My Patients Are All Mythical Monsters

0026 — Pre-Op

The kitchen was not a place of culinary delight. It was a digestive tract.

The walls pulsed with a low, wet rhythm, the wallpaper sweating faint beads of condensation that smelled of mint and hydrochloric acid. Pipes ran along the ceiling like exposed veins, thumping with the manor's accelerated heartbeat. The heat was oppressive, a physical weight that pressed against the lungs. It wasn't just hot; it was hungry.

The procession moved through the steam. The "Cognitive Slide" had faded, leaving Victor with a pounding migraine and a metallic taste in his mouth, like he'd been chewing on aluminum foil. He was holding the reality of the house together with sheer willpower and a lot of suppressed panic. Every time he blinked, he saw the wireframe code of the universe fraying at the edges.

Behind him, Valeska walked with the terrifying precision of a clockwork soldier. She didn't step; she arrived at successive coordinates. In her left hand, she held a clipboard made of solidified light. In her right, she held a pen that looked sharp enough to stab a god. She wasn't just walking; she was auditing the hallway. Her eyes scanned every c***k, every peeling strip of wallpaper, logging them as violations against the laws of physics.

"The geometry of this corridor is non-Euclidean," she noted, her voice flat. She tapped the wall, where the angle was clearly 95 degrees but looked like 80. "It violates Building Code 7-Alpha. Fire hazards must be linear. Curves encourage flame propagation."

"It's a digestive peristalsis, Inspector," Victor lied, not breaking stride. He wiped sweat from his brow. "The house is nervous. Anxiety causes spatial warping. It's psychosomatic structural deformation."

Valeska paused. She looked at a spiderweb in the corner. The spider was currently weaving a pattern that looked suspiciously like a pentagram. She frowned.

"And the arachnid?" she asked. "Is it also anxious?"

"That's a... structural support weaver," Victor improvised. "It reinforces the load-bearing corners. Unionized labor."

Valeska made a note on her light-board. Scritch-scratch. The sound was louder than the groaning pipes. "Patient exhibits structural neuroticism and relies on unauthorized biological contractors. Noted."

Behind her came Carmilla. The Vampire Queen was floating an inch off the ground, her face a mask of haughty terror. She held her wrist—the one with the spreading Vantablack stain—away from her body, as if it were a dead rat she was forced to carry. She looked at the sweating walls with the same expression one might look at a public toilet in a plague ward.

"This establishment," she murmured, her voice dripping with aristocratic disdain, "smells of wet dog and despair. In the Crimson Court, we have sanitation thralls for this level of filth."

"We call that 'atmosphere' here," Victor threw back over his shoulder. "It adds character."

And finally, there was Fenrir.

Or rather, the Fenrir-Cube.

Since he had no legs, Victor had to drag him. He'd looped a belt around his midsection (mid-cube?) and was hauling him across the linoleum like a heavy piece of luggage. He didn't complain. He just vibrated. Every time they hit a bump, he let out a muffled womp sound, like a bass drum kicked down a flight of stairs. The Great Wolf was currently contemplating the humiliation of being a piece of furniture, his yellow eyes blinking slowly from the front face of the cube.

"We have arrived," Victor announced, kicking the swinging doors open. "Welcome to the Operating Theater."

The kitchen was a nightmare of industrial alchemy. It looked less like a place to cook food and more like a place where food was interrogated until it confessed its flavor. The stove was roaring, its iron grate glowing cherry-red. The fridge was vibrating aggressively, rattling its chains. Jars of questionable liquids—pickled eyes, glowing moss, something that looked like a fetus made of tofu—lined the shelves.

But in the center of the room, cleared of all debris, stood the centerpiece of his desperate plan.

It was covered by a greasy, oil-stained tarp.

Standing next to it was Iron-Jaw. The new orderly looked like he'd raided a hardware store during a blackout. He was wearing a welding apron over his pinstripe suit, thick rubber gloves that went up to his elbows, and—for reasons Victor couldn't fathom—a metal bucket on his head. On the bucket, someone (probably him) had painted a crude red cross in what looked like ketchup.

He saw them and snapped a salute so vigorous the bucket clanged against his goggles.

"Doctor," he barked. Then his eyes slid to Valeska, and the color drained from his face. He visibly shrank, trying to hide his massive cybernetic frame behind a spice rack. To a criminal, an Auditor wasn't just a cop; she was a natural disaster. She was the personification of 'The End of Fun'.

"Nurse," Victor nodded, acknowledging the bucket. "Is the device prepped?"

"Pressure is stable," Iron-Jaw said, his voice trembling slightly. "But the... the slime output is high, Boss. It's leaking. And the containment unit is making a sound like a dying cat."

"That's just the harmonic resonance," Victor said quickly. He turned to his audience. "Ladies. Behold."

He grabbed the corner of the tarp. This was it. The moment of truth. If he couldn't sell this, they were all going to be bleached into non-existence.

The tarp whipped off with a heavy snap.

There was a moment of silence. The kind of silence that usually precedes a scream.

It was a washing machine.

