My Patients Are All Mythical Monsters

0025 — The Clinical Report

The red light didn't just shine; it weighed.

It pressed down on the foyer like a physical layer of lead, heavy enough to pop the joints in the floorboards. The glowing word CONDEMNED, hovering in the air above Valeska's head, wasn't a hologram. It was a legislative decree etched into the local reality. Dust motes stopped mid-air, frozen by the absolute authority of the font. The antique coat rack near the door groaned under the invisible pressure, its brass hooks bending slowly downward as if burdened by a thousand invisible winter coats.

Victor adjusted his glasses. His knuckles were white, but not from fear. From the sheer effort of lifting his hand through the solidified atmosphere. The air tasted metallic, like l*****g a battery, and the silence was absolute. Not the silence of an empty room, but the silence of a held breath before an execution.

"High energy density," Victor said. His voice sounded thin, compressed by the pressure. "Impressive diagnostic tool, Inspector."

Valeska did not blink. Her eyes, pools of perfect, sterile white, remained fixed on the structural integrity of the main staircase. She stood perfectly still, her white trench coat unmoving, as if she were a statue carved from alabaster and bureaucracy.

"This is not a diagnosis," she said. Her voice was the sound of a guillotine blade sliding down a greased track. Smooth. Final. "This is a Demolition Order. Site sterilization will commence in 23 hours, 59 minutes."

"That's one interpretation," Victor said.

He stepped forward. The red light hummed against his skin, smelling faintly of ozone and burning plastic. He walked right up to the floating brand, squinting at the burning letters as if reading a thermometer. The heat radiating from the text was dry and clinical, enough to curl the edges of the wallpaper.

"But from a clinical perspective? It's a fever chart."

Valeska's head snapped toward him. The movement was instantaneous—no acceleration, no deceleration. Just Position A to Position B.

"Explain."

"The manor isn't 'condemned', Inspector. It's 'quarantined'. Look at the readings." He gestured vaguely at the burning air. "The chaotic fluctuations? The structural warping? Symptoms. The house is sick. You didn't brand it for execution. You flagged it for intensive care."

Victor reached into his coat pocket. His fingers brushed the cold, sweating surface of a flask of vodka—a tempting escape—but he pushed past it to the stack of papers he'd prepared.

"Standard procedure, of course," he said, pulling out the sheaf. "I assumed you were here to review the treatment plan."

He held out the papers.

Top of the stack: A greasy coupon for 'Two-for-One Pepperoni' from Pizza Hut, valid only on Tuesdays.

Middle: An overdue electricity bill, stamped with red ink.

Bottom: A crayon drawing Fenrir had made of himself eating a mailman, titled "ME AND SNACK".

Valeska stared at them. Her eyes narrowed, the white irises contracting like camera lenses focusing on a distant, blurry object. She didn't take them immediately. Instead, she leaned in, her face inches from the papers.

"This format..." she said slowly. "It is... non-standard."

Victor activated Cognitive Slide.

It wasn't magic. It was a forced perspective shift, a mental sleight of hand that overlay his subjective reality onto hers. He didn't try to change the paper physically—that would be illusion magic, and she’d see right through it. Instead, he attacked the context. He pushed the concept of 'Medical Chart' into the space between them, willing her to see the data he was describing.

The headache hit him instantly—a sharp spike behind the eyes, like an icepick driven into the frontal lobe. Pushing a delusion onto a regular human was easy; it was like suggesting a flavor of ice cream. Pushing it onto an Auditor of the Crimson Court was like trying to bend a steel girder with his mind. His nose began to itch, a prelude to the inevitable bleed. But it wasn't enough. The air around her began to crackle. She was resisting.

He grit his teeth, tasting copper. He had to double down. He didn't just suggest the lie; he anchored it to her own logic.

"As you can see," Victor said, pointing to the pepperoni graphic. "The caloric density of the ambient mana is spiking here, here, and here. The patient is suffering from acute metabolic acidosis."

Valeska took the papers. Her gloves were white leather, spotless, and they made a crisp snap as she grabbed the sheets. She held the pizza coupon up to the red light, scrutinizing the cheese distribution as if it were a spectral analysis.

Victor's heart hammered against his ribs. If she saw the pepperoni, he was dead. If she saw the chart, he had a chance.

"The Y-axis is unlabeled," she stated. Then, her brow furrowed. She tapped the pepperoni slice. "And this data point... it resembles... processed meat."

Victor's stomach dropped. She was seeing through it. The 'Cognitive Slide' was slipping. He felt a trickle of blood run down his upper lip. The cost of maintaining the overlay was ramping up exponentially. His vision blurred at the edges.

"A metaphor," Victor choked out, his voice straining. "Abstract data visualization. It's the new standard in... chaotic system analysis."

Valeska paused. She looked at him, then at the paper. The logic of 'Abstract Standard' warred with the visual input of 'Pepperoni'.

"Sloppy," she finally said. "Data integrity is paramount. However..." She flipped to the electricity bill. "The voltage spikes correlate with the observed spatial distortion."

She looked at Fenrir's crayon drawing. The crude wax lines depicted a stick-figure wolf with a giant mouth devouring a stick-figure man in a blue uniform.

"And this?"

"Patient visualization," Victor lied smoothly. "Projective therapy. The subject manifests its inner turmoil as... consumption. Note the aggressive use of the color red. It signifies deep-seated trauma regarding authority figures."

Valeska stared at the drawing for a long, uncomfortable silence.

