Deal Down at the Hospital

“After I died,” said seven-year-old Cassie, suddenly free of cancer and wild in the eyes, “there was a big red sky with a huge head floating in it like . . . like the moon, only super close. It was a’ old man, like a wizard, with sharp teeth a thousand feet high and gray lips and no hair—not even eyebrows—and his eyes, they were all white, and they looked sleepy.”

The little girl bounced on the hospital bed, feet dangling beneath her gown. She tilted her head and pinched at her hair, which was just starting to regrow. She couldn’t wait to get her pigtails back.

“And he, and he drooled a lot too,” she went on, “like waterfalls that fell forever. And there were white fuzzies floating into his mouth. It was all dark in there, except in the back where it glowed orange.”

She paused, clawing thoughtfully at her gown. Her bright eyes danced along with the memories as they came rushing back.

“Oh yeah, and there were all these little funny-looking heads going around the big head like . . . like meteors. They were spinning and going round and round and laughing. They were so happy!”

“Mm-hm,” said the doctor, distracted as he went back and forth between various charts and x-rays. “Go on.”

“Then the wizard head talked, but not with his mouth though. His mouth was open the whole time like a stinky cave. But all the words went right into my head like, um, like tel-e . . . tel-e-pathic?”

“Telepathic—right,” replied the doctor, scratching his head over a recent x-ray. His other hand reached for the little girl’s knee. She flinched, then quickly stood up on the bed and stretched. “Guess what he said?” she asked, her spine cracking quietly.

“I don’t know, honey. Tell me. What did the wizard head say?”

“He said if I want to, I can live to be two hundred years old!”

“That was nice of him,” said the doctor, biting his lip as he recalled the pattern on her underwear. He politely asked her to sit down, then turned to grab some paperwork. The little girl giggled and reached for a nearby scalpel, her thin shadow stretching across the man’s white lab coat. She bent her knees and leaned forward, swaying from side to side like a parakeet about to fly out of an open cage.

“I just have to keep my promise first,” she said flatly, raising the scalpel over her head.

“Oh yeah?” said the doctor. “What’s that?”

After she leapt onto the floor and crawled between the man’s legs, the girl wasted no time in fulfilling her promise that the doctor would never become aroused again.

(From the book The Hunchback's Captive and Others)