User blog:MrTyeDye/The Nightmare House (Part 7: Lana)

Previous Chapters:

(Lori)

(Leni)

(Luna)

(Luan)

(Lynn)

(Lucy)

Lana sat in the pediatrician's waiting room with her head down, twiddling her fingers. The room was stocked with an assortment of toys, children's books and magazines, but Lana wasn't exactly in the mood for play.

"Cheer up, Lana," said Rita, giving her a pat on the back. "It's just a checkup, that's all. You're not due for any shots."

"I guess," muttered Lana. Even assuming her mother was telling the truth, there was always something unnerving Lana found about the doctor's office. For one thing, she was a bit put off by the overly chipper artwork and decor in the waiting room. The rainbow-colored foam mat in the center, the toys laid out right in front of her, the pictures of smiling doctors lining the walls... it was almost as if the room itself was trying way too hard to cheer her up, or luring her into a false sense of security. And there was little consolation provided by the assortment of cheap, stale lollipops offered to her on the way out - which allegedly came in several different flavors, but all tasted like sweetened cough syrup to her.

Lana doubted she was the only one who felt that way, because the other kids in the waiting room seemed even less enthralled to be there than she was. Some were whining, some were crying, some were fighting one another, but none of them looked particularly happy.

"Lana Loud?" called a voice from beyond the room.

"Oh, that's you!" said Rita, as if Lana couldn't have figured that out herself. "I'll be waiting for you right out here, Lana. Mommy loves you."

Lana hopped off her chair and walked toward the hallway, with her eyes pointed towards the floor and her hands clasped in front of her. Near the middle of the hall, she was greeted by a thirty-something man in a lab coat, with a bit of stubble on his face.

"Why, hello there!" piped the doctor, beaming down at Lana. "You must be Lana. I'm Dr. Mitchell!"

Lana looked up and gave the doctor a small wave, forcing a polite smile. "H...hi, Doctor Mitchell."

Maintaining his cheery disposition (a little too cheery to be natural, from Lana's point of view), Dr. Mitchell walked Lana into his office, hoisted her up and plopped her down on the table. "Oof!" he grunted. "You're pretty heavy. Looks like someone's growing to be a big girl!"

Lana rolled her eyes. At six years old, she had already outgrown this kind of condescension. Regardless, she just let the remark pass without comment, as she wanted the session to be over as soon as possible.

"We're gonna start with a few routine checks," he said. He then lightly gripped the end of his stethoscope and pressed it against her chest. "Gimme a deep breath, Lana."

Lana nodded, sucked in a gulp of air and let it out.

"Hmm... okay." Dr. Mitchell moved the stethoscope over onto her back. "Once more, please."

This continued for about a minute, as the doctor ran his stethoscope all over her body and continually asked her to breathe.

"Okay, your breathing sounds pretty normal," said Dr. Mitchell. "Now, let's test your reflexes."

My reflexes are fine, thank you very much, Lana quipped to herself. I'd never be able to survive in the Loud house if they weren't.

But, once again, Lana didn't want to be difficult, so she just let Dr. Mitchell go through with the test. He drew a tiny mallet from the pocket on his lab coat, bent down, and gave Lana a firm rap on the knee. As expected, Lana's leg instinctively kicked forward. He then repeated the motion for the other knee, and got the same result.

"Reflexes are normal," he said. "Now, I'm gonna take your height and weight. Do me a favor and go stand on that scale over there."

He gestured towards a scale set up next to the table - one of those doctors' scales outfitted with a height measuring stick. Lana hopped down from the table, took off her sneakers and stepped on. Dr. Mitchell started by grabbing the measuring stick, pulling it up and stopping it just above Lana's head.

"Three and a half feet," said Dr. Mitchell. "Now, as for your weight..."

Dr. Mitchell shifted around the dials on the scale until he arrived at a reading that caused the scale to balance out.

"Sixty pounds!" exclaimed the doctor. "You're getting even bigger than I thought!"

Even though they were the exact same age, Lana outweighed her dainty twin Lola by almost fifteen pounds. This was understandable; not only did Lana eat like a pig, but her hobbies of alligator wrestling and plumbing (the latter of which involved handling some heavy tools) helped her build a pretty decent level of muscle mass. The only reason Lola could fight evenly with Lana during their scraps was because of the former's liberal use of dirty tactics - biting, scratching, eye gouging, etc.

"Now, let's see if we can do something about that," said the doctor, grunting as he hefted Lana back onto the table.

Lana eyed him confusedly. Do something about what? Her weight? Sixty pounds wasn't heavy enough to be cause for concern, was it?

"Now, hold still for just a moment," he said. "You won't feel a thing."

Lana's expression grew even more concerned. She could've sworn that her parents said that she wasn't getting a shot. What was going on?

