Phlegethon

Mr. Black had just finished cleaning up after the horror that had unfolded that morning in the Cactus Wing corridor. It had taken longer than he’d expected . . . longer than he’d hoped. Blood had a way of sinking into things in this building. Not soaking, not pooling . . . sinking. As though the mortar and paint and sixty years of institutional rot had developed a taste for it.

Cracks in the plaster swallowed it like veins. Grout lines bloomed pink before fading, reluctantly, under layers of baking soda, peroxide, and effort. Cleaning blood was never straightforward. It was an act of war: spray, scrub, rinse, repeat. And just when you thought you’d won . . . just when you let yourself believe it was over . . . you’d catch it again. A spatter on the ceiling. A fine mist behind a desk leg. A glisten on a strip light, dull until the angle caught it just right.

One particular patch had stopped him cold.

While cleaning a wall outside the patient’s room, he’d noticed something odd . . . a slow, viscous trail of oil bleeding down the door frame. Blood dusted its surface in a thin skin, catching the overhead fluorescents like red glitter. The oil ran thick, almost black, and the droplets gathered with unnatural patience before slipping downward.

He’d stared at it for a long time before he understood what it was.

Ocular fluid.

It had come from the orderly’s eye.

Poor bastard.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Inside the room, the air changed. Not the temperature . . . just the feeling of it. Like something had been cooked too long in a sealed container. The moment he opened the door, a wall of heat and stink rolled out . . . A ripe fog of sour sweat, filth, and something sickly sweet . . . like rot trying to pass as perfume. He stood still for a moment, breathing through his mouth, but it didn’t help. The stink still climbed inside him.

Shit.

Literal.

Smeared across the walls in careful, looping patterns.

The patient had expressed himself.

And by all appearances, he’d taken his time. Mr. Black slowly rotated in place, eyes sweeping the full span of the four walls. It wasn’t the frantic scratching of a man in crisis . . . it was curated. Purposeful. The brushstrokes of a lunatic with patience. Symbols. Diagrams. Writing that crawled up the corners and wrapped around the light switches. Some lines had been darkened twice, maybe three times, to make them bolder. Clearer.

Madness, yes . . . but disciplined madness.

He might’ve even called it art, if the stench didn’t make that thought absurd.

One image stood out.

It repeated across the room. Sometimes large, sometimes small. A simple circle emblem with thorns. At first glance, it looked like the Stick Wing logo. A ring of twigs. But no, not quite. He stepped closer. This version wasn’t quite the same, and the angles were sharper. Too jagged.

Wrong.

He took another step back, nostrils flaring as the smell pressed harder. Faeces layered thick over something else . . . something chemical beneath, like melted plastic or scorched ink.

And then he saw it.

A word. Tucked between symbols.

Phlegethon.

He squinted at it, mouthing the shape silently.

Didn’t know how to pronounce it.

Wasn’t even sure it was a real word.

Sounded like a prescription drug or a Greek insult.

He made a note to look it up later.

With a quiet grunt, Mr. Black reached for his cart. Rubber wheels creaked as he shifted it closer. He picked up a cloth. Grey with age and frayed at the corners and retrieved a spray bottle from the top tray. The clear liquid inside trembled as he aimed it toward the wall.

Nozzle raised.

He pulled the trigger.