My Patients Are All Mythical Monsters

0010 - The Floor Is Lava (and Debt)

Victor sat on the counter, his legs dangling safely above the kill zone.

The puddle on the floor trembled. It was a wide, grey circle of flattened sludge, pinned perfectly in the center by the small, heavy coin. The localized gravity field was doing its job - the tiles beneath the slime were groaning, spiderwebbed with stress fractures.

Fenrir, having just swallowed his first slice of victory ham, leaned down. His hot breath steamed against the cold floor. He sniffed the slime again, a long, deep inhale that made the puddle shudder.

"It still smells like receipts," Fenrir noted. He poked the edge of the slime with a black claw. Squish... "And regret."

"Don't play with your food," Victor said. He wiped the last of the blood from his nose with his sleeve. His head was pounding with the aftershocks of the gravity manipulation, a dull throb that felt like a hangover from cheap whiskey mixed with a migraine. Every time he blinked, he saw static.

"I am not playing," Fenrir said. "I am testing the structural integrity."

The wolf stepped onto the grey puddle again.

The slime let out a wet, pressurized squeak as four hundred pounds of apex predator pressed it into the grout. Fenrir marched across it, wiping his muddy paws on the living surface. The slime bubbled in silent agony, unable to form a mouth to scream because the gravity was flattening its vocal cords. It tried to flow away, but the coin anchored it in place, stretching its substance until it was translucent.

"It is definitely furniture now," Fenrir decided. He nudged the fridge door open with his snout - the appliance was an industrial walk-in unit, a relic from when the manor hosted banquets for giants, now barely running on Freon and prayers. Even so, Fenrir had to hunch. The shadows around him coiled tighter, visibly condensing his mass until he was merely the size of a draft horse rather than a minivan - small enough to loot the fridge without taking down the wall. He began loading the rest of the ham onto the bottom shelf. "Squishy. It massages the toes."

Victor exhaled. One crisis managed. Now for the other.

He leaned down from the counter, staring at the coin in the center of the grey mass. The slime had stopped struggling. It was just vibrating now, a low-frequency shimmer of pure panic.

"Hey," Victor whispered. "Can you hear me down there?"

A small bubble formed near the coin. It popped with a wet plip.

"Mercy," the bubble whispered. The voice was thin and watery, like a drain gurgling.

"I can't hear you," Victor said. "Speak up. Or I tell the dog you're flavored gelatin. He likes lime."

Another bubble. Larger this time. "PAYMENT... WAIVED. MERCY. THE WEIGHT... IT CRUSHES."

"Who sent you?" Victor asked. He kept his voice low, glancing at Fenrir. The wolf was busy tearing open a package of cheese with his teeth, oblivious to the interrogation.

"The... Agency," the slime gurgled. "Sub-contractor... Level 1... just following the ledger..."

"The Agency," Victor repeated. It sounded bureaucratic. Boring. And infinitely worse than a single monster. "Do they know you're here?"

"Signal... jammed," the slime wept. "Gravity... crushing... signal. Cannot report... failure."

"What happens if you don't report?"

"Audit," the slime shuddered, sending ripples through its flattened body. "They send the Auditors. They... verify assets. You do not want the Auditors. They have... scissors."

Victor felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. Auditors with scissors. Great.

"Listen to me," Victor said. He grabbed a spatula from the jar on the counter - his only weapon. He pointed it at the puddle. "I have a proposal. You are currently inventory. I can liquidate you. I can pour bleach on you. I can let the dog use you as a chew toy. Or..."

The slime rippled hopefully. "Or?"

"Or you work off the debt," Victor said. "I need a doorman. Someone to filter out the solicitors. The vermin. The other collectors."

"Traitor..." the slime bubbled. "Agency... will... audit..."

"If you go back," Victor said, his voice hard, "you failed. What does the Agency do to failures?"

The slime went still. "Recycling."

"Exactly," Victor said. "Here, you get to live. You get a job. You get to be... part of the decor."

"Look at the dog," Victor added.

He pointed. Fenrir had finished the cheese and was now l*****g the wrapper. The wolf paused, sensing attention. He turned, his eyes burning with blue fire, a piece of cheddar stuck to his nose.

"Fenrir," Victor said. "If the carpet doesn't agree to the terms, you can eat it."

Fenrir swallowed the wrapper. "The carpet tastes like sadness. But I will eat it if you wish. I am still hungry."

The slime turned a pale, terrified white.

"I ACCEPT," the puddle screamed. "DOORMAN. MAT. WHATEVER. LIFT THE WEIGHT."

