Dr. Greenwich’s Flesh Clinic

Superintendent Harlowe and I stepped into the interrogation room. It was strange performing an interview in here with one of our own, and not even for a crime. Officer Molloy was still in a sweat, his eyes raw and puffed out from crying. Poor bastard. If the report we both read was true, this man had seen shit that had I heard it from someone else I would’ve thought they’d been tripping balls.
His unit had been tasked with investigating the home and private clinic of one ‘Dr. Greenwich’, a man believed to be responsible for the disappearances of several people. The case had been excruciatingly slow in gathering evidence – whether it was this Greenwich guy or someone else, they were eerily good at covering their tracks. It had caused a nightmare with the press as well; understandable given that these disappearances had been going on for literal years, causing significant distress. So far, we hadn’t released anything of the investigation of is clinic to the public. And depending on how this interview goes with Molloy, it’s possible we won’t be releasing anything.

We pulled up our chairs, and exchanged pleasantries with Molloy. Harlowe got straight to the point.
“Molloy – I’m sorry, but what the fuck is this?” she waved around the report, though I use the word ‘report’ loosely, slapping it on the table. “What the fuck happened in there?”
Molloy’s dark brown eyes were greatly exaggerated by the his recent weeping. “What do you mean? It’s there, in the report Harlowe, everything I saw, everything in that godforsaken clinic that we found”
Harlowe frowned deeply whilst rubbing her eyes. “Molloy what the fuck am I meant to tell O’Brian’s family? They’re going to want more than ‘died in the line of duty’, given how long he’s served on the force and the nature of the assignment. I can’t bloody well tell him a… What the fuck did you call it?”
“A man-sized mannequin that looked to be made of – bits of people” he answered, fresh tears springing forth.
It was my turn to sigh. “Molloy, I believe you, no matter what you claim. You were in a sober and sound state of mind. Now, does this freak the fuck out of all of us and leave us with more questions than answers? Yes. But, much and all as I believe you’re telling the truth and it is what it is, Harlowe and I have to hear this from your mouth, to go over everything again”
Harlowe gave me one of her trademark looks. I hadn’t mentioned this beforehand, I knew she’d dismiss it immediately.
“For what reason? There’s nothing more to be gained from hearing this fever dream from start to finish”
“Yes there is – clues as to what motivated Greenwich, clues as to where he may have disappeared to. Whether he’s the only freak doing this or not”
I left that hang there for a while for her to chew on. Thankfully, as I predicted, she allowed it.

“From the beginning, Molloy. Leave nothing out”.
“Alright” he swallowed.
“But make it quick” she cut in. “We only have this space for an hour, then we need to leave to manage the press and funeral arrangements for officer O’Brian”. He simply nodded his understanding. It was saddening to see a man I knew to never even blink when under gunfire to appear to steel himself, and fail.
“We finally gathered enough evidence and a warrant for Dr.Greenwich’s clinic, as you know. Myself, and officers O’Brian, Fadhzee and Iyanavich approached the clinic with caution. Not because the suspect was armed, as you know, but we’d recently heard through the grapevine that there were some very strange, loud noises emanating from the building”
“Why wasn’t I told about this?” Harlowe interjected. He simply shrugged. “It was one of those things – ‘oh yeah, my friend’s cousin’s friend’s neighbour heard’ – nothing concrete or normally worth considering”.
“Fair enough” she relented.

“We knocked on the door three times, announcing our presence. No answer, so we forced the door. Nothing unusual so far. But, we all had this weird feeling, and I know we all had it because of the eye contact we immediately made with each other once we entered. There was something off about the place. A crawling over the skin, a cold twist in the gut. The smell was abnormally strong for a private clinic – probably alcohol – and the clinic looked in such a state that it appeared not to have been inhabited or maintained for weeks. There was thick layers of dust, the usual signs of abandonment. We searched the clinic, no sign of anyone. The doctor’s office door was unlocked. Despite the abandonment of the practice, his office, while dusty, was still in really good order. Prescriptions, folders for patient files, various medicines to have on hand, all there and arranged in neatly.”
“Did you, or any of the others, by chance read the patient files he had?”
He shook his head. “Nah – didn’t so much as glance at them. Figured it could be used against us in court, patient confidentiality and such”
“Did you have a look at his diary or planner?” I pressed. Both of them looked a little impatient, but despite the time crunch, now was not the time to pass over anything. If Dr. Greenwich, sick fuck that he is, is still out and about, I want to avoid a repeat of what happened here.

