The Doctor howled as thick jellied waste squirmed down his forearms. The lumps of amniotic mucus shifted and rearranged like icebergs lost over incarnadine flotsam and the room filled with the inert echoes of death. The halcyon melodies of yesterday now piped the muffled song of decay as the breathless woman lay on the hospital bed, like a marble sculpture, unmoving. The Doctor had been emptied of his soul and thrown into the shadowed chambers of despair where all roads lead back to exile.
The days leading up to this tragedy had seemed strange, as if a portent messenger itself had hoisted the Sun each morning. Peculiar weather patterns shifted by the hour with polemic schizophrenia, leaving the meteorology department in dumbfounded befuddlement. The morning papers reported sightings of strange red hazes emanating from clouds and bizarre incidents taking place beneath the shroud of night. Dustbins had gone missing in their entirety from residential streets. Domestic refuse now pilled up in the Poundbank Estate and children romped betwixt disused bathroom appliances and rotting food.
Despite Doctor Bage's academic notoriety, financial decadence had evaded his family. The contentious subject of his doctorate forced him into the forgotten institutional grottos of academia, every aspect of his funding was fought for tooth and claw or bestowed upon him by eccentric benefactors. One such patron was Lord Massingberd, a fat pompadoured homosexual of ruddy complexion. Not an unkind man, Massingberd had given over the west wing of his Gloucstershire estate to aid in the Doctor's research. The facility came complete with an underground complex suitable for housing more sensitive experiments and clandestine projects. To enter the sunken laboratory one had to first gain access to the secret lift shaft. This lay behind the library wall on the ground floor of the west wing. Here Bage had installed a device so often seen in spy movies. When a specific book was pulled forward by the upper tip it cranked a lever that released the entire bookshelf to open. Bage had chosen Mary Shelley's 1818 horror tale 'Frankenstein' as the book to activate the process. Since a young age he had been captivated by the gruesome story of the lonesome scientist and could think of no novel better suited to the job. The concealed lift was styled with an ornate design based on Egyptian patterning and made the plummet in a swift four seconds. Sixty feet below ground the air was laden with moisture and the walls were stained with viridescent slime. Towering iron buttresses supported the roof from collapsing on the Doctor's experimental miscellany that cluttered the laboratory floor; Automatons, clockworks in multiple forms, vials of quicksilver bubbling in tubes littered the concrete floor. It was in this subterranean edifice that the Doctor received the news that now had him mewling with agony beneath the artificial light of the trauma ward.
Lord Massingberd approached the Doctor with care and concern. When he delivered the awful news Bage collapsed to the ground like a deflated balloon, before composing himself and stumbling to the service lift. The morning was dressed in a blanket of cold fog and plumes of misty breath bellowed from Bage's mouth as he fumbled for the keys to Massingberd's 1954 vermilion Thunderbird. The engine took three attempts and manic throttling before it sputtered in life. The piston rod whipped back and forth as if it was soon to burst through the crankshaft and whale into empty space. Bage drove at suicidal speeds towards the accident, he swung round the narrow corners with little regard for what awaited him. It seemed like days before the characteristic blue flashing lights could be seen reflecting off the green topiary.
The recent unusual weather patterns bought with them a wave of fatal accidents. Lizzie Pocock, a domestic employee for Lord Massingberd, was currently recovering in hospital after a car accident that followed a series of flash downpours. Out of nowhere a wall of rain cascaded onto the road sending her car into an aqua-plane towards the central reservation. She suffered cuts, bruises, a broken arm and six shattered ribs. Another local resident known to the Doctor was killed after an electrical fire raged through his pub. The pub landlord was trapped after a dry storm dislodged the wiring that ran throughout the establishment. This sparked a blaze that eventually burnt the publican to death in an orange fulminating prison, his screams were lost amongst the crackling of flesh and the punches of splintering wood. It seemed these terrors had now extended their ghoulish palms towards the doctor's closest ally, his wife Rose.
She had woken early in the morning to the clattering of wooden shutters against cold stone. Untameable winds attacked their marital house from every angle. Like an invisible army it tore pieces from the structure and tossed them into the elegiac sky. From the window, Rose heard the querulous cries of an animal in wretched agony. The mellifluous baying of yesterday had given way to the muted howls of terror as a lamb had become stuck in the barbed wire separating the fields. Unable to release itself, the wind forced the young creature unceasingly onto the rusted spikes. Puncture wounds gushed into the lamb's wool, like cochineal shells scrubbed over stones the creature was turning a pale shade of red. Rose knew the animal would soon die if she didn't intervene.
She hurried down the spindled staircase towards the front door. The old key jammed in its warded lock before it flew open, rattling into the oak portico. She fought against the lashing eastern wind and made a progress towards the yowling wretch. The wind almost tossed Rose into the wire herself before she dropped to her knees to attend to the lamb. Her maternal instincts had driven her out into the storm and her thoughts now turned to her own child trapped in her belly.
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