My Patients Are All Mythical Monsters

0013 - The Gluttonous Furnace

The basement door didn't open. It inhaled.

One second, Victor was standing in the foyer, nursing the phantom ache in his shin where the house had broken its leg. The next, the air pressure in the room dropped so sharply his ears popped. The heavy oak door at the end of the hall rattled, bowed inward, and then flew open with a violence that stripped the varnish off the hinges.

A roar echoed from the depths of the house. It wasn't a scream. It was a belch.

"Ah," Yggdrasil said, checking his pocket watch. "Right on schedule. The metabolic spike."

"Spike?" Victor yelled over the sudden gale. The wind was howling inside the hallway, dragging the hallway runner rug—and Victor standing on it—toward the kitchen. "What spike?"

"Hypoglycemia, sir!" Yggdrasil shouted back, his roots digging into the floorboards to hold him steady. "The structural repairs consumed the house's glycogen reserves. It is now critically low on blood sugar. Or rather, soul-sugar. It is 'hangry'."

Victor grabbed the doorframe of the kitchen as he slid past. The suction was incredible. It felt like the house was trying to turn its own lungs inside out.

"And where is the stomach?" Victor asked, though he already knew the answer.

Heat blasted his face. The kitchen was no longer a room. It was a blast furnace.

The cast-iron stove at the far wall was glowing cherry-red. The burner grates rattled like chattering teeth. Green and purple flames licked up the chimney, roaring with a sound that was distinctly articulate. It sounded like FEED. ME.

"The kitchen," Yggdrasil explained, walking calmly against the wind, "is the primary digestive organ. We must administer calories immediately. High density. Protein preferred."

A frying pan lifted off the drying rack and flew across the room, sucked straight into the open maw of the oven. CRUNCH~. The stove chewed it. Metal shrieked as it was folded like gum.

"It's eating the cookware!" Victor ducked as a spatula embedded itself in the wall next to his ear.

"It is indiscriminate," Yggdrasil noted, calmly side-stepping a flying toaster. "When the glucose levels drop, the stomach acid rises. It will eat anything. Iron. Wood. Flesh. Yesterday, I believe it attempted to consume the vacuum cleaner. A tragedy, really. It had terrible indigestion."

He looked at Victor, his green eyes glowing with clinical detachment. Then he looked at Fenrir.

Fenrir was currently clinging to the leg of the kitchen table, claws gouging deep furrows in the linoleum. The wolf whined, his tail tucked so far between his legs it was practically touching his nose. He looked like a very large, very scared rug.

"We need meat," Victor said, realizing the implication. "Real meat. Before it decides to eat the staff. Or me."

"The Ham," Yggdrasil suggested. "The Serrano leg you purchased. It is in the stasis unit."

Victor looked at the refrigerator.

It was a massive, chrome-plated beast from the 1950s, built like a tank and humming with a deep, aggressive vibration. It sat in the corner, vibrating with a low-frequency growl that rattled the silverware in the drawers. It wasn't just a machine; it was a fortress of preservation.

"Open it!" Victor ordered.

"I cannot," Yggdrasil said. "The cooling unit is possessive. It hoards resources during metabolic crises. It is... defensive. It believes it is saving us from starvation by refusing to let us eat."

Great. The stove was starving, and the fridge was greedy. The house was at war with its own organs. A civil war of appliances.

"Cover me," Victor said. "And if I get eaten by a stove, cancel my subscription to the medical journal."

He let go of the doorframe. The vacuum dragged him across the slick tiles. He skidded past the roaring stove - feeling the heat singe his eyebrows - and slammed into the fridge.

He grabbed the handle. It was cold enough to burn. He pulled.

Locked.

The fridge growled. A low, metallic rumble that vibrated through Victor's arm. The ice dispenser on the front door clattered, spitting out a single, threatening ice cube. It hit Victor in the eye.

"It's resisting!" Victor shouted, wiping freezing water from his face. He braced his foot against the freezer door and pulled with both hands. "It's like trying to open a bank vault!"

He tried to jam his pen into the c***k to pry it open. The fridge simply magnetized the pen, ripping it from his hand and sticking it to the door like a trophy.

"Fenrir! Help!" Victor screamed. "If we don't feed the stove, the stove feeds on us!"

The wolf looked at the stove, then at the fridge. The stove was definitely the bigger threat. Fenrir made a decision. He scrambled across the floor, claws scrabbling for traction against the suction, and threw his weight against the fridge door.

The fridge fought back. The magnetic seal intensified. The compressor roared like a jet engine. The ice dispenser machine-gunned a volley of cubes at Fenrir's nose.

"It's a biological lock," Victor realized. He could feel the mechanism inside - not tumblers and pins, but muscles and tendons. The fridge was clenching its jaw. It was stubborn. It was a miser.

