My Patients Are All Mythical Monsters

0023 — Rejection Reaction

The foyer of Blackwood Manor looked less like a grand entrance and more like a triage unit.

Victor knelt on the floor, surrounded by the dismembered organs of a high-tech drone. Circuit boards, cooling fans, and servo-motors lay arranged on a sterile sheet. He had spent the last hour scrubbing the grime off the plastic casings, treating each component with the reverence usually reserved for transplant organs. To anyone else, it was a pile of scrap salvaged from a dead streamer's camera gear. To Victor, it was life support.

"Scalpel," Victor said, extending a gloved hand without looking up.

Iron-Jaw, the towering g**g leader turned nurse-acolyte, hesitated. He stood by the makeshift operating table—a stack of old crates covered in a clean sheet—holding a Phillips-head screwdriver in his massive fist. He clutched it as if it were a holy relic, his eyes wide with a mix of fear and religious fervor.

"The... Spiral Wand, Boss?" Iron-Jaw asked, his voice trembling slightly.

"The screwdriver. Yes." Victor snatched it from the giant's hand. "We need a positive pressure airlock. If we don't control the airflow, her Ladyship over there is going to hyperventilate every time a dust mite floats by."

He gestured vaguely toward the staircase with the tip of the screwdriver. Carmilla floated three feet above the landing. She held a lace handkerchief to her nose, though she wasn't breathing. Her velvet dress hovered inches above the dust, refusing to touch the crime scene.

"It is... plastic," she observed. She didn't look at Victor; she looked at the fan unit like it was a dead rat on a dinner plate. "And it is painted a vulgar shade of matte black. Does this house not have mahogany? Or perhaps a nice ebony inlay?"

"Mahogany doesn't have HEPA filters, Your Highness." Victor positioned the cooling fan against the throbbing wooden panel of the inner wall. He could feel the pulse of the house beneath his fingertips—a slow, deep rhythm that vibrated through the grain. "This is a graft. We're giving the house a new lung. If it works, you get clean air. If it fails, the wall eats my hand."

He pressed the fan against the wood, checking the alignment. "Okay, hold this steady. I'm going to drill the pilot holes."

Iron-Jaw leaned in, his weight pressing the metal frame against the dark, veined wood of the wall. He whispered a prayer to the God of Gears under his breath, his eyes squeezed shut. "Forgive us, Machine Spirit, for we graft thee to the Beast."

Victor aligned the drill. He took a deep breath, steadying his hand against the faint tremors running through the floorboards. He squeezed the trigger.

The drill bit bit into the wood.

A high-pitched, tearing shriek erupted from the paneling.

The sound wasn't the clean whine of metal on timber. It was wet and organic, like a bone saw hitting a nerve. The vibration traveled up Victor's arm, rattling his teeth.

The wall shuddered violently.

Dust fell from the ceiling like dandruff. A low, grinding groan echoed from the basement, traveling up the pipes and shaking the crystal chandelier above them. The shadows in the corners didn't lengthen; they thickened, clotting like old blood.

Victor winced, clutching his side. A phantom pain shot through his ribs, sharp and hot, mirroring the trauma he was inflicting on the house. "Easy," he hissed, patting the wall with his free hand, trying to soothe the agitated architecture. "It's just a little prick. Stop being dramatic."

"The Spirit is angry!" Iron-Jaw backed away, nearly tripping over his own feet. His eyes were wide with panic. "We have violated the flesh!"

"It's an immune response," Victor gritted out, the phantom pain throbbing in his kidney. He watched as the wood around the drill hole began to darken, turning a sickly purple. "The house thinks the metal is a splinter. It's trying to push it out."

He wasn't speaking metaphorically.

Around the drill hole, the wood had softened. It turned into a semi-liquid paste, the color of bruised plums. The texture shifted from solid oak to rotting fruit. With a wet, repulsive sound, the wall spat the screw back out. It clattered onto the floor, covered in steaming, acidic sap that smelled of sulfur and old blood.

Then, the hallway began to cough.

The floorboards rippled in a peristaltic wave, throwing Victor off balance. The front door rattled in its frame. A glob of amber sap shot from a knot in the wood, landing inches from Victor's boot. It sizzled, eating into the stone tile like concentrated acid.

The floorboards groaned again, rising up like teeth ready to snap the drill bit—and Victor's hand—in half.

"Do not be tedious," a cold voice cut through the noise.

Carmilla didn't move. She simply... projected. For a fraction of a second, the air in the foyer turned heavy, smelling of copper and old graves. The shadows behind her flared like wings.

The house flinched. The floorboards slammed back down. The wall stopped convulsing, trembling like a scolded dog.

"I am trying to read the label on this bleach bottle," Carmilla said, smoothing her dress. "Keep your pet quiet."

"System warning," Victor muttered, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. His vision blurred for a second, a headache spiking behind his eyes. "Tissue incompatibility ninety-eight percent. Recommend amputation."

"It rejects the machine!" Iron-Jaw shouted, raising his spray bottle of bleach like a shield against the supernatural wrath. "The Old Gods deny the New Steel!"

"It's not theology, it's biology," Victor snapped. He looked at the drone parts, then at the heaving, angry wall. The wood was now actively bleeding sap, sealing the hole he had made. Brute force wouldn't work. If he tried to bolt this thing in, the house would digest the plastic or crush it into powder.

He needed an immunosuppressant.

