Nurse Frogbottom here. Ah, yes, I have missed your mediocre musings of the mundane, but I am here to brighten...or maybe I should say, darken your day, with a terrifying tale of horrifying horror. Please keep your scintillating screams to a decent decibel. No, not because the baby's sleeping, or that you'll frighten someone. Because some of my dear, demented, darling, departed friends may be attracted to their favorite noise-screams; music to their ears.

Now without further ado, let us delve into that wasteland they call the mind of Nurse Frogbottom. Hold on to your seats, kiddies...and don't take any rides from strangers.

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"What the hell? This is a brand-new car. How do you rent out a piece of shit like this and still sleep at night?"

George Swensen was sweating under the hood of the overheated compact. The girl at the rental counter had cautioned him that the smaller cars sometimes got overly hot in such a long stretch of desert, but he had her pegged. He knew she was just trying to shove one of those giant SUV's up his ass, so she could make a bigger commission. Well, he fooled her. This guy wasn't born yesterday.

'Well, not so fast Missy,' George thought as a smirk came across his face. He had insisted on renting the smallest car they had. He thought of that briefly now, but dismissed it.

"So, the bitch got mad and gave me some kinda defective vehicle, just to make it look like she was right," he said aloud.

In George's mind, he was pretty good at assessing a situation, adding up the facts. And two plus two equaled, the world was against you. You just had to fight the best you could, that or die trying. He wasn't 'cheap' like his ex-wife said. He was just frugal and he wasn't going to let anyone cheat him.

He was pissed, but he took a deep breath and decided he'd best keep hydrated. He sat down against the wheel of the car on the shady side and took a long draw of bottled water. He was getting too old for this over-the road shit. He needed to get a sales job that flew you to a certain location, let you sell whatever, then put you up in some fancy hotel overnight. He was thinking of that room when he dozed off.

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George came awake with a start. His vision blurred and he squinted to compensate. Man, those were some bright lights. Just then, a face appeared in front of his.

"Don't worry, Mister, everything is going to be okay."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know after what happened out there, we didn't know if you were going to make it, but you are stabilizing now."

George felt a pressure on his arm and looked over to see that it was a blood pressure cuff.

"Where the hell am I?" he said, starting to panic.

"Don't worry, Sir, you are in the ambulance and we are taking care of you."

"Taking care of me? I'm not sick, now let me out of here."

"Sir, I realize you likely don't remember the accident but it would definitely be in your best interest not to move."

"Accident, what accident?" George felt fear rise to a spot in his throat. He tried to move but realized the only body part he could move, was his head. "Why can't I move?" he said in a whining voice.

"Like I said, Sir, the accident. Can you feel anything at all?"

George looked down to see that the man had been pricking his skin with a safety pin. He hadn't felt a thing. He knew this was a test doctors did to see if someone was paralyzed or something. His fear deepened.

"But why did I feel the blood pressure cuff?"

"Oh, sometimes you can feel a little pressure when something like this happens, just no pain, and you can't move. Let me show you."

The man leaned against George's body and George thought he did feel the pressure.

"Did you feel that?'

"I think so."

"Well, what about this?" The man picked up a metal tool box with great effort and dropped it on George's legs.

"Hey that's weird! why would you do that?"

"I'm just assessing your level of feeling," the man said.

As George watched in horror the man began poking the safety pin, full length into his legs and arms, saying, "Do you feel that? How 'bout this?"

George was screaming at the top of his lungs when the man brought the scalpel out and plunged it into his flesh, creating a 10-inch incision in his chest. He was lucky to pass out, as the man held up his heart, still attached to arteries and veins, and said with a big smile, "It's still beating...so far."


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"Well, I think, poor Georgie is gone. What say we go 'rescue' someone else?"

"The next one shouldn't have gotten too far," the girl from the rent-a-car said. "You know old George was just the right type to take the car I wanted. Always so suspicious. That's why I tell his type the opposite of what I want them to do. They all think the world is against 'em. But, I guess this time he was right."

Their medical uniforms were splattered with blood. "Well, looks like we need a shower and a change of uniforms. We gotta get rid of this one, the next one will wait. After all where is he going to go? The car will stop soon and I gave him the same directions. No one will go by on our private road. Let's go back to the house and rest up. Then we'll go save him," the girl chuckled.

"We need to refill that med too. Does a great job simulating paralysis wherever injected without stopping breathing. Luckily the research center has a big supply since it is being used for testing. Did you see his face when he saw the scalpel?" Another round of laughter from the two.

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Well Kiddies, we've come to the end of our little tittilating 'trip'. Hope you enjoyed the rambuctous ride. Damn, those meddling, medical people. If that's an assessment, I don't want the treatment.

What's that you say? You're having surgery tomorrow? Well I hope you're not going by ambulance. Do you feel that? Heh, heh, heh?

Nurse Frogbottom out, until next time.