Not a sleek, modern appliance. No. It was a 1998 industrial-grade Maytag top-loader, the kind used in laundromats to wash horse blankets and rugby uniforms. It was white, dented, and looked like it had survived a war. But it had been... modified.

Thick, pulsating tubes of translucent green slime connected the back of the machine to the kitchen's plumbing, pumping glowing "Monster Mucus" into the drum. The control dial had been replaced with a pressure gauge from a steam locomotive, currently redlining. The lid was reinforced with iron bands and inscribed with runes that Victor had drawn with a Sharpie. The whole thing sat on a base of vibrating alchemical bricks that hummed in a minor key.

"This," Victor said, gesturing grandly, "is the Bio-Centrifuge."

Carmilla stared at it. Her pupils dilated until the red iris was just a thin, trembling ring. She looked at the machine, then at Victor, then back at the machine. Her brain was trying to process the indignity and failing.

"That," she whispered, her voice trembling with rage, "is a Maytag."

"It is a High-Velocity Curse Separator," Victor corrected, his voice full of conviction. "Standard chassis, yes. We use the shell for its acoustic properties. But the internal mechanism is pure thaumaturgy. We've replaced the agitator with a spectro-siphon."

"It has a 'Delicates' setting!" she shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the dial.

"A necessary calibration for... fragile soul structures," Victor improvised. "You have a delicate soul, don't you, Your Highness? We wouldn't want to spin you on 'Heavy Duty'. That's for demons."

Valeska stepped forward. She didn't look at the brand name. She looked at the mechanics. She leaned in, her white eyes scanning the vibrating drum. She touched the slime-tubes with a gloved finger, inspecting the viscosity. She pulled out a small, metallic ruler and measured the vibration amplitude.

"Centrifugal force," she murmured. "Separation of fluids based on density variance. The logic is... sound."

Victor let out a breath. Thank god for physics. Even magic police had to respect angular momentum.

"Exactly," he said, stepping into the gap before Carmilla could protest further. "The Vantablack stain is a high-density curse. It's heavy. It has mass. Your blood is a low-density fluid. We spin you. The heavy curse is forced outward, sticking to the... containment walls. The clean blood remains in the center."

"I am not getting in that," Carmilla hissed. Her fangs extended, gleaming in the harsh kitchen light. "I am the Queen of the Crimson Court. I am the Matriarch of the Night. I do not get laundered! I have bathed in the blood of virgins. I have slept in coffins lined with silk from the worm-farms of Mars. I will not sit in a machine designed to wash tube socks!"

"Would you prefer to be incinerated?" Valeska asked.

She didn't shout. She didn't even look up from her clipboard. She just stated it as a fact, like reading the weather report. "Option A: Centrifugal separation. Probability of survival: 0.04%. Option B: Incineration via Holy Fire. Probability of survival: 0.00%."

Carmilla froze. The threat hung in the air, heavy and absolute.

"The sterilization order is paused, not rescinded," Valeska continued, tapping the pen against the light-board. Click, click, click. "The contagion must be removed. The method is irrelevant. Efficiency is mandatory. If you refuse the procedure, I will revert to the default protocol."

"But... it's a washing machine!" Carmilla pleaded, looking at her sister for any sign of empathy. She found none. Valeska was a creature of pure function; she would put a baby in a blender if it cured a fever.

"It is a centrifuge," Valeska corrected. "Doctor Corvinus has labeled it as such." She pointed to the piece of duct tape on the lid where Victor had written CENTRIFUGE in block letters. "The paperwork matches the reality. The label creates the function."

Victor stepped closer to Carmilla, closing the distance until he could smell the ozone on her skin. He needed to close the deal. Fear was good, but shame was better.

"It's not about dignity, Your Highness," he said softly, pitching his voice so only she could hear the full weight of it. "It's about hygiene."

He pointed to the stain on her wrist. It had grown since the foyer. The black rot was now creeping up her forearm, pulsating like a fungal infection.

"Look at it. It's dirty. It's filthy. It's foreign matter violating your perfect, sterile form. You can feel it, can't you? The itch. The crawl. It's not just killing you; it's polluting you."

Carmilla flinched. Her OCD flared behind her eyes. He could see the panic rising—the itch of contamination battling the pride of royalty.

"Do you want to be a Queen?" he whispered. "Or do you want to be... a carrier?"

She looked at her wrist. She looked at the stain. Then she looked at the washing machine. The drum was gleaming white porcelain (he had scrubbed it himself with a toothbrush). The water—mixed with green slime—looked... sterile. Chemical.

"Is it..." she swallowed hard. "Is it bleach-safe?"

"We are using a 5% Sodium Hypochlorite solution as the suspension medium," Victor lied. It was actually water and dish soap, but she didn't need to know that. "Maximum sanitation. It will strip the curse right off your pores."

Carmilla took a shaky breath. She closed her eyes.

"Fine."

She stepped toward the machine. Iron-Jaw rushed forward, placing a step-stool (an upside-down milk crate) for her. She climbed up, her gothic dress rustling around her ankles. She looked like Marie Antoinette ascending the scaffold, if the scaffold was an appliance sale at Sears.