"Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Being Watched..."

This short story stars Jillian Nightingale, nurse of supernatural creatures for The Agency for the Betterment of Cryptohumanoid Health.  If you'd like to read her other adventure I've written, it can be found here.  This story takes place before the previous one, when Jillian is new to her rewarding, sometimes frightening, job!  

- Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Being Watched.... - 

“And you say the cough has persisted?” I asked, trying to look my patient in the eyes.

“Yes,” she replied.  “It’s been three days, and it hasn’t gone away. A terrible tickle in the back of my throat.” 

When I looked down at my electronic tablet, a steadying breath slipped between my pursed lips.  I had been successfully looking Ms. Pfeffernusse in the eyes for two minutes, but I was getting exhausted.  I pretended to look at the screen a for a few moments longer than necessary, touching it even though I had minimized the program that I used to keep track of my patients.  When I could stall no longer, I said, “Well, we’ll see what we can do about that cough today,” and I looked up.

Into hundreds of pairs of dead, glassy eyes. 

“Is there something wrong, dear?” 

Ms. Pfeffernusse was my second patient of the day.  Her house was a little four-room ramshackle structure that was probably older than my parents and was situated in the area of the city known as ‘Little Loch Ness’.  She looked to be in her eighties, but, according to her file on my tablet, she was quite a bit older than that.  Apparently, her appearance was deceiving.

But it wasn’t her appearance that was leaving me so unnerved.  It was the hundreds of porcelain dolls that covered every available surface in her tiny living room.  On top of her television and china cabinet, situated single-file on the couch, across the plant shelf that ran the perimeter of the entire room.  Everywhere.

Even if this was a normal house call, I would think there was something seriously unhinged about a woman who kept that many effigies in her home. But this wasn’t an ordinary house call. I never did ordinary house calls, anymore.

“When did you first start feeling under the weather?” I asked.

“Maybe a day before the actual cough developed,” Ms. Pfeffernusse went on. “I felt a tickle at the back of my throat for hours. Even drinking water didn’t help.”

While my patient drolled on about her psychosomatic cough (I had already figured out it was all in her head; she hadn’t once coughed since I had set foot in her apartment), I finally let my eyes probe the room.  It seemed that no two dolls were the same. There were boy dolls and girl dolls, each with a different combination of eye color, hair color, and skin tone. Even the ones that seemed almost imperceptibly similar wore different outfits, though they sat on shelves together, like twins. 

I must have been looking at the dolls for too long, because suddenly Ms. Pfeffernusse cut off her statement about her imaginary cough and said, “Do you like my children?  They’re really beautiful, aren’t they?”

I swallowed.  The Agency had told me not to talk about the dolls unless she brought it up, and to try to divert the conversation as soon as possible if she did.  “Yes, they’re lovely,” I replied, and when I put my eyes back on my patient I quickly added, “Are you allergic to any medications, that you know of?”

“Would you like to see my favorite?” She asked, struggling to her feet from her recliner.  “I’ve had her for so long that I don’t remember exactly where I got her.” 

“Would you mind looking at this list of medications, Ms. Pfeffernusse?” I asked quickly, acting like I was doing something important on my tablet.  “All you have to do is tap the ones that you’ve taken before, and how they affected you.  It’ll help me get a good idea of….”

“Janet is her name,” Ms. Pfeffernusse interrupted, and when I looked up from my tablet I found her turning from her piano back toward me. On the piano there was an empty spot in the layer of dust, as big as a doll’s bottom, and in her arms was the former occupant of that space.  

The doll’s porcelain face was so perfectly handcrafted that, for a moment, I thought I was actually looking at a miniature child in Ms. Pfeffernusse’s arms.  Then its unearthly pallid complexion, synthetic-looking brown hair, and disproportionate limbs revealed the doll’s true nature.  The old woman slunk back into her recliner and cradled the doll in her arms.  When she sighed contently, she almost seemed to melt down into the old chair.

