When the door to the room closed, Elizabeth felt relieved; she was safe for the time being. At first, she was reluctant to watch the others get eaten; after all, she had existed among some of them for years. However, she felt no guilt; this was a matter of survival. She already knew how the ones outside would end; to justify herself and to find motivation, she convinced herself that someone had to watch their end, like some kind of testimony that they existed. She came close to the door. The rooms of the older and more fragile patients had this small Cristal window through which the workers of the nursing home could take a look at the sleeping patients without having to open the door and disturb their sleep. Some of them had a very light sleep, and to make things worse, it was not easy for them to fall asleep. She could not see much, but it was enough. She saw Willy run away; the munchers passed by the room; then she heard the screams of the ones getting eaten by the monsters; and then there was silence. She was surprised when she saw Willy come walking straight to the door.
"Elizabeth, they are gone." He said.
"The munchers are gone; we can leave; the others ran outside the building, and the munchers followed them; we can leave; come, let's go before they come back," Willy said as he acted vigilant towards the main door of the building.
Elizabeth wanted to believe him; she was happy for a second; maybe the nightmare was over; maybe she was finally free. However, something in her mind screamed at her to be careful.
"Why is Willy the one coming to tell me? I just betrayed him and threw him to the munchers. The Willy I know is not so noble. Something is wrong." These thoughts made her doubtful.
"You are lying" was Elizabeth's answer.
Through the cristal, Willy looked at her face and realized his bait was not effective; she wasn't coming out on her own.
Elizabeth saw Willy's eyes turn pitch black; that usual crying expression of his was gone, and instead he had an evil grin that showed his teeth.
"You little bitch, you know how much energy you made me waste with your little double cross?"
"You? How?" Elizabeth was surprised and confused.
"Open the door, you stupid whore!" yelled Willy.
Elizabeth didn't know what was going on or what was happening to Willy; he didn't get eaten by the munchers, nor did he become one of them. She went down on her knees and, with her index finger, did what she used to do to leech energy from the living, but in this case instead she was pouring some energy into the door. She made her move in the nick of time, while Willy did the same and tried to move the handle. However, Elizabeth's energy interfered, and Willy's attempt failed.
"Oh, come on, just open the fucking door!" Willy was losing his patience.
"Okay, you asked for it."
Like if a ram had hit the door, it flung wide open, sending Elizabeth flying in the air. She crashed against the wall. As a ghost, she was not hurt, but an uncomfortable feeling went through her ghostly body. She raised her head and looked at Willy. His eyes were black and six long tongues came out of his mouth and were moving like snakes around his head. For a moment, she had flashbacks of the day of her death, and her mind was filled with fear. Willy walked slowly towards her; her mind was blank; she was screwed, and she knew it. Whatever Willy planned to do, it would not be good for her.
"What am I doing?" She asked herself.
She had been dead for years; her life was cut short by a maniac, then she got trapped here; not even in death did she find peace.
Anger overtook the fear; she pointed her index finger at Willy, and before he could do anything, the released energy hit him and pushed him back. But Willy just resumed his walk. Elizabeth tried again to push him back, but this time she did not have enough energy. She was cornered against the wall.
Willy was blocking her way to the door and walking slowly towards her. He could have rushed and caught her, but there was no hurry, and her fear entertained Willy's sadistic nature.
Seconds later, Willy was in front of her, looking down at her face. She tried to punch him and slap him, but she had no more energy, and her ghostly body was useless. Willy's tongues wrapped around her neck, and Elizabeth felt as if something had been drained from her. Then a painful sensation invaded her body; it felt like she had been submerged in boiling water, and all of her skin was on fire. She wanted to scream; she wanted to kick and struggle, but her body didn't move. All she could do was endure the pain in silence.
"I hope you are enjoying it; I had to deal with something similar for years."
It was not totally the truth; whenever he had the munchers inside his body, he took control of them, and the pain he felt was just a fraction of what the munchers themselves were feeling. What was going through Elizabeth right now was a lot more than what Willy ever felt. Willy walked out of the room.
Elizabeth's immobilized body was suspended in the air by his long tongues and dragged along the hallway. Willy walked straight to the machine room, where the generator used to be. He squatted down, his hand when through the floor, and a strong rumbling noise was heard over the whole building. The noises were so intense that maybe they might have been heard by the living if there were any around. Willy tongues lowered Elizabeth's body through the floor until only her head was out.
"You are going to be a great battery."
Willy took her head on his hands; his tongues receded, and he looked up at the ceiling. A black mucus-like substance formed around Willy's skin and then seeped into Elizabeth's head, like if she were suddenly woken up and reconnected; her body turned rigid, her eyes opened wide, and a scream escaped her mouth. Meanwhile, Willy had a face of relief. The weight of hundreds of tortured souls—fear, hunger, pain—and the endless cycle of the munchers cannibalism that had been running for almost fifty years were all released from Willy and dumped into Elizabeth's soul. However, she had no control over the munchers; she didn't have the energy needed to keep them at bay. They started ravaging her soul; she was deforming at a visible speed and turning into a muncher. Once all the munchers were out of his body, and before she turned into one herself, Willy let Elizabeth's head go. She fell into a pitch-black space.
The sound of some metal mechanism resounded in the machine room, then a small vibration shook the whole building. The rumbling intensified along the walls, and the sound of gears turning could be heard.
Meanwhile, inside the darkness, Elizabeth screamed. The munchers were hurting like never before; to them, it was like if there were a hundred suns bathing them in their lights. To ease the suffering, they started eating themselves inside Elizabeth's body. Elizabeth was halfway turned into a muncher. Her body tried to defend itself from what was hurting her and, at the same time, tried to turn. She deformed and reformed again in a fast and painfull cycle. The munchers inside her fought for a position further away from her skin while eating each other. Along with her, the monsters turned into a deformed blob of pain, suffering, hunger, and madness. After a few minutes, the rumbling in the building stopped. Willy smiled and then started dancing and laughing.
"Para ra, parapa, parara raran," he repeated while dancing along the hallway.
Once at the entrance of the building, he looked back.
"Not bad"
His aberrant and anti-natural creation worked with the precision of a Swiss watch. Willy walked out of the building, phasing through the door like it didn't exist. Once outside, he took a minute to look at the sky and the world around him. It was the first time he was outside in fifty years since he died. A new moon and the stars adorned the sky, and the street lights illuminated the road. Without looking back, he started his walk. He was still dead, but he was free, an unbound ghost; he could go wherever he wanted. But he already knew where he had to go. His best work, his Magnus Opus. The Atocha General Hospital, was the pinnacle of his career as an architect. All of this hell he passed through in this pathetic nursing home was for the sole purpose of freeing his soul. Now, with his newfound freedom, he could try and have another chance at life.