Graveyard shift

Things were not looking up. 

Her night was a dumpster fire of flaming hot excrement.

And she was hungry; beyond hungry really. She was hangry.

Her gums ached and her fangs pressed painfully against her lower jaw and lips. She could feel the hot viscous blood flowing and pooling in the bottom of her brand-new shoes.

Her once clean scrubs were smeared with a mixture of blood, green-tinged lymph, something black, and a strange assortment of particulate matter that she wasn't ready to delve into at that moment.

"Chest compressions, chest compressions." She chanted as she continued to administer CPR to the prone body beneath her. Her knees straddled to either side as the gurney was rapidly pushed towards the ear-marked trauma bay.

Alongside she could hear other nurses calling orders, while others pressed fist fulls of gauze against the wound that was pooling blood down her leg. 

"Got a rhythm. Get clear" The call came and Gabriela rolled off the patient, falling into the arms of an orderly posed to catch her. Once on the ground, Gabriela took her place in the supply relay; passing bandages, saline, and bagged donor blood that were all being pumped into the half-changed body of the werewolf.

His skin was nearly bloodless; made nearly pure white in contrast to the sprouting dark tufts of fur that ran down the bridge of his nose and circled his eyes. 

Young, Gabriela could see the youth in the soft roundness of his face, in the lanky build of his body, and so still.

The senior nurses managed to pass an intubation tube down the boy's throat with the attached bag forcing his chest to rise and fall in carefully structured breaths. The hard cement floor was coated in a patina of blood, yellow puslike lymph, and discarded gore-soaked linens. 

Just a few feet away another team circled another male; this one with skin like melted wax. Across his chest rested his severed left arm; the reason for the puss-like liquid that coated the floor and seeped up the hem of Gabriela's pants.

She watched as they attempted various ways to staunch the bleeding of the severed stump. Sutures just tore through the mushy flesh and muscle of the creature. A warbling, high-pitched, scream echoed over the ward as the surgical cauterization tool was finally utilized to sear closed the open blood vessels. 

The stench of burned flesh collided with the coppery scent of blood, and the sharp scent of bleach to create something uniquely stomach-churning. Gabriela fought back the urge to gag; cursing whatever God decided that she needed to have the worst first day of work.

Her non-slip shoes slipped over the gore-encrusted floor until she caught herself from falling with a hard bang against one of the surgical trays. 

"Son of a bi.." Gabriela bit back the curse as she righted herself, ignoring the burning tingle that ran straight up from her elbow to shoulder.

The nurse closest to her chuckled before handing Gabriela a cleanish towel to wipe off the blood that coated her hands. 

"That one didn't make it." A sharp jerk of the older woman's head indicated a gurney occupied with a too-still sheet-shrouded body.

Someone's friend, child, or lover was reduced to just an empty, motionless, shell. The sight was obscene in an emotional sense and commonplace in the Emergency Department; more so in one where predators ran in packs against other predators. 

"Take him to the morgue then clean up. We need another body in triage." The curt command offered some respite and Gabriela looked forward to shedding the stiff and rather grotesque scrubs to the spare outfit she had packed as a just in case.

Full moons, here, it seemed would live up to every superstition present in the human world. 

"Fine by me." Gabriela paused to look over the emergency ward. The trauma bays were emptied while the cleaning crews came through to start washing away the signs of the struggle over life and death that had just passed through.

Other beds were occupied by those with less severe injuries. White sheets hung on railing screened-off areas for privacy and Gabriela kept her gaze focused forward, just in front of the wheeled table she pushed.

The front right wheel wobbled and spun on its own. She noticed this about fifty feet through the old warehouse that had been converted into a hospital for the denizens.

By the time she reached the walk-in freezer that served as the morgue Gabriela was ready to rip off that wheel and deal with pushing a lopsided gurney

Relieved she pushed through the strips of heavy black plastic and into the chilled air. There were several bunches of similarly covered metal tables. A woman in a white lab coat stood to one side; noting something into a manilla-colored medical chart.

The woman's straw-textured blond hair was scraped back into a messy ponytail. Cratered skin combined with sickly jaundiced eyes only confirmed the woman as one of the ghouls. 

"Another one? Stupid to die so young. Good thing they have so many" The woman only briefly looked up from her task before absently motioning towards a group of three shrouded tables. 

"Go ahead and put her there with the rest." Gabriela only grunted in agreement before pushing the gurney over; doing her best to ignore the tables with sheet-shrouded bodies but heads neatly aligned on separate surgical trays. 

"What happened to these?" Her hands, free of pushing the gurney, clutched at her sides. She could see the faint tip of white fangs peaking from beneath lips made lax in death. Her species, this was the first she had seen of them all evening.

Sad representatives the lot of them. Dead and vacant eyes that stared towards an otherworld only they could be privy to. 

"Hunters. It's always hunters with your kind. They are nasty pieces. Like the young and the helpless." The woman's words were filled with scorn at the humans. Her head jerked towards another row of dead; this time the linens were stained red with blood. 

"I will get him processed." The woman looked up at the standard industrial clock with its flinching path around.

"Go get changed; sunrise comes fast." Gabriela gave a sharp nod at the woman as she thought over the words. Hunters seemed to be a unique issue for the citizens of their world.

"Why? Why do they do it?" The question slipped past her lips and into the chill air. Part of her needed to know what this group of people did the things they did.

Why she was condemned to death for being kind and ignorant; part of her soul screamed for answers. 

"Some because they were wronged but one of us. Others because they were born into it. Some just do it because they enjoy the kill." The answer given, the woman once more waved Gabriela off.

This time she obediently turned and headed towards the employee locker room. The squeak of her shoe soles against the floor mimicked that of the off-kilter wheel. 

She didn't notice as her mind worked through the information she had just received.

Some did it just for fun.

For fun.

Those last two words echoed in her mind as she threw on the shower in one of the stalls. Gabriela didn't wait for the water to get hot, or even undress.

She just slid under the spray as those two words echoed through her mind. The man who had killed her had seemed to enjoy her screams; and had fed off her pain. 

A gasping sob escaped her as she sank to the floor of the shower, her back pressed against the tile in the narrow stall. The spray of water ran over her, turning the bottom an orange-pink as the dried blood started to dissolve. 

Gabriela held her hand against her mouth; stifling any sound as she finally grieved the loss of her human self as just another act of senseless violence. 

For fun; her entire life had been ruined for the man who attacked her's desire for fun.