I had been doing well thus far with addressing Ms. Pfeffernusse and drawing as little attention to the dolls as possible, like the Agency had instructed me.  But now Janet’s lifeless glass eyes seemed to bore into me, and I couldn’t find the willpower to draw my eyes away from them. 

The doll’s eyes blinked.

The Agency had warned me this might happen, and had told me that if it did, I above all shouldn’t panic.  But even though I was half expecting, I still jumped like a frightened cat at the disturbing sight. 

“What’s the matter?” The doll asked in Ms. Pfeffernusse’s voice. 

The Agency had warned me that, if she slipped, it was very difficult to bring her back peacefully.  That if I wanted to keep her calm, I had to choose my words carefully and exercise a great amount of understanding and tact.

Instead I panicked, fumbled my hand into my medical bag, and stammered, “Uh… um….”

Hundreds of glazed eyes turned in my direction.

If I had more experience, I would have been able to talk her down and deescalate the situation without immediately reaching for my trump card.  But it was my first day visiting Ms. Pfeffernusse, and only my second week on the job.  Though they were completely valid, I didn’t feel very confident in my excuses as I whipped a black wand from my purse and pressed the gem set into its end against my temple. 

Dozens and dozens of porcelain mouths opened in silent screams.  To my further horror, each doll began to lift from its place, scattering motes of dust about the room, and levitate inches into the air.  The dolls drifted toward me, mouths open, staring with fixed gazes.  Lazy circles of porcelain dolls drifted around me and my Agency-issued folding chair. I held my breath, bit my lip, and pressed the tip of wand against my temple until it started to give me a headache. 

Janet Pfeffernusse had lapsed into a full poltergeist episode.  The Agency for the Betterment of Cryptohumanoid Health didn’t have many ghosts on in their caseload (ghosts’ physical health was rarely an issue, and they moved locations so frequently that they were often difficult to find), but Ms. Pfeffernusse was a special exception.  According to her file, she had collected dolls during her life, and when she died, the compulsion to collect only became worse.  As her house filler, her phantom developed a separate personality for each doll, even having a commissioning a life-size one made in her old image. 

I was supposed to keep her talking, keep her phantom contained in the largest doll.  But I’d screwed up.

Poltergeists are psychic phantoms.  In her full poltergeist episode, Ms. Pfeffernusse was, not entirely of her own free will, trying to feed off of my fear.  Luckily for me, the wand of mind-shielding the Agency had me pick up that morning was working perfectly. 

Once I was convinced that I was in no immediate danger, my breath started to return to normal.  Trying my best to tune out the horrifically creepy image of the open-mouthed dolls, I flicked my fingers across my tablet to find out what I should do next. 

“Ghost touch” I murmured aloud as my eyes skimmed the screen.  Urgently, I dropped the tablet and rummaged my free hand into my medical bag. A moment later I produced a piece of marble as small as my closed fist, carved into the shape of a headstone.  Per the instructions on the tablet, I knocked twice on it with my knuckles.  

The tiny headstone disintegrated into a pile of dust on my lap and released a subtle pulse through the room that made my ears pop.  The drifting dolls froze in the wake of the ghost touch talisman.  Their eyes rolled back in their heads (an image that was sure to visit me in my nightmares for months to come), and the drifted back to their places on the dust-covered furniture.  The tablet had explained how each personality would follow its psychic trail back to its resting place, or some other supernatural mumbo-jumbo. All I was concerned with was that I was no longer surrounded by those horrible, silent faces. 

The only two dolls that hadn’t moved were the little Janet, which must have been Ms. Pfeffernusse when she was younger, and, of course, the full-size doll that I had been talking to since I had stepped into the rundown little house. 

I dusted the remains of the talisman back into my medical bag (I’d clean it out later) and, now sure that all the dolls were temporarily incapacitated, I removed the wand of mind-shielding from my temple.  