“I think Iyanavich did, I don’t remember…. Wait”
“Go on”
“I do remember something – something that one of the others commented on. Some of the entries in the planner matched up with some of the dates of the disappearances, but there was also one other weird thing-”
“Do we have the planner in our possession as evidence?” asked Harlowe. I nodded, and Molloy continued on.
“Some of the entries were marked as important, for a testing, or crafting, that kind of thing. Makes sense in hindsight, considering what the sick bastard was doing, but we obviously thought nothing of it at the time”.
“We moved on to search the doctor’s living quarters. Rather modest, quaint even, with its Aga stovetop, and seventies decoration. The fridge was empty, oddly enough, and there wasn’t as much clutter there as there was in the clinic. Books tidily stacked, very little dust to be seen, the whole shebang.”
“We went through his personal affects and found his personal diary. We haven’t read it, but it’s down in evidence. Almost wish we had, for what good it might have done”
“O’Brian is dead, Molloy, you can’t wish and regret him back now. Part of the job” Harlowe’s tone was simultaneously harsh, yet forgiving. I suppose you could say she meant it in a disciplined, yet understanding way.
“I know, I know. Anyway, we spent about fifteen to twenty minutes looking for any sign as to where Dr. Greenwich may have fled to. Nothing. We called it quits when Fadhzee noticed some scratchmarks on the floor, behind a rather substantial bookshelf. Credit to him, it was a pure hunch as to why he shined his flashlight behind there. Never would’ve seen it otherwise.”

His eyes suddenly widened. “How are Fadhzee and Iyanavich? They alive?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but, curt as ever, Harlowe spoke over me.
“They’re in a really bad way, but they’re both stable. Don’t worry about them. Focus on remembering. What kind of scratchmarks were they?”
“Uh – the kind marks where a door has scraped along the ground a lot? Anyway, Fadhzee found that door behind the bookshelf. It was well concealed, flush with the woodwork of the wall. Barely moved it was so tightly fit. It had a keyhole, but it wasn’t locked. Once it opened, with a loud scraping, that’s uh…. That’s when we heard the first sounds. The ones the neighbour had mentioned.”
“It – Jesus, it sounded inhuman. Fadhzee nearly shit himself when he heard it, and Iyanavich turned white as a ghost. I probably did too, to be honest. O’Brian was the only one who held his nerve at all. If anything, he just got angry. Probably thought the missing persons were down there, having suffered through who knew what at the hands of Greenwich. He took point.”
“The way down was black as could be. Our flashlights just about lit the way. It was cold down there too, like a damn freezer. Could see our breath in front of us as we went down these narrow stairs. Had to go single file. The concrete brushed against our shoulders as we did, and the space at the bottom of the steps was barely big enough for us. There was a smell there too – as rank and awful as it gets, but it was mostly masked by the cold. I don’t know why we didn’t call for backup then. Or called anyone at all. I guess we wanted answers sooner than we wanted support or safety, I don’t know. There were two rooms, one either side of us, and one long corridor in front of us. We stuck together, tight as it was, and swept the rooms as carefully as we could. There were – a lot of things that were not legal in that first room. Jesus man, he kept so many jars full of just – bits and pieces of people, man”