His eyes landed on the jar of green slime they had harvested from the "Doormat" earlier. Monster mucus. Viscous, organic, and smelling faintly of old cucumbers and ozone. It sat on the crate, shimmering in the dim light.

"Hand me the grease," Victor ordered, pointing at the jar.

Iron-Jaw blinked, confused. "The... Anointing Oil?"

"The slime. Give it to me."

Victor dipped his gloved fingers into the jar. He scooped out a handful of the thick, translucent goop. It quivered in his palm, cold and slimy.

Carmilla gagged audibly from the stairs. She floated higher, pressing herself against the railing to get as far away as possible. "You are not going to put that... secretion... on my airlock."

"It's not metal anymore," Victor said, ignoring her. He smeared the slime liberally over the casing of the cooling fan. He worked it into the screw threads, coating every inch of the "foreign" material in the biological signature of a monster. "It's seasoned meat. We have to trick the white blood cells. If it smells like a monster, the house will think it's part of the family."

He held up the slimy, dripping fan unit. It looked like something that had been sneezed out by a dragon, strings of green mucus trailing from the blades.

"Open wide," Victor whispered to the wall.

He pressed the unit against the bruised, pulsating wood.

The wall didn't scream this time. The wood rippled, sensing the mucus. It hesitated. The purple bruising faded slightly. Then, slowly, the grain of the wood expanded. Tiny, root-like tendrils emerged from the paneling, sniffing the slime like hungry worms.

"That's it," Victor coaxed, applying gentle pressure. "It's delicious. Eat it."

Iron-Jaw watched in horrified fascination. To him, this wasn't engineering. It was a dark pact. The Boss was feeding the machine to the beast, fusing the cold logic of technology with the chaotic hunger of the void. He clutched his bleach bottle tighter, terrified but unable to look away.

"Masterful," Iron-Jaw breathed.

The wall swallowed.

The wood flowed over the edges of the fan casing, sealing it in tight. The sap hardened almost instantly, acting as a natural caulk. The graft was complete. The metal fan was now embedded in the wood, looking like a tumor that had grown teeth.

Victor connected the power line—not to a battery, but to a pulsating vein of mana that ran behind the skirting board. He twisted the wires together, sparks of blue magic jumping to his fingers.

The fan blades twitched. Then, they began to spin.

The fan spun to life with a soft, pneumatic hiss.

A steady stream of air blasted out of the vent. But it wasn't the stale, recycled air of a machine. It carried a scent. Fresh, biting, and aggressively clean.

Mint.

The house had processed the mint leaves from the greenhouse and was now exhaling them through the new gill. The air smelled sharp and cold, cutting through the humidity of the foyer.

The wind hit Carmilla, blowing her hair back. She stiffened, waiting for the stench of rot or decay. Instead, she blinked, her red eyes widening slightly.

"Menthol?" she whispered. She took a tentative breath. "It... clears the sinuses."

"Positive pressure," Victor said, standing up and peeling off his slime-covered gloves. He tossed them into a waste bin. "Nothing gets in unless we invite it. Germs, dust, or debt collectors."

He turned to grab the roll of duct tape to seal the final seam, feeling a surge of satisfaction. The surgery was a success. The patient had survived.

"Hey, where's the—"

He stopped.

Fenrir, the shadow wolf, was sitting by the scaffolding. He had been investigating the "new toys" while the humans were busy. Now, the roll of silver duct tape was firmly stuck to his wet, black nose.

The wolf shook his head. The tape flapped. He sneezed, a sound like a wet shotgun blast, and pawed at his face. The tape didn't budge. Panic set in. The great beast, capable of devouring souls, was being defeated by adhesive.

Fenrir yelped and bolted.

He ran in a tight circle, crashing into the stepladder. Ideally, a creature of shadow would phase through solid objects. But panic had solidified him. He was a hundred pounds of solid, clumsy wolf bouncing off the walls, knocking over a stack of empty crates.

"Fenrir! Sit!" Victor commanded, trying to grab the frantic animal.

Fenrir didn't sit. He slammed into Iron-Jaw's shins, sending the giant tumbling into the pile of leftover screws with a loud crash.

For a moment, the tension broke. The eldritch horror of the living house, the aristocratic vampire, and the cyber-cultist gangster were all frozen, watching a dog fight a losing battle against duct tape.

Victor sighed. The headache was coming back.

"Hold him down," Victor told Iron-Jaw, who was trying to untangle himself from the screws. "I'll get the solvent."

Just as he stepped forward, a sound cut through the chaos.

Three heavy, rhythmic impacts shook the front door.

It wasn't the wolf. It wasn't the house's heartbeat.

The heavy iron knocker slammed against the wood with a rhythmic, demanding precision. It didn't sound like a monster. It didn't sound like a raid.

It was three knocks. Evenly spaced. Dead. The sound of a clipboard hitting a desk.

The hallway went silent. Fenrir stopped thrashing, the tape still on his nose, his ears perked up. The airlock fan spun quietly, exhaling its minty breath into the sudden, heavy stillness.

"An appointment?" Carmilla asked, her voice low.

Victor shook his head. A patient would be desperate. A monster would be violent. But this sound... it was the rhythm of something far worse. It was the only thing scary enough to make the house shrink back in fear.

"No," Victor said, looking at the door. He could feel the house tightening around him, the walls stiffening in defense. The playfulness of the duct tape incident evaporated instantly. "That's not a patient."

He wiped a smear of slime from his cheek, remembering the date on the calendar.

"That's the inspection."