In my bag was the medicine I was supposed to give to Ms. Pfeffernusse, disguised as treatment for whatever one of her personalities had convinced her she had come down with this week.  I was supposed to have earned her trust with small talk and then offered it to her, to ensure that she’d take it every day and keep her multiple personality disorder in check. 

So much for that. 

I popped the top from the bottle, took one pill in my hand, and slipped it between the artfully crafted porcelain lips of the old woman.  Awkward minutes passed, during which I watched and waited, trying to ignore the pupil-less eyes of the dozens of other dolls. 

Finally Ms. Pfeffernusse’s eyes blinked open, and she sat up in her recliner.  Her arm had been cradled around the doll of her younger self the whole time.  “Oh… oh my, what happened?” She mumbled, pressing her free hand against her forehead. 

“It appears your condition is a little more serious than I first thought,” I lied to the ghost inhabiting the huge doll.  “You’re going to need to take two of these every day; one in the morning and one in the evening.  Do you understand?” 

 Ms. Pfeffernusse still seemed disoriented, but nodded anyway. 

Even though she had been dead for quite some time, my heart broke for the confused poltergeist.  If I had done my job correctly, she wouldn’t have lapsed into the episode, and I wouldn’t have had to use the ghost touch talisman.  Before I could talk myself out of it, I took a piece of paper from my medical bag and scribbled my number on it.  “If you start feeling bad again, you can call me at this number, any time, day or night.  Would that make you feel better?”

She looked at me with those glassy doll’s eyes, and for the first time I wasn’t creeped out.  “Thank you, dear. That does make me feel much better.”

I left the medicine with Ms. Pfeffernusse, bid her a final good-bye, and left her little house.  I can’t believe I just gave my phone number to a ghost, I berated myself.  I’m just begging to be haunted. I should have just left the medicine and gotten out of there.  I can’t save them all.   

“Maybe I can’t save them all,” I told the doubting part of myself as I climbed into my car and started the engine.  “But I can damn sure try to help the ghost of Janet Pfeffernusse find some peace.” 

I pulled away from the little house and followed my GPS to the next patient prescribed to me by the Agency for the Betterment of Crypohumanoid Health.  According to his case, which I had read the night before, he was a gorgon who had accidentally looked at himself in the rear view mirror of his car and turned himself to stone. 

Lucky me. 

"The Best Medicine"

Eyes on the electronic tablet in front of her, Jillian did the math in her head.  “So, you’ve been here for… six months now?”

“That’s right,” replied her patient, who had been identified by her tablet as Wesley Baumgartner.  He wrung his long, thin fingers together one moment, and then absent-mindedly picked at his eyebrows the next. 

Jillian winched away in disgust and hoped that he hadn’t seen, quickly donning her professional face.  This man was one of her patients, after all.  “Are you thinking of moving into more permanent housing soon?” 

Wesley’s large, watery eyes became distorted as he looked around the extended-stay hotel room through his thick glasses.  “Um… well, I suppose I could,” he replied nasally.  “But, I’m sorting of holding out that mother will change her mind and let me move back in with her.  I mean, right now, the basement is completely unused.  It’s a waste, really.” 

Shifting in the folding chair the Agency had given her, Jillian tapped a box labeled ‘attachment issues’ on her tablet screen.  “Mr. Baumgartner, I think that your mother asked you to move out in an effort to help you rather than punish you.  You have to admit, it’s hard to get by with your… condition… while you’re living with your mother, isn’t it?”   

The thin, weasley, middle-aged man swallowed, and his eyes seemed to flicker even faster behind his glasses.  “Oh.  I was… um… wondering if you were going to bring that up.” 

“Well, it is why the Agency sent me, Mr. Baumgartner.” 

Wesley seemed to sit up a little straighter in his chair.  “Oh.  Really?”  Jillian noticed the man’s knees beginning to shake.  “Just… um… how did the Agency expect you to… remedy my problem?” 

Remembering her training, Jillian put on her most serious face in an effort to diffuse the situation.  “Simply to examine your living conditions and prescribe medication if I think it’s necessary.  Standard procedure.” 

