shade of green.

"The decedent has also lost all of his hair. I wonder if the radiation in the treatment the decedent took had something to do with this radical change in decomposition. Hopefully more conclusive evidence will be found on the internal examination, because right now I just have more questions."

She took her scalpel and made the definitive Y-incision. A thin, blue liquid emerged from her incisions.

"The decedent appears to have blue blood. Um… I've never seen this. There are very few animals that biologically have blue blood, and I know of no conditions that would cause someone's blood to turn blue. It's as if all of the oxygen has been taken out of his blood. What the hell?"

After using the rib splitter, if what she had found so far wouldn't be enough to make a name for herself, this certainly would.

"Mr. Ansel's organs have… god, I guess shriveled is the best word to describe this. All of his organs are black and shriveled, like they've been drained, somehow. But, how? And why? I don't understand the physiology behind this."

She began removing and weighing organs.

"A normal liver weighs about three pounds, and Mr. Ansel's weighs… one pound, seven ounces, roughly half the weight."

The rest of the organs yielded similar results.

The stomach contents were just as confusing. Whatever was in there was indeterminable; it was all just a thick, black sludge.

Abigail was dumbfounded. In all her years in pathology, she had never seen anything even closely resembling this. She liked the weird cases; she was good at them. She always had something to find out, some clue that led to an answer.

"Um… I don't know so far. The only hypothesis I can make right now is that the Restorex that the decedent took had immense physical reprecussions. Maybe the cranial examination will give me some answers, but I am doubtful. I'm going to need to get a sample of this Restorex, and run some tests."

Abigail went to get the bone saw. When she came back, Janek had turned his neck to look at her. She had heard of dead bodies having post mortem spasms and doing strange things, but nothing like this. It was subtle. It was unnerving. After getting one of the security guards to join her in her room, she resumed the autopsy once more.

"All right. Time is 7:57. I am about to proceed with the brain examination of Mr. Janek Ansel, dead for a little over 19 hours, and presenting with some incredibly strange pathology. I am almost certain that these strange findings have something to do with this treatment of Restorex that was taken by the decedent, and once I have received a sample, I will be able to make more factual conclusions, but until then… we have the brain examination."

She turned on the bone saw, and then he took his reaction.

He was quick; quicker than you would think from someone spontaneously reanimated. The corpse of Janek Ansel swung his arm up and struck the bone saw out of Abigail's grasp. It fell to the floor with a buzzing impotence. He then moved to attack.

He brought himself up to a bipedal position in front of Abigail, and lunged at her, bringing them both to the ground.

He had the advantage; she was obviously caught off guard by his sudden attack. He was strong, but he still possessed the body of a 90 year old man, so his advantage was short lived.

He was still on top of her when the security guard got over his shock and moved to help. He tried to pull her out from under the man that, for whatever reason, wanted to come back to life without any organs, but it was difficult. The security guard tried to push Janek off as he pulled Abigail away, but Janek grabbed his arm with surprising strength, causing him to trip and fall.

Smelling this larger, slower prey, the body that once housed Janek began to crawl over to be on top of him, grasping and clawing at his prey's flesh, trying to get to his delicious innards. As the moving corpse tried to take a bite out of the stomach of the security guard, a pair of sharp-end scissors Abigail used earlier in the autopsy were shoved through the back of his head, piercing his brainstem.

Ansel immediately stopped moving, making no further attempts to consume flesh. He landed with a hard thud on top of the guard.

The guard pushed Janek off of him and checked himself for any wounds. He seemed fine. "Are you okay?" he shakily asked.

"The - the fucker bit me," she said, and lost consciousness.

March 2, Year Zero

Abigail turned quickly. After getting the bite treated, she attacked the nurse bandaging her wound. She was quickly restrained and sedated.

She broke her restraints later that evening. She ran for anything she could smell. She was exhibiting the same symptoms as Ansel: elevated temp, heavy cataracts, bloated, purple skin, hair loss, and attacking without thought.

She was killed shortly after she broke her restraints. No one was bitten. The infection was stopped.

March 4, Year Zero

Tom the security guard sat on his couch, wrapped in a blanket, watching soaps. He felt like shit. He was scratching at his stomach; he didn't know how, but he got a small cut there. It itched and burned like nothing he'd felt before. It made him furious.