"Tickle it!" Yggdrasil called out helpfully from the safety of the doorway.

"What?" Victor stared at the butler. "It's a GE Monogram, not a puppy!"

"The gasket! It is sensitive! It has ticklish reflexes!"

Victor didn't have time to question the absurdity of his life. He jammed his fingers into the rubber seal of the fridge door and dug in, wiggling them frantically.

The fridge shuddered. It made a sound like a hydraulic hiss, almost like a giggle. The grip loosened. The aggressive humming faltered.

"Now!"

Victor and Fenrir yanked together.

The door popped open with a wet suction noise.

Inside, bathed in holy golden light, hung the Ham. The magnificent, bone-in Serrano ham Victor had spent a fortune on. It was beautiful. It was cured to perfection. It was supposed to last him three months.

"Get it!"

Fenrir lunged. But the fridge wasn't done. The crisper drawer shot open, trying to kneecap the wolf. Fenrir yelped, jumping over the plastic tray, and clamped his jaws around the ham bone.

He pulled. The fridge pulled back, snagging the meat with a wire shelf. It was a tug-of-war between a werewolf and a kitchen appliance.

"Let... go... you... gluttonous... metal... box!" Victor kicked the fridge in the compressor.

The fridge flinched. Fenrir ripped the ham free.

They tumbled backward just as the fridge slammed shut, furious. It revved its engine, vibrating so hard it walked an inch across the floor.

"To the furnace!" Yggdrasil pointed.

Victor scrambled up, grabbing the ham from Fenrir. The wolf looked betrayed for a second - he clearly thought he’d just won a prize - but the heat from the stove reminded him of the stakes.

The stove was screaming now. The iron door was banging open and closed, a hungry mouth snapping at the air. The vacuum was strong enough to lift the kitchen table. Plates, cups, and loose tea bags were swirling into the vortex.

Victor held the ham like a javelin. It was heavy, greasy, and smelled of cured perfection. It was worth more than his car.

"Forgive me," Victor whispered to the ham. "You were too good for this world. You deserved a charcuterie board, not a sacrifice."

He stepped forward, braced himself against the wind, and threw it.

The ham spiraled through the air, a beautiful arc of pork and tragedy.

The stove door swung open wide. The green flames roared up to meet the offering. It caught the ham mid-air.

The flames convulsed around the meat, a sudden, muscular contraction of fire that looked disturbingly like a throat swallowing a pill.

The ham vanished into the fire.

For a second, nothing happened. The roaring continued. Victor held his breath. Had it been enough? Or did it want dessert?

Then, the silence broke with a sickening, wet snap.

It sounded like a tree branch shattering under hydraulic pressure - the distinct, final destruction of the femur bone. This was followed by a slow, satisfied smacking noise.

The stove shuddered. The green flames turned a calm, satisfied blue. The intense suction died instantly, dropping the kitchen table - and Victor - to the floor with a thud. The flying toaster crashed down next to Yggdrasil, who caught it effortlessly.

The heat receded. The aggressive "feed me" vibration smoothed out into a gentle, rhythmic purr. A smell wafted out of the chimney - not the acrid stench of burning garbage, but the rich, hickory scent of slow-roasted pork.

The house sighed.

It was a physical sensation - the walls relaxed, the floorboards settled, and the air pressure normalized.

"Metabolic crisis averted," Yggdrasil announced, brushing dust off his apron. "Blood sugar stabilizing. Excellent throw, sir."

Victor lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling. He was covered in soot, sweat, and fridge-defrost water.

"That cost me three hundred gold," Victor said. "That ham was vintage."

"A small price for structural integrity," Yggdrasil said. "The house will be dormant for several hours now. Digestion takes energy."

Fenrir trotted over to the stove and sniffed the air, tail wagging cautiously. He seemed to accept that the fire monster was now asleep.

Then, a click.

It came from the far wall of the kitchen, behind the pantry shelves. A section of the wall that had looked like solid plaster hissed and popped open. It wasn't a normal door; it was an airlock.

Cool, humid air spilled out. It smelled of wet earth, ozone, and peppermint.

"What is that?" Victor asked, sitting up.

"The greenhouse," Yggdrasil said. "The metabolic activation seems to have unlocked the secondary vascular system. The plants are awake."

Victor walked to the new opening. Beyond the threshold lay a glass-domed room filled with a jungle of bioluminescent flora. Vines pulsed with blue light.

In the center, a massive sunflower slowly rotated its head.

Victor squinted. The center of the flower wasn't seeds. It was a glass lens. A camera aperture.

The sunflower focused on him. The lens clicked. It zoomed in.

"I hate this house," Victor said.

"We need mint for the tea," Yggdrasil said, walking past him into the jungle. "Watch your step, sir. The Mandrakes are light-sleepers. And they bite."