The visitors walked down the hallway, led by a brutally boring doctor in his mid-60s. He was a strange old man. He wore glasses thicker than lead and combed his hair over in an effort to hide the deteriorating, almost rotting skin on his scalp. He was also German. His name was Werner.
"Zis is Vard A," Werner said, rubbing his forehead in an effort to perhaps find something relatively interesting about Ward A. It didn't work. "Ve keep a lot of sick people in Vard A". The less intelligent majority among the group of visitors were genuinely interested, surprised even, at the revelation that there were indeed sick people inside a ward of a hospital. The slightly more intelligent minority were completely apathetic. The extremely intelligent duo marveled in Werner's redundancy, only barely resisting the urge to clap sarcastically in his face.
Werner moved slowly down the hallway, which was extremely poorly lit and decorated (the fading picture of a beach severely clashed with the dull turquoise paint job that was smeared along the walls). He labored with every step. Any rational person would have thought that he was on his last few breaths or, realizing the futility of the skin bag that they were confined to, that his bones were trying to escape from his body and he was slightly more focused on keeping them from shooting out of place and impaling a nurse that was just passing by than on walking faster than an inch an hour. Unfortunately, there were only two rational people in the group, and they were both too busy counting the tiles on the ceiling and wishing for a brutally painful death.
The group walked by another set of double doors, clearly marked with a giant "B".
"Zis is Vard B," Werner said, again rather redundantly, "Zis is our research and development vard of the hospital. Ve are currently vorking on stuffing lab rats into containers ze size of test tubes. Ve call them CLRHs." Werner beamed proudly at being able to find something other than "ve research things here" to tell the guests. He promised himself a cookie for his effort.
"What's a CLRH?" one of the dimmer visitors asked.
"It is a 'Cylindrical Lab Rat Holder'," Werner replied, "Ve use it to hold lab rats. In cylinders." Steve, one of the rational thinkers, had recently come into possession of a firearm and was negotiating the terms of a mutual suicide with the other rational thinker, his companion Natalya. It was somewhere between their agreement that a "pre-death quickie" was out of the question based on the logic that such a thing would only be considered if "every living soul (male, female, both) no matter what race, religion, or even species were to be extinguished from existence, leaving only you, Steve" and the actual loading of the weapon that Werner said something that actually piqued their interest.
"Zis is Vard C. Normally ve vould show you around in zer, but recently ve had quite a nasty accident involving vun of ze more... insane patients." The majority of the group of visitors made an overly visible effort to veer clear of the double doors marked "C", as if the area in front of them was just a facade and anyone that stepped on their tiles would fall to a fiery, rather uncomfortable death.
Steve and Natalya looked at the door, then at each other, then at the gun, then at each other again.
"We should go through that door."
"Yeah we definitely should."
"I mean it'd be a crime not to."
"They're asking for us to just step right on through."
"Wouldn't hurt to just clear out the pipes a little bit before we did though..."
"Last form of life on Earth, Steve. 'Kay? Then we'll consider it."
"Even plants?"
"Even plants, Steve."
"That doesn't seem physically possible."
"I'll MAKE it physically possible."
"So what are you, God now?"
"No of course I'm not God. Don't be so blasphemous."
"You're the one who said she'd do anything with a pulse even if there was a dude right in front of you practically begging for it."
"So I have standards, what's your point?"
"My point is sarcasm isn't a sin and beastiality KIND OF is."
"Shut up. Let's go through the door."
"Yeah let's go through the door."
The rest of the group had already gone past four more lettered doors over the course of the couple's argument, leading both Steve and Natalya to believe that either time had sped up while they were deep in conversation or that Werner had donned a pair of roller blades and had proceeded to briskly glide down the hallway at what was, at least to him, an alarming rate.
The two stood in front of the door labeled with a big "C", took a deep breath, and pushed themselves through it. They were met with a strange sight: a completely white room, so white that it was hard to differentiate the walls with the ceiling and floor, with a man standing in the middle in a tuxedo (which included a shirt that seemed to be absolutely soaked in blood. The two tried to process all of what they were seeing, but their thoughts were repeatedly interrupted by the faint sound of elevator music. Steve looked at the man, who hadn't moved an inch since him and Natalya had entered the room. He was smiling from ear-to-ear.
"You've got a bit of blood on you," Steve said. The man looked down at his shirt as if this was the first time he'd noticed that his undergarment was soaked in a warm, red liquid.
"Well would you look at that!" the man exclaimed rather cheerily, "No problem." He proceeded to rip the shirt completely off of his body without disturbing the tuxedo jacket or his bow-tie, which remained in the same place it had been before he had thrown off his shirt. The garment landed on the floor with a squelch, somehow managing to have stayed in one piece. The man didn't seem to mind that he'd just ruined a perfectly good shirt, and had gone back to smiling broadly and the room's new entrants.