Victor nodded. "Good choice. Now, swear it."

"Swear?"

"The Old Law," Victor said. He didn't know where the words came from. They just bubbled up from the headache, ancient and instinctive. "Guest Right. Hearth Law. You eat my dust, you guard my door."

"I SWEAR," the slime gurgled. "BY THE DUST AND THE LINT. I AM THE MAT."

The house groaned. A subtle shift in air pressure. The contract was sealed. Not with a signature, but with a binding of intent.

Victor nodded. "Good choice."

Now came the hard part. The bluff.

Victor hopped off the counter, careful to avoid the gravity zone. His legs felt like jelly. He walked over to Fenrir and patted the wolf's flank. The fur was coarse and smelled of ozone and rain.

"Fenrir," Victor said casually. "The paperweight. It's in the way. Could you move it to the back door?"

Fenrir looked at the coin. To Victor, it was a condensed singularity of cursed mass. To the wolf, it was a shiny circle.

"Okay," Fenrir said.

The wolf bent down. He clamped his jaws around the Hunter's Mark.

Victor braced himself for the floor to explode. He expected the wolf's neck to break. He expected the house to tilt.

Instead, Fenrir just lifted his head.

Clink~~~

The coin came up. The gravity field moved with it, stabilized by the wolf's own overwhelming conceptual mass. Fenrir trotted to the back door, the coin jingling against his teeth, and dropped it on the threshold.

THUD~~~

The house shook. Dust rained from the ceiling. The coin embedded itself halfway into the wood of the doorframe.

"Good spot?" Fenrir asked, wagging his tail.

"Perfect," Victor said, his voice cracking only slightly. "Good boy."

Freed from the crushing weight, the slime surged up from the floor. It formed a vague, humanoid shape - a torso made of grey liquid, no legs, just a trailing puddle. It looked at Victor with hate. It looked at Fenrir with absolute terror.

Then it looked at the coin by the door.

It understood its place in the food chain.

The slime slithered across the kitchen, moving fast. It reached the back door and spread itself out in front of the threshold. It flattened, squared its edges, and changed its texture.

In seconds, it wasn't a slime anymore. It was a grey, rectangular doormat. It even formed the word WELCOME in raised, bristly letters on its back.

"Nice," Fenrir said. He stepped on the mat, wiped his paws vigorously, and walked back to the fridge. "Very practical."

Victor leaned against the counter, sliding down until he hit the floor. He sat there, staring at his new household.

A giant wolf eating ham.

A sentient doormat terrified of the wolf.

A cursed coin acting as a doorstop.

Adrenaline drained away, leaving only the cold, hollow ache of reality. He was alive. The debt was... deferred. The house was secure, in the most insane way possible.

He looked at his hand. It was still shaking.

"We need more groceries," Victor muttered.

"I forgot the eggs," Fenrir said, his snout buried in the vegetable drawer. "The chickens were screaming. I did not want to disturb them."

"You... didn't want to disturb the chickens?" Victor asked.

"They were loud," Fenrir said, his voice muffled by a mouthful of lettuce. "And they looked... organized. I do not like organized food."

Victor let out a laugh - a dry, rusty sound that hurt his throat. "That's fine," he said. "We can live without eggs."

He closed his eyes, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the wet chewing sounds of the wolf. The kitchen felt strange. Domestic.

Then the doorbell rang.

Ding-dong~

It wasn't the heavy pounding of a monster. It wasn't the scratching of a beast. It was a polite, mechanical, two-tone chime. The kind you heard in suburban sitcoms.

Victor's eyes snapped open.

Fenrir froze, a carrot halfway to his mouth. "Intruder?"

"I don't know," Victor whispered.

He pulled himself up. His knees popped. He walked to the hallway, stepping carefully over the cracked tiles where the slime had been.

The doorbell rang again. Ding-dong~. Impatient, but civil.

Victor reached the front door. He didn't open it. He pressed his eye to the peephole, the brass cold against his skin.

The fish-eye lens distorted the world outside. The fog was thick, swirling grey and white. But standing on the porch, illuminated by the porch light, was a silhouette.

It wasn't a slime. It wasn't a wolf.

It was wearing a coat. A trench coat. And a hat.

A human?

Or something that knew exactly how to look like one.

Victor held his breath. His hand hovered over the lock.

"Help," a voice came from the other side. Soft. Female. "Please. I saw the light."

Victor looked back at the kitchen. At the wolf. At the doormat.

"We're open," he whispered to himself.

He turned the lock.