The Flesh of the Orchid

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Somewhere in the building, above the roar of the wind that rattled doors and windows, a woman’s scream filtered through padded walls. It was an eerie sound of idiot degeneracy rather than of pain or fear, and it swelled to a muffled crescendo before dying away in a whimper of lunatic self-pity.

A young and attractive-looking nurse, carrying a supper-tray, walked down the broad corridor that ran the length of the building. She paused outside a door, set the tray on a white enamelled table against the wall.

As she did so a squat dark man with two gold teeth came round the bend in the corridor. He grinned cynically when he saw the nurse, but another scream from the woman upstairs twisted the grin into a wry grimace.

‘That yelling sets my teeth on edge,’ he said as he came to a slouching halt by the nurse. ‘I’d like to give her something to yell about.’

‘Oh, that’s number ten,’ the nurse returned, patted the corn-coloured curls that framed her pretty face under the edge of the stiff white cap she wore. ‘She’s always like this in a storm. It’s time they put her in a sound-proof room.’

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