Lower lip now trembling, Wesley replied, in what Jillian would later realize was a laughable attempt at a seductive voice, “Are you sure they didn’t send you to perform a… physical examination?” 

A sliver of fear slipped into Jillian’s stomach, but it didn’t show on her stone-cold expression.  Even so, she remembered her training, and let her right hand slip toward her purse.  “Definitely not.  This is a very standard, very professional visit.  You shouldn’t be worried.  This sort of thing is much more common than you’d think, Mr. Baumgartner.” 

“Please.  Call me Wesley,” Wesley said, just before leaping to his feet and lunging for Jillian. 

Adrenaline and fear filled the nurse like a hot poker placed on her skin.  Jillian leapt to her feet, dropping her tablet and knocking her folding chair to the floor.  Though she twisted away from the man, Wesley managed to grab her wrist. 

And then he licked the back of her hand. 

Jillian shifted her weight, broke Wesley’s hold and, with a twist of her hips, planted the sole of her right foot squarely into his sternum.  All the air left his lungs in a great whuff, and the scrawny man tumbled backward over his chair.  In the moment she had bought, Jillian snatched her purse from the floor, where it had fallen, and produced the instrument she had reached for earlier. 

A moment later, Wesley’s hands appeared on the back of the chair as he struggled to pull himself to his feet.  His previously combed-over quaff of hair was disheveled and his glasses sat skewed on his nose.  “Wow,” he wheezed.  “I know it’s been a while since I used the Venom, but I forgot how powerful it can be!  Just not so rough from now on, okay?” 

“I think you’ll find, Mr. Baumgartner, that I’m immune to your Venom” Jillian huffed.  Her adrenaline-quickened breath made her hand rise and fall rhythmically, but still she maintained perfect aim on Wesley with the implement in her hand.  “The agency made sure to inoculate me against every possible poison, venom, toxin, hypnosis, mind trick, and curse known to cryptohumanoid kind. So if I were you, I’d not try that again.  This thing was freshly enchanted this morning.” 

Wesley’s eyes widened in fear at the red-handled, ruby-tipped wand in Jillian’s hand.  “Oh.  Oh, no.  I’m… I’m so sorry,” he stammered.  “I had no idea.  Oh god.  I’m so sorry.  It’s just been so long… I mean, look at me!  I’m not supposed to be like this!”  Wesley returned to his chair and put his head in his hands, which put Jillian more at ease. Still, when she righted her chair, she made sure to place it a few more feet away from the man, and to keep her Wand of Stupification in her hand. 

“It’s not healthy for an incubus to stay holed up in his mother’s basement,” Jillian went on professionally.  When Wesley opened his mouth to protest, she added, “no matter how good his video game collection is.  Your kind survives on the sensual energy of young women.  And there are NO young women playing video games on the internet.” 

“But…,”

“NONE.” 

Wesley lowered his face shamefully. “I’ve tried everything, though.  I mean, look at these pills I ordered from an ad I got in my inbox.”  He trotted to the room’s nightstand, opened it, and produced a pair of plastic bottles, each the size of the venti coffee Jillian had drunk that morning.  Written across the front of the red bottles were the words ‘LOVE MACHINE’ in black letters, plastered in a yellow comic-book style starburst. 

“Mr. Baumgartner, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet,” Jillian said, setting down her wand long enough to make a few quick taps on her tablet.  “I’m calling you in a prescription meant to help incubuses just like you with this very same problem.  Soon you’ll be looking like your old self again, and you’ll have no trouble with the ladies.” 

“Thank you, Ms. Nightingale,” Wesley said, looking repentant.  “Mother has been teasing me because I look older than she does.” 

“That’s because she’s a succubus, and she feeds regularly,” Jillian replied, “and doesn’t spend all her time playing video games.”  She flipped the cover on her tablet closed and stood, collapsing her folding chair.  “Your prescription will be ready by tomorrow.  Simply take it, and concern yourself more with your health instead of how many headshots your squad is accumulating.” 

