Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer

The doctors head swirls and vomit pisses from the swelling inside of his head and into the corners his eyes. He blinks and the moistened windows clear and he looks down upon his manacled hands and then along the stretch of table that leads to the dark form that settles at its very end.

“Welcome to the Fairfield Woman’s Correction Facility and Spa… Mr You.”

“How’d I get here?”

“Found. Beaten and just to the left of dead.”

“My briefcase…”

“Black carbon-fibre with blood-red details and a shield emblem featuring a rearing horse?”, the dark form offers as it decides to form into a young woman adorned in a jutt-breasted Nirvana smiley-face T-shirt.

“It’s full of cash money… Maybe I’ll buy you a new shirt?”

“Nothing of that description in the report. Be sure to let you know if it turns up…”

“This is outrageous!”

“Isn’t it just. Cash? It’s now only used to stoke the barbecues on not-Nude Wednesdays. You been… in a cave?”

“Basement”

“The swam ceased three years ago…”

“Large basement. I seek sanctuary. I can more than pay my way. I want in.”

“We’ve very strict criteria for entry. You’re not a DJ are you?… We’ve the summer festivals and nobody to spin the discs.”

“I’m a cardio-thoracic surgeon”

“Oh…”

“Oh?”

“We’ve a doctor… anything else?”

“I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic medicine and trauma surgery, I have been awarded citations from eighteen different medical boards…”

“So, that’s a no to the DJing?”

“I’m… a… specialist.”

“Only REALLY good at one thing then… diversity is key here.”

“I’m a better surgeon than any doctor you could possibly have…”

“Dawn is actually a vet, but she’s pretty damn good on the ol’ hoomans too…”

“Seriously?”

“Basement was a bunker… right?”

“May have been… no use to you now, destroyed it…”

“As you do.”

“Electricity gone. Entrance seal-door stuck in open position…”

“Terrible. So, you killed it?”

“Didn’t want people getting up in my shit.”

“You shared this enormous throbbing bunker with…”

“My wife.”

“And she is…”

“Dead.”

“Kill her?”

“No.”

“Not even a wee bit, when food ran low?”

“Food… would have lasted years had it not been for that damned reactor malfunction.”

“Reactor?”

“Cold fusion… Supposed to last a lifetime…”

“Cold fusion is my favourite fusion. Do you have any… hobbies?”

“Wine.”

“You’re a vintner?”

“No, I collect fine wine. Considered to be amongst the top five private collections in the world.”

“Had? No more?”

“I smashed them all and left it a hole of cinder. What’s mine is mine.”

“So, you killed your wife?”.

“Cancer. Life support systems stopped when the reactor stopped”.

“But, you’re a doctor… oh, that’s right…”

“I am a cardio thoracic surgeon…”

“… a specialist, I forgot. Branch into Oncology maybe…”

“I’m perfect at what I do. I m going to be a part of this little new world of yours… you cannot afford to pass me by.”

“May… may, take a few weeks to process but we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as well would you look at that… Decision already confirmed. Sorry better luck next time”.

“You cant send me back out there… who the fuck are you… some lowlife convict to judge me?”

“You presume to much, doctor… I’m no inmate. I was an outmate just as you. I sat in that very chair. But I didn’t have handcuffs because I’m pretty and not an asshole”.

“What are you?”

“Me… I’m a preschool teacher…. got to know a wee bit about a fucking lot. Backbone of society right here my friend… and when the sun falls be sure to watch for the razor-hook backs of their fingers… that’s what will end you. Next!… please.”