THE HUNGER OF SAINT MARGUERITE'S HOSPICE: THE HARVEST MASS

Season 2

CHAPTER 4: THE SCRUB NURSE'S GOSPEL

The pager's glow burned through Daniel's coat pocket like a brand.

OR THEATER 1. STAT.

His legs moved without consent. The hospice corridors stretched unnaturally, walls pulsing with the rhythm of a heartbeat not his own. The air smelled of antiseptic and scorched sugar, a scent he now recognized as saint's breath—the exhalation of Marguerite's marble lungs.

Operating Theater 1 was lit by seven black candles, their wax dripping upward onto the ceiling. The surgical table held:

A crimson-stained gown with his name embroidered over the heart

A bone saw fashioned from a human femur

A gramophone playing a choir of surgical screams in perfect harmony

The statue stood at the head of the table, her marble chest cracked open to reveal mummified organs threaded with gold wire. Her stone lips—now flesh up to the chin—parted:

"Scrub in, Felix."

His hands moved on their own, unwrapping the gown. The fabric slithered around him like a living thing. When he touched the bone saw, his fingers fused with the handle, tendons knitting into the bone.

Across the room, the twelve former Felixes watched from shadowed alcoves, their:

Mouths stitched into permanent smiles

Throats slit open to form perfect surgical resonators

Hands replaced with scalpels, retractors, and clamps

The gramophone's needle skipped. A new voice joined the choir—his own, screaming from yesterday.

CHAPTER 5: THE VOCAL CORD EXTRACTION

The procedure began at 3:03 AM, the hour when the hospice's walls grew thin.

First Incision: The bone saw sang as it parted Daniel's sternum, revealing ribs that had turned to silver.

Harvest: Marguerite's stone fingers plucked his vocal cords like harp strings, stretching them into suture thread.

Transplant: The thread was woven into the gramophone's mechanism, where it vibrated with his stolen voice.

Daniel tried to scream. Only choral Latin emerged—the same hymn the Felixes sang.

His reflection in the surgical lights showed:

Porcelain cracks spreading across his face

Steel sutures replacing his eyebrows

Glass eyes with tiny scalpel-shaped pupils

The statue whispered:

"You are the treble clef to my symphony."

CHAPTER 6: THE CHAPEL CHOIR

The chapel pews were filled with former patients, their:

Lips sewn shut with hair

Ears removed to make room for surgical soundholes

Hands grafted into the hymnals

Daniel was nailed to the organ pipes, his:

Ribs reconfigured into keys

Arteries rerouted as bellows

Scream sustaining the final note

The statue ascended the altar, her marble skin sloughing away to reveal:

A skeletal figure clad in stitched-together surgeon's coats

Faces pulsing beneath her skin like tumors

Fingers that never stopped cutting the air

She raised her scalpel. The choir inhaled.

SEASON FINALE: THE FOURTEENTH FELIX

The hospice doors opened at dawn.

A new applicant stood on the steps, squinting at his contract.

£90,000 for six months' service.

Qualifications:

Medical degree

No family

Willingness to answer to "Felix"

Inside the walls, Daniel's hands twitched in their glass jar. His vocal cords hummed in the gramophone. His eyes watched from the portrait above the mantle.

The statue's newest marble lips curled into a smile.

Somewhere, a pager buzzed.

Sshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

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