"Doctor Mitchell?" she asked, squirming a bit as she felt him roll up her sleeve and lightly grip her by the wrist. "I don't have to get a shot, do I?"

"You won't feel a thing," repeated Dr. Mitchell.

That totally didn't answer my question, thought Lana. "Doctor Mitchell, I-"

"And done!" said the doctor.

Feeling increasingly uneasy, Lana's eyes drifted over towards her exposed arm, and she gasped at the sight of a hypodermic needle piercing her skin. What was even more shocking was the fact that Dr. Mitchell had actually kept his promise; she didn't feel a thing. Quite the opposite, in fact. She felt a numbness at the point of contact between the needle and her skin, which was starting to radiate through the rest of her arm. She didn't feel anything when Dr. Mitchell yanked the needle out.

"W-what did you do?!" cried Lana, trying to move her arm away but finding it increasingly difficult to do so. Dr. Mitchell grabbed her by the wrist and looked her in the eye, displaying a frown for the first time since she stepped into the office.

"Your mom and dad have told me a lot about you," said Dr. Mitchell, with sternness creeping into his tone. "Plumbing, fixing cars, wrestling wild animals, eating out of the garbage. These are not things that a good, healthy little girl should be doing."

"Says you!" spat Lana, prying at Dr. Mitchell's fingers with her other hand. "My big brother and sisters say I'm just fine the way... the way ah... the wuh..."

Mid-speech, Lana started to lose the feeling in her tongue. The numbness that had overtaken her entire arm was now starting to affect her face. In a panic, she started grasping at her face with her free hand, only to find that it, too, was having all of its nerves shut down.

"Now, what we're going to do is turn you into a good little girl," said Dr. Mitchell. "A good, healthy little girl who acts how little girls ought to."

Lana, lacking the capability to flee (as the numbness was already spreading to her lower body), watched helplessly as Dr. Mitchell walked to the other side of the room and pulled the black curtain off the apparatus on the other side of the room. It was a table, upon which lay a black, metallic mold in the exact shape of Lana's body, with a door hinged to the side. There were several things Lana wanted to do at that moment - scream for help, run away, and give Dr. Mitchell a swift kick in the groin, just to name a few. But all of them were rendered impossible by the fact that she had lost all sensation in her body. Her brain was now little more than a prisoner locked in an empty, lifeless shell.

Dr. Mitchell picked her up, carried her over and dropped her into the mold, where she landed with a thunk. As she saw the mold's door slam shut and heard the click of Dr. Mitchell locking it down, she was struck with a chilling realization; her mom had lied to her. Her guardian, one of the two people she thought she could trust to take care of her, told her a bald-faced lie, just so the doctor could subject her to... whatever this was. Lana could only guess what was happening, judging by the constant beeping, whirring and clicking she heard coming from the apparatus, but she knew she wasn't going to like the result.

At long last, the din of the machinery died down, and Lana saw the fluorescent light of the office seep through the darkness as the door was cracked open. Dr. Mitchell gripped her under the arms and hoisted her out of the mold, and Lana was marginally relieved at the fact that she had regained some level of sensation in her body.

"Here's the new you, Lana!" he announced as he set her foot-first on the floor and wheeled a mirror out in front of her.

What Lana saw in the mirror was enough to make even her iron-cast stomach churn in disgust. Her eyes were forced open all the way, accentuated by long, prominent eyelashes and underlined by liberal amounts of blush. Her mouth was locked into a wide, open grin - the kind displayed by cartoon mascots on cereal boxes. Her red cap was gone, and her now-exposed hair was done up in cutesy, springy pigtails. Her overalls were replaced with a canary-yellow sundress, her sneakers with fancy black buckled shoes. As she grasped her frozen face, she noticed that her fingernails were all manicured and polished the same color as her dress.

"Ah, let me see my little Lana!" Rita called from the hallway. She emerged into the room, beaming with pride at what Lana had become. "I think you're much better this way," she cooed, ruffling Lana's hair. "Don't you agree?"

Lana, feeling bile rising within her throat, wanted nothing more than to spew it at her traitorous mother, berating her for letting Dr. Mitchell mold her into such a monstrosity. But as she prepped her larynx, the following words came out:

"By golly, I sure do, Mama! Let's go home!"

''By golly? Mama?'' Lana had no idea where these words were coming from, and she wanted to slap herself for talking like that. But when she tried to do so, she found that her arms were stiff and could only move in a rigid back-and-forth motion, like a Barbie doll or a toy soldier. And when she followed Rita out the door, she found herself walking in perfect formation - heel, toe, heel, toe - with her arms swinging at her sides like metronomes. As much as she wanted to run out into the waiting room and yell out a frantic warning to all the kids there, she simply couldn't. She was a good girl now.

The sound of her neat, well-polished black buckle shoes clicking against the hardwood floor was the last thing she heard before she woke up.