"It is crude," she said. "But the psychological profile is consistent with the subject's behavior."

She dropped the papers. They didn't flutter; they fell straight down, pinned by the gravity of her presence, hitting the floor with a heavy thud like wet towels.

Victor exhaled, and his knees buckled slightly. The world spun. He had to grab the coat rack to stay upright. The 'Cognitive Slide' had burned more than mana; it had burned calories, focus, life force. He felt like he'd just run a marathon while holding his breath.

"The contamination source," she said, pointing a finger at Carmilla.

The Vampire Queen was cowering behind a pillar, her usual arrogance replaced by a primal terror. She looked like a cat that had been threatened with a bath.

"It is a Class 5 Bio-Hazard," Valeska intoned. "Protocol dictates immediate incineration."

"That's not a bio-hazard," Victor said, stepping between the Auditor and the vampire. "That's the patient."

Carmilla peeked out from behind his coat. Her fangs were bared, not in aggression, but in a silent, terrified grimace. She started to hiss a protest—something about her royal lineage—but Valeska's gaze shifted to her, and the sound died in her throat, choked off by the sudden increase in local gravity. The Vampire Queen slumped, reduced to a shivering blur of gothic lace.

"Irrelevant. The stain is spreading."

"You don't burn down a hospital because a patient is bleeding, Inspector. You stop the bleeding."

Valeska paused. The red light pulsed, casting long, harsh shadows across her face. "Bleaching is 100% effective."

"It's also 100% fatal," Victor countered. "And as a licensed practitioner under the Old Law..." He tapped the floor with his shoe. The wood echoed, a hollow sound in the pressurized room. "...I have a duty of care. Malpractice suits are messy, Inspector. So much paperwork. So many audits."

The word 'audit' made her pause. To a creature of pure order, bureaucracy was a sacred ritual. The threat of paperwork was far more effective than the threat of violence.

"I have a better solution," Victor said.

He turned and walked to the corner of the room, where the Fenrir-Cube sat.

The Great Wolf was currently a perfect, fuzzy box, about three feet on each side. He was vibrating with suppressed rage, emitting a low, square hum. Two yellow eyes blinked from the front face, filled with humiliation and fury.

"Look at this," Victor said, resting his hand on his flat, furry top.

Fenrir growled—a sound that bounced around inside his geometric form like a marble in a wooden box. Grrr-clunk-grrr.

"Before your arrival? He was a chaotic mess. Shedding everywhere. Chewing the furniture. A vector of entropy."

Victor patted him. He felt dense, like a brick wrapped in velvet.

"Now? Look at these lines. Look at the stability."

Victor pulled a pen from his pocket and placed it on Fenrir's head. It didn't roll. It sat there, perfectly still.

"Perfectly level," Victor said. "This isn't punishment, Inspector. It's swaddling. I've been applying compression therapy to stabilize his ego-boundary. Your arrival just... accelerated the process."

Valeska tilted her head. Her eyes zoomed in on the pen. He could almost hear the shutter click of her internal camera.

"Efficiency improved by 400%," she murmured.

"Exactly. I'm not harboring monsters, Valeska. I'm fixing them. I'm turning chaos into... furniture."

Fenrir let out a sharp yip, but the sound was muffled by his own internal angles. He tried to bite Victor, but his jaw was currently a flat plane, so he just kind of aggressively nudged his thigh.

Valeska looked from the cube to Carmilla, and then back to Victor. The red light overhead dimmed slightly, the word CONDEMNED flickering like a dying neon sign.

"Proposal," she said.

"Dialysis," Victor said instantly. "We don't burn the vampire. We separate the curse from the blood. Mechanical extraction. I have the equipment ready."

"Where?"

"The Kitchen."

Valeska considered this. The air pressure in the room seemed to equalize. The dust motes began to drift again. The coat rack slowly creaked back into its original shape.

"The probability of success is low," she said. "0.04%."

"Higher than the probability of you leaving here without filing a Form 27-B for wrongful termination of a registered entity," Victor bluffed. He had no idea if Form 27-B existed. But with Auditors, there was always a Form.

She stiffened. "Form 27-B requires a tribunal."

"Exactly. Who has the time?"

The red light vanished. The crushing weight lifted from his shoulders so suddenly he almost stumbled.

"Proposal accepted," Valeska said.

She stepped forward, her heels clicking on the floorboards with the precision of a metronome.

"Conditional."

"Name it," Victor said.

"I will supervise." She walked past him, heading toward the hallway that led to the kitchen. "If the patient is critical, the 24-hour demolition window is rescinded. Emergency Containment Protocols are now active. The procedure will commence immediately. I require a sterile observation deck. And..."

She paused by the Fenrir-Cube. She reached out a gloved hand and adjusted him slightly, rotating him two degrees to the left so he was perfectly aligned with the wall.

"Keep the dog square," she said. "I like the geometry."

She marched into the dark hallway, her white coat glowing in the gloom.

Victor let out a long, shaky breath. His nose was bleeding freely now. The Cognitive Slide had burned through a good chunk of his mana reserves, leaving him lightheaded. He wiped the blood away with the pizza coupon.

"You heard the lady," Victor whispered to the angry, vibrating box. "Stay square."

Victor grabbed the handle of the cube and dragged Fenrir across the floor. He was heavy, surprisingly so—density of a dying star compressed into a ottoman. But at least he didn't struggle. It's hard to struggle when you have no corners to leverage.

They had a surgery to perform. And if he messed it up, the red light wasn't coming back. The bleach was.