Wesley nodded, his hands clasped in his lap.  “Thank you again, Ms. Nightingale.  And I’m so sorry about my little… outburst.  I hope you can forgive me.” 

Despite herself, Jillian smiled.  “It’s not the worst that’s happened to me in this job.  Coincidently, werewolf bites itch like you wouldn’t believe.”  With that, she stuffed her belongings into her back, bid Wesley a final good-bye, and left the hotel room. 

On her way down the hotel’s stairs, Jillian recalled the patients she had seen that day.  A harpy with a broken wing.  A merman with a terrible case of athlete’s flipper.  A troll, currently living under the Watterson Beltway Bridge, with fang rot.  And, lastly, an antisocial incubus with a hormonal imbalance. 

Jillian Nightingale, nurse practitioner for the Agency for the Betterment of Cryptohumanoid Health, returned to her mobile office (a.k.a. her car).  No doubt, it had been a long day.  Though she could have squeezed in one more patient, she decided against it, and picked up her phone to text the Agency that they’d have to find another agent to treat the Sasquatch with fleas. 

The nurse left work at five o’clock, officially, and headed in the direction of her favorite bar.  The wizard bartender had promised her a Wand of Flypaper for the pixies she was supposed to visit tomorrow, should they try any funny business. 

Just another day.

"I Can Explain...."

“Fergus! What happened here?!” Fergus heard Father McCollum cry, and the sound of boots on grass quickly approached behind him. 

Fergus swallowed nervously and kneaded his hands together.  He had been utterly impotent to stop the fire, but hadn’t run and hid when it had started, like his cowardly instincts had told him.  “Something happened, and now the barn is on fire.”  He said it with a slight inflection at the end, making it sound like a question, as if Father McCollum's question might have been rhetorical.

“Clearly!” Father McCollum cried, his billowing robes appearing in Fergus’s peripheral vision.  “What happened to cause the fire?” 

Fergus’s face was warm, though he was quite a distance from the blazing shed. It was past dusk, but the well-kept monastery grounds were easily visible in the radiant, orange glow.  Before he knew it, his knit peasant’s hat was in his hands and he was wringing it back and forth.  “I … I don’t know,” Fergus lied.  “I saw the light from my window, and I came down here as fast as I could. By the time I made it down all those stairs, it was like this.” 

His stomach hurt from lying, but what was he supposed to do? Tell the truth? There was no way Father McCollum would believe him, and he’d simply have to spend the week in the tower without supper again.  Still, guilt chewed at Fergus’s insides.

“Where are the cows?  Are they still out to pasture?” Father McCollum asked urgently.

“Yes, Father,” Fergus stammered.  “I put them out just before you left for the trader’s market, just like you asked.”

“Thank the High Ones,” Father sighed.  “We would have been sore off without them.  What about the chickens?  How many are accounted for?” 

“I found Mable, Isold, Darby, Juniper, Silverbeak, Penelope, Fiona, Tristina, and Janet,” Fergus reported mechanically.  “But there’s no sign of Caneil, Harriette, or Regina.”

Father McCollum rolled his eyes.  He had never thought much of Fergus’s propensity to name livestock.  Still, his face was thankful.  “More saved than lost.  Good lad, keeping up with them.” he said.  “And there wasn’t anyone inside the barn? The other acolytes and scruples are still at the communion in Talonwood, then?”

“Um, yessir.  It’s just been me here, all day.  All by myself.” 

Fergus held his jacket tightly against his sides. 

Father McCollum placed his hands on his hips and started up at the leaping flames.  The barn’s roof collapsed, the wooden shingles finally giving way to the corrosive power of fire, and filled the air with glowing ashes and smoke.  The trees from the nearby wood were painted an eerie orange.