He couldn’t help but cry. It took visible effort to control for him to control his breathing again, and longer again to refocus. But at least we had something now; Dr. Greenwich was heavily involved in the black market organ trade. You can bait and track people who deal in such things. Like any trade of banned substances or services. Especially, I speculated, if he wanted to keep a low profile in the next place he squirmed off to. Order his bits and pieces before he harvests them first-hand. Harlowe didn’t react in any way. She simply kept a level stare tracked on Molloy the whole time.
“That room even had an operating table in it. It practically twinkled, it was so damn clean. Most of it was shelves though, full of jars of bits of people. And a freezer full of limbs, cus why not.
“The other room was another small study of his – really plain and contained. There wasn’t a mote of dust or a thing taking up too much space, everything exactly where I’m sure it was meant to be. We read what he had lying open on the desk. We could speculate on some things, but the gist of it was clear. We didn’t know what kind of black magic crap he was doing, or why exactly, but we did know he was building something. Beyond a doubt now. It even contained sketches, really rough scribbles really, but again we got the gist it was him drafting plans for whatever he was putting together.
“Then we read the bit where he’d been successful. He called it ‘the world’s first Flesh Golem’. A ‘working prototype’. Jesus Christ”.

“A ‘Flesh Golem’? The fuck is that?” Harlowe demanded.
“If you let him finish, you’ll know.” I meant it as respectfully as possible, but I don’t think Harlowe took it that way. To try and repair the unintentional damage I did, I reinforced the idea by asking Molloy another question.
“You found it, didn’t you Molloy? You and your team discovered this prototype Flesh Golem”
“I can’t believe you’re saying that and being completely serious” Harlowe was visibly disgruntled now.
Molloy tried his own hand at mediating, despite the distress he was clearly in. “Look, that’s what we’re calling it, because I don’t know what else to call it. Just – hear me out for the rest of this, OK?”
She sighed, somewhat dramatically. Clearly losing her patience, but I figured she had just about enough for the oncoming hocus pocus Molloy was gonna walk us through.

“Again we heard that – scream, that noise, whatever it was. O’Brian kept point, and we went single file down the long concrete corridor. I couldn’t see past Iyanavich’s shoulder and over his, but I heard him say something about a door. I could hear him jimmy with the door handle, probably locked. He lost his temper and started ramming the door with as much momentum as he could gain in such a small space. Two or three kicks at the door later, and the noise started up again. It was like – more than one voice overlapped, and horribly mixed up in how low and high it was. Like, children’s voices in distress mixed with men and women’s, all muddled up and piled up on top of one another. Only this time, it had a clearer emotion behind it than just pain. It sounded like it was crying.
“The room was surprisingly big, and just as dark. It was padded the whole way along, far as we could tell. There were all sorts of bits and pieces strewn about the place – books for children, Shakespeare plays, children’s toys, model planes. But there was also an awful lot of blood, Harlowe. An awful lot of blood”.
“Several people’s worth?” she questioned. He nodded, replying “At least that much. Thick streaks of it”
She sighed. “Well we found our missing people at least. Chopped up into neatly arranged pieces for the organ trade, and having been tortured and mutilated beforehand. Lovely”
“I’m assuming that’s the story for the press?” I asked. She cast a look at me that made me feel about three centimetres tall.
“Of course it’s the bloody story for the press! You think I’m going to start harping on about Flesh Golems to the news?! Obviously I won’t reveal details about mutilation and torture, but at least we have something for the press now.
“Sorry Molloy, continue” she added.

“We… We uh… Found the source of the noise, anyway. Jesus Christ” he sniffled.
“It was uh… It was huddled in the farthest corner of the room, away from our lights. I could just about make out its silhouette. Stopped everyone in their tracks, so it did. God, the closer we got the that end of the room, the more the place stank – of shit, and piss, and something else much much worse.
“We stood around, just kind of staring at the thing for what felt like several minutes before O’Brian advanced on it. The closer he got to – that thing – the worse everything felt. First we could see details that didn’t make any sense. Like, limbs that weren’t of the exact same length, or even looked like they belonged to the same person. There was blood slowly dripping into a pool beneath where it huddled, and it’s back looked – uneven. I don’t know how else to describe it, honestly, other than it just looked uneven, not balanced. Well, I knew why once O’Brian got closer. It was covered in surgical stitching. I mean covered – from its head to its feet, probably even its bloody toes. Looked like a railway map. The way it heaved while it – sobbed, I guess? – I don’t know, but its face was buried in its hands, and the way its back and shoulders moved, that’s the best guess I could give. It’s skin looked – it didn’t look dead, but I sure would not have said it looked alive either. O’Brian, credit to him, didn’t take out his gun first but his taser. I can still hear his Scottish accent now, asking if that thing was alright. Soon as he’d addressed it, it stopped moving, and so did we. It didn’t even breathe. He asked it, politely but firmly, to turn around.

