Mistletoe

"Run, run! When you die it will be running.
Feet sinking into sand soft-seeming but not soft.

Bare feet sinking run run for your life. 

Looming behind you, to catch you around the ribs with his big-bear hands.

Never any progress. Quicksand. Yet, always running. 

No choice but to run. Run for your life!

Thick-piled carpet, high-heeled shoes sink into it like (quick)sand. 

Nape of your neck bare resting in the shallow groove, a very cold stainless steel utilitarian table. 

Bare skin the hue of snow at dusk, faint-blue-tinted.

Are you aware of the drain beneath the table? - you do not (actually) see the drain. 

Are you aware of the glaring fluorescent tubing overhead? - you do not (actually) see the tubing in the vinyl-tiled drop ceiling.

Dimly aware of the white-coated figure looming over you. Latex gloves gripping the sharp utilitarian instrument.

Dimly aware of arterial-red color -- (berries?) -- above the double doors opening inward where someone has placed, perhaps prankishly, a sprig of mistletoe. 

It's that season -- mere weeks before Christmas.

Somehow, time has accelerated. It is a riddle, how. 

So long you'd taken for granted that time is an infinite supply to be used as you wish, dipped into, measured by the calendar, the clock, and the watch, now you realize time is the river rushing you along heedless of your wishes. 

When you die, such pranks will continue. Such jokes. 

Mistletoe in such a place!

Refrigerated air, sharp odor of disinfectant."

Joyce Carol Oates

Babysitter (2022)