"Hi-ya folks!" he said, "My name's Eddy! I'll be your tour guide today!" The man, whose name was apparently Eddy, moved for the first time since Steve and Natalya had entered Ward C. He darted over to a door and opened it for the two, motioning with his hand that they should proceed down the hallway on the other side. The two obliged.
The hallway looked nearly identical to the first room in Ward C in that an untrained eye couldn't perceive its depth, but it was also very different in that it was populated, however sparsely, with other people, including one strange man whose eyes were darting around the area as if he was convinced that a swarm of men with swords were about to jump out of the woodwork and slice him to bits, a fate that could only be curtailed if he was always looking around. What made the man stranger was his choice in clothing, or a lack thereof, and his hairstyle, or a lack thereof. There wasn't a single hair on his body, perhaps explained by the shaving cream and razor he had in either of his hands.
Eddy dashed pass Steve and Natalya, looking at the man straight in the face.
"Hi-ya Bob!" he said exuberantly. The man screamed uncontrollably, spraying shaving cream all over himself and almost immediately shaving it away. Eddy patted him on the shoulder, an action the man didn't much appreciate, screaming even louder before piling a mound of shaving cream on the patted area. "Good talking to ya'!" Eddy said. He continued down the hallway. Both Steve and Natalya looked at the man with great interest, following their clearly insane tour guide further down the hallway.
"What's his problem?" Natalya asked.
"Extreme Chaetophobia!" Eddy exclaimed, "Guy's scared bonkers by hair! Can't stand the sight of it!" He stopped walking and put his hand next to his mouth. "Keep this between you and me, but I think he's not all there. You know... mentally." He started walking down the hallway again almost as quickly as he'd stopped, leading the couple to another door. The room on the other side wasn't even half as bright as the hallway it stemmed off of, and only featured a man sitting at a desk.
"I looked on in interest as Eddy and the two strangers entered the room. The woman was quite attractive. I contemplated asking her out for a nice meal on the town followed by the sweet fruits of my naturally charming labors. The man looked like an idiot and I wanted to punch him," the man at the desk said in an oddly familiar accent.
"I'm flattered!" Natalya said.
"I found it disturbing that the woman knew what I was thinking even though I hadn't even said a word. It terrified me to the bone... but it also aroused me slightly." Natalya and Steve's eyes grew wide at the comment. "It was a good thing that I was sitting at a table, otherwise one of the room's new entrants might have noticed my sizable erection." The room was silent for a few seconds, but the peace was cut short by a loud thud from under the desk. Natalya turned around and left the room immediately afterward. Steve remained still.
"Dude... nice..." he said.
"I found the man insufferable. I was trying to decide whether I should take his life or my own... and how I should do either..." the man's eyes shrank as he said it. Steve turned on his heel and left the room. Eddy followed and closed the door behind him.
"What the hell was that?" Natalya exclaimed.
"Oh that's Ricky..." Eddy said, keeping a smile on his face, "He doesn't actually talk to anyone at all! He just records all of his thoughts in his Captain's Log!"
"So he has an internal monologue... that he says out loud?" Natalya asked.
"Precisely!" Eddy said.
"...and he thinks he's Captain Kirk?" Steve asked.
"Precisely!" Eddy said again, matching the first time he'd said it rather eerily. Natalya looked at Steve and shook her head.
"Only you," she said.
"Hurry up you two!" Eddy exclaimed, "You'll miss your assignments!" Intrigued by the mysterious event to which Eddy was referring, the pair followed him down to the end of the hallway, where they went through another door into a room that was identical to the first one in Ward C. There was another man at a desk, but this one was feverishly filling out papers.
"Hey Johnny! Natalya and Steve are here for their assignments!" Eddy said. The man looked up at the two.
"Ah yes. Natalya, you get Parthenophobia. Steve, Teutophobia," the man at the desk said. Natalya turned to look at Steve. She then began to scream hysterically. All of a sudden, Eddy spun around and kicked her in the face, sending her to the ground.
"WHAT THE HELL MAN?!?!?" Steve shouted rather angrily, "What's Parthenophobia?"
"Fear of virgins," the man said.
"Aw dick move, man. Dick move," Steve said. He looked at Natalya, who was still breathing, but hadn't moved since Eddy, who was strangely still smiling as widely as he was when he had first met the couple, had kicked her in the jaw. He then realized that he too was given a phobia, but he was unaware of what it meant.
"What's Teutophobia?" he asked quizically.
"You're about to find out!' Eddy exclaimed. He pushed Steve through a door and into a dull turquoise hallway. The group of visitors, led by Werner, were all staring at him.
"Ve vere just going to see ze uzzer vards Steve," Werner said.
Steve began to scream hysterically.
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