My Almamater My Training Ground

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Vincent slowly cracked his eyes open for the first

time in months, though to him it merely felt like a

pleasant nap. The first thing he noticed was an

unfamiliar, cloying taste in his mouth, and that his

heart rate was oddly elevated despite his body

being at rest. Disoriented, he shifted his eyes

around the dark chamber he found himself in, his

stiff body unable to move from his strangely moist

but comfortable bed. His scattered thoughts slowly

knitted themselves together as he began to make

out the shapes around the room. It was all coming

back to him now.

He was in the coma ward of one of Paris’s oldest

and finest hospitals. The rare neurological disease

that had plagued him for all forty-three years of his

life had finally progressed enough to force him to

enter a medically induced coma in order to prevent

more permanent damage to his body. He wasn’t

sure how long he had been out, but surely this was

a sign that his research assistants had finally

proven themselves competent and successfully

completed the cure he had devoted his life to

developing.

This flash of hope only lasted for a moment.

Something was clearly wrong. The room was

unusually dark. Either it was nighttime or something

thick was covering the windows, but regardless, no

lights were on, and missing were the expected

sounds of beeping equipment and bustling hospital

staff. What he heard instead was a strange

combination of grotesque, wet squelching sounds,

erotic moaning, and… a woman’s giggling? Surely

some whore nurse hadn’t turned off the lights to

have her way with one of the other comatose

patients?

Feeling some strength finally returning to his

muscles, Vincent weakly turned his head to get a

better view of his surroundings. A slowly blinking

red light on the wall, assumedly some sort of

emergency power system, periodically illuminated

the room… no, the hellscape. Each flash painted the

interior a bloody crimson and cast long, black

shadows that wiggled and danced as if alive.

Vincent’s eyes widened and he attempted to gasp,

but he suddenly noticed that his mouth was covered

in some sort of organic oxygen mask that was

hanging from the writhing ceiling.

A man of a lesser mind might have immediately

panicked, but Vincent remained motionless,

analyzing the situation and attempting to draw clues

from the nightmarish environment. Clearly, some

sort of biological warfare had occurred since he had

fallen unconscious, or possibly a new, invasive

species had been discovered. A virus, perhaps? The

unearthly sight of squirming tentacles weaving

along the slime-covered tumorous growths

emerging from the walls pointed towards an

extraterrestrial origin. Not something too hard to

believe possible. The fact that he could still breath

unhindered through the obstruction in his esophagus

certainly indicated something beyond human

understanding.

Streams of mucus-like fluid oozed and dripped from

every fleshy surface, with slimy strands webbing

around each piece of furniture as if spun by a

drunken spider. All around the room, several

occupied beds divided by curtains could be seen

barely peeking out from the pulsating organic

masses around them.

All of the other people in the ward appeared to be

sleeping - or more likely, in comas - and they all

had the same tentacle covering their mouths as

Vincent. For the first time, he realized that everyone

was nude, including himself. He could see a few

pairs of naked breasts gently rising and falling with

steady, sleeping breaths, and semi-erect penises

whose shadows mingled with those of the swaying

tentacles. It was an oddly hypnotic sight, and not

one that Vincent necessarily found unpleasant.

Suddenly, the man in the bed across the room from

Vincent violently bolted upright, a look of confusion

and panic contorting his face as he desperately

screamed into the tentacle covering his face. He

frantically clawed at the tendril in an effort to

remove it from his mouth, but the more he tugged

at it, the tighter it appeared to grasp his sweating

cheeks.

Vincent was surprised that the man had such energy

despite having no doubt been in a long coma just

as he had been. Were his muscles not atrophied?

Come to think of it, Vincent’s own body felt rather

healthy as well. He attempted to twitch his toes

and found that his body responded. He couldn’t

imagine therapists and doctors still visiting in a

clearly derelict place like this in order to exercise

comatose patients while they slumbered. Just what

was going on here?

Vincent was about to reach up and investigate the

tendril in his own mouth, but froze as his eyes

spotted a change in the scenery around the other,

flailing man. Unseen by the man, several tentacles

had grown out from the wall behind him. Suddenly,

they clasped around his arms and neck, yanking him

back down onto the mattress and binding his limbs.

He struggled pathetically, but it was clear that these

creatures were far more powerful than a fully-grown

male human.

The slightly deranged female giggling Vincent had

heard earlier suddenly bubbled out again from

behind the curtain next to his bed, followed by the

sound of footsteps moving across the squishy floor

towards the bound, shaking man. An attractive

woman entered Vincent’s view. Her long black hair

and pale skin were caked with a viscous slime,

which glistened in the eerie red lighting. Something

was very off about her - not the least of which was

her clothing.

To Vincent’s amusement, she was completely nude

from the waist up. Her large, plump breasts jiggled

softly as she stepped over a growth on the floor,