The Gavel and the Coma
The sound wasn’t a heartbeat; it was the thunderous, repetitive slam of a wooden gavel against a mahogany desk. Crack. Crack. Crack.
Dr. Arthur Vance opened his eyes to a distorted reality. He wasn’t in his clinic, and he wasn’t lying in the ICU bed where the enraged husband’s lead pipe had left him fractured and comatose. Instead, he was trapped in a towering, gothic courtroom that smelled heavily of sulfur and old parchment. The air was thick, vibrating with the aggressive shouts of the gallery.
“Order! Order in the court!” the judge bellowed, his face obscured by a thick, unnatural shadow.
Arthur looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Across the aisle stood the prosecuting attorney. She didn’t look human anymore. Her eyes gleamed with a predatory, bureaucratic malice as she pointed a jagged fingernail directly at Arthur’s chest.
“You botched the delivery, Dr. Vance!” her voice screeched, echoing off the high ceilings like a siren. “You ripped life away, and now you will pay with your soul!”
The accusation cut through Arthur’s fading logic. He was a professional, an expert, but in this nightmare tribunal, his skills were being systematically shredded. The prosecutor advanced on him, her jaw unhinging slightly, revealing rows of sharp, needle-like teeth. She was a lawyer—a natural bottom-feeder, a creature that lived to consume the misery of others.
Desperate to keep her away from his defense table, Arthur reached blindly behind him. His hands met something warm and moving. The courtroom benches weren’t filled with spectators; they were overflowing with squirming, crying newborns. With pure, panicked survival instinct taking over, Arthur grabbed an infant and hurled it directly at the advancing attorney.
The gallery gasped, but the prosecutor didn’t flinch. Her bottom-feeding nature took complete control. She caught the child mid-air, her mouth widening into an impossible, cavernous abyss, and swallowed it whole. She shuddered with a grotesque, ecstatic pleasure, her eyes locked onto Arthur, demanding more. She couldn’t stop. It was her nature to destroy.
Crack! Crack! The judge slammed the gavel again, grinning wildly. “Proceed, counselor!