It screamed, a mix of anger and distress, and swung for O’Brian. He ducked beneath a blow that would’ve taken his head clean off. He uh… He didn’t dodge the second one. Didn’t have the chance. It leaped on him, and his screaming – Jesus, his screaming was cut short so quick. God, it – it ripped out his throat with its teeth!”
He started sobbing again. I suggested a break, let him get his nerves back on track, but Harlowe was having none of it.
“Molloy, we have twenty minutes left, finish the story”
When he started up again, his words were layered with tears and snot, but we understood him all the same between his irregular breaths.

“It just took his throat clean out! And its face! If you could even call it one! Looked like nothing I’ve ever seen before, even in movies. Stitches everywhere, but you could tell there wasn’t just one person’s face, it was several people’s facial features all fused together in a mess. All asymmetrical and covered in stitches and staples!
It’s chest was also a mess. A woman’s breast one side, a man’s on the other. There was just – so many bits and pieces all messily put together.
It moved surprisingly fast for something that looked like it could barely walk. Fadhzee went to take out his gun and the thing whacked him so hard even the padding didn’t do him much good. Iyanavich couldn’t even move, and neither could I. It barged past Iyanavich, and I could hear something snapping as it did. I just about managed to put two or three bullets in it, the padding dampening the noise a little, but the thing didn’t even so much as flinch. Don’t think it felt it in the slightest. May as well have just spat on the damn thing. I followed it up the stairs – I don’t know how it got its frame up there, with its uneven shoulders and hips, but chances are it forced its body through. I could see massive streaks of blood on the walls leading back up to the living quarters.”

“I only managed to catch up to it because it didn’t seem to deal too well with sunlight. I put another bullet into it, I think by its shoulder, and bar a spray of blood, it did nothing. And then it…. Then it took off, out through the clinic, then outside. It’s in the heavily forested area near the clinic. Should be able to find it easily enough, it bleeds everywhere so much”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Harlowe look as pissed, or to have lost as much colour in her face before or since.
“Not that I believe you, officially, but unofficially, are you telling me that that thing is in the forest?”
I decided to deflect. A loose creature of fiction, that thing, would be easily enough handled from the sounds of it. Cordon off the forest, declare it a crime scene, or make up some story about why it’s temporarily unsafe for the public to enter, then hunt it down and double tap it in its head. Problem solved. Finding the good Doctor, however…
“Molloy, I’m sorry to ask this of you, but are you sure you can’t remember any signs of where the Doctor may have escaped to?”
He made to respond, and judging from his facial expression, in the negative, when Harlowe interrupted.
“We have a description for him, we put out a wanted announcement for him, and advise the public that he is a highly dangerous individual responsible for multiple kidnappings and murders. We have no trail, and an officer that requires leave due to temporary stress-induced mental illness.”
Before Molloy or I could object, she was already at the door, holding it open. She had her ‘end of discussion’ look on.
“Sorry Molloy” I muttered as I left. Poor bastard looked so deflated.

We did exactly as Harlowe ordered. No sign of the Doctor, and the ‘Flesh Golem’, despite its alleged continuous haemorrhaging, was also nowhere to be found. We all took it as a small mercy that there didn’t appear to be anything to indicate it had gone beyond the woods – less PR nightmares to contend with.
I visited the forest near the clinic myself. Gotta say, while the blood has long dried up, the forest is eerily silent. I don’t think I saw a single bit of wildlife there – not even an insect. While I don’t consider myself a coward, I honestly couldn’t stick it, especially when I thought I heard someone crying.
You think ‘Flesh Golems’ or whatever they’re called, can starve?
Because I sure as hell hope so.

Credit: Robert Galvin