The Story

The Characters

I: Trouble in Shangri-la

Screams echoed throughout the sanitarium from the electric shock therapy room. Urara shivered, wrapping her jacket tighter across her white tank, even though it was stifling in the huge building. The doctors moved from one room to another, brushing past her with out a single glance or greeting. Blocking out the screams, she made her way down one corridor, glancing into each room as she went by. She paused before a nameplate that seemed familiar to her.

"Kheyman Maharet. Diagnosis: hallucinogen," she read aloud.

"Bullshit," a voice piped up. Urara peered into the dim room through the barred window. The walls, ceiling, and floor were densely padded. A figure slouched in one corner, his arms draped across his bent knees. The metal of his android right arm glinted in the setting sun's light streaming in through a barred window in the far wall. He flexed his steel hand a few times. His ice blue eyes stared at her in a most intent manner over a pair of lavender-tinted spectacles resting lightly on his nose. A bandage with a wire running from it disappeared beneath his straight brown hair. He was clothed in a crimson trench coat with the right sleeve rolled up and dark pants and boots. His pearly teeth glimmered as he shot her a smirk.

"Hallucinogen," Urara repeated. The smirk never left his face.

"Bull-shit," he said, emphasizing each syllable. "These doctors don't know their asses from their elbows."

Urara couldn't help but snicker. Kheyman's eyes brightened a little.

"Ah, so you do have a soul."

"What do you mean?"

"Anything that laughs has a soul. Ever notice how vampires never truly laugh? That's how you can tell who's who nowadays," he explained. Urara was beginning to understand why the doctors called him a hallucinogen. A doctor passed by her just then, and she stopped him. Briefly looking him over, she discovered a name tag bearing the identification of Dr Bateau Kagura.

"Dr Kagura, what do you know about Kheyman Maharet?" Urara asked.

He lifted his clipboard and shuffled through some papers for a moment, then looked up.

"Well, an elderly woman found him stumbling along a back alley, raving about vampires plotting to take over the city. To make the whole thing even more bizarre, his right arm had been completely torn from his shoulder clean as anything. Take him, add that story, throw in a dash of Bram Stoker and you've got yourself some authentic Hallucinogen Gumbo," he told her, lowering the clipboard. "We gave the poor fellow a new arm--" Kheyman stretched out his right arm toward her, grinning all the more. "--and gave him a room. But you've got to be careful with him. He somehow installed retractable razor blades into his hand. Those damned things are sharp enough to rip through flesh and bone. We had to put in metal plating beneath the padding, so he wouldn't get very far as of clawing his way through." Kheyman swore at him. "Poor fellow rotted his brain with porno comics and horror flicks probably."

"You don't know your ass from your elbow, Kagura," Kheyman snapped as he started to stand up, wavering a little. Instantly Kagura pressed a button on a small hand-held controller. Kheyman froze in his tracks, throwing his head back and howling as the little wire leading into his skull sent shock after shock of high-voltage electricity through him. The little crackling bolts zapped up and down his body, throwing him to his knees. Urara frantically knocked the controller out of Kagura's hands, screaming at him to stop. In an instant Kheyman was on his feet and dashing toward the door. His right arm jerked through the bars, the blades jutting out the knuckles and over the backs of his fingers. He shoved his hand into Kagura's chest, wrenching out his heart. Kagura's eyes bulged and his mouth opened as if to scream as he stared at the still-beating organ in Kheyman's blood-drenched hand. Kagura slumped to the floor as Kheyman crushed the heart and heaved it against the corridor wall.

"Oh my God," Urara squeaked, backing to the wall beside the door, eyes wide and staring at the fist-sized hole in the chest of the now-dead Kagura. Kheyman reached out to the lock with a key card he'd stolen from the doctor and slid it through. A green button flashed, and the door automatically swung open. Walking calmly out and sidestepping the body on the floor, Kheyman pulled a handkerchief from one pocket and he wiped Kagura's blood off his hand. He turned to Urara and smiled thinly. Urara screamed and ran, shoving past a group of doctors. They took one look at Kheyman coming toward them and were quick to follow her.

"Call security! Kheyman Maharet has escaped from his cell! He's killed Kagura!" one doctor screamed at another at the end of the hall. Kheyman, still smiling, pulled a double-barreled shotgun from under his coat and blasted off half of each of the doctors' heads, blood and grey matter spraying the walls on either side of them. Urara, in her hysterical sobbing and panic, stumbled as she turned the corner and hit the linoleum hard, landing flat on her stomach. She struggled desperately to get up, tears streaming down her cheeks, as Kheyman approached her. She looked up at him pleadingly.

"Please don't kill me," Urara gasped. Kheyman coldly looked into her terrified eyes as he whacked her savagely on the back of the head with the butt of the shotgun. Brilliant colors flashed behind Urara's eyes, then everything went black, and she was still. Kheyman eyed the unconscious girl in the black mini-skirt and windcheater jacket lying on the floor at his feet. Bending and throwing her over his shoulder, he started for the entrance, fingering the trigger of the shotgun.

"Halt! Drop your weapon and the girl and put your hands in the air!" one of the security guards shouted as he approached the doors. Kheyman obediently set Urara on the floor, but held onto the gun. The guards started toward him. He suddenly opened fire, felling five of the guards! Another came after him with a bayonet. Throwing the gun aside, Kheyman whirled and caught the guard, shoving the blades through his neck. He dodged the blood that was hosed through the four finger-width holes in his neck. He wrenched the screaming guard's head off and dropped the body. The head, its eyes still rolling around in their sockets, was thrown at the two remaining guards. They screamed, tossing the severed head back and forth like a sack of potatoes, allowing Kheyman to escape with the unconscious Urara.

As he ran out to the parking lot, he produced a grenade from one coat sleeve, pulling the pin out with his teeth. He slowed and turned, throwing the grenade toward the huge white building. He watched it, triggering the other bombs his partner had placed around the building, watched the entire place go up in a huge explosion of flames, the force blowing him nearly off his feet, and Kheyman smiled.

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