“Come on, then,” Father McCollum said. “There’s little we can do about it now.  Dew’s fallen, so it won’t spread to the monastery.  The best we can do is wait for it to burn down, and then examine the ashes for any sign of who did this.”  For a moment Father McCollum didn’t move, except for crossing his arms over his chest.  Fire reflected off of his bald head.  “These are dark times we’re living in, Fergus.  Dark times, indeed.” 

“Y-yessir,” Fergus replied. 

The Father turned to leave, presumably back to the cart that he had brought back from the trader’s market. When he was sure that he was alone, Fergus opened his jacket ever so slightly and hissed into it, “Now look what you’ve done!  You’ve gone and gotten us both in such deep trouble!” 

Two amber eyes blinked open, catching the light of the fire, and a scaly head, the size of Fergus’s thumb and the color of the leaping flames, poked its way from beneath Fergus’s arm.  The creature hiccupped, and a gout of fire the size of the boy’s open palm erupted into the air.  Fergus twisted away from fire before his clothes could catch, but the heat made his face and fingers sting. Silently he hoped that Father McCollum wouldn't later notice his lack of eyebrows. 

Tending a monastery by yourself can be ever so boring.  But when Fergus had gone exploring around the grounds that day, he had no idea he would stumble across the huge, brown egg in the crags south of the abbey.  Though he was beginning to appreciate why the monks called the area ‘Forbidden Gulch’. 

Already Fergus was making a list of things he would have to do that evening, in addition to helping Father McCollum unload the goods from the cart. 

Number one: find out what had happened to Caneil, Harriette, and Regina. 

Number two: dispose of the brown egg shell pieces in his bedroom.

Number three:  figure out how to muzzle a dragon hatchling. 

"Ungrateful Arms"

The grey sky outside is still lit by the afternoon sun, though it's filtered through the grey cover like a filthy window.  Trees bow and sigh, moving in the wind like fish caught in a current, their leaves glittering scales as the first raindrops patter upon them.  The air smells heady and humid, like grass and dirt and life, and the pre-storm squall blows it into my modest home.  Tossed asunder, the fingers of the curtains beckon me closer to the window. 

I've always easily fallen for lovers that could care less for me.  Not necessarily those that are outwardly malicious, but undeniably those that were callously indifferent.  And the storm is just that.  I am nothing more to her than another warm body to kiss with her raindrops, to tease with her voice and her sweet smells.  But, as is so often the case, risks are so difficult to assess in the presence of a beckoning hand, a sweet smell, and a seductive voice.  And the approaching storm has them all. So I take my coffee and my guitar and venture into her bosom, seeking the sweet peace that she peddles. 

The hilltop already belongs to her when I step outside. The fields worship her, bending in deep green-golden waves as she whispers over top of them.  She’s already begun singing her song, her first notes tapping a staccato beat on the metal roof of the porch.  I settle into a chair, and immediately her teasing begins.  A sweet-smelling breath blows on the back of my neck, tossing my hair and parting the collar of my shirt.  A raindrop kisses me lightly on the cheek.  Her voice, deep and throaty, echoes somewhere in the distance, promising to be here soon.

Samson, my huge, grey cat, has followed me outside, and even he seems to wonder what possessed him to do so as he curls beneath my chair.  After one last sip from my coffee, I place my guitar on my knee and let my fingers slide along the strings.  I don’t play anything in particular:  just a few chords, some scales, some songs I know by heart.  She doesn't care.  I mean nothing to her.  And yet, I continue to throw her my affections. 

A raindrop strikes my guitar’s wooden body.  I’ll have to dry it soon or the finish will be ruined. 

The strings are already expanding from the humid air. It’ll need to be tuned. 

Steam rises from my coffee cup.  It will soon be cold. 

Samson mews pleadingly from beneath my chair. 

But still I play.  She continues to ignore me in her approach, dispassionate to my efforts.  I don’t mind.  Because her voice, her smell, her damp, cool kiss, are all I need in that moment.  I've always easily fallen for lovers that could care less for me; but, for this moment at least, I am satisfied.