Doctor Thorne looked through his large glasses at the two vials in his hands. He marveled at how such small contents could have such a great effect. He could almost envision the outcome of his little experiment; the initial shock, the panic, and then the crushing pain. He rapidly shook his head—he needed to get on with it. He poured the contents of the vial in his right hand into the vial marked Propofol in his left. Sleep, he thought. The lengths they go to sleep like the dead.

Propofol was also called milk of amnesia, and medical professionals, namely anesthesiologists, used it to sedate patients. Then the game of operation begins. He smiled.

But this vial had been empty for a long time, and he hadn’t filled it with more of the milky Propofol.

He closed the Propofol vial and put it in his suit jacket pocket, and he threw the other vial in the garbage. He was getting ready to go to work at St. Gressil’s Hospital. And like every other day, he wore a black suit to work.

Sure he’d need to change into his scrubs once he was there, but he always liked the idea of going to work in a suit. It made him feel… important. And he was.

Ever since the encounter with his Red Angel, he had conducted a few experiments, but never had he attempted one as ambitious as he would today. The rise in complaints against him had been… an annoyance. Fentanyl has been a good friend, though.

Fentanyl was a synthetic opioid, and he was supposed to use it to manage a patient’s pain during operations where numbing agents weren’t used. The experts say it’s one hundred times more powerful than heroin.

He remembered the first experiment he did. He had administered a dosage of Fentanyl twenty-five percent less than it should’ve been—the pain… it must have been something fierce.

But Dr. Thorne wasn’t satisfied with small dosage decreases. His next patient received a reduced dosage of thirty percent. And he administered a reduced dosage of forty percent for the patient after: complaint number one.

He put on his tennis shoes and stepped out the door and into the sunlit morning. Taking a deep breath through his nostrils, he placed his right hand on the jacket pocket, feeling the vial inside; he nodded, as if to say everything is a-okay. He stood next to his car and looked at his three-thousand square foot house; his home was on the outskirts of Blooming Heights and he loved living there. A blessed man am I.

He chuckled, thinking he was doubly blessed. Once by fortune and once by his Red Angel.

But he was no longer interested in small dosage reductions. No, his experiments needed to be bigger, and the vial marked Propofol in his pocket was the key to his next experiment.

Dr. Thorne drove down the highway, the secret knowledge of what he would do tickling his mind. He felt like a kid waking up on Christmas morning; he was anxious and giddy. He glanced in his rearview at the mesa towering behind him, and he was reminded of the weighty purpose entrusted to him. He shivered. He could almost taste the chaos; surely, his actions would be used for his Red Angel’s designs. He would do his part, even if his efforts were small.

He looked down at his jacket pocket, worry entangling his mind. What if I mess it all up? But he wouldn’t—couldn’t; too much rode on his work. Besides, he had dreamed and fantasized about this day for longer than he could remember. He was finally free to do whatever he wanted. He would go through with his experiment and pray to his Red Angel that it would go according to plan.

But what kind of plan is this?! He knew it was madness—wrong, even. But his Red Angel had called him to new righteousness. He said I am to be ruined; his plan is that I be ruined. He would do what society deemed wrong to be righteous in his angel’s eyes.

Dr. Thorne looked at the bulge in his jacket pocket again. I already bought the damn stuff! The night before, he had acquired a vial of succinylcholine, a paralyzing drug, from a disreputable sort of fellow; somehow, the man could get his paws on large quantities of drugs used in the medical field. An expensive acquisition. St. Gressil’s Hospital had ceased using succinylcholine for two years now due to complications with the drug and better alternatives coming to the market. Sure, he could’ve raided the hospital’s storerooms for any of those alternatives, but that kind of desperation was easily detected.

He wondered what happened to all that succinylcholine after the hospital stopped using it.

His desire to conduct his experiments had festered in the recesses between his conscious and subconscious. After he was set free, his plans came to him like divine revelation, and they were practically ingrained in his mind. He had picked a patient who would’ve needed general anesthesia during their operation, but he would use the muscle relaxant instead of Propofol. So rather than putting the patient to sleep, he would paralyze her. He needed her to be on a fast acting paralyzing agent from the operation’s start, a drug that would feign unconsciousness to the surgeon, assisting doctors, and nurses. There was no reason for him to have this drug mixed in with the cocktail of other drugs he’d administer during the operation—succinylcholine chloride will be dressed up as Propofol.

She would lie on the operation table, completely paralyzed by succinylcholine chloride, unable to speak, unable to flinch away from each stroke of the blade cutting into her flesh. Dr. Thorne would refuse her sleep, deny her numbness, revoke her relief from the excruciating pain. There would only be pain. Terror. Anxiety. An eternity of torment. And if she went into shock or was on the verge of passing out, he had acquired ephedrine, an adrenergic, to assist her in staying awake and alert. She’ll feel everything. Every incision, every breaking bone, every stitch and staple.

Dr. Thorne grinned as he took the offramp and drove towards the looming building in the distance. He couldn’t wait to walk through those hospital doors.